Regular City Council and Special City Council Meetings April 19, 2016

0:00:02good evening everyone uh this is i'm gonna call to order our regular city council meeting of uh 7 p.m on tuesday april 19 2016.

0:00:15item one is pledge of allegiance to the flag or observation of a moment of silence mayor pro tem abelson i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all

0:00:39thank you and that brings us to item two which is um council and staff communications seeing none from staff i'll come to council several the first one is kind of a fun one i was invited to a special preview of bart's first new train car and it was really quite exciting

0:01:04i think that there's been a lot of improvements in the new bart cars and there are three doors for example to go in so it'll make make it easier for people to get on and off the trains and the um for people in wheelchairs they'll go in through the middle door because there's

0:01:27no pole there and for people who are not in wheelchairs who don't who want a pole they can go in the front door or the back door and so there's something for everybody you might say and there's also some bike parking with actual um apparatuses that you can put the bikes

0:01:50into so i think people will really like the new bart cars and [Music] the i see someone here from bart who might want to add something i don't know [Laughter] thank you paul fidelis i work for bart and it's very exciting it's still a little bit of time away before the bart cars come but

0:02:18we have one car and by um a few months from now we'll have 10 cars and we can really put them into the system and make sure they work uh it's in testing now um it'll be quieter that's very exciting for el cerrito residents quieter outside and inside a lot of visual things for

0:02:39disabled folks and audio accoutrements so we're very excited about it but we need this bond measure too to make sure that the system works and we can invest money back into the system which we'll we'll talk about later in november so thanks for this thanks thank

0:02:56you jana for coming appreciate that oh it was great and one of the things i'm hoping will be a byproduct of this is less crowding on the trains because there as as i think many people here know there have been a lot there's been a lot of increase in patronage of the bart system

0:03:16and so it's gotten very crowded on the trains at rush hour if you ride then which i happen to and um so i'm personally looking forward to there being less crowding on the trains as a result of getting these uh new cars so that's my first thing my second thing is

0:03:36a an ab 1234 report i attended the league of california city policy committee meetings i actually personally attend the administrative services policy committee and community services policy committee so i thought since there are a lot of topics i could talk about because we do talk about

0:04:00a lot of different talk topics i thought i would top talk about san diego's open data program and i actually have a powerpoint for it that i thought i would when i'm done give to the city clerk and i believe you can put it up on our website so that if anyone wanted to look at it

0:04:23they could and it's called san diego's open data program and they did a whole bunch of work on what they call the open data policy and program and what it does is commit the city in this case san diego to the principles of open accessible efficient and transparent government

0:04:48and the use of technology to help put that into practice so what that means is that their data is open and out there and you know accessible to everyone and it doesn't mean that if you want data in a particular format that isn't available that you can get it because that is not what this means what

0:05:12it means is the the actual underlying data is accessible and um so we spent quite a bit of time going over it and i think it helped to support the concept of open government and [Music] but what it also showed is what open government is and what open government isn't

0:05:38you know so it isn't saying that if you want a report that's in a format that no one's ever done it takes a lot of work to do it doesn't mean that you can necessarily get that but if you want to see the data that you you under this program that they're talking about here you can get it um if it's at

0:05:59all available period so it was really interesting and um so i'd like to give two documents to the city clerk one is the um slideshow and one is the open data policy from sandy the city of san diego and of course they're much bigger than we are but i think we can still learn

0:06:20from them so that's my report on that thank you great uh council member quinto this morning i attended the air quality management board workshop which is very interesting a workshop that included uh folks from the different municipalities as well as transportation

0:06:41and uh the main thing that i'm really excited about is they want to work uh with mtc and with the different agencies to make sure that transportation in small cities like el cerrito maintain and have different ways of expanding with the air quality management management

0:07:03board with programs there are programs dealing with bicycle sharing programs dealing with transit oriented development and programs dealing with infrastructure with quick chargers that we have a lack of here in el cerrito so i'm very excited about the future here in el cerrito dealing with

0:07:26making sure we have a better air here in the bay area great and i've got a couple of things to report we had a closed session last meeting after we met with with the public that closed session was with regards to the annual performance review of the city manager

0:07:50and at that time we did form a subcommittee to begin negotiations with the city manager and we did discuss his overall performance and we'll be having a similar meeting this evening after our regularly scheduled meeting i also would like to to report on a few things um

