Regular City Council and Special City Council Meetings April 5, 2016

0:00:00been a resident of el cerrito for 60 years and i've been a renter for since 1973.

0:00:09a year a year a year and a half ago i was living in a duplex for 16 and a half years at that one location i know i had a sweet deal my rent was for a two-bedroom was 9.55 a month but we got new um owners of the building and they raised my rent 640 a month and i had to move out

0:00:32so now i'm living with my mother she's elderly and i'll probably be living with her until um she passes away and after that i would like to come back and rent an el cerrito but i kind of fear that i don't know that i'm going to be able to do that with the rents that i just keep going

0:00:50crazy respectfully um requests that you consider rent control in el cerrito thank you nicholas arzio it's the last speaker's lab good evening i'm nicholas arzio i live at [address removed] i'd just like to to thank janet abelson for hosting the earth day celebration again this year

0:01:25i plan on participating in a cleanup event hopefully on san pablo avenue or east shore boulevard for the third year and i'd be happy to lead a group if i'm called upon so i'd like to just call as many people as are interested to help us clean up our avenues and especially to keep

0:01:42cigarette butts out of our bay thank you for your time great thank you no other speakers we'll move on to item five which is the consent calendar uh we have uh four items on the consent calendar approval of the march 15 minute 15th meetings earth day proclamation

0:02:03amend the more icofano goltzmann mig agreement authorized an annual report for the landscape and lighting assessment district for fiscal year 2016 2017.

0:02:15so moved second we have a motion by freeman seconded by bridges all those in favor please say aye aye opposed extensions seeing none let the record show past five zero uh that brings us on to item six which is the active transportation plan it's ortiz uh it's a continuation of the public

0:02:43hearing oh sorry yeah yeah i gotta get to my purple sheet um item six is it is a continuation of a public hearing from october 6th of 2015 uh consideration to adopt city of el cerrito active transportation plan and approve the initial study slash mitigated negative declaration

0:03:02and approve a mitigation monitoring and reporting program so i'm announcing the continuation of the public hearing um at that hearing we received comments from four speakers and we appointed a subcommittee of myself and vice mayor abelson to review the active transportation plan

0:03:22with staff we have provided comments and received responses to those comments and tonight we the the plan we'll be looking at does incorporate and respond to our comments so now we'll go on to staff presentation thank you mayor lyman city council members my name is yvette ortiz i'm the

0:03:43city's public works director and city engineer tonight staff is requesting that council like you indicated continue the public hearing and consider approving the environmental documents the initial study and environment mitigated negative declaration and mitigation monitoring and reporting

0:03:59plan for the active transportation plan and adopting the plan itself and we've just gone over this so move on the development of the active transportation plan has been to a three-year process and it's been a joint effort between the public works department and the community development

0:04:20department the plan actually updates the circulation plan for bicyclists and pedestrians that was adopted by city council almost nine years ago so it's much much needed at this point given that the city has completed a numerous projects that weren't in the original plan

0:04:38there's innovative and new best practices for pedestrian and bicycle facilities and new state of california active transportation program guidelines as well as other plans that the city has adopted that we wanted to make this plan consistent with as mayor lyman indicated

0:05:00over the last few months we discussed the august 25th august 2015 plan with the subcommittee and so and given that a detailed presentation provided at the october 2015 meeting i'll give you a brief overview of the plan development process tonight but more focused on the revisions to the

0:05:20plan since october um the plan development process began in 2013 with a series of workshops that were held concurrently with workshops for the urban greening plan which you adopted in december of 2015 as well as the san pablo avenue specific plan and complete streets plan

0:05:45with the city which the city council adopted in september of 2014.

0:05:50it also included a formal comment period and a planning commission public hearing after hearing the public comment um at the october 2015 meeting city council directed the formation of civic committee and staff over the last several months has discussed various

0:06:10issues and with the plan the current version of the plan is dated february 2016 and it reflects all the public comment that was has been received today the revisions that that the planning commission had to policy 3.1 as well as various comments from the subcommittee

0:06:32i believe that the plan has been improved over the course of this process and it meets and now definitely meets multiple city strategic plan goals specifically public health and safety by identifying programs and projects that promote walking and biking and environmental sustainability by

