City Council Meeting January 19, 2016

0:01:36all right appropriate good evening everyone i'm going to call to order the regular city council meeting of the city of el cerrito tuesday january 19th uh let the record show it's 703.

0:01:49um we will do let the record show we're all present as well and if you will join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag or an observation of a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation

0:02:10under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right uh we'll move on to item two uh council staff communications i know we have at least one staff communication excellent welcome good evening mayor and council members my name is melissa tiggbao i am the engineering

0:02:40manager for the department of public works staff sent notifications to residents surrounding the koramatsu middle school for parking modifications around the school staff anticipated bringing the item to the january 19th meeting however it has been rescheduled to the february 16th council meeting

0:03:00notifications were sent to the same recipients last week to inform them great thank you very much thank you city manager and any additional staff okay council announcements um go ahead i'm just going to say unless you wanted to make the announcement about yesterday i

0:03:17have plenty to make so you may make whatever announcements you would like a very successful uh martin luther king celebration yesterday and i would like to personally thank everyone involved with that um starting with our very own staff suzanne yarla and karen pinkos

0:03:38and um who am i leaving out boys afraid to mention what and the human relations community i was going to move on to that that's okay and the human relations commission but i especially want to uh thank the people who i know devoted just an extremely large amount of time

0:04:02pulling it all together and making this a very very nice one on a couple of levels that i'd like to mention one is i think that moving it over to the city hall plaza was a really good idea and anyone and everyone i talked to seemed to also and then the other thing that i wanted to mention was the

0:04:27programming of the event that occurred at the high school was really nice this year i think they did a really good job and since i don't know who's responsible i'll assume everyone was responsible that i'm sure that one of the main ring leaders in the responsibility for making

0:04:44it so successful was pat durham um and um so that was very well done and then we did have a movie at five o'clock which was a screening of a new documentary on the black panthers which was a really good and very interesting movie in that it um really made you pause and think about

0:05:14things i think so that was really good that was done at the cerrito theater at five o'clock so we had a full day and um our emcee was tony thurman and um so i think uh it was a very successful event and i just once again like to thank everyone responsible and i'd lost

0:05:36a lot to thank everyone who participated even at that any other all members of the city council we were yes we were there any uh additional announcements all right i'll try and rattle through mine uh rather quickly i wanted to thank the el cerrito chamber of commerce today

0:05:56they invited me to come speak to them it's their 80th installation they've been around since 1936 and as part of today's presentation i did help them install themselves their new officers including marty kaliski of marty motors mark fagoni of east bay sanitary john stasik of the

0:06:20printing facility and melanie mintz our own staff person all of those are officers and it was a good luncheon i did do a state of the city presentation that was well received there were quite a good number of questions regarding that i will save that one for later but i do

0:06:42want to highlight for our city council and the public the progress that is going on with regards to the installation of a solar project at the chevron facility this is an mce sponsored project uh the the applicant is styon and they have broken ground in order to install

0:07:09uh the solar panels at that location um and it's proceeding quite well um with one hiccup uh pg e has already announced that they will not be able to do their short amount of work that they need to do to make this operate in october that they won't be able to get to

0:07:30the inner ties until next march so there will be some delay in about what what our staff is saying is maybe two to three weeks worth of work somehow the el nino is preventing them from doing that work next fall and pushing that work into next march of 2017 so that's uh that i

0:07:55save that for later and save that for later okay with that we'll move on to item three which is oral communications from the public do we have any speakers yes mayor there's one request to speak cordell hindler mayor lyman city council members my name is carl hendler and i'm a member of the

0:08:16park plaza neighborhood association i came twice uh before about in regards the police coming down on our street i have gotten some feedback from my neighbors and they were like el cerrito police are still at it again i was like yes i say because according to jurisdiction

0:08:33they're not supposed to step within outside of their boundaries so because because albany has a similar ordinance so so hopefully and i did send you an email regarding to that matter mayor lyman i did send you an email i didn't get no response back so so hopefully uh sometime within the

