City Council Meeting March 1, 2016

0:01:34good evening everyone i am going to call to order the city council meeting of the city of el cerrito for tuesday march 1st 2016.

0:01:46let the records show that we are missing council members quinto and abelson however council members friedman uh bridges and myself are present thank you um we will at this time do a moment of silence or a pledge of allegiance please join us i pledge allegiance to the flag of the

0:02:15united states of america and to the republic for which it stands this is item two which is council and staff communications and i'm going to start off um i was disturbed to learn a family in our community were victims of an alleged race-based hate crime last week

0:02:43it angers me that an individual or a small group of individuals can inflict so much pain upon our community this unfortunate incident is not in character with the el cerrito community and it provides an opportunity to highlight our community's commitment to diversity and inclusiveness

0:03:07we need to combat prejudice by speaking up when hate crime of any type occurs and taking the time to meet our neighbors el cerrito is a great place to live because of the diversity of our community the el cerrito police department is actively investigating this regrettable

0:03:32incident and has requested assistance from the community i asked police chief moyer and captain keith to attend the human relations commission meeting tomorrow night to provide information about the investigation and ongoing response to this incident we will work with the human relations

0:03:52commission relations commission to develop ways to demonstrate community solidarity against intolerance community members are invited to attend the human relations commission meeting seven o'clock tomorrow here at city hall to hear that those details additionally community members are

0:04:11always encouraged to participate in neighborhood watch and look out for each other at this time i'd like to have the police department come forward and talk about this the specifics of the case as much as you can on your ongoing investigation thank you mayor captain paul keith from the el cerrito

0:04:30police department so this incident occurred on february 24th of this year at approximately 3 20 in the morning in this incident the suspect used store-bought fireplace logs in an effort to ignite the homeowner's vehicle the incident occurred up on arlington boulevard in the 1500 block

0:04:48in this case luckily the fire was discovered by the homeowners and quickly extinguished before it could cause any major damage the suspect in this case also left behind a note that contained a race-based slur evidence processing in this case is being done in partnership with the

0:05:02contra costa county crime lab and we've also talked with some persons of interest in the case as far as our ongoing actions yesterday we put out a request to the public as we widen our search for video surveillance evidence thus far we're analyzing tape that we've

0:05:17received from residents and we're hoping that other residents may have other footage available to help us narrow down a suspect in this case so we're asking residents that have surveillance systems to look at their footage particularly with the hours of 1 30 in the morning to

0:05:344 o'clock in the morning on the 24th in mind and contact us if they find anything of interest we're also waiting for results of our evidence examination and we're providing extra patrol to the affected neighborhood the yellowstone police department will place a high priority on cases of this

0:05:48type while we disapprove of all crime hate crimes are particularly reprehensible and are counter to our role as guardians of the constitution of the state of california and the constitution of the united states of america thank you for this time to talk about the summary in the case

0:06:03we hope that somebody listening tonight or listening tomorrow may have additional information and if they do we encourage them to come forward and talk to us about what they know about the case thank you great thank you any other staff announcements i would actually ask chief moyer and

0:06:19captain keith to stand up there for another minute for those of you who may not know i wanted to take the opportunity to welcome effective next monday captain keith is our interim police chief in el cerrito and send on behalf of all the city staff our best wishes to chief moyer and her

0:06:39new endeavor down in tempe arizona and uh thank you so much for everything you've brought to the department over the last five and a half plus years and give either of you the opportunity to say a few words if you'd like never miss an opportunity to express my gratitude i told the mayor no more than

0:06:5945 minutes it will be very brief i was given an opportunity to join the el cerrito police department and the team in the city of el cerrito in july of 2010 and a very courageous move by city manager scott hannon and immediately when i joined the team i knew i was joining a team of talented

0:07:22compassionate people that wanted to make a difference in a community i have been in awe of the service perspective of the men and women of the police department i have been able to stand beside them and watch the great work that they do in service of this community we have

0:07:42incredible council members that support the initiatives and the strategy and the policy of this city that don't just act as switchboards for community complaints but you act genuinely on behalf of the strategy of this city and i am i'm very grateful for how you challenge and

0:08:00support staff i can tell you this that it is it is easy in many ways to pass the baton on to paul keith he is an incredible public servant he has the character to lead he has the quality to lead and i believe that the leadership transition in the police department will be

0:08:24seamless with him at the helm i will sleep well at night knowing that the city the community and the department are in good hands with his leadership he's an extraordinary public servant i think you will find him to be exemplary i am grateful for the opportunities that

0:08:38i've been given policing has given me opportunities i never would have dreamed of and after 28 years i'm still excited to come to work every day i will look back on my time serving this community and being part of this team with tremendous fondness and i appreciate

0:08:54every opportunity i've been given thank you very much and on behalf of the police department i want to thank chief moyer for all the time she spent teaching coaching and mentoring the members of the el cerrito police department she really went above and beyond what

0:09:15you could ever imagine a chief would be and really cared for each employee as an individual um one of the we kind of talked about this earlier today through our our speeches at our swearing-in ceremony but um one of the tenets of backpacking and camping is that any place you go you have to

0:09:31leave better than you found it and so chief moyer has certainly done that for us she set us on um the right path for our agency to have a progressive agency that is focused on ideas and innovation at every level and we're going to be better off for having had her and we're very sorry

0:09:50to see her go but we're really happy that she's taking on new challenges with another agency as well so thank you for all of your time with our agency chief chief um i i you know i i remember when you started you came highly regarded by some of your peers um who

0:10:09had worked with you over many years and now i know why um after five and a half years uh you do put your heart and soul into your work you did a wonderful job for us and indeed as captain keith has said you have left us a better place so thank you for all of your service

0:10:33thank you appreciate it thank you um i want to echo those sentiments and how much you've taught me personally and i think all of my colleagues about the proper relationship of compassion and heart-filled policing which you don't always think of in the same sentence but

0:10:51that's what you exemplify and it's just been an honor to have you serving the city and to get to know you and see all that you've contributed and we wish nothing but the best for captain keith going forward i just want to thank you but i can't say too much more because clinic's box is

0:11:08way down at the end of the dios today thank you for everything been an honor thank you [Applause] i have one other announcement saturday march 5th so that's this coming saturday 4 p.m to 7 p.m west county right at home in-home care it's a new service that's opening up

0:11:36this is our open house a grand opening for west county right at home in-home care and that's going to happen 9 30 it's on san pablo avenue street number 930 suite b in panol and it's a service that will be serving all of west county including el cerrito any other announcements

0:12:01okay seeing none we'll move on to item three which is oral communications from the public we we tom pannas followed by jeff lichtman followed by nicholas arzio good evening mayor lyman members of the council and city staff my name is tom panis and i live at [address removed] in el

0:12:36cerrito i'd like to urge the council to adopt the seed saving resolution that's on the consent calendar this evening with the concentration of our plant genetic material and fewer and fewer large corporations it's critically important that we preserve our genetic

0:12:50diversity locally and this resolution helps us do just that on a related note the el cerrito community garden network is working again this year with the contra costa county library to promote backyard vegetable growing and knowledge sharing our first event this year is our west

0:13:07county fog belt tomato summit for those of you who are frustrated tomato growers i have to say that as one of the seed stewards in our town i am stunned by how many different kinds of tomato varieties get deposited in our seed library i don't know if these people gave up on them or think they're

0:13:25the world's greatest thing but we're looking to have everyone come tell us what varieties do you plant where do you plant them what exposure do you always plant in the same place um do you get anything good so we're hoping for an open discussion on saturday march 19th from 2 to 3 30 we

0:13:43can figure out how we can all grow the best most delicious tomatoes one would ever imagine in foggy el cerrito thank you for your time this evening if you throw in an element of tomato tossing i think you'd get a better turnout next year i'll speak with robin about

0:13:58that okay great jeff lichtman followed by nicholas arzio and al miller uh hi i'm here to speak in support of the family of emma dawley who were the uh unfortunate victims of this apparent hate crime about a week ago uh the reason i'm speaking is i think it's important

0:14:26for uh this family to know that they have the support not just of the police department and the city government but of the community as a whole so i'm here as a community member just to say that a crime like this is a crime against everybody that i take this personally

0:14:47i've lived in this city my entire life i've never heard of anything like this happening here before and i never want to see it happen again and i particularly want this family to know that the members of the el cerrito community are behind them thank you thank you very much

0:15:08nick arzio followed by al miller and the last speaker slip is howdy gowdy hello i'm nicholas arzio i'm a member of the el cerrito branch naacp and the city of el cerritos crime prevention committee i'd just like to start by saying that hate crime has no place in the city of

0:15:27el cerrito in the state of california or in the united states of america i'd like to invite everybody here to the next meeting of the el cerrito branch naacp which will be saturday march 19th at the saint peters cme church and i'd also like to say that the crime

0:15:45prevention committee will be meeting on march 9th at the el cerrito city hall in the hillside room the one of the duties of the crime prevention committees is to promote neighborhood watches and i think that neighborhood watches are an effective tool for crime deterrence as well as criminal

0:16:02assistance in criminal investigation i certainly hope that the police will continue in their valiant efforts to apprehend the perpetrators behind this hate crime and that the city residents will do everything everything they can to support the police and their efforts

0:16:18thank you for your time great thank you al miller followed by howdy gowdy good evening mayor lyman staff i would like to invite you all to an event that the el cerrito branch of the naacp is hosting it's a meet the candidates for california senate district 9 event

0:16:43it'll be held saturday april 2nd from 10 a.m to roughly 12.

0:16:50again at the saint peter's cme church 5324 cypress avenue in el cerrito all four of the candidates indicate that they will be present and give they'll be given time to talk about themselves and what they want to accomplish and what they believe in but most of the time will be questions from

0:17:10the attendees so a good opportunity to come and find out who you want to support it's not an endorsement meeting the naacp cannot endorse a candidate but they feel very strongly about informing their community about the candidates and i also would like to add my support

0:17:30to the comments you just heard from jeff and nick and i would encourage all of the members who are concerned to come to the human relations committee meeting tomorrow night especially those people that have a tendency to go online to places like next door or facebook and get involved

0:17:51in conversations and make a lot of allegations or uninformed statements come and get the facts find out how we can really support the family in our community and then go online and have a discussion to get more people involved in it please thank you all right thank

0:18:10you good evening mayor lyman council members my name is howdy gowdy i live at [address removed] i certainly want to echo everyone else's community support for the family that was affected by this hate crime and just say that i want to be a part of that demonstration of community support so

0:18:41i'm speaking on behalf of robin mitchell she couldn't be here tonight um but she's part of the el cerrito community garden network which wishes to acknowledge um support of your resolution on the consent calendar for um seed saving so the resolution is important uh statement

0:19:05about the important tradition of stewarding local seed diversity and you know the el cerrito community garden network operates two seed libraries in el cerrito they're very well utilized and um you know your support with this um resolution is is an important statement

0:19:33of you know the importance of of that seed saving activity nfc libraries and their ability to operate without you know onerous constraints so that's the message that robin wanted to share with you and i appreciate your inclusion of that on the consent calendar um with a different hat i will

0:19:55use the rest of my time just to um bring some awareness to what i was you know shocked by and think is a rather serious construction permit violation two lots were recently graded and excavated without a permit up on madeira circle this is directly uphill on a steep slope with a history

0:20:18of instability directly above the madera open space that the city just worked and a lot of residents donated to acquire so i really appreciate that the city was very prompt in stopping that work when it came to their attention and i trust that the project site conditions

0:20:42and the project itself will be thoroughly evaluated for compliance before any work resumes this contractor's reckless actions are are really a violation of community trust and they they deserve a close attention to bring a compliant project that's consistent with all of our standards and

0:21:02safeguards so thank you thank you any further speakers no mayor mister how do you don't go very far then that concludes item three and we'll move on to item four which is a presentation from the environmental quality committee and uh the chair of the environmental quality

0:21:20committee is mr howdy-gowdy all right yeah thank you is it all right if i sit here yes please all right all right so again uh thank you mayor lyman and council members um my name is howdy gowdy and i'm representing the environmental quality committee or the eqc

0:21:41with our work plan so for background the eqc mission is to educate inspire and activate our community regarding environmental quality we currently have 10 members there's a small mistake on this slide actually two of our members have served continuously since 2008 when the

0:22:04committee started so i wanted to recognize both dave weinstein and mark miner for their long-standing contributions to this committee we have a lot of other members have served many years and we're continually gaining great new members as well which is keeping the committee active and

0:22:20dynamic so one major role of the eqc is environmental you know advice policy development recommendations to the city also we have a strong commitment to environmental program activities including public outreach education and volunteer service to the community in

0:22:43the forms of hands-on environmental work parties our goals include outreach to the public with environmental education and action we focus on engaging the whole community all ages residents and businesses the eqc strives to inform and champion environmental efforts in the city

0:23:04particularly the climate action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions other areas include reduction of hazardous chemical use protection and creation of open green spaces we're lucky to have unique large natural open resources in our community and finally sustainable water systems

0:23:21both enhancing natural systems like creeks and improving efficiency and reuse in utility water systems serving buildings so our past accomplishments the eqc has hosted public forums and contributed to the development of several environmental policies that have been recommended to you including

0:23:43an updated animal ordinance prohibition on single-use plastic bags and foam takeout containers a particularly significant policy accomplishment was the climate action plan the climate action plan helped lead to the more recent major policy community choice aggregation which enabled the

0:24:01community to buy greater amounts of renewably sourced electricity and thus lower carbon emissions and then on the other hand we've also maintained a steady core program and tech activities including green team volunteer work parties eco films lectures and workshops

0:24:20participation in standing city events like earth day and fourth of july celebrations as well as creating new recurring events such as the hillside festival and the music for madera celebration so for our 2015 accomplishments there were three policy efforts completed over the past year the eqc

0:24:44initiated a pollinator safe community organ ordinance and i'd like to recognize eqc member renee solari who led that effort you know most of our work is largely a group effort and but sometimes an individual member stands out by seeing a process through so i just like to

0:25:01recognize those who champion things we also helped recommend the definition of priority conservation areas which are sort of complement planning complement to the priority development areas a larger policy achievement which has been under development for more than a

0:25:17year was the urban greening plan that was adopted at the end of 2015 and we held several public meetings on the topic and helped review that substantial grant funded planning effort so on the program side a major program focus over the past year was the support

0:25:38of mce's enrollment outreach that's the community choice aggregation to help maximize the number of electric power customers in el cerrito choosing renewable power we are pleased that el cerrito community embraced the 100 renewable energy options so enthusiastically