0:06:50identifying pedestrian and bicycle networks and projects that will make it easier for residents and visitors to walk and bike and leave their car behind the comprehensive pedestrian and bicycle networks include both existing facilities and a variety of improvements

0:07:06to substantial portions of those networks as such the plan will help also implement the city's climate action plan goals of reducing vehicle miles traveled and the associated greenhouse gas emissions overall this is the outline of the plan it includes seven chapters and several

0:07:24appendices staff made various minor edits throughout the plan including clarifying terminology and reformatting tables and figures to include to improve the overall readability of the plan and for this same reason we also restructured chapters 2 5 4 and 5 of the plan

0:07:45most of it again was reformatting but but we made some other significant changes to make the discussion about programs recommendations and projects more cohesive throughout the plan more specifically the more substantial changes were revisions to um the addition of two policies related to

0:08:06accessibility policy 2.7 2-7 the ada advisory group related to the ada advisory group a review of the active transportation plan programs and projects and policy 2.8 related to accessibility design we also enhanced some of the accessibility and pedestrian facilities discussion in

0:08:30policy 3.3 specifically related to pedestrian signal timing and we reworked substantially reworked a recommended action regarding inventory improve and maintain pedestrian routes and bikeways and so those were the substantial changes to chapter 2 regarding policies and recommendations

0:08:53we also made substantial changes to the way we discussed and discussed projects in chapters four and five and we moved away from the terminology of focus area medium and low priority projects to detailed projects and prioritized we prioritized our projects the focus

0:09:12area are now detailed there projects were projects that were previously selected because they were previously identified for a detailed evaluation as part of the previous plan or the needs had been identified over the last few years that prioritize them for detailed evaluation

0:09:28and we now have grant ready fact sheets that make them ready to go for several calls to projects that are anticipated this coming spring and summer we also added an evaluated prioritization criteria related to accessibility so now all the projects were evaluated

0:09:46for whether or not they had accessibility improvements related to them in addition on in the detailed projects listings we highlighted and called out specific specific accessibility improvements that are part of those projects um so that's the summary of the the

0:10:06major changes since october um in terms of the environmental document um consistent with the california environmental quality act the findings of the the the documents you presented in back in october did not change and so that initial study and mitigated negative declaration went through the

0:10:26public review comment back um period back in the summer and staff also prepared a mitigation monitoring and reporting program to help us implement mitigation measures as part of when projects are implemented i will now thank you for the opportunity to present the revised plan to you and i'm

0:10:46available now to answer your questions actually before you turn you you turn it back to us i was hoping that you might speak to some of the changes that were issued after the published document if you could speak to the changes on pages 24 25 33 36 93 and 76 the

0:11:05figure 4-3 right i'm just looking at your memo that you that you transmitted to us and then the figure so the the changes to those pages um they're all in the document that was published it's it's included in the yes it's included we we added those revised pages to the february 2016. so

0:11:26the one that's put the one that's posted online is the correct one but for the figure that we got tonight right so we did it so it's just the figure then the right okay did you mention the figure during your presence no i didn't so we did um at the request of mayor lyman we updated

0:11:45figure 4.3 which on page 76 which is the bike network let me the let's see the the active transportation plan bicycle network and what we did was we screened out the existing facilities so they don't take as much attention and you could more easily see the proposed

0:12:07facilities and the proposed facilities the bike facilities are the dashed lines and we also clarified that the east shore boulevard currently has a bike lane but the active transportation plan proposes a buffered bike lane on east shore great thank you now now i'll ask for questions

0:12:30uh miss bridges questions uh i just had a couple questions i asked uh about before the meeting and i got my questions answered so i'm fine with content with the answers excellent got my clarification vice mayor i had numerous questions and i also got them answered thank you very much uh miss

0:12:48ortiz excellent thank you for uh for responding to the few questions i had as well um that will take us to any public comment at this time okay we've got one speaker [Music] hello i'm nicolas zarzio so i have one concern about um the class three sheroes along san pablo

0:13:21avenue i just think that it would not be the safest or the healthiest route for bicycle traffic because of the high volume of automobile traffic the congestion and gridlock and the admissions that would be inhaled by bicyclists i think that we have existing bicycle

0:13:39and pedestrian uh pathways on the ohlone greenway as well as uh on carlson that will suffice for north south traffic for bicycles and i think that as an alternative possibly kearney street or parallel street to san pablo would be a safer and healthier path for bicyclists