0:08:13councilmember abelson i i going to report on earth day which i actually thought you were going to report on um but i can at least uh thank uh at least report on what i did on earth day which was uh to protect rare plants or unusual plants along the pg e right of way

0:08:33so i spent a good portion of the day stooped over looking for very specific type of leaf and cutting grasses away from from those leaves i want to thank pg e for their team that they brought out that was well prepared for that event but i also want to thank some of the sponsors that provided food

0:08:55and all of the volunteers that came out to the uh earth day and to the celebration that we had at the community center it was a very beautiful day and i think we we did a lot of good work within the city i don't know if you want to add any additional thoughts one of the things we did this year that

0:09:13was unusual was to go up and down san pablo avenue as far as we could get with the number of volunteers we had and pass out the materials we have about our no smoking campaign to uh various uh commercial establishments and my understanding is that the um there was a lot of support

0:09:36from those establishments and they were happy to receive the material so i think we hope to extend the effort during the year until we've reached all the businesses along the avenue and i'd like to thank suzanne yarla for coming up with the idea thank you suzanne

0:09:56yes sir i want to thank council member abelson president pro tem for your wonderful job coordinating it as you do every year and thanks so much you do a fantastic job and a great service to the city some other things that i wanted to let people know that have occurred since our

0:10:14last meeting i met with the fairmont parent teacher association in conjunction with the library foundation i answered a number of questions that they had with regards to our our plans for a library i did represent us at the contra costa mayor's conference and it was uh the executive director for

0:10:39bart grace kunichan who was the speaker and grace did a very good job of explaining what uh what the upcoming bond measure will be on the november ballot what it's for uh and why it's needed and and what the district is doing the bart district is doing with our our

0:11:03fare boxes now and fairbox intake and bart actually is one of the highest um least subsidized is probably the best way to to summarize this bart is probably one of the least subsidized uh transit agencies in uh in our nation uh possibly the world and it it relies on

0:11:26only 30 percent of their revenue for capital improvement projects and other types of improvements that they're doing on the system and those would be federal grant state grants and the type of bond measure that's coming up in november other agencies are well below uh 50

0:11:44percent in uh the amount of of or they exceed 50 and the amount of money they need externally their fare box is not covering the bulk of their operations so it was a very good presentation and i don't know if the contra costa conference is putting it on their website but i would certainly

0:12:03it's probably on the bart website so i would certainly encourage people to go look for that presentation two other things i'll end with that one today i met with a number of seniors our residents that are at st john's senior center they have on tuesdays they have a lunch and they

0:12:25asked me to come and speak to them so i today went and spoke to them about some of the things that are going on in the city and one of the things that they reminded us to consider is that they are a very willing and able um volunteer pool uh they may not be as physically active and physically strong

0:12:45as some of our other volunteer pools but they are very interested in in helping the city uh and potentially volunteering for various things and finally council member bridges and i had the pleasure of issuing a plot proclamation recognizing one of our infamous bands

0:13:06are famous bands that started their career here in el cerrito and on saturday i issued a proclamation honoring metallica at their private party that they had in el cerrito and i will tell you it was very enjoyable and memorable and and i'm sure if you really want to look

0:13:29there are pictures on the internet of that event um go ahead and just for the record we all did get earth day shirts and so did they and they put them on so it was rather cute yep yeah we they as part of our proclamation or part of our recognition of them honoring their roots in el

0:13:48cerrito i gave them some of our earth day shirts and they they did they enjoyed them so we'll thank you very much for the shirts um that concludes uh item two council and staff communications at this time we move on to oral communications from the public all persons wishing to speak uh

0:14:08should sign up with the city clerk remarks are typically limited to three minutes and the the laptop is almost always open when i say that if somebody could close the laptop that'd be great there's a lighting system in front behind the laptop that does starts with

0:14:25green goes to yellow and and when you get to reddit your three minutes are up and it's for talking about items that are not on the agenda or on the consent calendar however i do want to acknowledge that we are pulling the consent calendar item 5b so if you are here to speak on item 5b

0:14:46we will take that up uh in due course after the presentations after item 4.