0:25:56as of last summer we achieved you know nearly 500 deep green enrollments more than any other mce city we were in a close tie with fairfax for the most deep green customers per capita and you know most of those customers are residential and and so a large opportunity still remains with

0:26:16businesses our outreach included events like our last eco film titled the future of energy that discussed cca in renewable energy as well as reaching out to the public on the cca topic at tabling events like the 4th of july we also organized a very informative lecture with three experts on native

0:26:40plant pathogens called phytophthora i wanted to recognize our mayor greg lyman who was one of our featured speakers at the event um i think it was great to see one of our elected officials sharing their knowledge from another role in their day job so thank you again for doing that it was a nice

0:26:57thing um in december we also had a very successful workshop on solar energy including education about installation and financing again a special thanks to eqc member rebecca milken for organizing that she's been on the eqc about a year but has already been very active and

0:27:16built a great partnership with the berkeley ecology center for some events also renee solari one of our members was one of the speakers who drew on her experience with the solar industry so 2015's been busy we also had our second annual hillside festival and music for madeira events so

0:27:36demonstrating the enduring support and enthusiasm for the hillside natural area these events are co-sponsored by the trail truckers in addition to these events providing education awareness celebration of the hillside natural area they've contributed to fundraising efforts and

0:27:52with the fundraising effort for the acquisition of the madera parcel successfully completed this year's donations were sought for ongoing maintenance and restoration activities in the hillside area and i believe trail truckers you know passed along the funds they collected to

0:28:08the city and and made made some work happen that way our longest standing core program the green team volunteer events has continued on the schedule about every other month and i want to thank dave weinstein and vice chair robert shot for their consistent commitment to green teams

0:28:29the substantial litter removal by the green teams are key to the city's compliance with the clean stormwater program this past year we also co-sponsored a green team cleanup with the crime prevention committee that brought together youth volunteers and city police officers

0:28:47and the eqc provided free green team t-shirts to the youth volunteers we've also begun to and again robert shot deserves a lot of credit for um being our eqc side of organizing that obviously the crime prevention committee had a lot to do with it too we've also begun to diversify green team

0:29:11events with habitat restoration activities such as invasive broom poles and beyond so that's that's all our past accomplishments um and then i've spent a bit of time on that but as you'll see our future work is really a continuation of what we've been doing so it's a good

0:29:28representation of our ongoing activities we provided a very detailed work plan in your packet but i'll just outline what we're thinking for this coming year we continue the regular green team events about every other month litter cleanups will remain a core activity but we intend to

0:29:46make the activities more diverse for example we have an earth day habitat restoration green teamwork party in cooperation with pg e on their right of way parallel to moser avenue planned for the earth day we also have arranged to co-sponsor a tree planting with the tree committee

0:30:06saturday march 12th 10 a.m at arlington park as our eco film and lecture series continues we'll be showing a film called this changes everything this saturday march 5th at 10 30 pm a.m at the rialto cinema at cerrito theater and that will be followed by an informal

0:30:30mingle with refreshments at the non-thon restaurant to continue the community dialogue and we'll be welcoming many active members of the community working to implement positive climate action and we welcome you know everyone listening to this now it's a free event

0:30:47it should be a lot of fun and specifically want to welcome council members to attend and then looking further forward it remains to be fully planned but we expect to conduct a healthy garden workshop with a focus on pollinator friendliness later in the year we plan to continue our

0:31:07climate action implementation and you know there's probably more of an opportunity to you know grow that deep green enrollment with our mce customers especially with businesses and in our upcoming meeting we'll be discussing whether to pursue an environmentally preferred purchase

0:31:30policy is recommended in the climate action plan um there's the cool california challenge outreach which ends in one more month this is sort of a friendly competition between cities that el cerrito was enrolled in we're currently ranked 12th out of 22 cities and we're hoping we'll get a little bump

0:31:49after our eco film event bring some more awareness this this saturday so the hillside festival is being planned for may 15th that's at the third annual event um so this education awareness and celebration event will help raise donations toward maintenance and restoration and may

0:32:11incorporate some of the musical element of music for madera not sure we'll continue with both of those events but we might combine them we're continuing to look at trash mitigation strategies and you know our volunteer cleanups are part of that but um we're looking for a fresh look at policy

0:32:31opportunities and i just happened to have some correspondence with garc schultz and he's tentatively agreed to be a guest speaker to eqc to share his solid waste experience which will be great to have him you know back visiting the committee that he contributed to for so long

0:32:53and then following its adoption we have you know opportunities to help implement the urban greening plan so we'll potentially be working on pollinator habitat connectivity so-called pollinator pathways integrate them into green infrastructure things like that so

0:33:18more ideas for education events and workshops greywater's been a recurring interest water efficiency in general electric vehicles awareness and there's a national plug-in day in september that we're thinking about participating in this year already kind of mentioned the healthy

0:33:37garden workshop idea energy efficiency and solar energy topics are always interesting and we're looking at future opportunities for workshops in those areas as well so just to reiterate our upcoming events um you know the eco film this changes everything is this saturday march 5th 10

0:34:0230 a.m at the cerrito theater it's free there is a you know a free online registration just to help us know who's coming but certainly welcome everyone to to attend that and don't forget about the after conversation at long thong there will be refreshments so um you

0:34:24know it should be a good good time to meet people in the community um and this film is based on naomi klein's best-selling book which explores how confronting the climate crisis can be our best opportunity to build a better world in many ways you know transcending just the climate

0:34:42change issue itself but actually you know the the whole society so um we also have it's not on this slide but we have a tree planting that i mentioned at arlington park with the eqc green team and tree committee saturday march 12th 10 a.m and that's you know in

0:35:02celebration of arbor day and it's also trying to restore some of what had to regrettably come out of arlington park as a result of some tree failures so um and then i mentioned the earth day stewardship on uh the pg e right of way next to moser that we're coordinating with pg e um there are some

0:35:25unique remnant native plants there that we're going to hand weed around and protect so that you know the rest of the fire protection mitigation that goes on there doesn't disrupt them and then the third annual hillside festival on may 15th so that's uh pretty much just recapping

0:35:47this calendar of events and giving a sense of how we fit in the various cleanups through the year um and that's my presentation so any questions i'd be happy to take them i don't have any questions i just want to thank you for um well thank all of the committee members for all that you

0:36:09do for the city and you in particular i think you do a lot of homework and have brought a lot of things forward for us and i also wanted to mention in the absence of um council member or mayor pro tem abelson not being here that this was really her baby and um she pretty much thought of this

0:36:27committee and really all the committee members have done incredibly well with all the things you've accomplished so thanks again thank you um i just want to echo that and say that eqc is really i think the most hands-on committee or commission we have in this city because you all do so

0:36:43much volunteer work to make this wonderful calendar of past and future events happen and really appreciate you and and the other members going the extra mile to make this city a better place to live in so thank you thanks and i want to echo there thanks for your

0:37:00presentation this evening it's a great outline probably easy to update on an annual basis so i really appreciate the work that goes into the presentation two issues that i did want to sort of follow up on i'm not sure that you have answers for them one is the plastic bag ban the threat of

0:37:16the on the plastic bag band and just trying to figure out what the eqc may have planned to defeat any erosion of the plastic bag ban again you don't necessarily have to answer that today and it may have to be individual efforts since that is potentially going to the

0:37:34ballot and then the second is a conversion of the hillside area sort of removing eucalyptus and trying to promote natives you're you're and i'm delighted to be out there on mojo working to support natives in the pg e right of way this coming earth day but i was curious if there's

0:37:54any efforts or any thoughts or planning that might go into converting some of the non-native eucalyptus and stands into native stands again i've caught you off guard so i'm not surprised those are great comments and suggestions so i i guess uh as far as the plastic bag ban goes um

0:38:14it hasn't been a topic of discussion at eqc for probably a couple years and it's it's great that you brought it up because i mean it makes me realize we've gotten a little complacent we feel like you know that's done and you know we don't see as many plastic bags in stores anymore so um but i think

0:38:33you're right there there is this bigger picture of how it's um being handled you know at the state level and um and i think it's a good idea for us to put it on our agenda and try to get educated on that maybe it's something garth can help us with he mentioned doing some

0:38:50you know review of legislation and and what is on the docket for for solid waste issues so um yeah i'm glad you brought that up because i think we do need to educate ourselves about what what else is happening um as far as uh you know the eucalyptus go that's not a topic that eqc has really

0:39:12tackled and you know it it may come up we we did actually co-host with the um uh historical society i don't know if that was in 2015 or not maybe i missed it on my list of things but there was um a speaker from a retired uh east bay regional parks ranger who spoke about sort of the

0:39:37history of of how the east bay hills became forested with with eucalyptus and some of the efforts that are happening elsewhere to change that so i mean that was just education and awareness we didn't take any policy position or suggest anything and i think it it bears a bigger

0:40:02discussion i think the hillside natural area has been identified part of the urban greening plan was identifying the hillside natural area as a an area that needs a sort of a master planning effort to sort of figure out best practices going forward and you know it's a large space there's

0:40:24really a lot of opportunities for restoration without taking on the tree issue which um you know i think it's it's a worthy conversation but i could see that it might become more contentious or you know have a process to to figure it out thank you again for your presentation

0:40:46thank you with that we'll move on to item five which is adoption of the consent calendar items 5 a through 5g this includes the approval of the minutes from february 16th a proclamation of women's history day and month administrative analysis uh analyst for recreation department

0:41:08the seed saver in el cerrito um support of the state seed state seed law an op a resolution opposing islamophobia a tree committee appointment and our quarterly cash and investment report 5a through 5g a move to adopt items 5a through g second it's been moved and seconded all those in favor

0:41:32please say aye aye let the record show that it passed 3-0 all right tonight we have no public hearings so we'll move on to item seven which is our policy matters item seven a discussion and possible direction on a new el cerrito library location um and i am looking to see okay

0:42:04nobody's moving so it must be it must be scott's turn it's my turn yes it's my turn do you guys want to sit at the table or okay um thank you mayor members of the council while our team is setting up i wanted to do a brief introduction and then do a little bit of a close when they get

0:42:23back to the end of their presentation as you all are aware we've been working on the possibility of a new library for more than a decade now with different starts and stops throughout that period and it wasn't long ago that the council gave us general direction to do whatever it

0:42:41took to be ready for a potential ballot measure in november for a new library as part of that we've recently updated our library needs assessment as well as did a city-wide survey on how our residents feel about the new library and as you recall approximately 70 percent

0:43:01were favorably disposed to a new library assuming that the project was roughly 30 million dollars in cost so one of the other things we had pointed out last time we were here was that we needed to spend more time uh refining the costs and refining the sites and in order to do that

0:43:20we have engaged uh group four architects and swinnerton management and construction to help us with that process based on their really significant expertise in the field so with that i'd like to turn the presentation over to them and allow them to introduce themselves a little bit

0:43:38and then i'd like to say a few words before at the end of their presentation before you start with questions and comments in public comment i'm john baker from swinerton management consulting we perform schedule and cost review for this effort along with group four

0:43:57architects good evening mr mayor members of the council dawn murkis principal with group four architecture research and planning and with me here tonight is ben irinaga one of our project architects also working on the project group four has significant library

0:44:16experience we've done libraries in contra costa county from walnut creek all the way down to san jose and up the other side of the peninsula as well as nationally and so we were selected to work with swinerton on the feasibility study and scope development report that we are

0:44:34presenting to you tonight in our report we'll go briefly over the project description vision for the library we'll also talk about the work plan and the process that we went through we'll summarize the library needs assessment and the facility assessment now this

0:44:51wasn't part of our work but this was part of the work of catherine page and associates done back in 2014 we will do a summary of a potential library program kind of a contemporary library program that you could do in a twenty one thousand square foot facility we will go through the site analysis

0:45:10we'll look at site development strategies that we've developed with the project management team from the city and look at the valuation criteria that we developed together to analyze the sites and then we'll come back with the recommendation based on all of this

0:45:25great information so the 2014 library needs assessment update that was completed by catherine page was kind of the predecessor to the work that we've developed and a lot of our work is really based on that as our foundation what we saw as our scope of work when we

0:45:44undertook this war or this study was to affirm the recommendations for a new and expanded library to identify potential library program opportunities to identify and develop site strategies and the budgets for those that would be for those potential alternate sites and then to look at

0:46:04evaluation criteria to really help go back and sort through those options to determine which one might be best to move forward with and our work plan is laid out here is to kind of reconfirm the library program the needs assessment work and then look at developing what we call a

0:46:23library scope kind of the program the site alternatives the site opportunities and the evaluation criteria all coming together here with the presentation to you tonight these little green dots that you see down here are project management team meetings and this didn't just

0:46:40consist of the consultants and your city manager's office it included recreation as well as the library community development and planning so it was a very collaborative approach to the study to kind of bring together the collective knowledge together for you the history of the library you probably

0:47:00know better than i but it's really a great asset to your community it's been open since 1948 it was expanded in 1960 about 6 500 square feet since then only minor renovations so 50 plus years in a same building 6 500 square feet as your population has continued to grow is pretty good service

0:47:22out of that little building but based on that definitely more needs have arisen in the community the 2006 needs assessment was kind of the first look i think seriously at the need for new library it was then updated in 2014 and the recommendation for that was a 21

0:47:42000 square foot library would meet the needs of the community as we look at the facility assessment i think the age and the use the heavy use of the library is definitely showing on the building the space is about a third of what is being recommended even even less than

0:48:03that what's missing from this besides space for people is the space for programs literacy tutoring group study space there's no dedicated program space the friends of the libraries is in the storage it's in the basement which is inaccessible and the lack of space really kind of

0:48:22takes away from everything when you have all of these uses compounded in such a small space it really does not make it efficient it does not make it functional and it really creates a space that competes with itself and it's a kind of a failure because of its success

0:48:41the collection lacks basic materials due to the shelving capacity there's not enough seating and my guess is you probably actually have less seats in your library right now than you did on opening day more collection more material has come in more equipment has come in computers

0:48:57have come in and what has gone out is the people space there's no teen space there's no space for additional staff if you're doing a special program probably very challenging space to have volunteers work in the library and then the inadequate storage for a space just

0:49:13the work that the library does in terms of the collection and sorting as we look at accessibility there have been improvements made to the facility for ada but basically any building that wasn't completed since the new building code has been issued is really in

0:49:30non-compliance the building code does change quite drastically almost every time it's issued one of the biggest challenges is the site the accessible parking widths of doors and things like that so the current building isn't does not meet current ada requirements