0:14:01and i think that it would also impact the traffic even more than it already is so i hope that that change can be made thank you great thank you any other speakers seeing none we'll bring it back um miss ortiz you you heard the question and it's one that we raised actually during

0:14:20several study sessions so i i know that you've considered this item before um i know myself raised this concern two years ago when we had an earlier version so i'm just curious if you had time to consider this and i know that you have an expert's response right

0:14:38well actually the san pablo avenue bicycle facilities including the buffered bike lanes in the midsection of the of the corridor and the shared bicycle routes on the downtown area or the south end of the corridor were adopted as part of the san pablo avenue specific plan and complete streets

0:14:58planned so those were already adopted as part of that plan and we're just referencing them here we are definitely not removing any lanes of traffic the buffered bike lanes on the midtown include maintain the two lanes of um for vehicle traffic and the um the shared bicycle facilities on the

0:15:19south end of town really are just a gap um a a couple blocks that would connect the buffered bike lanes to the facilities proposed in the city of albany excellent so i'll bring it back for comments do we need to close the public hearing uh you guys are way ahead of me thank you

0:15:40for helping me um let's see we have a motion to close the public hearing by ableton second by freeman all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions seeing that it passes 5-0 uh additional questions and council deliberation at this time yes yeah i want to thank ms ortiz and

0:16:02staff for putting this plan together and i really want to thank mayor lyman and mayor pro tem abelson for all the work you did to make it an even better plan and i know you put a lot of time and i really appreciate it the thing that i uh really appreciated about the plan is

0:16:17the last sections that deal with funding and how much it would cost for the desired improvements and also pretty comprehensive lists of funding sources so i'm always looking for that in our plans and i think this does an excellent job of addressing those key areas so we can

0:16:35hopefully get to the place where this beautiful plan becomes a reality element by element as we go yeah i also addressed that with yvette earlier today and i thought it was also not only helpful to us to know the funding sources but she also mentioned that we've applied in the past for some of

0:16:59the grants but because some of them we didn't have money to match we didn't actually get them so that may actually change this year and a lot of times we can bring money in from different agencies and also complete that but i also like the prior uh how you priority

0:17:14prioritized all of the the projects because there's criteria for that now and i think that was very helpful okay i would also like to thank yvette i know you worked extremely long and hard on this plan and i really appreciate it because i think this is a really

0:17:35important document for our city and i especially appreciate the changes that were made regarding accessibility to make sure that it's included as a integral part of the plan i think this does a great job of doing that and i think it overall it the whole plan goes a long way towards uh making el

0:18:04cerrito the type of place that many many people in our community have said that they want and i think it's you've done a great job i love the new presentation it's just very very readable and all i can say is thank you and i look at those comments the document is now very

0:18:26approachable and understandable from uh from every aspect um the changes you made to chapter two were the most profound in in making it more uh understandable what the goals are so i really appreciate the work that you put in in chapter two and um the chapter four tying chapter

0:18:47four and chapter five together which is the description of the projects and how they fit into our overall proposed network is really uh works much better now so i appreciate that all the work that you did in in echo vice mayor abelson's consider considered thanks and and sincere thanks

0:19:07for your work um so thank you at this time i would like to entertain a motion i'd be happy to make a motion i moved to adopt a resolution making the appropriate findings and adopting the initial study mitigated negative declaration in mitigating monitoring and reporting

0:19:28program and adopt the active transportation plan including the active transportation plan bicycle network the revised figure the revised figures right thank you okay motion by ableston second by bridges uh does anybody need to repeat the motion no okay all those in favor please say aye aye

0:19:50opposed abstentions let the record show it passed unanimously thank you very much [Applause] right uh gotta find the back of the play sheet um this brings us to item seven which is policy matters uh we have one item on tonight's uh agenda which is the annual parcel assessment for the

0:20:19national pollution discharge elimination system better known as npdes this program program and drainage maintenance and we'll have a presentation [Music] by mr pray [Applause] hi good evening mayor lyman members of council city council el cerrito residents interested public and city

0:20:48staff my name is stephen pray i am the environmental programs manager and city arborist in the el cerrito department of public works as such i coordinate the city's clean water program the action uh brought before you tonight namely to adopt a resolution establishing the annual parcel