0:14:53um so item 3 we have three speakers cordell hindler uh followed by tom panis and al miller so uh mayor lyman uh members of the city council i am cordell hendler i'm with the park plaza neighborhood association i came last month to make to make a complaint that i have

0:15:15seen on three occasions el cerrito police zooming down on our streets and we've had our and we had our meeting uh after that and we and the update was we still i have seen el cerrito please come down on our street and this is really getting to be a a habit so that's the first thing i

0:15:33like to complain about so the second thing is i'm on the flip side of the coin um i would like to invite the city council to our to our youth leadership committee uh graduation on friday may 6 from 5 to 6 30. it will be held in the city council chambers so that's two and a number three um i

0:15:54would also like to invite the city council to come see the the mountaintop which is from april the 15th through may the 8th the at conscious housing civic theater and tickets are 10 no 11 correction 11 or so so come see that and then finally the fourth thing i had in mind was let's see what else

0:16:11and i i spoken with uh with the owners of a well-grounded coffee and when he came to the meeting last month about to talk about the um the well um the the local minimum wage jobs i think that was a good idea because i think it's wonderful that that more businesses want to provide

0:16:29more income for their employees so that's number four and then finally uh i have noticed some of these vacant properties around el cerrito i for me personally i would never set up a business in elsewhere because the rents get more higher by the minute and nobody and

0:16:43nobody from marin county would come even set foot in elsewhere because the rents get more higher every day so hopefully that you'll take a look at some of these uh these vacant properties around around el cerrito thank you thank you tom panas followed by al miller

0:17:05mr mayor we holding off on 5b sagan are we holding off on 5b yes please we'll we will take 5b up shortly mr miller good evening mayor lyman council members and staff and attorney good to see you again uh i'm here to speak on earth day and for the second year in a row the el

0:17:29cerrito library foundation partnered with the el cerrito rotary club in managing guiding staffing work party at the library this year we were also joined by some supporters of el cerrito library that have signed up on our website to hear what we're doing and see what we're

0:17:50doing and we had a fun time like most of the sites did i'm sure i think that earth day and the way it's organized and the opportunities it gives us to come together with fellow el saritans and feel great doing well are doing good things hopefully well is really great and i hope it will

0:18:11continue on time i'd also like to thank bill driscoll from the maintenance work and his colleagues they delivered a mulch and other material and tools that we needed as well as taking the tools back and the trash and the green waste about eight bags full that we delivered or that we

0:18:29developed or produced and janet i want to thank you for your ongoing leadership of this program throughout the city and the staff you organize at the community center to make sure that we're well fed deserted and drunk i mean drinks available uh afterwards it's truly a

0:18:50unique celebration of the city that's another thing that makes el cerrito a great place to live thank you for those that may be watching this at home or later those are non-alcoholic drinks that are provided just to be clear um we are not we are not promoting anything else

0:19:08um that concludes item three uh it it would be my pleasure to actually take up item five b at this time given the interest from several people to speak to that item um so if if possible i would love to call forward mr jones to present on item 5b good evening honorable mayor and city

0:19:36council i'm chris jones your recreation coordinator or director excuse me um i'm honored to be here this evening uh to talk about a really special person who will be retiring from the city of el cerrito recreation department at the end of this month after having served 36 years

0:19:56for the recreation department corey diaz has been a fixture in this city and in our department she's pioneered several of our programs that are still going on today certainly has a lasting impact on what we do and what we will do well into the future if you think about it and you think

0:20:17about over the course of her career there's literally thousands of children who she has helped care for nurture make sure that working families have a safe fun and quality place to be or for their kids to be while their parents are at work and so truly very important job and to be some

0:20:41big shoes to fill when she leaves cory is a advocate for children you know she wants them to have the best experience that they can every single day after school so they don't just feel like they have to go to child care she has always had the goal that we want

0:20:58to start kids in el cerrito at 22 months at our teeter top program then they can move on into our kindergarten program and our our before and after school care program then they can come back as teens serve and learn leadership skills give back to the community hopefully then they'll

0:21:16return as part-time employees for the department and then after that we several of our employees have either come to work for el cerrito have worked in other parks and recreation departments around the state worked in public safety worked uh in education so um you know and that i think that sort of

0:21:39inspiration for public service starts when you're young and starts in programs like corey has run and overall you know corey is just a great person she will be missed a lot and i hope you'll join me and several others in honoring her this evening and passing the proclamation thank you

0:22:02great thank you i don't know if we want to take comments from the public before we bring it back to the diocese or if the council is ready to make any type of comments or or statements at this time okay if if you could call anybody who would like to speak on item 5b um tom