0:49:48in terms of life safety since there hasn't been major structural repairs done to the building re-engineering since it was built it it does not meet current seismic requirements there are several shear walls lacking and the foundation is not adequately anchored as well as noted that the shelves aren't

0:50:08anchored as well in terms of the systems again the building's 50 years old the infrastructure does not meet current technology requirements electrical requirements hvac power data all of these things are really integral to today's 21st century libraries and if they're not able to

0:50:28support the functions of the library it just makes it more challenging one of the things that is even more challenging is because of the age of the building the spaces aren't as flexible the the way the structure was built it doesn't allow for things to be moved and things to be

0:50:44changed to allow for more flexibility architecturally the building is showing its age finishes are worn exterior interior lighting fixtures were recently replaced because the lighting levels were so poor so that's good news but just the main thing about libraries today and if you

0:51:06go to a contemporary library the building can be designed to work with you or against you and as your library expands and you look for a larger library one of the things you really want to make sure you do is that you design a building that's going to be operationally efficient and so like in

0:51:22the walnut creek library it was expanded almost four times its original size staffing was like two and a half times you know it went from seven fte to 14 fte and so that's because the building was really designed to work with it the current library makes operations

0:51:40challenging it does not make them efficient so in summary the library is vastly undersized no surprise here from all the previous studies that you've you've heard before the existing facility is at the end of its functional life and will would require will require major

0:52:00renovations reconstructions if it was to be have further use in it before before you go on i was that that bullet sends a big flag in my uh world and i'm just curious between your your previous slide in this slide what is the state of the structure so again the facility assessment was

0:52:22part of the previous report and so we i'm talking about structurally what's the state of the structure so the state of the structure um is it safe yeah i i cannot come on comment on that so the what we're reporting on is what was included in the facility assessment

0:52:40from catherine page but just based on the age it was designed in 1960 and not been seismically upgraded yeah i know it's not current the current code right but no we did not evaluate the structural system assess it for its current right thank you yes um so one of the things that we do when

0:53:02we start looking and planning for libraries let's look at comparables and where do you fit in terms of square foot per capita just as a general measure because libraries really are not just the square feet they're what's in that square feet and as we look at el cerrito

0:53:17we look at the size of the facility of 6500 your population based on the 2010 census and what you have square foot per capita is about 0.27 located right here and as we look at your projected population to 2030 that gives you a future population square foot per capita

0:53:36about 0.25 square foot per capita and just looking at communities that you may compare yourself to from lafayette millbrae los gatos hercules kind of population are all around the same as el cerrito you can see it's significantly lower than what kind of standard

0:53:56libraries are and all of these do san pablo is actually planning it in progress right now and all the other ones are relatively new libraries and as we look at plugging in what kathy page had recommended at the 21 000 square foot per per capita you can see it takes you

0:54:16right up to the middle here of the 0.8 square foot per capita with your projected population so in a really good range would be the 0.8 square foot per capita in our experience based on the population and your needs and then just you know looking at your current stats in terms of library use

0:54:38you know people might say well libraries are becoming obsolete we don't need them anymore with the internet it's clear based on your stats that your library is well used in terms of book circulation highest in west county your door counts incredibly high as well as

0:54:55your visitors per hour of operations as we look at over the last 10 years 57 percent increase in library visits that's pretty impressive as well as your circulation also 50 so the library is still well used and needed and actually current studies indicate that libraries are busier than

0:55:18ever and have really become destinations so i'm not going to go through each of the things that we're proposing in the library program but this is just kind of the summary page that we're going to go through with some visuals here and we'll show you some of the spaces that some of your

0:55:34neighboring communities have included in their new libraries from the marketplace in the marketplace is really where your new and popular collection can happen it's where your hold will be it's where if you're stopping in to pick up a book that you put on hold and you just

0:55:53want to run in and check it out you would grab it you knew popular collection your media would all be in this area here outdoor spaces are designed to complement indoor space it's hugely successful much less cost per square foot and really nice alleviation the one located over here on the right

0:56:12is actually the manor branch down in san leandro story times are held out here kids go out here and study after school they want to make a little bit more noise and then children spaces spaces are really engaging spaces that inspire kids to learn to want to pick up

0:56:28manipulatives to want to pick up those story books for parents to read to them spaces for the whole family both including technology as well as learning manipulatives as well as the books one of the things that's interesting in newer libraries is the teen spaces

0:56:47when i was a kid the teen space was one collection of harlequin romances right and they were paperback the teen spaces we're showing you are here this is scott's valley located here is walnut creek including gaming includes spaces for them to do their homework to socialize to collaborate

0:57:07from group study spaces one of the spaces located down here on the bottom left is actually in mitchell park and that's a community center and this is directly adjacent to the library and the spaces were developed complementary between the team space in the library

0:57:23and the community center very successful and then just generally people spaces spaces where you can sit down with your laptop do your email during a lunch hour where you can actually sit down pick up a book and sit in a comfortable chair and read and and this is our just all

0:57:39good examples all libraries in the bay area somewhat your neighbors you know just an environment that you don't have in your current library right now but that people really do use the group study spaces tutoring spaces collaborative spaces with technology integrated into it are hugely successful

0:57:59big draws to libraries right now as well as flexible program rooms then the technology the big change in technology in the last 10 years is that it's seamlessly integrated you don't even know it's there you can go in there the wi-fi immediately picks up or you can check out a tablet you can get a

0:58:18ipad kids can use this after school just seamlessly integrated and really has changed what libraries do it used to be a place where you go to access information now it's a place where you can go create information quiet reading again big conflict that you have now because you're over

0:58:38programmed you know you just undersized there's no place to get away so having places where you can actually do heads down type of work and have quiet spaces in the library and then destination spaces these are all spaces where people feel comfortable something

0:58:56for everybody it's really our motto when we look at designing libraries something for the seniors something for the young folks something for the working people a place for everyone and then the program space and this is interesting because as we look at different site alternatives for you

0:59:12there's different opportunities for these shared use program spaces if it's adjacent to a community center it can be a shared program space with the community center and they can be complementary potentially of the theater site there's also an opportunity for complementary uses there too

0:59:29so really looking at program opportunities specific to each site can really leverage this community program space depending on which option we look at and then in some of the options there's opportunities for retail and cafes and things like that and if it's a campus

0:59:48that we're looking at or a location where it might be more available to the public like on san pablo avenue there's different opportunities there to consider either a small cafe as part of the library or even just vending machines and then the friends of the library

1:00:06really cannot be understated here the friends are really the backbone to the library in a lot of ways and the ways that they provide additional support and volunteerism the friends bookstore is really just the face of the friends it's not really everything that they do

1:00:24there's so much more and so really providing an opportunity for the friends to create a space that allows them to continue to support the library both as volunteers as well as financially and that can not just be the friends bookstore but potentially storage spaces as well

1:00:44and then informal collaboration spaces maker spaces tinker labs we've all heard of kind of the current trends this does not necessarily have to be a dedicated space in the mitchell park library community center all of the equipment's actually stay stored in a storage room and then it's pulled out

1:01:02when when they want to set up the maker space so just depending on which direction you want to go it can be everything from audio visual media to more hands-on kind of 3d printing things like that so that kind of is the overview of what potentially could be in your 21 000

1:01:22square feet and that would be one of the next steps in developing the library is actually developing a detailed program for your building very specific to meet your community needs the sites when we started working with the city and looking at potential sites we kind of

1:01:38looked all across the city we looked at all opportunities from south to north from east to west and tried to find sites that would really create the most opportunity for a new library and as we're looking at these sites you can see along san pablo avenue we've definitely considered

1:01:58and i got stuck in my mouse here and then as we look at over by the swim center on moser avenue right here and then we have the existing library and we've identified the other school sites in the community we did an overlay of the zoning analysis to understand where appropriate zones

1:02:21for the new building would be and then always taking into consideration transit and access to the library you know one of the things that's most important is that you're able to get to the library easily pedestrian bicycle public transits vehicular and that it's visible and

1:02:39accessible just by the way that's a different that's an updated slide from what was in your packet thank you in case they didn't recognize it yeah um and so one of the sites that we've uh landed on was definitely the portola middle school site or the former former

1:02:58portola middle school site and there's actually three parts to that site that we considered so it's the upper the middle and the lower site here here's moser lane and portola drive over here and john maybe you want to talk a little bit about how we landed on this portion

1:03:15of the site so one of the things in all the sites that you'll see this evening is we looked at uh fairly detailed all the detailed information which exists on geotechnical and soil information utility connections um the uh uh maximum allowable square footage on each site so we actually did

1:03:33a along with group four pretty comprehensive analysis of uh of each site what actually is allowable and what can be done there on the portola middle school site as many of you know there have been soil and geotechnical issues on that site for many years uh because of that

1:03:49the upper portions and middle portion of the site we ruled that out fairly early on in this process due to the difficulty and cost of building buildings and mitigating the site and soil conditions for that part of the site and so we then focus down on the lower

1:04:04portion of that site uh as the optimum or the preferred site as part of that the former school site the next site that came kind of rose to the top and the options that we considered was the contra costa civic theater site and the opportunity to look at the theater and to see if there isn't a way

1:04:30to create kind of a joint facility with the theater the theater's site is owned by the city and there's good precedences a very successful facilities where they've actually combined libraries and theaters and so that will be one of the sites that we walk you through as well and it's also

1:04:48located very close to the swim center the community center cerrito vista park and kind of in this civic campus that we have is kind of created here so the opportunity to kind of add another a piece to that campus was seen as an opportunity that we would want to

1:05:06consider and we looked at the zoning for that and i'm not going to go into this a lot of detail that we needed to do in order to check the viability happy to answer questions about it but it's probably a little bit more detail that we need to get into today we looked at the three portions of san

1:05:22pablo avenue from uptown midtown and downtown and of these three sites or these portions of san pablo avenue if you will the two that really seem to rise to the top in terms of the access and the visibility and just how the how the residents seem to commute through town was midtown and downtown it

1:05:47just seemed more practical that more people would have access to it there and would either go by it on their destination from home to school or to another community facility and so those really are the two portions of san pablo avenue that we kind of landed on in

1:06:03terms of recommending be considered for the potential library and you can see we've we've looked at the transit bart lines bus lines and so just in summary the lower portion of the middle school site the civic theater site and then what we're calling midtown and downtown

1:06:26for san pablo avenue and and based on identifying those sites and starting to develop those strategies we started working on evaluation criteria with the project management team and the criteria um kind of had two pieces to it definitely had prerequisites so all of

1:06:44the sites needed to meet the prerequisites they all needed to align with the city's planning goals they needed to have the ability to provide functional libraries and that really meant a single story library a twenty one thousand square foot library in two stories is really not operationally

1:07:02efficient and so those sites were not really considered and then sustainability and sustainability we look at very comprehensively it's definitely environmentally sustainable as well as operationally sustainable and so from the city's perspective you know creating

1:07:20a building that you was expensive to operate long term and was a big burden was not seen as desirable as well as one that needed to be environmentally sustainable as well and so from that additional evaluation criteria that we use to differentiate the sites or to look at the sites from

1:07:40all aspects was visibility access economic impact place making quality of life program synergy timeline land cost and development cost most of these are somewhat self-evident but not all of them so like economic impact on this it was looked at from as much the opportunity for this building to be a

1:08:10catalyst to create the uh image to make other projects happen that really was one thing that we thought was important to consider place making is this some place where we can come in enhance an existing place and make it better really create a part of el cerrito that is going to speak to

1:08:31the community and to reflect the community values quality of life and this one's starting to get a little bit more subjective perhaps but definitely the opportunity to improve the quality of life for the residents in el cerrito is it something that's going to make it a better place

1:08:50to live program synergy now there's a couple ways to look at program synergy is it something where you're going to have people come in because they're there for another event and it's going to be convenient for them to use the library in addition to that is it something where we can leverage

1:09:10spaces to make them more multi-use or are they kind of compatible uses like with the theater both cultural with the library if it's a recreation or community center or there are things that we can do there the timeline the land cost and development cost john's going to go into

1:09:29individually as we look at each option there were some assumptions that we had to make there because this is kind of high level budgeting and and john will review those as we get to each slide as well so based on that we've kind of laid out a summary matrix here kind of give you a

1:09:45preview about what we're going to go through right now the first option is the former portola middle school sites and this is the lower portion of that site and this is really just the standalone library and that's option 1a then we have option 1b which is on the same site but we took

1:10:06the opportunity to add some square footage about 7 500 square feet to the library need to create a library community center and the thought here is that it's opportunity to replace the senior center and potentially add some other program uses here as well to really kind of create this joint

1:10:27facility between the library and the community center and the second option is the contra costa civic theater site which is again the city-owned site and to look at a way to create a joint facility with the adjacent parking to kind of add to that civic campus and option three or four one is a

1:10:48straight library with parking and the other one is a library with housing above it kind of a little bit more innovative way of looking at public-private partnerships there but they're both on kind of undisclosed sites on san diego avenue if you will that would need to be purchased from the

1:11:07public or private sector okay and option 1a is the portola middle school site the library only and what we've looked at here is creating the library right here on the corner kind of speaking to the community center and swim center with the theater across the street here and on this option there's

1:11:28real potential because we know the site's being used for temporary facilities for the school district and as they phase their schools through their reconditioning and renovations that this site is going to be continued to use there is quite a lot of space on this

1:11:45site in our preliminary analysis just based on the program that's currently on their site there's plenty of room for us to work with the school district in the city to actually come up kind of with the win-win here where the potential parking lot can be used for

1:11:59drop-off for temporary schools and then it could even be phased in with playground and things like that and so it's quite a large site confident that we can work with the school district and their needs for the temporary use of this for modulars until their rehabilitation program is complete

1:12:18on their school projects but just a standalone library located in the corner here trying to create more of a stronger civic campus with the city facilities there and then potentially for a future vision to look at um creating more play fields kind of complementing the current

1:12:39need in the community for other recreational space as well i think even a gym had been discussed there possibly square footage 21 000 square feet includes softscape hardscape as well as the parking for the 21 000 square foot library as we looked at the valuation i think

1:13:01it's important for me to point out here that the valuation is relative to each other none of these all of these have great potential and they wouldn't have made it to the second cut if they didn't and so the ranking of the evaluation criteria is really just relative to each other

1:13:18and hopefully that puts it in a little bit better perspective for you but great visibility great access maybe not as much opportunity for economic impact as others or for the place making definitely have improvements for quality of life and opportunities for program synergy but

1:13:37the half yellow circle half green really just indicates maybe it's just a step down from some of the other options that you'll see in a minute for the project schedule for each of these schemes we actually developed a pretty detailed timeline looking at projects of similar size scope and

1:13:54complexity and those detailed timelines have about 30 or 40 different tasks we've broken them down here into five sort of phases the first ballot measure in sequa that shows the the timeline for a ballot measure on the november ballot as well as compliance with the california

1:14:09environmental quality act including a public review period land acquisition would have no timeline here because it's it would be a process where the city would work with the school district to acquire that parcel at no cost and with no real timeline impact to the project

1:14:27design criteria documents that's where we developed the program which dawn spoke of working with the existing needs assessment and also the library staff then we would we would then during that phase procure the project on a design-build basis i want to take just a minute to talk

1:14:45about design build the design build process is what was used on the the el cerrito recycling center environmental service center it's something we're seeing the majority of new construction for public agencies in california use this process it's much more collaborative it manages risk

1:15:00better for cities um it's something that a lot of public agencies are strong advocates of but we're looking at procuring the project with that methodology the next two phases then are the design process where the community stakeholders library staff would work with the design build team which

1:15:17includes a contractor and an architect would collaborately work to design the project and then you see the construction phase which includes all phases of construction again we looked very carefully how long it would take to actually build a project this size and you'll see occupancy takes

1:15:33place at the end of 2019.