0:21:08assessment levy for the national pollution discharge elimination system or npdes or niptis the drainage maintenance program has been an annual requirement of the cities in contra costa county since the stormwater utility area assessment or sua was established by the county in

0:21:30nineteen ninety three the purpose of the sua is to provide funds for permit implementation and compliance activities that are funded by the assessment include clean water related business and construction site inspections public education and outreach reach programs that elevate watershed

0:21:53awareness of kids and adults such as kids for the bay bringing back the natives garden tour funding for of the clean water program coordinator position and activities including permit compliance and reporting the background and the details of the sua resolution

0:22:14are contained in the staff report and because the sua provides funds for city activities to maintain compliance with a municipal regional permit we thought that this would be a good time to give an overview of the city's clean water program and the recent changes contained in the

0:22:34reissued municipal regional permit made by the san francisco regional water quality control board it should be noted that presentations such as this which are made to elected officials are also a requirement of the permit we dim the lights the npdes permit regulates all discharge

0:23:05into storm drain systems and creeks affecting san francisco bay el cerrito is one of 76 local agencies regulated under the recently revised municipal regional permit a storm water permit or mrp 2.0 that was issued by the san francisco regional water quality control board in

0:23:26november of 2015.

0:23:29mrp 2.0 requires specific measures to prohibit non-storm water discharges and minimize storm water pollutants including pesticides pcbs and trash litter the provision requirements are the same as the previous permit with an emphasis uh now on new development and redevelopment

0:23:58an emphasis on uh trash load reduction litter increased expectations and reporting mercury controls and pcb controls um these other elements are still equally as demanding as they were i might call attention to the municipal operations which really involves everything that

0:24:26our city does that is in relation to that may affect stormwater remember it's you know only rain down the drain and everything else is unacceptable and regulated industrial and commercial site controls include the inspections that are performed by a west county waste district in contract of

0:24:50businesses storm water inspections then as well as construction site controls to reduce sediment which is also a pollutant of concern public information and outreach water quality monitoring pesticides toxicity control there are definitely pesticides that are on the watch list the pyrethroids which

0:25:15have been used so often in the control of ants and mosquitoes trash load reduction as i said is a big one mercury controls pcbs controls copper controls legacy pesticides selenium other discharges and then the big one which is for me every year is the annual report

0:25:42the new increased demands on provision c3 require that the city complete and implement a green infrastructure plan for inclusion of low impact design drainage systems into storm drains on public and private streets roads parking lots building roofs and other drainages

0:26:07you'll note the inclusion of private property with this one as you know the some of the green infrastructure is you know there's a lot of cost involved with it the other demand or compliance issue is the for the city to adopt an appropriate legal mechanism to ensure

0:26:36implementation of a green infrastructure plan provision c10 the trash load reduction has stepped up the requirements with a 70 percent um uh trash reduction by july 2017.

0:26:57uh we previously the city previously and i'll talk about that in a minute the previous city previously had a higher compliance level trash reduction number if you will until the water board the allowance for certain activities was changed so they discontinued the credit

0:27:20for on land litter cleanups which was such a key part of of el cerrito's approach with the volunteer efforts of of you know the green teams and others there's increased credit for installation and upkeep of full trash captured devices such as what you kind of see on the right except it's covered

0:27:40with trash these are inlet screens that are placed in the in the drains and they have they collect the trash but they let the major flood waters pass in an event of a large rain then they uh to map and manage trash on private land greater than 10 000 square feet

0:28:04we have a few areas like that i think one area in the south end of town comes to mind which is noted as a high trash generating area the commercial in the commercial district next to the creek there so in the past uh the there was a 40 trash load reduction required by july 1st and in our 1314

0:28:28report we reported 46 percent compliance uh measured on the uh existing rules or the existing um credits in in the the permit then the status changed due to a discontinuance of credit for online cleanups as i mentioned earlier and we are currently at about 31 percent

0:28:54compliance the city's measures this year uh funds have been appropriated to for the installation of um 46 additional full trash capture devices with these devices the area essentially becomes compliant the problem is you can't always not all drainage areas are served by

0:29:19these devices so other measures may need to be taken um an additional measure we're reassessing some of the trash generation rates based on a a pre-approved visual assessment protocol which does require some time on the part of staff and consultants to go out and visually