0:08:50in the upcoming months that you would like direct staff to to do like a like a presentation for what do some research on what albany's ordinance um in regards to outside that police boundaries so let's see that that's one thing and number two um i was sending you all some

0:09:06flyers for the next show for contra costa civic theater it's called the clean house i'll send it to you at the next meeting on the the third tuesday so that's all i have to say right and can you refresh me i don't recall seeing your emails so what would the address

0:09:23yeah i addressed the fact that um that i spoken with my neighborhood association they were like el cerrito police have always been coming down on my on my on our streets and it's and they think it's within uh our our their their area and i was like that's not in our jurisdiction

0:09:37is your email part of your name or is your is part of your name is my full name handler ymail.com great thank you i'll look for it any further speakers no okay thank you um seeing that we'll move on to item four we do have a presentation from uh pedro galvo and i see our

0:09:58community hello hello good evening mr mayor members of the city council margaret cavanaugh lynch development services manager for earth fair city i wanted to come in and do an introduction for our uh planning colleague tonight uh as you may know plan bay area 2040 is underway it's a

0:10:20presentation tonight to introduce the efforts of the joint groups of mtc and abeg so it is without further ado it's my pleasure to introduce pedro galvon who is a regional planner with the association of bay area governments or abec hi good evening good evening um

0:10:42i am actually just going to get great so good evening mayor members of the city council my name is peter galval i'm a regional planner with the association of bay area governments and thank you so much for having me here tonight it's good it's great to be here both as a planner and

0:11:05as a constituent i actually live pretty close to here right by el cerrito bart del norte bart and so it's kind of nice to have a meeting in the town that i live in so thank you for having me so um who we are so we are the association of bay area governments the regional land

0:11:26use planning agency for the bay area and we're putting together plan bay area in conjunction with the metropolitan transportation commission and they do the transportation planning for the region the area is a truly regional plan in that it involves all nine bay area

0:11:46counties and 101 cities it its primary purpose is to decrease the regions over all greenhouse gas emissions by tying land use and transportation planning but it's also a platform to address shared regional concerns like the cost of housing our quality of life maintaining our existing infrastructure

0:12:11managing traffic congestion maintaining local land use control over planning decisions and protecting our environment the way plan bay area works is it ties together transportation and land use through a framework of priority development areas and priority conservation areas

0:12:32priority development areas are places where each jurisdiction has identified where they would like to see the development of more amenities and services to create a transit rich walkable area where they can put future growth priority conservation areas work in tandem with priority development areas

0:12:53where priority conservation areas are also locally nominated places where cities have identified that they want to preserve open space parks agricultural land so their regional constructs and in the bay area there are 188 locally designated priority development areas and 165 priority

0:13:18conservation areas so as you can see from the map it's truly spread out plain bay area what it does is it provides a road map to help cities adapt to future growth and the change that we expect between now and 2040. so it supports the region's economy by helping

0:13:37cities plan for future job growth and housing growth and it supports targeted transportation investments in places where we need them the most to relieve traffic congestion and deal with pollution so as i mentioned before in the land use planning end of things we have priority

0:13:56development areas and el cerrito has two of them and priority development areas are places with existing high quality transit or we'll have future high quality transit where the growth of most of the region's house most of the region's housing and jobs will be directed towards

0:14:18and on the transportation end of things we are focusing on maintaining the region's existing infrastructure first while making targeted investments in in places where it could provide the most benefit for very limited dollars so plan bay area came about as a result of

0:14:40sb 375 the sustainable communities act of 2008 and it ties together two regional planning processes that already existed but it makes them talk to each other for the first time and that is the regional transportation plan and the regional housing needs allocation the regional

0:15:02transportation plan is something that was traditionally done by mtc and the regional housing needs allocation arena something that abag has done traditionally so it brings both of those together and the framework that we use to implement the plan on the ground are the priority development areas and

0:15:18priority conservation areas so plan bay area is really built upon doing a lot of engagements and this graphic here is a little bit off in that there should be two-way arrows between each one of the circles because abag and mtc get feedback from local jurisdictions which we use to create our