1:15:39and then in terms of project costs we also did uh quite comprehensive construction cost estimates of these schemes looking at uh construction costs for similar projects similar to those that don showed earlier this evening of those types of finishes and construction types

1:15:58we then developed a comprehensive project budget this is the complete project budget to do the entire project which includes not just the construction but other aspects as well we broke those down here you'll see library that's the cost of the library building that includes design

1:16:13construction and also construction escalation one thing i want to point out the timeline for construction is great you're we're looking at a slowing down construction mark in the next two to three years which the city will i we we project will receive better value for their

1:16:28construction dollar than they are currently the site work cost includes everything permits utility connections also environmental costs if there's any environmental mitigation on the site as well as the mitigation measures that might be developed during the compliance with the sql process

1:16:46ffe includes not just furniture but also technology as don spoke of earlier libraries now have much more technology than they did in past years this is includes audio visual information technology telephones security and all those sorts of things that are part of a modern library

1:17:06other soft costs includes bond management costs to manage the actual bond program development of the design criteria project management city costs and also moving to temporary facilities for this scheme i want to point out that these costs include the cost of reconfiguring

1:17:22the portable classrooms on the site as shown here so the project would pay to reconfigure those create a new temporary campus as well as a play area for future use by the school districts as a temporary school site in the final contingency each scheme includes about eight to ten percent

1:17:38contingency for unknowns unforeseens modest program changes things of that nature moving on to option 1b located at the same site and as i did in the summary it does include an additional 7 500 square feet here of recreation space and then the parking also increases

1:18:03based on increased square footage and the type of use and the demand for the recreation space one thing i'd like to point out is that for the sites that could accommodate surface parking that's what we used in these strategies there's lots of opportunities that could be further refined and

1:18:22developed as the process moves to the next phase say conceptual design this is these are really just capacity studies that we're doing here to give you the good budgeting numbers that john's been working on but also kind of the worst parameters for you to look at

1:18:39for site area there may be opportunities to look at future replacement of surface parking with deck parking or things like that that level of detail and refinement would really happen in the next phase the parking counts are reflective of your current zoning requirements

1:18:59which really are kind of at their peak in terms of surface parking demands one of the things that's happening right now with best practices and how parking and people are actually carpooling trying to use bicycles pedestrians and be more efficient in their use of cars

1:19:19is parking demands are actually coming down and that again in talking to your planning department your parking standards may be being updated here in the near future but what we're showing here is actually what your current zoning requirements for parking are and so as we look at this option we

1:19:37have a 21 000 square foot library with 7 500 square feet additional that could be associated with the community center our softscape our hardscape and our parking again still plenty of space for portable classrooms for the school's use but real opportunity to create

1:19:59kind of a beautiful complement to the community center which is also probably on the small square footage side pulling the senior programming over here adjacent to the library which is really a great adjacency and nice synergy and then the opportunity to even strengthen the connection

1:20:17potentially across the street to the to the theater project or theater building as we look at the vision which again future uses of the open fields once the school district no longer has use of them it kind of gives you then kind of how you could reconfigure this site and

1:20:36create other recreational amenities on the site the precedent that we're showing down here is a project that just was completed a year and a half ago it's forty six thousand square feet thirty uh six thousand of that is library uh twenty thousand is a community center hugely successful

1:20:56project been named the landmark library and for library journal i think it's one in or one of 12 in the last five years projects so that synergistic relationship between a community center or library is one that we feel is really a nice one when the project can move in

1:21:14that direction for the criteria you can go with that okay so the criteria on this one um did your microphone get turned off by accident yes it did thank you um so um the valuation of this option it rated very highly as we looked at it comparing it to the others the one

1:21:42economic impact is where it rated a little bit lower because when we look at the san pablo avenue sites the opportunity for a library project to happen on san pablo actually potentially has more of a catalystic effect because of the private sector being close by and so that's just where

1:22:02it got ranked a little bit lower there and so with the land cost in costa city so also that then looking at the schedule i want to point out that option 1a of all the options here is the one that finite would be completed the first this one because the two-story building

1:22:19completes a little bit later just the end of 2019.

1:22:23um and uh state the same phase as ballot measure sequa no land acquisition phase design criteria documents design and constructions very similar to the project just a little bit larger takes a little bit longer to build in terms of costs again there's this is the summary of the detailed

1:22:39comprehensive project costs um library coming in about 12.8 million community center component 3.8 that's sort of the additional cost here site work is about the same as the other at about 5 million ffe 1.3 soft costs 4.5 contingency again about 8 percent with a total project

1:22:57cost of just about 30 million so option 2 is the one i think that when we started the study was kind of the unexpected one that kind of came up when we were looking at potential sites and the opportunity to partner with the theater and create this joint facility

1:23:19between a library and a theater there's not many of these honestly across the country and the one that we did had heard of in our work on libraries and our are kind of more of our national work is the maginon and it is a library and a theater project where they've done

1:23:38it's actually more of a main library adjacent to a larger theater project but the opportunity to kind of explore this relationship and see how it might fit on the site support that civic campus and create kind of a really unique destination was very intriguing i think to the project

1:23:56management team i think the part that was not so intriguing was the budget which sean's going to get to in a minute um but just as you know you step back and you look at the civic campus with the community center the swim center um the cerrito vista park and and just the

1:24:12whole thing the opportunity to kind of re-envision the theater site include that in the planning work i think was definitely worth the time that we invested in it and so the library is sized at 21 900 square feet consistent with the others the theater is the replacement square

1:24:29footage so we actually didn't do programming work with the theater we basically just took their existing square footage that they they need and kind of duplicated in our planning work in terms of a placeholder for a replacement theater it includes the softscape the hardscape in order to make

1:24:47the parking work on the site we've actually added deck parking here and so you can see we actually have two layers of parking here which actually could work nicely as you know the grade changes right here as it steps down to the park and so some of the parking can

1:25:01be shared with the park and look to complement both the theater and the library as well as the park and the theater itself has complementary use its peak demand is going to be a low demand time for the library so there's a lot of complementary potential uses for

1:25:18the parking there total square footage is 95 000 square feet 95 almost ninety six thousand square feet um with the parking spaces as well is that imagine on located i believe it's north carolina yeah it's hugely successful though it's very nice almost a regional draw not just the

1:25:41local draw in terms of the evaluation the visibility the access very positive again economic impact kind of a step down from the san pablo avenue place making quality of knife were considered very high as well as the program synergy i think again this one a little bit less in terms of the synergy

1:26:05than the rec center just because they're a little bit more independent in how they work they do have wonderful summer camps for the children and could see a lot of joint programming there but not quite say you know you see recreational uc library and they're really aligned in

1:26:20their service and their mission and the community theater is probably a little bit different so a little bit lower in terms of the evaluation of the program synergy the schedule for scheme 2 is a bit different also we have the same really duration of ballot measure and sql

1:26:35compliance but there's a three theater relocation phase which needs to take place the the current civic theater would need to find temporary space for their offices and programs and performances and that would take some time fortunately it's concurrent with some of the other activities but it does

1:26:49add a little bit of time to this this scheme we can have the same design criteria documents phase procuring the design builder team design construction construction also takes a bit longer because it's a more complex project we have the deck parking which don spoke of as well as a theater

1:27:05project a little bit more uh complex and and difficult and challenging than a standalone library library community center so this project then would finish in in the middle of 2020.

1:27:21where this project does uh differ quite a bit from the other schemes is in its cost uh the breakdown for the is the library about 13.7 pretty much the same as the other schemes theater is about as is because of the more the more complex construction and equipment and technology of a theater is

1:27:41about 11.2 site work is a bit more also at 5.4 because of again the the the slope site and the parking deck again there's no land acquisition costs as the city owns this site ffne is about the same again this is the ffie just for the the the library the theater

1:27:59ff furniture and equipment would be would be moved back in from their temporary site soft costs are about the same but a little bit over 5 million again contingency is about 8 percent but the total project cost is 41 about 41.5 million and again what drives the cost

1:28:14of this site up over the others is the complexity and cost of a theater facility which is greater than it per square foot than for a library and also the parking deck itself having to build a parking structure okay so moving on to option three which is a site along san pablo avenue of

1:28:38sufficient size that we can do a single story library and that's really what drove this we did do a couple of tests along san pablo avenue to see if there was potential opportunities for a facility like this and and we did find more than one location where this could

1:28:55be done option three actually looked at that public-private partnership where you might actually look at in addition to doing the library which would be on the first floor of course do housing above that and there is a multnomah county library the hollywood branch that you can see right here where

1:29:16they've done just this where they actually built the library on the first floor and they put the housing above that in addition to the housing above and the library on the first floor we also put two layers of parking underneath the building here and parking under buildings underground

1:29:37is expensive and that will be reflected in the cost here it is done though so the walnut creek library it has parking under the plaza and under the library about 127 spaces i believe santa clara county libraries another project where we put significant amount of parking underground

1:29:57so it definitely can be done and where you have land costs that kind of drive that to be feasible is typically where your theater where you have constrained sight like in walnut creek's case there was just no place else to go there was had previously for walnut creek been an

1:30:14option to do like a four-story parking garage in civic park which the community didn't find palatable and so that underground parking was definitely the right solution there and it seemed appropriate as we looked at the land cost and the amount of parking we needed

1:30:29on this site as well when we look at this so we do need two layers of underbuilding parking the first floor underneath would probably be for the library and then the second floor for the housing above and it does fit nicely on this site when we look at the evaluation criteria

1:30:48the visibility would be excellent along san pablo avenue as well as the access with the public transit opportunity for economic impact would be excellent as well really being a catalyst and potentially be an incentive for other projects along san pablo avenue to follow suit

1:31:07and then the opportunity for place making not as much and it's really because we we built you know we we took the site and we purchased the site in the cost model just to fit the library on it just because of the cost so it's not like we took out a pocket park or anything like

1:31:24that to really enhance above and beyond the building program that we were working with and the program synergy again no recreation no theater nothing to really leverage off of that and so that then it wasn't ranked as high as some of the other options excuse me where is the site

1:31:44there's multiple sites oh okay there's not one site that this was designed it was kind of done and then tested thank you i will put on to the site it's based on a one acre site on a on a hypothetical one acre site um along san pablo the schedule of this scheme as you might

1:32:02imagine is the longest of all this all the schemes we'll look at this evening that really is because of the size of the project but also site because the site would need to be acquired by the city the methodology viewed for procuring that for doing this project and we

1:32:16consulted with some of the consultants which are currently working with the city in looking at community development and economic analysis is it would be actually a joint venture a public-private partnership between a developer and the city um the uh the the way this would work is we

1:32:33would solve the same first phase of the ballot measure and secret compliance um there would be however a site acquisition which would need to take place really during calendar 2017.

1:32:43and this uh again assumes we could identify a site that the city could identify site during this year and that there would be a fairly smooth side acquisition process taking about a year to uh negotiate a price procure the site and have it transferred to the city so again that

1:33:01may vary depending on the site that that is chosen but for the purposes of this exercise we assumed it would be a one year process to acquire the site that can overlap however partially with the the process the design criteria documents could be you could start a

1:33:16little later than the other schemes after the site has been identified and perhaps is in contract with the city again the procurement methodology would be a little bit different would be it would be it would be a developer rfp that would go out to developers who do public private

1:33:31partnerships so it's a little bit of a different phase but again we're assuming this would be design and build procurement um with a design phase of about nine months followed by a construction phase of about 21 months against longer than their schemes because of the complexity

1:33:44project with this project completing towards the end of 2020.