0:29:43inspect and document how much trash is on the street you know done every uh 250 linear feet of curb provisions uh c11 and c12 mercury and pcbs controls this was a rather than a performance based um compliance requirement the water board has determined that a numeric weight

0:30:15reduction requirement is to be met and a lot of that will be done at the county-wide level and hopefully we can account for well first of all regional level and then county-wide each county is assigned a certain number of pcbs grams of pcbs to remove some of the ways that those will be

0:30:37accounted for is the management of pcbs during building demolition it could should be noted that the buildings that are involved are built between 1950 and 1980 and wood framed buildings are exempt so we need to develop a building develo a demolition program and identify and

0:30:58refer source properties and they also give credit for the implementation of the green infrastructure program as mentioned a moment ago clean water program funding we're requesting with this resolution that uh the city council uh established an annual parcel assessment for npdes at

0:31:27a current and maximum rate of 38 dollars per equivalent runoff unit this number has not changed in several years it is the maximum the fixed npdes revenue is insufficient to fund increased permit requirements additional funding is needed from other sources there is a

0:31:50statewide initiative that is may make it to the ballot in 2016. it's the california water conservation act of 2016 that would if approved by a simple majority provide funding a funding mechanism with local control and with that i will take questions miss burgess um

0:32:21so who's heading the initiative for the the measure do you know is it's a coalition of governments i think there are a couple agencies listed in the staff report maybe but um i haven't heard too much about it and i i guess the question for us is a small city is only about 85 of our revenues

0:32:44for this are returning to the city and i guess by 2021 it's going to be down to 83 we're already lending money i guess last year was what 54 000 or some such to the fund because the revenues don't um we're not collecting enough money to meet the compliance and the regulations

0:33:08etc etc so i think it's kind of important that the initiative get placed on the ballot so that we have some funding sources because it looks like it's going to be going down quite a bit over the next three years for us so and he's coming on my knock on my door i

0:33:27would sign that petition i was wondering who was behind it but you may not know that either and then i have another question about um i can tell you if you're interested yeah go ahead so it's the um the california state associate association of counties the league of

0:33:47cities and the association of california water agencies they filed a constitutional amendment and filed constitutional amendment language with the attorney's general's office as a potential statewide initiative and i would imagine our fiscal state isn't very much different from other

0:34:06cities i mean it's a problem um and when you had this slide about the c10 trash load reductions going down from 46 to 31 percent um because they changed their cartier criteria for on land cleanups does not our street sweeping uh con does that is that counted that

0:34:35would be counted would it not as part of trash isn't that part of why we do that it is part of why we do it and it can have a great effect if cars are not present right and that was my next question so when i see the street sweepers come around the city especially on some of

0:34:53our major arterials yes there are a lot of cars and so they don't get to the curb and i don't know if that has significance for changing this number that's on that slide under the c10 trash load reduction but but it's not only cars i sometimes see the street sweeping people

0:35:16are sweeping the streets on the days the garbage cans are on the street and you know we can't put our garbage cans are along the curb so they can't get to the curb so now you have cans and and cars and so it's probably not all that effective in some of our major arterials which is probably

0:35:33where a lot of the trash is my observation only um so i didn't know if if that would help change this number from from the low of 31 percent if we maybe changed our behavior i'm not saying we should necessarily say no street sweeping on or no parking on sweet street sweeping

0:35:55day say that five times in a row after you land in the airport um but anyway um so i do you want to answer that question or comment about it i guess there is a line item for credit for enhanced street sweeping right so if we were to add one sign per block or three signs per

0:36:19block that you know reminds people about the street sweeping that would be a minor enhancement if we if we were to enhance the street sweeping essentially we could take some credit the credit formulation is is quite an elaborate equation yeah so i can't even tell you

0:36:41how much credit we could get for that but there is credit available for that specific measure and i'm not saying we have to have signage on the streets or anything but like maybe just in a flyer that goes out for the community about the city services when it comes out in the fall

0:36:58in the spring and say just don't it would be it would be really helpful if you didn't park your car so you can't do much about the garbage pickup problem except for to change the schedule maybe of the street sweeper the one that i see it the most on is when i would go to

0:37:10work and see moser would be swept on the days the cans were out but um so that was my question about that and then would you think that the installation of 46 of these additional capture devices would also help that number significantly yeah i uh we haven't located the