0:15:41plans and we then pro each time we come across a milestone we we present those to you for your consideration both in our regular committee meetings some of which are specific to plan bay area like the regional advisory working group or the various abag and mtc committees or through workshops and then

0:16:01you guys provide us with feedback that we need we take that back and then we present it to you again until we come up with a regional plan that works for the region one really important thing to note for this update of plan bay area is that it's a four year update which means that

0:16:21this time around we're not doing a new arena allocation so that's on an eight year cycle and we did that the first time around of plant bay area and plymouth 2013 and we'll be doing it again in plan bay area 2021 but as of now this update will not impact reno so there are five major milestones

0:16:46with this plan update the first milestone happened in early to mid last year where we adopted the performance targets for the plan and those are the broad-based policy objectives that the plan is looking to accomplish and include things like creating more affordable housing

0:17:09mitigating the impacts of displacement maintaining the region's infrastructure to a really high standard and there's over 13 of them so if you would like i can go over so we adopted those um mid to late last year we've also um created a new forecast of jobs housing population

0:17:33and which we're using to distribute the growth for each city and county in the bay area mtc is currently developing a travel demand model that looks at how people get to and from places and they've come up with a transportation revenue forecast to figure out how much money do we have to

0:17:52put in between now and 2040 new transportation investments then there's the performance which on the performance end what that means is there's a limited set of transportation investments that are being considered with this plan update and specifically those are

0:18:10projects that are over 100 million dollars our regional and scope and increase capacity in some way so what mtc is doing right now is they are evaluating each one of those projects and they're looking at how well they how close they bring the bay area towards meeting its policy objectives um

0:18:30and they decide which projects to fund based upon that if a project is really taking the bay area away from the direction that we would like to go in then that project does less well and so they're figuring that out right now and we're also in the process of developing scenarios which i'll go into

0:18:48more detail later but essentially what those are is they represent different land use and packages of land use and transportation investments for what the bay area could look like in 2040 taking on all this new growth will it be will the bay area have more focused

0:19:07growth in the three larger cities will it be more dispersed in smaller communities and i'll be spending a little more time on that so i'll just leave it at that and so we're developing those right now and once we have three scenarios to show you we'll be taking your feedback

0:19:24taking the best aspects of each of those three scenarios to come up with a preferred scenario and we're looking to do that by fall of this year once we have a preferred scenario which represents the overall vision for how the region is going to grow between now

0:19:39and 2040 we'll take that through the environmental impact review process and that will take about a year and we hope to adopt um plan bay area by actually right now it says june but it's actually fall of 2017.

0:19:57so um how did we come up with our goals how did how does local input impact this plan so we had a number of open houses in all nine counties in the spring of last year where we heard feedback from stakeholders on what was most important to them and as you can see affordable housing is

0:20:20really important water issues open space jobs development and preservation and transportation and so um the goals of planned bay area address some a lot of these areas and scenarios are the packages of policies and transportation investments that are going to get us there so as i

0:20:42promised i'm going to spend a little more time on those now each scenario has a different package of policies and transportation investments that bring the region to that allow the region to meet its overall greenhouse gas emissions targets it cuts over all greenhouse gas emissions

0:21:02but it does it in different ways and so we have three scenario concepts right now which i'm going to go over the first looks at putting a lot of the growth of the region's housing and jobs in main streets in smaller communities it's a more dispersed growth pattern and the

0:21:20way we're going to cut greenhouse gas emissions in this scenario is through changes in technology improving bus linkages the second scenario looks at putting growth in large and mid-sized communities in the region that are served by trent by high quality transit and so

0:21:43we're defining that as rail transit so bart um and caltrain and so the invest so housing growth would go into those communities and the types of transportation investments that we'd be seeing is trent is supporting that existing regional rail network for the third scenario it's the most

0:22:02compact of them all it's putting all growth in housing and jobs in the three largest cities and focusing the transportation investment in getting people in and out of those cities while cutting greenhouse gas emissions and so those are the concepts right now we've developed those late last year

0:22:25we're in the process of developing the policies that will help bring those to fruition then we're going to build scenarios to see okay with these policies what how do they actually impact our goals and targets do they bring us close to where we want to be or they do they take