1:33:52in terms of the cost this is of course more complex again the the public-private partnership really looks at this think of this as being really sort of like a like you might imagine a condominium project where each entity owns a portion of their project this is that's the most common after

1:34:06talking to the city's uh partners who do community development economic analysis it seems as though this is really the the the preferred and uh best value to the city there are other sort of lease and lease back and other sorts of uh of arrangements but this is the one most commonly used for

1:34:23these sorts of public private partnership projects um the city of berkeley actually has done a couple of these uh where they they there's a public portion that's owned and then a housing portion that's owned um you can see the way that the the costs break down here

1:34:39um the uh the building costs divided by housing and the library component there's a developer fee that the the city would pay to the developer for uh which basically pays them for their management cost of the project um site where costs are kind of prorated between the library and and the the

1:34:58housing that includes the parking which is sort of prorated the way the parking works in this scheme is about a half to a third of the of the of the library parking is at grade to provide for better accessibility public visibility also keep costs down and then the other parking would be in

1:35:14in the garage um you'll see the biggest thing here the difference is there's a land cost we this land cost was calculated at the current sort of market rate for for land along san pablo which is 90 dollars per square foot for one acre for a hypothetical one acre parcel

1:35:29again prorated between the two sites um ffa would be really that for the library itself we're not the ffa is not really a consideration housing part soft costs again are kind of paraded between the two um contingency also between the two you'll see the library costs is

1:35:47approximately 17 million dollars for basically you the city would own the portion of this building which houses the library and the parking for the library and then the housing costs you'll see right there again the assumption here is this is these are is market rate housing market rate

1:36:03apartments that doesn't preclude doing this with a degree of affordability or partner with an affordable housing developer those are other models that are often used that's just for the purposes of looking at this exercise we looked at just market rate apartments but their other alternatives

1:36:18include affordable housing that could be factored into this scheme as well so option four is that same generic one acre site on san pablo avenue and looking at it just as a city development and just looking at it as a library with the parking so it's 21 800 square feet we did carve

1:36:44out a little opportunity to add 2 400 square feet to this option for retail space it just seemed appropriate along san pablo avenue in order to keep this one more cost efficient we actually took the building up above the parking the parking's on grade and the library is

1:37:02actually on the second floor so having a portion of the building that still fronts and addresses san pablo avenue as a retail front seemed like a nice strategy to address that it's a little bit different than what you probably see on san pablo avenue and it was one that we kind of came to in

1:37:22talking to the planning department because we were saying well we have to have it on the first floor the library because we want to keep the continuous facade along san pablo avenue they're like yeah well san pablo avenue is about four miles long so we don't really adhere to that along san

1:37:40pablo avenue continuously and so when we kind of took that into consideration it's like well there's been some really nice buildings done recently where they've actually put parking on grade in the building above that and the precedent we use to show this is the

1:37:53facebook new headquarters right down off of menlo park there between menlo park and palo alto and parking is right here on grade and then you can see the transparency up to the second floor so you could still see everything in the library you could still see that

1:38:08activity on san pablo avenue it just makes it a little bit more cost efficient than potentially dropping it below grade like some of the numbers we saw in the housing project or the housing option before this and so that's how we looked at developing this strategy and some of

1:38:23the parameters for that you can see the on-grade parking here the retail here we still have a lobby you'd probably even still be able to have lockers for you to pick up your books after hours and check them out access it with your library card and something like that very efficient for

1:38:40the users but then have the majority of your library space up on the second floor and so in the valuation of this option visibility access economic impact all very highly rated the opportunity for place making this is where it got kind of the lowest ranked of all of the

1:38:59options we looked at and brought forth to you and then quality of life and program synergy again because those opportunities on the sites to do other enhancements for the community or to look at leveraging other program opportunities weren't included in this option

1:39:20the schedule for this is not as long as for the housing site because it's a simpler building but longer than the other sites looked at earlier primarily because again we have a site acquisition period of again we're projecting about a year to acquire that site that tends to

1:39:33push the other activities further down the road we have the same design criteria document phase followed by design and construction the cost of this game you'll see is the highest of the sort of library only schemes and that really has to do with the parking structure itself you have to

1:39:49build a a one story or you have to build that once that first floor which is a structured parking with the library above the library at 13.9 is about the same as the other standing libraries but that parking structure tends to drive it up there's a bit of cost for the retail

1:40:03again that could be a that could develop however it could be an income generated piece um site work site development costs is about 4.4 again the land acquisition at 3.9 is on that based on a hypothetical one-acre site at 90 per square foot the current market rate

1:40:20um ffa is again about the same as all the other of the other library sites just over a million soft costs at 4.3 and contingency again about eight percent of total project cost for a total of of of about 37 million for this option um and and so just looking at all of the

1:40:44options together here on the summary slide option 1b which is the recreation in the library on the portola middle school site on the lower portion of it really was the one that raised to the top for the project team as we looked at the analysis of it one of the things i think that we were

1:41:04working with in the parameters to try and come within was kind of the 30 million dollar window which i think scott's going to talk about here in a minute and based on you know the overall project budget and the opportunities for meeting the valuation criteria it was

1:41:22kind of the project management teams the consensus that this option really gave the city the best value to meet all of the criteria that were developed so i wanted to talk about a few things and i apologize if some of it's redundant to what the team has already said

1:41:43but reiterate some of the major factors that were underlying the analysis for us um it was trying to stay within the 30 million dollars because at 71 support if that number holds and the next agenda item talks about doing another survey at some point this year that's within the margin

1:42:01of error for two-thirds so presumably if we decided to spend more money the two we would be much closer to right on that two-thirds margin we also as dawn already pointed out we're focusing on the central location to maximize we believe that would maximize the usage of the library for

1:42:20for a lot of reasons and also the ability to gain site control as it relates to the bond measure we couldn't we would be put in a very difficult position to go to the voters and not being able to acquire a site for if it were years there are rules around you know timing

1:42:38around issuing bonds and when you were doing them and how long we were collecting money without actually doing the project and then again i i want to reiterate how important we felt that the additional community space was based on all of the needs and the current buildings that we

1:42:53have and that um to be more specific than dawn was the ultimate ability down the road to convey the current land where the library and the senior center are back for usage by the fairmont school and i you know i want to acknowledge that we know that there's been some concern

1:43:13about the fair by the fairmont community and i wanted to re actually go back and read one of the clauses in case people didn't read the resolution that the council is considering which says whereas space shut shall be maintained for a temporary fairmont elementary school campus while the

1:43:31current location is being rebuilt in the fastest time frame possible and upon direction of the city council city staff will work with the district on the ultimate disposition of the current library and senior center sites so i wanted to just really reiterate that

1:43:46a key component of the recommendation was to try to take the longest view for fairmont i realize fairmont's not the center of what we're talking about tonight but that it was a major factor in our in our recommendation with what's going to ultimately be best for the

1:44:02campus and it does specifically have a be a resolved clause where the the council will be asking the district to rebuild fairmont as soon as possible um so in as it relates to the campus and the parking and the portable campus we would work with the district and obviously make sure that's why it's

1:44:26in the resolution to give a commitment that between the space on the site the space on the upper play field cerrito vista park the community center casa sarita that there was really adequate more than adequate space for fairmont if at when they had a temporary campus there

1:44:44so in regard i just wanted to point out if the council were to adopt the resolution our next step is that we will be presenting before the district's facilities subcommittee on the 8th we're trying to get on the agenda for the fairmont pta on the 14th and then based on tonight's action and

1:45:04what we hear over the next month the mayor and i are penciled in on the agenda on april 13th for the full school district meeting so um with that um we have a few more slides to help guide where we go from here and we also have an ending slide which is very more

1:45:24specific to um questions if it's helpful when you get to the point of deliberating okay questions i know you've been writing them down furiously dan so i was just uh going to give you the opportunity uh well i have a couple questions so regarding option 1b you mentioned that um

1:45:58as far as the portables are concerned you would reconfigure the portables does that mean you would move them too or does the school district pay for that or could you can you check your mic again please the assumption in the in the cost of the project would pay for the relocation so

1:46:20what we've included is the cost of relocating you can see the layout here is different than what currently exists right and also that includes all the infrastructure uh creating a play area etc whether or not those are actually moved by the city or the district depends on how they may

1:46:35have a contract with a portable company that would do that work but we've looked at the cost of actually relocating those included those in the budget and is that uh that area graded appropriately or would it need more grading if those portables got pushed back there they're actually

1:46:54currently located they're currently spread throughout the entire site so would there be no regrading so that's fine um these figures that you presented are all in figures it includes furniture and that is correct we actually made a took great great effort to make sure

1:47:13that they're all in figures again there's a a much more detailed construction cost estimate and comprehensive project budget that was developed these are merely summaries of those figures but we looked at all the costs that are included all inclusive on similar projects like this

1:47:32you'll notice that the for example the library construction cost here is only a 12.8 but it's a 30 million project cost that shows the other pieces they're laid in here um site work development furniture fixtures and equipment soft costs and then an appropriate

1:47:46contingency so we really did look at putting together a total project budget that's comprehensive and include and inclusive i think i need a little explanation about option two with the rebuild of the theater is the street is is it pomona that's the street that's

1:48:07parallel now yeah to the theater the front of the theater is this is is pomona still there um is it so pomona has been um incorporated in the new building in this option that's what it looks like yeah i wanted to make sure i understood that and that's why we showed the plan view right here and so

1:48:28this is pomona right here okay and so um actually taking the parking is along pomona and including it in the parking structure and so on grade or the deck parking but in order to get the frontage on moser lane and in order to create the configuration of the square

1:48:50footage so it'd be functional that site strategy is what has been developed so i suppose this is a question for staff but um if we've already done some polling and we have an idea of what we can um ask for in partial tax for a bond how does rebuilding the theater

1:49:16work in that the theater doesn't actually have any endowment or money correct we would be building them a new theater and we asked for that on the bond in the bonds and we would and we would have to sit down and certainly reevaluate everything we've done to this point

1:49:37because obviously we would have to be open that a third of the cost is going to the theater and we would probably want to re-survey our residents and see if there was support for that because it would also be a significantly higher rate yes that's my question we wanted to make

1:49:51sure that it we thought it was worth looking at and unfortunately if money if money wasn't um sort of the overriding consideration it is it is a as dawn alluded it could be a really cool project but it's because as john could talk more about it but also because of there's multiple grade

1:50:10changes that's another reason why it's incredibly it's much more expensive than we thought it was going to be there's a lot of opportunity because of the grade but it's really expensive to deal with the grade if you're if you're familiar with the site between the base of the

1:50:23base the field all the way down to pomona is an enormous grade change yes in a short space yes yes um i don't think i have any other questions right this minute the only reason you looked at the soil at the option on the 1b was because of what pre-exists there and

1:50:51what we know about it is that correct i mean the these other areas weren't evaluated for that but actually we have known conditions there we we looked at the soil issues on all the sites actually oh you did okay yes absolutely um the difference of the portrola site

1:51:06we looked at the entire portola school site and and it's which is quite large of course and we looked at uh previous information which had been developed by the school district and others on what it would cost to stabilize that site because it's not a real stable site

1:51:21the uh we the the portion of the the lower portion of it all the soils reports basically require a 50-foot setback from the toe of that slope that's viewed as being a stable site and so we we look in that particular site we looked at just the portion that site however each of the

1:51:36other schemes we did look at the soil and geotechnical issues along san pablo those are fairly minimal because it's a flat those are flat stable soil sites there are added site development costs at the theater site due to the um the grade change but we took the additional step of the

1:51:54patrol side of looking at it where would you would build on that site and i guess my last question is about the the private public and the items three or options three and four um do you think that timetable is really realistic when it seems like we're bringing a lot of people

1:52:15together trying to get this built and we don't have a developer we don't have an area to purchase at this point we haven't identified that we don't have correct i think i think the the wild card in these two schemes is the site acquisition is actually having to

1:52:31purchase the site once you do that though looking at other public-private partnershop projects if you do a development proposal they do go those projects do go quite quickly so um it seems like it would take much longer to build and it does take longer to build a project this size

1:52:48but there's a um a a just the comparable projects that are built like this they are are done they're they're done fairly quickly um but again the the what depends here is on how long it takes to acquire that site if it take it could take two years or longer to acquire a

1:53:05site and of course when that happens it pushes the project out further and also there's escalation there's further escalations you push it out so the thing is without identifying the site it's hard to say we just for the purpose of this exercise says will take a year to identify and

1:53:19procure site and doesn't fruitville have some parking structure and library correct and housing above it too correct it's about the fruitvale transit village is a little bit different and that that's a leased project the the the library at least when it was built

1:53:35it was the that the the um the uh the entity that owns that it's a smaller library site than than we're looking at here but that's that's a leased space within a larger um development thank you um 1b so you envision the community center is a separately operated entity that's

1:54:11contiguous with the library because libraries operated by the county community center would be operated by the city how what's the concept um well i can tell you my dream concept is um that you can integrate these facilities quite easily even though they have different operations from different

1:54:31departments walnut creek is a good example and i'm just because maybe some of you are familiar with it there's actually a mall great that you don't even know is on the second floor that can close off the library leave open the community room the technology lab the conference room

1:54:46that space can be completely independently accessed from the parking garage the city can lease it use it completely independently and so we can really seamlessly integrate spaces now and secure them off there's even the opportunity to use card key access to classrooms and so you don't even have to

1:55:04have staff there if somebody's coming in to do a program you give them a card key so they go up then they open it they run their program the library has a card key they can use it for a program you can give it to homeowners associate i mean there's just wonderful ways technology

1:55:17has allowed flexibility into buildings ideally you know from the community's perspective you would want kind of seamless integration and so then it's the design team's challenge to work with the operation constraints and come up with a perfect solution that's going to be

1:55:35functional for you and so that is how we've been working with a lot of communities right now on doing these community centers and senior centers libraries right now we're working in san pablo on their library working with a coffee company they're going to have a community room that's

1:55:56going to be used by the company coffee company for music things like that it's a big program room is going to be used by the library they're going to be openings between the cafe and the library i mean it's you know we we have a lot more options than we used to just

1:56:12because technology and flexible construction means of the 30 plus million are we thinking all that's going to come from the public is what about the fundraising efforts that are ongoing now and will be stepped up once we have the ability to move forward um i think i mean for the purpose of

1:56:36this exercise we assumed that the city was all in if there were significant fundraising it may offset some of the costs maybe some of it would in the f e which some of those costs may not be eligible under a general obligation bond there would be a great opportunity to partner

1:56:53there but to be safe we were trying to be as conservative as possible which assumed it would pay for all of it thanks um what what is the current parking ratio that you guys were given to to use for this project do you know one per 500 one per thousand we were using a three per thousand for

1:57:16the library and then about one per 50 square foot for the main program space in the community center that's about total of 90 spaces for this option three three per thousand on the library and one for one for 50 square feet for the community center main space which resizes about 3 000 square feet i

1:57:35believe okay and then um what what level of building sustainability is the targeting what what was the uh idea behind what level of sustainability we would be achieving we assume for purpose of estimating a lead gold project that's what we've built into the cost

1:57:55for each of these options okay um and and i know you spoke to the fact that you studied some of the the geotechnical soils but obviously there's contamination out there that may not be known about which of the options have the greatest amount of subsurface unknowns that would

1:58:20cause the greatest amount of risk and therefore should have the largest amount of contingency it really would be the san pablo site since we don't know what that site is we assume sort of a for the lack of a better word a medium level of mitigation that would take place where

1:58:34you wouldn't have where you would have um businesses before that would have been a non-hazardous use but may have lead paint in the construction of the existing buildings things like that but nothing nothing that you would have underground toxics or things of that nature those would be

1:58:48added costs for the san pablo scheme so um was the contingency on this one different to accommodate that or did you there there's a part of the um building cost you'll see at the top there includes um uh hazardous hazardous soil mitigation a-line item in there that's

1:59:07correct deals with site preparation correct but but it doesn't accommodate a tremendous amount of asbestos or a tremendous amount of hazardous waste other types of costs that could exist in these in in a project that at a location that's un unknown at this time that is

1:59:24correct i mean it assumes the the assumptions we made is you'd have a flat site that would have existing buildings on it that would have been older buildings with lead paint asbestos things of that nature it does not include such as a service station site which may

1:59:39have underground tanks and things of that nature great um on these structures that you're in mostly in one a one b and to some degree two uh don talked about flexibility and the idea for for um flexible space as you especially this one one b where you have uh this second second story