0:37:32we haven't specified the location of the new trash capture devices but the aim is absolutely to me to exceed the 60 percent and i i'm i'm i can speak with relative confidence that we will meet that uh for july 1st and it's just a matter of um public works so when those things get

0:37:55filled up we're the ones that go and clean them up and empty them is that correct the public works department no yes between us and a contractor yes yes yes yes so the public works does empty them on a three times a year three three to four times a year in high

0:38:11trash generating areas it needs to be done more frequently and you know unfortunately a lot of what gets in those devices is leaf litter yeah i guess that counts too yeah um do we get fined if we don't we there's penalties if we don't meet some of these measures right

0:38:33i don't know what specific penalties there are uh but i do know that you know you know a notice of non-compliance is is the first step and you know there have been lawsuits in southern part of the state regarding trash load specifically well it's an important thing i mean

0:38:56you know we can't eat fish from the bay because of the mercury so i think every little thing we can do to keep the water clear is a really important thing um and that's you know from a health perspective and just the whole ecosystem so i think it's it's an important thing so i think this

0:39:12is really helpful so i don't have any other questions um i i had a question about the day of the trash pickup versus um the day of the street sweeping isn't that something we could easily fix i think it's something that could be fixed i might say that there is if you could there is a certain um

0:39:39value to street street sweeping the day that um the trash and recycling is picked up because a lot of trash and recycling gets left behind now we can't you know how do you regulate human behavior and really i think that trash has a lot to do with human behavior one so i mean who's to

0:39:59say that you know the movement of the of the toters right after the the trash is removed nobody's going to we can't pay to do that but it would mean that all the toters would need to be removed and it is a complicating factor that should be looked into uh more thoroughly to

0:40:18coordinate the um the days the sweeping days maybe the day after the trash would be uh more appropriate well i don't know if this is an answer but the um the uh toters are put down it's a little unclear to me if this is the really the rule but aren't they put down into the street when they're loaded

0:40:40with trash by the resident okay and sometimes overloaded and then are they put up on the um parking strip or or sidewalk after or whatever what's the rule they're put right back where they were found is it okay maybe it seems like there's a variety of when i go out

0:41:08i find them all over the place actually so is there any possibility we could do something about that uh either we could have an educational campaign is there anything we could do that would help or even just saying don't overload because are those things that we can do in our

0:41:33for example we have our newsletter um those are things that all could be added to the newsletter it might add that on the street sweeping that's a consistent uh component of the newsletter is the street sweeping days yes so there's just you know several people that just missed

0:41:49the newsletter or yeah so sure those could be added to the newsletter and i think that there could be a greater effort made with our pravar waste and street sweeping provider that's managed under the same contract to coordinate the days thank you sure so i'm gonna ask a few technical

0:42:10questions i can't escape it sorry do my best the the c3 provisions that would require a green infrastructure plan on private property and i think there were some call for legal mechanisms for enforcement of that what what's what what most of my questions are going to

0:42:33be what does the future uh convey to us what what are we going to what changes are you going to be coming back to us over the next years and ask us to change i'll get to the one that has been touched on about sweeping but i'm gonna i want to focus on the private property

0:42:48ones first green infrastructure on private property and a legal mechanism to enforce what's the what's your thought on what the future uh can portends well i think that uh besides the plan which is uh due um in 2017 uh the beginnings of a plan are due in 2017 for the

0:43:12implementation structure that will be have some kind of peer review and then an ordinance should follow i think so there's an ordinance that needs to or some legal mechanism correct there may be other ways to do that a legal mechanism to enforce and implement the green infrastructure

0:43:38um greater than ten thousand square feet um that's the c10 that's the c10 that's the c10 and i i can refer to the permit if you'd like i can get into the a little deeper into it if you want i have that with me but i can also report back to you with a little more

0:43:58specific that way but it is going to require that we are more involved with our private citizens and that with the private development and um and not only with the uh green infrastructure installation but with the maintenance that we're regulating the maintenance this is going

0:44:18to require more staff time as well you're getting you're getting to the answer that i wanted you to get to which is that we have a lot more obligations as a result of the municipal regional permit 2.0 and and one of them for example the c10 is mapping and managing trash on private land