0:22:42us away once we have those results we're going to present them to you um this will be in late spring early summer so either we're finalizing the dates of the of the workshops but they will be either may or june of this year where we're going to present those scenarios to you and get your input as

0:23:01to what works best what needs improvement what what you would like to see in the bay area by 2040. so that's the schedule that i outlined we hope to adopt a preferred we hope to present to you a preferred scenario by fall and adopt it later in the fall and then start the eir process to next

0:23:25year to final adoption for the transportation investments where we finish the transportation revenue forecast and mtc is currently looking at the operation and maintenance needs assessments of figuring out how much will it cost to maintain and run the the region's

0:23:44existing transportation infrastructure and they're also evaluating new transportation projects that have come up that are up for consideration in this planning cycle so what does this mean locally so el cerrito has two priority development areas along san pablo

0:24:04where most of the city's growth in housing and jobs is slated to go and it has three priority conservation areas including the alone greenway which is right by here lower cerrito creek in the hillside natural area and so again you can really see here the balancing of growth with conservation

0:24:28that's key to the plan bay area framework also important to note is that el cerrito is part of an initiative called the east bay corridors initiative that seeks to really develop the san pablo corridor and leverage the best that it can offer in terms of retail residential development and really

0:24:47complement each community's characteristics alongside that run along san pablo and i can get on a little more detail on that later if you'd like so with that i'm happy to take it all any questions you may have this is a way for you to get involved and learn more about plan bay area

0:25:11you can sign up for our listserv you can email our a bags planning director or mtc's planning director and we're happy to um answer your questions and so with that happy to answer any questions you may have that's moby um yes um the three approaches that you refer to

0:25:32we could go back to that a second um so it looked like that was not an approach that really included cities like ours in it actually um oh i'm sorry because you know you're going by size of city for example i mean it doesn't actually i can't i guess you can't look at these

0:25:53and tell what they there's no way to tell what this means just looking at it but you said that it was large cities was one of them um regional rail which you defined as uh rail was the second one and the third one i can't even remember what it was but was what um it was the

0:26:16main streets so so main street so it mean in this case so the first one means if growth would go in the smallest in some of the smallest communities it would go into existing downtowns whether or not they have high quality transit running through them right now

0:26:34so it seems to me that by saying that you're going to do things by size is sort of missing the major point of some communities are interested and willing to do this sort of thing and others aren't and i think we're in the category of wanting to do this kind of thing

0:26:56but um we may be left out because of your definitions of how you would do this and many other communities would would also be and i'm just wondering if you've really thought much about improving upon that so that it doesn't have that negative impact on a lot of cities right so

0:27:18um i apologize for not being clear so it is both by size but also by the existing quality of transit so el cerrito is really well served by transit right now you have we have two bart stations here there are various regional and local bus lines that are of high quality that have

0:27:3920-minute at least 20-minute headways at peak time so el cerrito is actually going to see a lot of growth through plan bay area and a lot of resources and is eligible for a lot of regional resources because of the way that it's positioned now yeah and and it also includes places

0:27:58that might be smaller than el cerrito in the peninsula for example that again you wouldn't think of as a large city or even a medium-sized city but they have caltrain and the caltrain has certain headways that makes it that makes that place qualify for regional investments so el

0:28:15cerrito will definitely be focused on in that second scenario i believe that um in the east let's see i'm not sure how to define this certainly in the corridor that we're in every single city with one exception that i can think of has a bart station so it seems to me that

0:28:39that doesn't exactly define still that doesn't really do a very good job of defining anything to define it by you know so if every city already has bart what are you how are you defining it by saying it'll include every city that has art just every city so what you mean

0:29:00to do so growth so the growth will be centered in places that have high quality transit which does include every city that has bart but a lot of cities in the bay area don't have bart and don't have caltrain so those places will be seeing less growth in general so for example parts of

0:29:17eastern contra costa county are going to be seeing less growth in these scenarios because we really want to encourage people to live in places where they can take transit to work and drive less in general and so while it does include a lot of the cities going up 80 it re it doesn't include many many