2:00:03um councilman freeman just touched on it the the segregation the separation the security of those spaces but i could see you know you know a large atrium type uh area that would would be very attractive uh would be a challenge from the security perspective but it potentially is also you know

2:00:26feasible from a construction perspective there are some really low cost construction techniques that potentially could you know accommodate both one and two story type uh structures again the construction technique i'm an engineer i really wanted i really want to take off my gloves and

2:00:46rip into this but i'm really abstaining from that because i i do know that this is really early in the process and this isn't about the actual final design as as don as you alluded to we will tailor this over time this is much more about the the concept and and the site location

2:01:04um but i am trying to dig to you know you're getting down to i think it was 500 to a thousand dollar square foot type costs and i'm just trying to figure out what all in not just the building but i'm trying to figure out what construction techniques you potentially

2:01:21were looking at with regards to your assumptions here mr mayor i'm just going to reiterate and hand it over to john so the capacity drawings that you see are just that the square footage capacity drawings as you look at designing them in the next phase i could see pieces of green on the

2:01:39ground floor i could see pieces of orange on the second floor atriums connectivity all of that so these are really just capacity diagrams right now and john's going to talk about the construction we didn't look at specific these these projects aren't designed yet we look

2:01:53what we did is we we looked at existing examples recently constructed public libraries community centers projects of that nature so we looked at historical cost data for recently completed projects that's really where we came up with the numbers cost per square foot

2:02:09one thing you'll find with library projects now is they tend to uh they they're they're tending more open and less rooms than previous you see long span spaces with fairly straightforward construction methodologies um for example one project that we just completed along with group four in san

2:02:26lorenzo has a very uh cost-effective steel kind of open web steel joist roof system so libraries are fairly cost effective per square foot to build they have large open spaces not a lot of smaller rooms not a lot of complex vertical circulation things like that those lighter weight structures

2:02:45tend to be have less less foundation costs so they're more cost effective than other civic projects such as a city hall or certainly like a courthouse or a public safety building agreed the um the the projects you used for your benchmarking where they design build or

2:03:04where they uh design uh the we look at for the construction costs they were looked at irrespective of the delivery method um and design build the overall cost they'll all consider a design build delivery which is tends to be a bit more cost effective more schedule effective

2:03:20and lower risk for cities but the the precedence we looked at when we're looking at just the actual hard construction costs we looked at they were not necessarily a design build project right so some of them some of your cost waiting is driven by design build build correct okay great thank you

2:03:36and a couple other um what's the projected lifespan of this building or buildings um based on the methodology that john used in the buildings that he's referring to it was recently built buildings and like the images we're showing in our projects are 40 to 50 years 50-year public

2:03:57facilities made with very durable very maintainable mechanical systems that are designed when that unit wears out that you can replace it building systems roofing that are quality durable maintainable so yeah very good public facilities um the other question for the city manager

2:04:22i think is once we get this great new facility facilities it's much larger much more complex operating it is going to be much more expensive than our current tiny facility what do we see is this the fiscal sustainability of programming and hopefully the ability to expand hours

2:04:46sure what we have now um we've only just begun looking at that and i would actually defer to dawn on her experience but some of the the newer libraries are actually much more efficient partly because of technology partly because of the layout um the systems of the building are more efficient um we we

2:05:04do expect it to be more and what we're planning to do starting this budget year even though we haven't you know it'll be years before we built it is start including operating costs within the general fund budget this year that would go for additional operating expenses and additional hours and then

2:05:21start ramping up immediately that on the hope that um when the library is completed we've already built in that amount into the city's operating budget but i i don't know it well enough a lot of it's going to be driven by the site and and complexity um and how many hours we're

2:05:39going to want to be we assume we're going to want to be open significantly more than we are um if we go forward you know we're going to start we haven't forgotten about that we are going to start uh escalating our costs to it to assume um on this timeline that when we open we

2:05:55know that there's going to be a significant increase in costs i might just be more specific building on that question given the increase in visits 57 i think was one of the the increases um would would some of that budget be put to use at our current facility in the short term

2:06:18um it's something we could look at um i think that i think that's a good point and something we can consider in the short term for possibly more hours um it will depend on how much money you want to save towards this versus my longer term goal in saying that is to

2:06:37build in that amount to the annual budget but that's an interesting point between now and when we open the flexibility we have and maybe using some of that money great uh councilmember bridges um don would you like to comment a little bit you gave us the bad news about the fte increase in

2:06:52walnut creek which is actually not bad news they got four times more the library space that was actually good news and they went from you know they it was much more efficient so it's not a straight um correlation so they got you know 43 000 square feet as opposed to

2:07:09the 10 000 square feet they had and last when i was over there just a few months ago i think they only had 14 fte and i think before they had seven to eight and so that's actually quite a lot of improved services for the community which not but i do believe karen i think

2:07:26you're talking to the library and one of the things you're investigating right now is that operational yes thank you um one of the one of the things that we would be discussing with the library is exactly what how much they would be able to allocate their budget and that is also kind of variable

2:07:46from year to year depending upon how much of the library budget has been allocated currently it's allocated completely toward the hours while we maintain the building and so i think as scott said one of the things that we would look at is working with the library to determine

2:08:00you know depending the square footage would end up determining maybe how many ftes there are and working with them to determine exactly how many hours how many staff depending on where the efficiencies would go we would work with the library staff to make those calculations and then build

2:08:15those into the budget over time okay thank you and just you know the operational cost for the staff it's not necessarily what you need more of you have more collection going out so you need more people to shelf it's not necessarily more librarians so the higher paid positions might remain

2:08:32exactly the same and it's just the support staff needs to increase because more items are being checked out more people are using things things like that and so it's not a direct correlation but i think the library would actually even be able to project this for you based on

2:08:49the square footage and other facilities that they currently have in operations and then considering the time frame by which we do this i mean there are a lot more automation that is happening in libraries as well so that could also be part of the efficiencies of the building

2:09:02that you might even need less actual staff members to do collect collection work go ahead i was just going to say well you're going to need a higher level of technological expertise also so it's not necessarily all low paid positions no but they have that infrastructure in

2:09:20place now so they're i t people they're they're county-wide and and they're already on staff and in place and it they may need you know as their facilities grow you know they may need 0.2 more ftes for that department but it's not going to be necessarily all assigned to

2:09:41el cerritos library i also want to point out that um operating costs uh both uh um the the kind of rule of thumb we use is that that a a new building that's twice the size of an old building is about the same operating costs due to primarily decreased energy cost per

2:09:59square foot that's where the biggest gain in but also in terms of maintenance and capital and having to do like maintain a capital reserve to to to update a 50 year old facility and so really the this size project which is a bit more than twice your current product size

2:10:16from a maintenance and operation standpoint would be only slightly more expensive on an annual basis um yeah i have one last question um i think um you anytime you talk about money and you talk about saving money it perks our ears up and you made a statement that um

2:10:38construction costs might actually go down because construction is slowing down would you like to elaborate a little i want to be careful not go down but the escalation would not be as great as it's been recently okay um we've seen uh between five and ten percent

2:10:50escalation over the last few years as the economy has been quite strong um our projection it's always there's always a bit of a crystal ball that goes along with this but looking at one two three years down the road general consensus in the construction industry is that there's going to be a

2:11:04slowing of escalation so we've included about 3.5 percent annual escalation over those years not the five seven ten percent we've seen over the last three or four thank you for clarifying um there's a question for i think the city manager the property that we currently

2:11:19own that the um library occupies is about three quarters of an acre i think it's smaller than that smaller than that yeah and and i think it's smaller than that under option 1b would we need that property anymore um ideally no okay so that would be a parcel that we could

2:11:43dispose of as part of an arrangement with the school district yes [Music] all right seeing no other questions uh from the council will at this time uh we should traditionally go to public comment from the public um speaker cards we do ask for speaker cards i think we've got several at the

2:12:05moment we'll call out names if you could please arrange yourself so that we can be efficient in in getting through this um i'm going to ask you guys to either part no you can just part just so the the lights can be seen if you could slide the laptop to the city manager a little bit that'd be

2:12:22great no towards the other direction sit towards the city manager keep going there you go um there's a light system up front that uh that that you can see and green is go yellow is 30 seconds and red is please conclude your remarks and we'll start with the first speaker

2:12:40we have eight speaker slips um so i'm going to call out the first five names tom pannas followed by al miller melanie proctor then catherine levinson and peter meyer so we'll start off with tom panis good evening mayor lineman members of the council and city staff my name is

2:13:04tom panis and i live at seven three four five fairmont avenue in el cerrido i'd like to thank our staff swearington and group four for the work they've done and the report they've put together it's wonderful to see real progress moving our library services into the 21st

2:13:15century i appreciate the fact that the team has given us several possible alternatives to contrast and compare in particular i was pleasantly surprised to see the option that include the civic theater that demonstrated to me that the team was carefully examining all the options

2:13:28and considering alternatives that were not even on most people's radar i also fully endorse using the design build concept for this project there are elements in i like in every one of the options but my clear choice is what the project team has recommended option 1b the idea of providing library

2:13:44services and focusing our senior services at an upgraded community hub is very appealing as you recall i've spoken to the council and planning commission on more than one occasion about reducing the amount of hardscape that we have in el cerrito i wish that we could be stacking the

2:13:58parking at this site but i feel the cost of about thirty thousand plus per space or about three million dollars ten percent of the project cost is just too much to spend on stacked parking making the current library and senior service available for use by fairmont

2:14:14school is a key feature part key feature of option 1b if the council directs that a financing measure replaced on the ballot in november and the voters approve it the city could work begin work immediately to move the library and the senior center to temporary space

2:14:26this would free up both sites for use by the school district as it sees fit likely within about one year this space would be very useful in supporting the fairmont community option 1b also gives the city the most leverage in ensuring the current karmatsu site remains in public hands

2:14:40the citizens of el cerita helped pay for a significant part of purchasing the korematsu site that plus the fact that the city would be giving the current library site to the school district releasing its leaseholder rights to the senior center and paying to reconfigure the portables

2:14:53to accommodate fairmont makes proposed lease arrangement seem very reasonable i'm very pleased with what's being presented this evening and i urge the council members to support option 1b and to authorize the mayor and city staff to enter negotiations with the school district

2:15:08regarding use of the korematsu site and the surrender of the library and senior sites to the school district thank you for your time this evening al miller followed by melanie proctor and catherine good evening mayor lyman members of the council and city staff my name is al

2:15:25miller i live at [address removed] in el cerrido first i want to identify with align with and support comments you've just heard from mr pandas i also uh and i urge you to approve option 1b i also urge a council to direct the mayor and city manager to negotiate with

2:15:47the west county unified school district to achieve any necessary agreements in support of any property exchanges or leases needed to support option 1b and enable the west county unified school district to use the current library and senior center sites to enrich the new fairmont elementary

2:16:06school projects these properties have been in the public have been public properties for years and should remain in public properties one way or another the taxpayers have already paid for these properties once and we shouldn't have to pay for them again and remember that the el cerrito voters

2:16:27have long been strong supporters of the west county unified school district over the years we have overwhelmingly supported every school bond measure since the construction program began and we were strong supporters of keeping the district one district when it was

2:16:42threatened with a breakup movement hopefully that will open west county unified school district's heart the current uncertainty in the west in the school district's ongoing construction plans will complicate this library project negotiations it will be especially difficult on the

2:17:03fairmont school community for this reason i asked the council and staff when possible to make a special effort to understand their concerns and keep the fairmont school community informed of the steps being taken to bring a safe modern library to our community thank you

2:17:22thank you good evening mayor lyman council members and staff my name is melanie proctor i've been a resident of el cerrito since 2008 and the one thing that i found this community sorely lacking is a central community space which this opportunity represents but that said i'm also a fairmont parent

2:17:46i currently have a first grader there and my daughter will attend kindergarten there starting in 2017 and i am deeply concerned at the thought of my children being right next to a construction site that would be detrimental to their health it would be detrimental to their education

2:18:04and it would prevent the full use of the site which i understand from principal murphy is actually needed the current proposal does not take into consideration how much room is needed for an elementary school with place structures the proposal appears to cut off access

2:18:20to cerrito vista which might be the only form of actual green space available to the children and i urge the council to take this into consideration and also acknowledge the fact that there are many fairmont parents who are not here this evening because we only

2:18:36learned that this was an agenda item recently and there's actually a school district meeting that took place this evening because we are working very hard to get the school district to prioritize fairmont fairmont is a very special community it's fully inclusive

2:18:54there's there's a great diversity there that i value for my children's education above other options available in the school district and in the private sector and i urge the city to prioritize that value as well thank you thank you catherine levinson followed by peter

2:19:13meyer rochelle pardue okamoto and paul fideli mayor lyman council members and staff thank you for letting me speak i'm katherine levinson i've been a resident here for about five years i've been in the berkeley area since 1990 in a native californian um i'm also a librarian with a master's in

2:19:33library science and in talking i've also been a volunteer at the australia library now for six years and was mentored by some of the librarians there during my master's program i recently was talking with them and one of the quotes i garnered from them was the architects will build another

2:19:51worthless building without feedback of what the community needs in a library and that was because they felt that so far a lot of the librarians there have not had much input in what is needed and so i'm not sure whether the people giving the input are the higher up people in the county

2:20:08or the people who actually are the librarians at that library so i think they feel like they really would like to have some input and i'm you know saying that for them without them being here the other thing i'm worried about i live right below the retaining wall

2:20:25if literally downstream from the community pool so i'm concerned about the seismic instability of the site up above there so i just um hope to be reassured in the future that that's been really carefully researched as we're excavating parking lots and perhaps two-story buildings up

2:20:46on that site and then third point is parking and traffic patterns and just to take into account that we use moser for emergency services and helicopter landings at the park that's there and the idea of kind of cutting off pomona street is a little frightening on weekends there's a lot of traffic

2:21:09along there and a lot of heavy parking in the neighborhoods already in that neighborhood so just to kind of take that into con context in terms of our making parking lots and things thank you very much thank you peter meyer mr mayor council um first of all i am peter meyer i live

2:21:31at [address removed] i've been a resident of the city for about 20 years um many thanks to the staff for this really excellent presentation and this thoughtful analysis of the the situation of the library i think as we evaluate the prospects of my own favorite in this is certainly 1b

2:21:55but primarily this keys to the notion that um it's very important to have library services integrated into the community as much as possible and with the community center that seems like a fundamentally really important thing to have built into the project [Music]