0:44:37greater than a quarter acre 10 000 square feet is a quarter acre so that's that's just another obligation that we have picked up for c10 um with regards to c11 and c12 which is the pcbs and mercury there was quite a bit of discussion at the public hearing at the regional board

0:44:56and a lot of it was these opportunities with the demolition apparently demolition releases a tremendous amount of these pollutants to the to the water bodies to the bay and and how would we be changing our you you touched on it but i want to emphasize that we need to potentially

0:45:14change some of the ways we regulate demolition permits or you know permits in the for example the building next door is about to hopefully be taken away at the end of this calendar year what would what for example what are some of the changes that we would have to do with

0:45:28regards to taking down the the building next door trade way require the developer before they actually have received their demolition permit to assess the the potential for pcbs and mercury in the building and to lay out a plan that or some mechanism that for capturing

0:45:53any of the pcbs or or the mercury contained in that demolition again it's the the window of of the reference window is 1950 to 1980 right and non-wood framed buildings there have been you know the city of walnut creek found caulking in their swimming pool cracks that had really high elevated

0:46:16levels in the caulking and they were able to take some credit for that when they it just kind of they stumbled on that when they were remodeling their um renovating the swimming pool area so there are a number of different um potential uh sites for this but it really means

0:46:36uh writing policy that or or requirements in our permits that assures the city that the um that these pollutants are being captured does street sweeping count towards c11 and c12 to pcbs and mercury it does not not that i'm aware of and it if if the 46 if we have a hard time getting the 46

0:46:59put into the into place the 46 full capture and as you pointed out there are some areas of the city that don't necessarily drain to those types of capture facilities we've talked about the street sweeping i know other communities that i've come from don't allow parking

0:47:18on the street during certain types of events like garbage pickup days or street sweeping days is is that something we could you know consider or be looking forward to at some point some type of parking regulation on sweeping days certainly i'm not in a position to

0:47:36answer that i think it's an option that should be considered but whether the city is um in a position to take that kind of thing on or not i don't know i do think that you know i one place comes to mind right away is the north end of town um near baxter gateway baxter creek gateway

0:47:56park a lot of trash litter on on the street they um there's only one the first drain south of of the count the town line is it not on on the west side of the on the on the east side of the street that's the first storm drain on san pablo avenue believe it or not

0:48:17anyway there could be selected enhanced street sweeping in areas like that or other measures increased trash litter pickup which is another thing that we've implemented this year that didn't make it to the slide is that our contractors are picking up litter on san pablo more frequently

0:48:37excellent i look forward to some of the ideas you bring forward you have another question yes it was stated when i was speaking or it may be in response i can't remember that the well there was the concern about trash pickup being whether or not the trash pickup should

0:48:57be on the same day as the um street sweeping but i thought that street sweeping was in residential neighborhoods uh on off main streets was um once a month monthly monthly but trash pickup is once a week so that that would then only account for a fourth of that

0:49:24or some other algorithm you know so i don't think that's the excellent that doesn't make sense as an explanation then i think it could be looked at i really do the coordinating that could be looked at with a little more scrutiny so there is that one time a month

0:49:40yeah okay great i understand we have one speaker on this monitor it's tom panis good evening mayor lyman members of the council and city staff my name is tom pandas and i live at [address removed] i'd like to stack thank the staff for a great report here but

0:50:03the comments about the c11 and c12 items really brought to mind the idea that adaptive reuse of existing structures is always environmentally superior to demolish and rebuild and to the extent we can remind people that can you reuse that structure you know we don't use new materials or as

0:50:22many new materials there's an enormous amount of greenhouse gas generated with moving just moving all equipment to new materials to a site so whenever we can get people to adaptively reuse existing structures that's always a gain for our environment thank you thank you

0:50:40and we have another speaker hi i'm nicholas arzio i'd like to echo tom panis's comment that reusing existing structures is better for the environment and demolishing and rebuilding new structures i'd also like to echo a comment i made two years ago by encouraging the council to create a no

0:51:03parking time zone for street sweeping along san pablo avenue particularly along the theater block where i live in the the block that i've adopted i've noticed that oftentimes during sweet street sweeping the car is completely lined with movie theater patrons so by creating a no

0:51:20parking zone we could um excuse me no parking time for street sweeping we could ensure that the street would be properly swept and that garbage and other pollutants would stay out of the water thank you great thank you um steven if you if you could address a couple questions i'll ask um can we