0:29:37cities in the bay area like in the north bay for example there is no heavy rail there like a bart or a caltrain equivalent so they'll see a lot of those cities aren't included in that scenario okay thank you no problem councilmember friedman yeah um well i'm glad that we

0:29:56have two priority development areas and three conservation areas and i think the cities with the help of the trust for public lands and the community support you know was able to expand our conservation area during this last year what if anything can abac do to help us on

0:30:16those two priority development areas where we encounter challenges along the way is there anything practically that abag offers to member cities like ours that helps in those kind of situations thank you um so abac has been working with el cerrito in the east bay

0:30:36corridors initiative and what that is is precisely to try to leverage the best of all the communities along san pablo it's um i i think it's 13 communities that have signed a memorandum of understanding to be part of this initiative and essentially abac tries to work works with the local

0:30:58planners to come up with ways that places that right now aren't that attractive to development might be empty parking lots might be storefronts that are either deserted or not doing so well and tries to figure out how to make those places be activate those places so

0:31:20that they can attract the development that could happen in those areas and so one way that we do is we do that is by getting together planners having them share best practices we also facilitate applications that cities might have for look for state funding so for example

0:31:42one recent fund that the state put out is the affordable housing and sustainable communities program that's a fund that focuses the state's funding on in affordable housing in places that are have high quality transit are more have already had some developments or

0:32:02into greenfield el cerrito successfully applied for funding for the eden senior housing complex and was one of the few in the state that got it and i believe elsa rita won five million dollars from that um and abag was part of that process in helping el cerrito really identify the

0:32:24elements that make el cerrito a great applicant for that there's also regional planning dollars that that el cerrito is eligible for so there's planning grants there's over 40 million dollars of planning grants that we make that abag and mtc make available to jurisdictions who are interested in

0:32:44planning for their pdas and there's also 16 million dollars worth of priority conservation area grants that help jurisdictions do the planning that are that is necessary to preserve that open space or that agricultural resource land thank you very much no problem council

0:33:01member bridges um i just had uh thank you for your presentation um i had a question by 2040 what do you think the population um will be in the nine counties what are what is a bag projecting i think it's probably well over a million so it's um around 9 million about 9 million and what is it

0:33:20now um right now it's about seven and a half million it's about a million plus a million and a half yes more growth yes um so i have a question i'm glad you left a scenario uh slide up here because i had a question about scenario three yes i don't it's a little hard to interpret

0:33:39because we really don't know what all this means but when i look at this in scenario three it looks like what we have now we have san francisco we have oakland i assume that's probably somewhere down on the peninsula like san jose those are probably the job sites

0:33:52and everybody's trying to get there which is helpful for caltrain it might bart might take you to san francisco and oakland but we still have a lot of problems with capacity not only on bart but also on interstate 80. and just a little bit north of us is where bart stops and so

0:34:11if you spend any time driving from solano county to let's say the bay bridge right capacity so when you alluded to some new transportation projects where are we going to put all these cars and even bart is at capacity um i i i'm just wondering how do you see this working

0:34:31so what kind of solutions are out there right so um one thing that's important to note is that these aren't quite scenarios yet these are just general concepts that we um that we have come up with of with what of what growth could look like in the bay area so when you

0:34:48said you don't really know what it looks like yet we also don't really know what it looks like yet fully but these represent just the broad conceptual framework of what it could look like and so once we come out with the refined scenarios which will be in may or june of this year

0:35:05that's when we're going to have the specific policies and transportation investments that will make each of these scenarios work but more directly to your question of well how do we how could we make scenario three work focusing all the growth on the three largest cities so

0:35:24in that scenario it would involve using the region's limited transportation dollars to increase capacity to get to and from those cities so bart would be looking at possibly another trans bay tube for san francisco um it it's the scenario that develo that focuses the most on technological

0:35:46innovation and so um because it's this plan is through 2040 where part of the policy is looking at driverless cars drivers cars and electric vehicles as well as traffic demand management policies so um looking at maybe charging tolls on certain uncertain lanes in the highway for