2:22:13i think also i'd like to just thank everyone on behalf of my neighbors and the families in my neighborhood who rely on the library and the library services so much for your efforts in moving this along and we look forward to a really excellent library service we have excellent people in the

2:22:34libraries right now and a wonderful county library system that supports it so we look forward to this project as being really the next step in really improving life in el cerrito one more time thank you very much thank you go ahead please hello my name is rochelle pardue okimoto

2:23:03i live at [address removed] here in el cerrito i'll keep it short i support option 1b the lower patoa playfield i use the library frequently i was there today with my son we go there to work on homework together and it's a great resource for me to get out of my house away from distractions

2:23:29and help him with his kindergarten school work one of the things though is that it is often crowded and sometimes we have a hard time finding space so i'm really looking forward to the rebuild of the library i also take my two-year-old son to story time there as well so i'm very much

2:23:48looking forward to a better children's area larger more accommodating to several little toddlers running around i think the new library adjacent to the community center will really bring forward a focal point for the community which i think is much needed in the city of el cerrito

2:24:10i'm also very much in favor of the b plan due to the community center as well as the use of space for our seniors i think it's very important for seniors to stay active i was raised by my grandmother she just turned 82 and i think it's all of the activities that she goes to on a regular

2:24:30basis all the groups that she belongs to that has kept her so well into her her senior years and i hope to follow in her footsteps in that way so in conclusion i support the mayor and the city staff to enter into negotiations with the school district i too would like a safe

2:24:52new library for the entire community to enjoy thank you paul fideli followed by howdy gowdy denise sangster and amelia cunningham good evening paul fideli i live on arbor drive in el cerrito and i support also recommendation 1b by the staff i think it's an excellent

2:25:19report that was given tonight these are exciting times for el cerrito when i was growing up here my mother had a choice on where to take her two sons to the library and she chose the richmond library and we had lots of memories lots of times taking the bus down to richmond to go to the library

2:25:42and with my two daughters growing up here they had a choice they chose the richmond library as well and it's time that el cerrito started providing some family moments here for their own residents so we're very excited about the change in el cerrito the new era and the

2:25:59opportunities that are here and i think the campus model here by the community center is a good model hopefully the sensitivities expressed tonight for the fairmont school district in the neighborhood will continue to move on here in el cerrito in addition to the resources and the

2:26:16books and the broadband that we need in el cerrito i'm very excited about the community space and i think it's a place for our town to come together for people to meet for el cerrito to grow and nurture its relationships and the cafe concept i think that's a great

2:26:35idea and both of those ideas can probably bring revenue to el cerrito in some way renting out rooms selling items in the in the cafeteria and have opportunities to meet and finally i'm on the arts commission and i want to make sure that the library is a great opportunity for additional public

2:26:53art here in el cerrito i'm very excited about that thank you for your work great thank you howdy gowdy denise sangster and amalia cunningham good evening mayor lyman council members my name is howdy gowdy i live at [address removed] um so i highly support a new library

2:27:15i also really appreciate the effort that city staff and consultants have done analyzing the various options i think they did a very thorough job so my comments come mostly from just being introduced to the images that i saw in that report and um you know i'll be honest even though

2:27:40the the 1b site is i think a really practical location the image i saw of a library on that site the way it was presented and i realized this is highly schematic at this point but it it really didn't meet my excitement or expectations of you know the potential of

2:28:04of that space um i think um you know we have to realize recognize in this city we're highly built out we have very um limited you know opportunities of spaces of that size and it just seems underutilized and squandered i realized that you know there's economics of construction that

2:28:27go into all these decisions but and the and the operation aspects of a library being a one-story building but it just seems like putting a low building spread out on a big site with big parking lot is um an under utilization of space that that really needs to be reconsidered and um

2:28:51you know i understand the other constraints and but i hope that we can go into this looking at you know a more holistic view staged view with other um you know compatible uses i do like the central um municipal campus idea but i think we really have to think ahead to how all that's going to be

2:29:18integrated and accommodated without you know just building ourself out of options so um i am a little concerned about the transit connectivity in that site but hopefully as we bring more you know community activities there we can improve that and you know i just

2:29:39really want to say you know surface parking lots really need to be a thing of the past it's it's a really it's the worst use of space we could have in a city so i hope we can find a way to make an affordable use of the space that's highly dynamic and gets more uses there i mean

2:29:58i think adding community center theater everything in that spot is great but the parking has to be you know serving it in a way that doesn't dominate the site so thank you thank you hi denise sangster i have five comments first i would echo the the issue of the

2:30:24design i think um if you're going to spend this much money i would even consider doing a design competition to really see if you can get a state-of-the-art very interesting building that would really look nice in the hills and really be a centerpiece of the city

2:30:41second i'd like to understand really what kind of independent research has been leveraged to really justify this strategy and this kind of spending the largest book distributor in the world is ingram book and they're putting out a very different view of libraries and where libraries

2:30:57are going and it's not really big it's smaller so i think you need to be looking at really what that strategy is they really have their finger on the pulse about 90 of all books sold to libraries in the world are sold by ingram book so we need to understand really for

2:31:16for a 21 000 square foot building do we really need 21 000 square feet if we're really moving into a device enabled world of distribution of material of content second or third will the fi will the facilities as you're imagining them be easily reconfigurable if you're building a 21 000 square foot

2:31:39building and we only need 6 000 square feet in the future i think that's a really critical issue because it's a lot of money and if we are moving to this device enabled world of distribution of content we need to have a plan b at the time that this project is approved

2:31:59fourth given the questionable state of the public safety building is that a greater need than a library and if it's not earthquake sound then i'm not sure it is earthquake sound i was in there in an earthquake one day and i thought it was at least a 6.0 it turned

2:32:16out to be a two point something and that building really shook so what happens if we all of a sudden need a public safety building do we have the money to build that as well as a library which may not be a necessity given that we have public safety officers sitting there and

2:32:34possibly an unsound building and i think we have to consider that fact and lastly um i would actually rather see the third option which is very uncharacteristic for me for i'm sure you're thinking that jan because i've never asked you guys to spend more money i've always advocated

2:32:52for spending significantly less but with berkeley's global campus going in across the freeway this could be the opportunity of a lifetime for this city to build a really great looking building on san pablo with mixed-use facility including housing which will be

2:33:09desperately needed primarily by people coming from overseas who would probably love the idea of having a library on the ground floor of their building so this could be again another once in a lifetime opportunity and then lead to a huge redevelopment effort of all of sam

2:33:26pavel that could be the catalyst that i know mark you've looked at for many years and i know greg you have too but i think before any decision is taken on this we need an answer on what are we going to do about a public safety building and can we afford both and what happens if you have to pull the

2:33:41trigger and we do have to get a public safety building once this is underway where are we going to get that money thank you the final request to speak is amalia cunningham good evening mayor lyman and council i am amalia cunningham el cerrito resident and fairmont parent i have a

2:34:08second grader and an incoming kindergartner you might also know me as a co-founder of the el cerrito new library committee which is why i'm not here to question the merits of a new library or how much it's needed i am here to express my disappointment with how this came forward

2:34:24the understanding that seemed to be in place about what fairmont needed without any consultation with the fairmont community the fairmont principal the pta i feel like it really came out of nowhere the fairmont community is really upset as i think you can imagine

2:34:40the those of us who are here tonight are here because we chose not to go to the district's facilities committees meeting as i know you all know the district is in the middle of a fight a facility's prioritization process and we can all feel upset about that as well but fairmont is in a very

2:34:58complicated situation as it regards the district and their priorities and nobody from the fairmont community appreciates the city jamming itself into that process at this point it's a delicate situation it's a big concern for those of us with parenting some of the 600 kids there

2:35:14many of whom have special needs english is a second language lots of things going on fairmont is a great community and this community center site might be the best site for the library now is not the time to try to tie it up let the district facilities program play

2:35:31out and then make your move and i think we could all support a new library then if it's rushed ahead to get coincided with the presidential election well if it's a really good project at the really good site it doesn't matter what election will be on the community will

2:35:45support you thank you we have two additional requests to speak gary picorney followed by april parak good evening mayor lyman council member city staff my name is gary pokorny i live at [address removed] first of all i want to thank city staff and your consultants for what

2:36:10i think has been an excellent job of working through the site selection process as i think all of you know i've been involved also with the new library committee and when we took a look at that issue there were literally 25 or 30 sites i think that the consultants have done an excellent job

2:36:30of winnowing that down and focusing on a site that i think will be excellent for the library and the community facilities that option 1b contemplates and will be very good for operational reasons very good for community identity reasons and i think it's an excellent report

2:36:52i agree with all of the people who've spoken tonight and including the people from the fairmont district from the fairmont school attendance area who are expressing what i think are legitimate concerns which i think can be addressed i'm hopeful that the city staff their

2:37:09consultants you will in fact engage upon a thoroughgoing process of engaging that community in ways that will i think bring out unless i'm missing something opportunities for cooperation and opportunities for turning this into a win-win process i am disappointed to hear from some of

2:37:30the fairmont people that they feel they were not appropriately consulted i'm also disappointed to hear that some of the library staff may feel they weren't consulted i think there is opportunity going forward for those consultancies to be had and for those conversations to result in an even

2:37:49better design and timetable but i think that the solution that your consultants and staff have recommended option 1b is the best option and i think these other details can be worked out so i'm pleased to hear that this is going forward and i encourage you to act on it

2:38:06thank you april parekh hi my name is april park and i live in richmond annex i'm here as a soon to be fairmont parent i'm also a little bit concerned of course i actually went to the other meeting this evening so i'm sorry to show up late but i have looked through the documents

2:38:34online um and it's not really clear that there might be an overlap as far as having fairmont and the library there at the same time and obviously there's of just not the facility to do that to have both the school and the library there and you know so the timing really isn't there i

2:38:54definitely want to see the library rebuilt and thank you great thank you is there anybody else out there would like to speak at this time all right i'm going to take the opportunity to read a letter that was on our diocese from former mayor bill jones he has a very lengthy

2:39:18lever that points out that the library is approaching the age of 70 and is increasingly clear that a safe and modern library is needed the opportunity is available for the city and the school district to collaborate on such a project that will benefit each entity's current goals and

2:39:33objectives he cannot help but think that these two institutions public schools and library uh public library are not only symbols of our freedom democratic society they are also an everyday functionary of community life and he goes on to state the time is now for the residents of el cerrito to

2:39:54decide the fate of our library it is time for us to determine if our community will build a library that will continue the legacy of providing services that support our residents the project will become a shining example of city school district partnership we'll

2:40:08honor our freedom of an open society we'll stand in tribute to the men and women who have served to preserve our democratic way of life and will improve our commun community quality of life for future generations so i just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that we did

2:40:22have some input from former council member jones uh with that i'll close the public comment at this point and bring it to the dyess for uh discussion additional questions um at this time go ahead um okay i'll go ahead and start um i just want to address a couple

2:40:43issues that came up from on the speakers and thank you for coming and participating um regarding the fairmont school you know if we chose 1a or 1b this is really contingent on us working together with the school district we do not have control of what their bond schedule is

2:41:05and i think that from what i'm aware of fairmont's rebuild is kind of far down on the list right now that's not anything to do with the city with us here or with our staff members that's to the electeds of the school district and i think that it's on the schedule to be

2:41:27rebuilt at some point in time but from what i understand it's probably somewhere between number five and 10.

2:41:34and how they spend their bond money we can't actually determine that now if this we were to choose one b remember it's contingent on them letting us do so um the reason that this is being looked at primarily and i think that the consultants illustrated this quite well

2:41:55it's it's really about being able to have a land swap and that's sort of why we're interested in this particular site it would also vacate eventually the senior center and we're not we're trying to get away from calling it a senior center and i'm i you know i guess i shouldn't really say what

2:42:19i'm collecting now for my health insurance because then you all know how old i am but um we want to say that we're going to be using community space so when some when we talk about you know books maybe not being um as popular in the library just being about books it's really not about

2:42:35that it's about programming space and i do think that even though it's not maybe the most obvious place making site it has that synergy there and you know you can you could foresee a situation where the children are there in the community space not necessarily in the

2:42:53library but the seniors are also there there's opportunities for tutoring i mean there's there's a lot of synergy that can take place there it's just not about books and shelves but it can be about a cafe that's there the uh ability to plug in laptops for teams etc

2:43:14etc um so i don't think any of us here are meaning to diss or not consider the feelings of the fairmont community because we too want that school built and we know that it's sort of a unique school it it has academic opportunities there that a lot of the other elementary schools in the

2:43:37city don't have and it's sort of a shining star in the district here so it's it's not really about that we're trying to disrespect you in any way but it's just about it's about the land and about that opportunity it's been no secret public safety is a big deal to me

2:44:03and the reason we don't have a better public safety building we're not going after a bond for that is because it didn't pull i mean we have to go to our residents we don't have 31 million dollars sitting in the bank here to build any of these facilities and i've been in

2:44:20the police station i've been not not because i was hauled in there but just to visit and i mean even when our old chief was here you know i went in and looked at the holding area in the fingerprinting area et cetera et cetera i mean it's real i mean we we do need that but

2:44:37the reality is it hasn't pulled well in this city and the library unfortunately or fortunately has and so that's why we're here now today discussing that the other thing that um talk about the place making and the synergy is that believe it or not our community center is sort of on its last

2:44:58legs too and having that additional space for um community meetings is sort of a very desirable thing i mean we don't really know what to do with our community center it's it's aged too and i kind of see that as another opportunity and i think that having it in this

2:45:21campus site is a good thing because again with fairmont maybe being there someday on the portables you know believe it or not i've played tennis in the community center um you can have swim opportunities there's a lot of things that you can do recreationally that if fairmont ends up being there

2:45:40when the library's dead that you really don't have even now i mean maybe it's not outdoor space in greenfield but cerrito vista park is across the street and some of the other local schools do actually use that as a playground so again it wouldn't be a permanent thing

2:45:55but it there there are some things that can be addressed and you know we intend to work with the school district about that um when we did the study the the new needs assessment in 2014 um parking came in ninth of 23 24 different things that were pulled and probably a

2:46:16good 50 percent of our population lives above shoveling or certainly above ashbury the reality is they're not going to walk there and even though a lot of us want and we are trying to get people out of cars and we have bike routes and we have pedestrians and we

2:46:37have some transportation not necessarily to this particular site but i think the parking is really going to be needed and if at some point in time we can convert that potential portable space into fields that's also another reason to have parking and i guess another thing about the

2:46:56parking is you you could have tournaments there you're going to have kids coming from different cities if you have a soccer field there are potential baseball field and you know a lot of the things then we hear this with koramatsu people neighbors don't want people