0:22:19panis and i believe mr miller thank you good evening mayor lyman members of the council and city staff my name is tom panis and i live at [address removed] in el cerrito i'd like to thank corey diaz for all she has done for my family and our city all the time she's invested in them she did

0:22:40so much for my sons when they were younger and the guys still talk about her all the time whenever i go to the community center or other places around town she's always there and happy to see me and happy to help and i know we're not the only family in town who feels the same way about her

0:22:54i'm so thankful she's always been there for so many people in el cerrito thank you for your time this evening and corey thank you so much for all you've done for us thank you hello again hello again uh i know you'll well take care very well the official uh business that happens at sad times and

0:23:19joyous times like this but it seems that corey came to el cerrito maybe she lived here before she worked i don't know where that was shortly after i did but i know that from the time i started participating in city functions with nine years on the park and rec commission and on and on and on

0:23:39she's always been there and uh i know uh one of the difficult things we had in the park and wreck at the time was setting rates that weren't that had to be within a certain rate of the commercial weights around so we didn't put them out of business financially service-wise there was never

0:23:58any comparison but corey was always very helpful in helping us understand what we're up against in doing that but every time i go into the community center well not every time sometimes she's someplace else working but it's very often it's just like she's been a

0:24:15fixture in the recreation department of el cerrito for so long and i know that she's influenced in addition to a lot of children uh a lot of the workers in the department so corey i too want to add my thanks for the continuous service you've given our city thank you

0:24:33thank you would anyone else like to speak at this time seeing none we'll bring it back i'd love to have someone make a motion i would be happy to make that motion on behalf of all the children and others who have enjoyed the services that corey has done such a good job of leading

0:24:56i would be happy to make a proclamation recognizing corey diaz on the occasion of her retirement and wishing her the greatest happiness in doing so second we have a motion a second and i'm going to read a few items from this proclamation um you know whereas corey diaz recreation

0:25:19supervisor has served her community with passion honor and dedication and upon the occasion of her retirement is deserving of recognition [Music] corey has served the residents of el cerrito and surrounding communities and in retiring from her position as child

0:25:35care supervisor concludes a career with el cerrito recreation department that exceeds 36 years now therefore the city council of the city of el cerrito does hereby commend and recognize the many contributions made by corey diaz to the residents of el cerrito and the

0:25:51importance in her role in caring nurturing and mentoring thousands of youth over the course of her career thank you let the record show it passed unanimously yep all right i gotta sign it first okay and it's really authentic yeah if you corey if you could please come forward

0:26:43for a photography that's a good thing well i i would just like to i would just like the the to thank the city for um allowing me to start working here when i was 18 years old and and kind of work for a couple years and decide that recreation is what i wanted to go into as a career and pursue a

0:27:57degree in recreation from sac state and and then come back here and work part-time and then eventually becoming a supervisor and um i think my parents were always ones that that stayed in the same job and you know i i did actually start out in el cerrito i was born in

0:28:14san francisco and lived here for eight years before we moved to penal and it's always been a community and i think on the highway 80 corridor el cerrito is really the community and um you know just being a part of some other cities it's like i don't think anybody does it like we do it here and

0:28:35you know it's been a great journey and um i feel very blessed to have had you know all the wonderful staff that we've had and the longevity that the young people have stayed working together we've tried to make it like a family and we have i'm kind of chris mentioning the goal that

0:28:54you know i've always strived for we've had so many children that have actually done that that have grown up in our program since 22 months they've come back and worked for us staff that have come here and then brought their children back to our programs and that's

0:29:08so wonderful to have spent 36 years and being able to see you know the kindergartner grow up and actually my daughter when she was three um was in the wedding of one of our former children that grew up through our kindergarten program and came and worked through college so it's that kind of

0:29:24stuff that i think really builds the community and i'm really proud of the staff that we have and and the work that they do to really try to develop the children and you know strengthen the families and really be a part of what el cerrito offers here and it's been a

0:29:41great journey and i will miss it and i want to get a job at disneyland that's where i'm headed next great with that we will go back to item 4a which 4a is a presentation it's a presentation on uh by pacific gas and electric company uh regarding retrofit of existing street lights to