0:36:10example um and it's it's a combination of many many things that could make that work out um also to address your comment about you know scenario three is what we currently have that that is very close to the status quo but what we try to do with plan bay area 2013 the first time around is we created

0:36:32this priority development area this priority development area concept specifically to try to encourage growth away from those three large cities so that way you're not only going to those places and that can and to alleviate some of that congestion that happens in the roadways and on bart

0:36:50and on caltrain as a result of the status quo and so and so right now i would say scenario two is closest to plan bay area in that you have a lot of the region's priority development areas along those corridors with high quality transit so around bart and caltrain

0:37:13you have a lot of small to medium-sized cities in those areas taking on more growth than they would otherwise and that's what we've been trying to encourage with the first iteration of the plan so we would go with scenario three if that is what the region wants and

0:37:31elected officials and stakeholders strongly say we want to focus the growth our region's growth in the three largest cities that's why we would go with that but as of planned bay area 2013 we're looking at growth more like scenario two yeah and i think it's you know what

0:37:50council member abelson and um friedman both stated i think we're interested we we have we have the desire to have um more housing but we also and we you know won't be so veiled from me probably is to say that you know we also need the money with the loss of redevelopment our

0:38:09hands are pretty tight it's very very difficult for some of our small small cities and we have property tax losses here and a lot of issues that have affected you know the city of el cerrito and um you know it would be nice to see some of that funnel towards us so that we don't

0:38:24have to always um commute and it's as was number one on your uh thought process here the affordable housing is really what the issues which is what's making everybody commute that that's really what the problem is is that people are going for you know for tech jobs it'll

0:38:45probably continue to increase it'll be health care um and probably government but you know that's probably where this the sector will show where we're going to see the most job growth but that doesn't necessarily mean those businesses are going to be right here so

0:39:00yeah it's a it's you know real problem um so um could you just talk a little bit about the transportation fix it first um what that could you explain that a little bit further sure um so i'll begin by saying because i'm not a transportation planner my overall knowledge of the specifics is

0:39:23limited but the concept of it is to focus on the regions existing maintaining the region's existing infrastructure so you're not going to see a lot of highway widenings for example you're going to see money being poured into maintaining the existing highway for mass transit you're going to see

0:39:42money being poured into maintaining bart the bart tracks bar trains caltrain tracks caltrain trains and any new investment will have to really make a significant difference in terms of moving people in the region for it to be worth it because just maintaining what we

0:40:04currently have is very expensive and is going to take up i believe about 90 percent of what the region forecasts as its transportation revenue through 2040.

0:40:15thank you so um it's a very aggressive timeline is there a deadline uh deadline for their state mandated deadline for adopting the next plan yes by 2017. yeah because it's a very aggressive timeline and and uh certainly doesn't leave a lot of opportunity for to work out the concepts um if i

0:40:37heard you correctly in response to councilmember abelson's question you you said it and i'm not certain it was um clear but when she asked about you know which one of these includes el cerrito and and to get to council member bridges and council member friedman's comments

0:40:55which ones do the best the most for el cerrito um i think your concept was that scenario two or concepts two is the one that does the most for el cerrito because concept one might be auto might you might consider that automobile centric because you're you're putting uh people out in

0:41:16areas that are not near transit and not you may not even be near existing freeway structures and and concept three is very clearly oriented towards you know commuting so not necessarily putting job centers near uh housing centers so i just wanted to be clear that that

0:41:38the the the current plan bay 2013 which is as as you characterize most reflects uh concept two is certainly the one that that would most benefit el cerrito and the and the growth that uh we anticipate here because of the funding that would also come from this program

0:41:57however one of the concepts that council member abelson you put out there was how do you balance what each community wants to do because certainly there are communities in eastern contra costa that are going to want a concept like scenario one and there are communities in

0:42:21alameda county and and san francisco county that are going to want concept three so how is it that you're going to be able to balance what different communities want because certainly el cerrito has already taken many steps to work on being transit oriented development