2:47:13parking on their streets and that too i suppose could be considered a safety hazard so having that parking isn't necessarily a bad thing in my my view even though i agree that it's probably not the best use of the space but it's just the reality we live in um i think al's probably the only one in

2:47:33the room that remembers the prince of wales study yeah and where where was that place making it was right here at the community center i mean that's that's what that whole study was about is that that really should be one of our focal points so um let's see if i have other things i

2:47:53wanted to say and just address the transportation issues again um it's further up from san pablo avenue than the current site is on stockton but i just think that if we went to alternatives that were not 1b which i am going to say right now i am in favor of that um

2:48:19that would be a better way to address getting people there um on the bus or maybe even on bart if it were closer to a bart station but that's not a deal breaker for me um i do have some concerns about the longevity of a project like this if we have to have a private developer i i

2:48:39don't know if it's if it's real i mean it could be we could luck out and have somebody come in and be very excited about building a a project that has maybe a little retail a library and housing above it and that is attractive and i do agree that it could be the one thing that gets

2:48:56san pablo avenue to have a little more economic development but it kind of concerns me um about delaying this this library real rebuild altogether i just i'm not sure if that's um doable and in a short period of time um as far as the theater site i don't know how we would i'm not i'm still a little

2:49:21unclear about the bond and how that would work um not that i'm necessarily opposed to it and remember this is all again contingent on the school district and if um if this doesn't go through we're going to be back here talking about these other alternatives thanks i agree with many of those

2:49:42comments um i agree with ms sangster that in a ideal world i would prefer option three because of the benefits we get to helping implement the san pablo specific plan of potential economic development opportunities our desperate need for more transit-oriented housing

2:50:06etc but for the reasons stated in the report i do support 1b because i think it will get us to where we need to get a lot faster than option 3 would i also agree in the need for a public safety building and i think we should explore auction three for the public safety building because

2:50:29it's much more cost effective by having the development of housing as part of it and particularly in what we hope will continue to be a pretty hot housing market so that might be a creative approach to take care of some of the benefits we would get from option three

2:50:48but aren't suitable at this particular time to move us forward on this essential library project which time and time again the residents have told us is their highest priority in terms of the council discussion here uh i say yes to the first five i think definitely this is the approach

2:51:13we need to take of consummating an agreement with the school district as soon as we can i think we all know the school district in his school district is in a state of transition with a new superintendent coming in with some of their legal issues with their lack of available money to complete all

2:51:36the projects that were promised to the voters etc etc so that is worrisome that we're negotiating with an institution that isn't totally stabilized at this time but i think that's even more reason why we need to be aggressive at moving forward before whatever happens with changes in the

2:52:01district and i think there is a lot of support on the school board for helping to facilitate this project and the swap of land is one piece of leverage or quiver an arrow that we have in our quiver so i do support 1b i think this is great staff work i also agree

2:52:22that the libraries of today we require a lot less space for books but getting 28 500 feet of quality public space in our committee community is really important and when we get to the planning of the details of design we'll be able to design how modular it is and how if we

2:52:46need less space for books and more space for technology or ports or wi-fi etc that we'll be able to design that in a way that's appropriate both for now and for future uses as the concept of library resource center learning hub changes through the next 50-year lifespan of this building so i think the

2:53:11points raised by all the speakers are excellent and i agree with my colleague that the fairmont school rebuild is a priority in our city and that's something we need to do everything we can to foster and i hope that we make every effort to make sure fairmont community is involved and that the

2:53:35current librarians also feel involved going forward first i want to thank group four and swinnerton for doing all the hard work that you've done i think your calendar showed that you did it over like a three or four month period of time and and the level of detail that you um

2:53:55you touched on tonight because you certainly didn't present all the detail is greatly appreciated i want to thank all the speakers who came tonight um i really appreciate a lot of the the topics that you brought up tonight um you know whether it's the librarian input

2:54:12or lack thereof the need for more of it uh the fact that fairmont it needs more support so their construction occurs earlier the public the need for a public safety building and and uh on this um denise has heard me at a financial advisory board meeting saying that a public safety building is

2:54:32something that i truly support and so we we are as a council unanimous on that at the moment but the library gets 500 visits a day and there aren't many el cerrito residents going into the police station which is a good thing but as a result the library is polling

2:54:53out as a much higher need for by the people who will be paying the bill so let's get to the bill so my criteria you know that i'm looking at is cost safety uh building a community asset uh flexibility that was touched on tonight and and council member friedman just touched on it the space needs to be

2:55:14flexible it needs to be a space that is is able to be used for any number of future uses a 50 a structure that is that is going to be around for 50 years it's hard today to think about what we might be using that structure for 50 50 years from now so when when i

2:55:33look at the the structure i'm i'm always trying to tinker with it to potentially come up with a structure that has a great flexibility or a low cost to reprogram it whether it's the elimination of books or or the the increase of an art collection there there are some attributes that i

2:55:54certainly like when i'm looking at this you know when when you look at a maker space for example or collaborative spaces uh to talk up to do a little visioning which i i know i'm trying not to do to think of a glass elevator that take could take you from the pool to a

2:56:11cafe that overlooks the golden gate bridge and you you are able to enjoy that space strikes me as something that would be a fantastic asset a great space to allow places for people to go at 10 o'clock at night that they need to have a last minute meeting with a client and

2:56:31they can use a credit card or a pass card to get into a a secure space that would allow them to have white boards and and thinking spaces that they could use at 10 o'clock at night those these are the things that that we need in our neighborhood our community um the inclusion of a friends space

2:56:50uh you know for for us to have spaces that that places for people to actually align with those are all valuable things so cost the cheapest option is option three 17 million to the city so but that is the greatest uncertainty because we don't have the land we don't have a partner to build the the

2:57:17housing above it it's very creative it's very place making i actually not certain i agree with all of the scores that it got but it's it's uncertainty is too great for us to go to the polls in november to to push that forward so then i look at the next cost 1a 1a

2:57:39is is very tempting but 1a does not vacate fairmount it does not um get some of the structures at fairmont vacated to allow fairmont school to really build a world-class school there so for me 1b which allows us to completely vacate the structures at fairmount is something that is very valuable

2:58:09i think one of the speakers tonight spoke about the fact that we've paid for this ground at the school district our community has paid for it probably many times over in all of the bond measures we've supported for the district we should be using public land for

2:58:25public good so i am very strongly believing that we should be using the lower playground and using our property that's adjacent to fair amount to to potentially even influence the district to build fair amount before the library gets built the in a perfect world

2:58:49fairmont would be rebuilt sometime in the next 24 months and all of our schedules construction would start ideally in those 24 months but not much before those 24 months so if empowered i would love to be using our land our it was estimated 1.4 million dollars not

2:59:13less than five years ago using our property at uh fairmont to push it forward will it be successful i don't know but that would be an a a perfect win-win for everyone is for us to to try and do both of those projects in a timely manner with regards to going to forward to the district at this time

2:59:38the facilities master plan if it doesn't have our use of the lower play field in it then we may never get that opportunity again so i really understand the comments about from the fairmont community that that we've they feel abandoned and and unsupported um and i will do my best to try and

3:00:05make that a a change in that opinion but we need to be inserted into the facilities master plan so that this public land for public good goes down in their record going forward so that that would be a strong reason for that there was a comment today about alternative two uh both

3:00:28council member bridges worry about the cost of it as well as the the um circulation changes that would be necessary as a result of closing uh pomona those those are very big concerns for me with regards to alternative two um and alternative four is uh significantly more expensive than than

3:00:50all the other others and that leaves me with one a and one b one b because it's two school two structures a community space as well as a library and vacates the fairmont property so fairmont can potentially have a much better campus i i have to support 1b it's the staff's

3:01:10recommendation for many reasons some of which i've articulated tonight okay make a motion i move that we give direction to staff by answering yes to questions one through five there's actually a resolution that you could just go even one you can go one step further and move the

3:01:36resolution i move resolution to the city council the city of el cerrito selecting the former portal middle school lower play field is the preferred location for a new modern library authorizing the city manager and mayor to work with the west contra costa unified school district to

3:01:54develop a lease and plan for a new library in anticipation of a november 8 2016 ballot measure and this doesn't actually cover everything that's there but we can start with that um right [Music] it's yeah uh yeah the 50-year lease is not in the current resolution so it would need to be

3:02:23amended to include the 50-year lease um do you want that in there it's no okay and the the resolution as i read doesn't reference the fairmont school site it it does later on adequate room for right it does in one of the and we can we can change that if you would like

3:02:43it it doesn't do it in the title but it does in the body of the rest yeah okay good and just to read that whereas claws out because there are some people who came that were late and didn't necessarily hear this clause read uh earlier whereas space shall be made for a

3:02:58temporary fairmont elementary school campus while the current location is being rebuilt in the fastest time frame possible and upon direction of the city council city staff will work with the school district on the ultimate disposition of the current library and

3:03:12senior center sites all right i'll second uh the motion has been made by freeman seconded by bridges uh all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions seeing none let it record show that it passes 3-0 thank you we'll now move on from item 7a to item 7b

3:03:39item 7b is uh suzanne are you going to present this or is scott going to present this okay good evening mayor and council members my name is suzanne airline i'm the assistant to the city manager and i am here tonight to request that the city council make a budget appropriation

3:04:07and authorize the city manager to enter into professional service agreements to support public information efforts related to a possible ballot measure for a safe modern library in el cerrito so following on your last agenda item as you know staff has been working on

3:04:26this effort and concept for a safe modern library in el cerrito and in addition to the information you heard at the previous item we have been conducting a community feedback survey and the needs that residents have indicated are very similar to what was echoed or the results echo

3:04:49what was in the needs assessment that dawn did touch on in her presentation during the last item the results from that survey indicate that the community is interested in an elsewhere library that is a safe energy efficient building with adequate space and a layout to accommodate different

3:05:05users such as the children's area public access computers etc so towards that end staff is interested in working with lou edwards the lou edwards group which is a communications consulting firm as well as god be research which is a public opinion research firm to carry out a public information

3:05:26program this spring and early summer about the need for a safe modern library and the possible funding that would be considered by the city council the city has worked with both of these firms in the past and we've been very happy with their services specifically what you're being asked for

3:05:43tonight would be an appropriation of ninety six thousand dollars plus a small contingency in case actual expenses exceed the projected costs thirty thousand dollars of that would go towards the lou edwards group to develop the public information program thirty three thousand dollars would go uh for

3:06:02god be research to conduct another survey and thirty three thousand dollars i would go towards three mail pieces about the library so that would include the uh the design the printing and mailing out of those materials so the action being requested tonight would be for the city council to approve

3:06:19the resolution before you which would authorize the city manager to enter into agreements with the lou edwards group and gobby research and to appropriate ninety six thousand dollars from the fiscal year 2015-16 unrestricted general fund balance for public information related to funding

3:06:37for a safe modern library facility for el cerrita you have any questions i'll be happy to answer them or mr henry could as well [Music] my question is on the thirty thousand dollars for the lou edwards group they've done library campaigns before right they have for other communities yes yeah

3:06:58what's so special about our community that we need thirty thousand dollars to design a whole new campaign i realize there's some data that you have to go through and the demographic information but thirty thousand dollars seems like a lot just to design it we don't get

3:07:16um we don't reach one voter by that design process that comes from the mailings and other information let me do it um well the first thing i would say is this is the exact strategy we used in the last three successful measures they put together sort of the whole work plan

3:07:39for all the public information they draft all the texts they draft all the language and it is much more complicated than what other cities are doing as the city attorney will attest to um and and it's getting even more complicated with recent legislation um we have a bandwidth issue of who on

3:07:56staff is going to take the lead and write all of this um and we think it is frankly much more nuanced and the 30 thousand dollars relative to getting 30 million is a small price to pay we actually spent more on the streets measure um and i believe one of the two measure r's

3:08:16so we're kind of following what's worked in the past and i'd also point out that the public information program that they will help put together goes beyond just those three mailers there's other community engagement strategies that they would help identify that city

3:08:32staff could carry out so it is broader than just those three mailings so they are actually writing the information pieces this is unclear here that they will do that right thanks questions no um given in the testimony in the previous item uh is the questionnaire the survey going

3:08:58to include uh the theater i'm assuming it would not include just questions about uh incorporating a theater into the project we haven't discussed it yet but my guess would be no um i've asked this question before and given the the in light of the all three of us saying that we would support a

3:09:18public safety funding would there be a would you be open to a question about uh asking if a public safety if the ballot measure could include a public safety structure funding a public safety structure i would really want to discuss it with with brian um my guess after doing this

3:09:40a fair amount of times is that could really dilute the survey um because you would be talking about a project cost that would be more than double um i i realize that that's why i'm struggling to ask it in a in a succinct way because i understand that it is but it

3:09:59and i would i would concur with what you said all earlier based on not only surveys that we've done repeatedly what surveys cities have done for public safety buildings particularly frankly particularly police stations voters residents their attitude unfortunately is more

3:10:21um we want them out on the street anyway uh there's a little more sympathy to the building falling on fire trucks maybe but the we have we have consistently pulled in the 30 percentile and that's not inconsistent with what other cities see i mean it is still a very high priority

3:10:43but as as you all have already said i mean it's consistently falling below well below the library maybe someday it'll be different uh is there any public comment on this item no i have no requests i'll bring it back for discussion and motions i'll move i'll make a motion

3:11:06okay okay i moved to adopt resolution resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a standard professional service agreement with lou edwards group for the proposed public information strategy and associated materials and mailings and god b research for a

3:11:23targeted library survey in a total amount not to exceed ninety six thousand dollars for technical assistance associated with potential ballot measure to fund construction of a safe modern library facility and approve a budget amendment to appropriate these funds from the unrestricted

3:11:43general fund balance second motion by bridges second by friedman all those in favor please say aye aye opposed sentience let it record show it past 3-0 right that brings us to item eight which is uh council assignments and liaison reports none i've got to look at my calendar i don't

3:12:17think i have any on the 17th of february council member bridges and i attended the um uh the officer of the year awards and uh uh officer leone was uh was recognized by the elks club um and on thursday the 25th of uh february we hosted the west county mayor's conference and had a presentation

3:13:02about minimum wage the county's efforts uh that was minimum wage wasn't it yeah county's efforts on minimum wage uh that was actually fairly well received uh by the the various cities that were present uh with discussions uh about that and uh that concludes my uh

3:13:23liaison reports and we'll now item nine is to adjourn the regular city council meeting uh to the next regular city council meeting which is tuesday march 15th 2016 7 p.m here in city council chambers we're adjourned you