0:51:38sweep at night is there any prohibition from our ability to sweep the streets at night we actually do sweep at night on san pablo avenue and the major arterials are swept i think they start maybe 10 p.m and it goes on quite a while um but now you know there's advantages and

0:51:58disadvantages to that maybe in the theater block that would work on a major arterial obviously on a residential or a minor sites you know minor arterial i don't mind have my active transportation language down yet but um that wouldn't work out so well but for obviously reasons people are parked

0:52:19and go to sleep okay and then um with regards to c11 c12 there was a requirement to go after source properties for those types of pollutants and potentially clean them up do some type of of cleanup and i'm not certain if that was industrial sites that had been abandoned or the type of

0:52:41buildings that um the steel buildings or or other types of buildings that potentially have deteriorating surfaces coatings pcb caulking pcb can be found in mastic caulking all sorts of elastomeric type compounds that degrade and become brittle and and can contribute to the

0:53:00environment over time it is in this concept of reusing a building there still would be some need to go back and remove paint coatings remove plastic or pcb laden mastics like you discussed at walnut creek so they're so that just reusing a building is not in and of itself

0:53:19the answer it's it's making sure that we address the the source of mercury and pcb lead-based paint those types of things that are all building materials that might be inside in a building that gets reused does that sound right yes that is correct and i'll just give a quick

0:53:36couple of anecdotes so a couple of other situations we've got um in richmond there was a lot of release of pcbs from a pg e site and um the city doesn't have to be too involved with that it gets turned over to the water board which turns it over to the u.s epa and in in pittsburgh a similar um

0:53:58situation with a auto wrecking yard uh with um trace elements of pcbs coming off that yard and and it you know it was raised to a higher level great thank you very much any um i'm going to bring back to council uh any discussion motion on this matter motion i'll move for resolution of the city

0:54:22council establishing the annual parcel assessment for national pollutant discharge elimination system program and drainage maintenance at the current rate of 38 dollars per equivalent runoff unit and authorizing the contra costa county flood control and water conservation

0:54:38district to adopt storm water utility area levees based on set amount second a motion by freeman second by quinto any discussion seeing none i'll call the question all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions let the matter uh past five zero and that will bring us to item

0:54:58eight council assignment liaison reports okay i will give you guys a few um as you were represented to marin clean energy um they had a board meeting on march 17th they we got an update on the pg e pcia hearings pcia is the exit fee basically for pg e to recover

0:55:33their costs associated with energy they purchase that they don't have clients to sell to when we leave their their system uh it actually went fairly well as far as the mce staff believes um and it really started uh cpu understanding all of the issues uh so they they um felt that that

0:55:56hearing went well it's the beginning of uh hearing and there were several hearings that will be coming in the future a second item is that mce their fiscal year is april 1st to march 30th so we passed their budget so that they're they are compliant with their fiscal year budget

0:56:19i can say that the west county mayor's conference met here in el cerrito and we had a presentation about fiber optics fiber fiber optic networking and that's a combination between what unified school district is doing in the city of richmond is doing and as it turns out there is a fiber

0:56:40optic in the street just out here on the on the side that when it's installed we we got them to put some ports in place that we potentially could use someday i learned that um that the fiber fiber optic cable uh um doesn't i don't think it has an unlimited capacity but the real driving

0:57:00of what the capacity limit happens is the hardware at either end of the um of the light cable um and unlike what i thought it was they have now just developed a technique for hanging fiber optics from telephone poles so you can actually put fiber optics cables in on telephone poles now

0:57:25i represented us at the rotary luncheon the rotary group is very interested in our development uh plan that we passed several weeks ago and i gave them updates on our plans that are going on along san pablo avenue the recycle more subcommittee met and gave the executive director

0:57:49goals that will be taken up at the larger recycle more committee and mce has a subcommittee that's going on where they're working on their vision and goals they're doing a strategic plan similar to the strategic strategic plan we went through some time ago and finally

0:58:09we are continuing council member abelson and i are continuing centennial committee interviews that are ongoing so that is my update that'll bring us on to item nine which is uh we're going to convene the city council to a closed session this closed session is with regards to

0:58:37the public employee performance evaluation of the city manager and so we will be moving into closed session at this time there's no public speaker upstairs you