0:42:40i actually think i was saying something a little bit different i might interject that what i was saying is we want to do to encourage that growth in our you know in our enviro in our more transit oriented environment so we're willing to you might say step up to the plate

0:43:00so it isn't that um so there's a little bit of a difference so we're not and oakley wants to do their share too and and san francisco certainly wants to get their shares so i'm just curious how they balance i'm not naming names but the the point is for those cities

0:43:17there are some cities who do not want to to do this and for those cities who do not want to do this why not let those of us who do want to do it do it and when you define it by size of city for example that isn't what that's particularly doing and and so to answer your question mayor lyman um

0:43:41it's a great question i mean how do you you know al cerrito is a good case of wanting more growth but a lot of cities don't want any more growth and other places that don't really have the capacity don't really have good transit also want more growth where they want to

0:43:56continue in a more suburban style of growth or that expands their growth boundaries into places that have not never seen development um so we balance it through both um we share our preliminary findings with local planning staff to say okay this is what abac has come up with

0:44:18based on our forecast based on what we know of what you are doing locally do these numbers make sense to you so we hear back from planning staff for what they think makes sense or doesn't make sense once we've heard back from planning staff we refine our numbers and we

0:44:37present them to local elected officials because we we wouldn't want to give you something that was so outlandish that you would it couldn't be implemented and so in that process of just sharing it with planning staff is one level of review then once we share it with local elected

0:44:58officials is another level of review people might say no you really need to give us more growth others might say you've given us way too much this is impossible how could you it it gets a little bit complicated because once it's at that level then it it really does become a conversation you

0:45:19know we'll come up with the best approximation what we think growth could feasibly look like in the preferred scenario here so let's just say we'll pick we'll go with two right and so we'll come up with what we think growth could reasonably look like we'll present that to local elected

0:45:35officials local planning staff and then it gets to be a matter of the boards of abag and mtc talking about what makes most sense to the region and you know as representatives of the region figuring out where they which pattern they want to adopt and how they're going to move forward but

0:45:57um as staff i know that we're focused on putting growth where we see it making most sense where it could have the most impact on greenhouse gas emissions and in in a way that complements what's already going on locally but we also understand that it's not gonna

0:46:16it's not going to work out each time and so once that happens we can only do so much and then it becomes a question for our board or the elected officials to really decide where it's going to go great thank you very much for coming tonight the presentation was quite good

0:46:35um and with that thank you we'll move on to the next item thank you so much for having me our next item is items 5a through 5e this is our consent calendar the 5a is the approval of minutes from december 1st december 15th december 21st and january 5th item 5b is the second reading of our

0:47:01regulation of medical marijuana cultivation and deliveries which is an ordinance of the city of el cerrito amending el cerido municipal code chapter 6.8 regarding the cultivation of marijuana item 5c is accepting staff's recommendation to award huber park improvement project

0:47:235d is agreement with west coast arborists for tree pruning within and maintenance services in the city for a contract ending june 20 june 30th 2016 and finally item 5e is accepting the tree committee's reappointments of uh ralph banello steve price and mike sergo

0:47:44you've adoption we have a motion to have dropped seconded by friedman mode made by abelson all those in favor please say aye aye item six is public hearings we have none of those this evening that brings us to item seven policy matters i see somebody coming forward i hope

0:48:09and i didn't get a script so i don't think we have i think we're just going with the normal format so is that you miss mints this is me great thank you fast meeting tonight um good evening mayor council members my name is melanie mintz and i'm the city's community

0:48:27development analyst and i am here tonight um to ask that you adopt a successor agency resolution reviewing an authorizing submittal of the draft rops recognized obligate obligation payment schedule for uh 2016-17 and improving also on the resolution inclusion on the rops of reimbursement

0:48:48for the city's streetscape improvements as you can see this is something that you have done each year since 2012 in the wake of redevelopment dissolution tonight's is um not very different from those it has the same items that it has had in the past uh the repayment of the craft iraf loan

0:49:09bond debt service payments um paying off the valente note which is the no the loan that bought the mayfair property and the administrative alliance allowance the new item tonight is somewhat of a cleanup item resulting from the finding of completion that was issued at the end of the year

0:49:28and i'm not sure if you knew it was issued but you approved it and it was i think we had a december 30th um approval so until the end of the year the dof and ourselves were busy um on that item we were allowed to also include on the rops ex including a bond which for for which

0:49:50we've already actually spent the money the finding of completion enabled us to now include that that those that were allowed to put the money for projects that were made consistent with the bond um allowances um and the other thing i wanted to point out as you as you can see this is also

0:50:08the first year that we'll be switching to an annual rops so sb 107 changed that we can do an annual rops versus a bi-annual rop so this includes the full year although payments will still come twice a year based on the attack the what i call the riptif based on the

0:50:24county auditor receiving the property tax um so i think it's pretty straightforward and those that is what i have tonight i'm here for questions great uh any questions for miss mintz seeing none is there any public speakers on this item yes we have one please come forward cordell

0:50:48mayor lyman uh city council members i am carter handler richmond i really do like the um the payment um for the city or elsewhere because i walk by there every day and uh and i notice the improvements on these streets and i'm like hmm i wonder what the city is going to do

0:51:05about this so i figured okay so this so the all of this is it looks pretty good so hopefully this item will be supported so that's it great thank you very much um do you have a question no i'm gonna just make a comment do you want to make your comment or you want to move right to

0:51:22motion yeah i'll let you do that in a moment i i do want to acknowledge that our staff works very hard on this and we continue to have the litigation fees on here which is something i was looking for when i picked up my packet so i i'm very content that uh we are

0:51:41hopefully someday going to be made whole for all the trouble that the state has put us through um with that i will entertain the motion all right i move a resolution of the city council of el cerrito acting as the illustrator redevelopment agency successor agency authorizing submittal

0:51:57of the draft recognized obligation payment schedule 1617 as required under the dissolution act and approving inclusion on the rops which is the acronym for what i said before of reimbursement to the city for streetscape improvements made pursuant to an improved redevelopment project

0:52:17plan for infrastructure improvements second motion by friedman secondary bridges all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions let the record show it passed unanimously thank you very much i believe the city clerk wants me to point out that as passed um it's kind of

0:52:34a um just a administrative item but the replacement sheet you have for the cash balance is what you have just entered into the record that that will be the completed balance sheet is the one that will be authorized to be submitted does the motion need to be amended at some

0:52:48point to to to acknowledge that i don't think so okay great no then we'll handle that as an administrative matter thank you um we'll move on now to item uh eight council assignment and liaison reports all right i have two um on your behalf i did go to the contra

0:53:15costa mayor's conference uh that was uh held in uh january um and at that conference we did um got a presentation from a university professor uc berkeley professor on negotiations but also we selected a chair for the conference and the chair is now wade harper of antioch mayor harper

0:53:42and the vice chair for the conference is now cindy silva of walnut creek so that's mayor's conference and then i also on your behalf attended the marine cleaning energy technical committee meeting tomorrow thursday night is the the full board meeting but at the technical uh

0:54:03committee meeting we did receive a handout and an update on um the pcia the the exit fee that i reported on before passing down to scott um so this this is uh this is the handout i'm providing right now is is a handout regarding the electro electricity utility exit fee oversight

0:54:31um which is one way of reading the power charge and difference adjustment and uh this this two-page uh summary is very good summary of the actions that were taken in december and it does talk about the types of solutions that the mce and other community choice aggregation

0:54:51organizations are seeking uh the california public utilities commission to take when they take up this matter in february so just giving you an update on that um and that thanks very much yeah it's very helpful yeah no this this one page handout is is very useful in explaining

0:55:10the topic in case somebody stops you on the street asks you about it right if they say why is pg e ripping us off we'll have an answer he'll have an answer and that concludes uh my reports from that concludes my reports uh that brings us to item nine adjournment uh we will be

0:55:31adjourning to the next city council meeting which is tuesday february 2nd 2016. i would like to apologize now i will not be here and council member vice chair uh vice mayor abelson will be running that meeting great with that we're adjourned you