0:30:18new um led light emitting diode lights good evening mayor lyman and members of the council i'm maria sanders and i'm the operations and environmental services manager and i'd like to introduce jeff pollard who's a program manager with pg e he'll be providing more information on

0:30:40the led street light retrofit program that they have and the work that they will be doing here in el cerrito over the next couple months thank you mayor lyman council members staff maria thank you suzanne thank you for for the time uh what i wanted to do is give you an

0:31:06overview of the program that pg e is running throughout the territory to let's see if i go forward there we go review the the led street light replacement program we're talking about uh this is something that we went to the puc and got specific permission to do

0:31:24it's to replace the high pressure sodium street lights the the ones that there's a picture of one in the upper right hand corner there have the yellowish tinge to it uh when they were first came out many years ago they were the the latest and greatest in energy efficiency and now

0:31:39we're kind of at the end of their life cycle leds have become the the new normal in the street light world and so the puc has approved us replacing the pg e owned street lights and that's what we're talking about here and most of the street lights you have in el

0:31:54cerrito are pg e-owned and so we put a program together propose it to the puc and it has been approved and now we're implementing that there is a timeline on that program that started last year and it goes through the end of 2017 next year we started really installing fixtures

0:32:11about a year ago in april or may of last year we've so far installed about 36 000 fixtures we've completed work in east county and central county where we started doing the work for this program in those two areas we then went from there we've done santa cruz and some a

0:32:25lot of work down in the san luis obispo area and now we've come into the east bay and we're moving into other areas and throughout the pg e territory um it's important to state that this is a voluntary program it's only it's it's it's not imposed on any city or any any customer record at

0:32:41all we have not had anybody yet decide that they in no city has decided that they did not want to participate yet so we have 100 opt-ins with the governments that we've been working with i think with some of the private entities that we've worked with there's been a few so out of 30 35 000 likes

0:32:58that have been installed i think we've had a total of about 30 fixtures that people have decided not to participate in the program for one reason or another the drivers behind this really is energy efficiency more than anything else it's a chance for pg e to decrease our carbon

0:33:11footprint it's a chance for our customers to decrease their carbon footprint we estimate the savings from the program will be about 50 million kilowatt hours a year on an ongoing basis the within the city of el cerrito the savings will be about 330 000 kilowatt

0:33:27hours per year and you also with that receive a monetary savings of about eight thousand dollars per year which actually will grow over time primarily because the maintenance costs for these lights will go down because they have a much longer lifespan so let me go to the next slide which talks

0:33:42about the fixtures so after the puc approved the program uh we went through an extensive rfp process to select the specific products that we're using because these are the pg e lights that are being replaced we pick them there's not a lot of options for the city to take care other

0:33:58than what you have the opportunity to increase or decrease the wattage of fixtures that are being replaced and you have the option to say no don't do this at all but there's not a lot of other options other than that because so we thought because of that we should

0:34:14really do our due diligence in selecting the vendor in the product and try to take into consideration all the issues that become important that we've run across as we've replaced lights throughout the territory previously and and so we looked at things like of course we looked at efficiency we looked

0:34:28at uh price and all the normal things we actually went on site to the manufacturers that we were looking at to make sure that they had good safe working practices that they had good practices for sustainability and recycling we also looked at their whether fixtures that we were buying

0:34:43would be ready for future capabilities such as dimming and other things we're not including dimming in this but the fixtures that we're installing are able to be dimmed by just replacing the the photo sensor on top so they're future ready we also looked at it very much from the

0:34:57perspective of night sky issues and being able to see the stars at night the lights a lot of people say they're brighter they're really just more focused into a particular area they have what's called a full cut off on them so that the light doesn't go up it only goes down to the street and

0:35:14sidewalk the fixtures are are very very well tailored for directing the light down in a rectangular pattern to to hit the street in the sidewalk and not go off in all directions so issues like light trespassing stuff have been greatly minimized um the fixtures are four thousand kelvin

0:35:32lights they're not which the kelvin scale the higher the number the brighter and bluer the lights a lot of the leds that you see in the area the cities of oakland and berkeley have done a lot of lights as of some other cities most of those are 6000 kelvin lights

0:35:46when we did our research a year ago 4000 was about the best you could get and that's the product that we selected and it specifically was approved at the time by an organization called the international dark sky association idsa or ida they go by uh where they look

0:36:01very much for is this a light pollution friendly product or not now they have since changed their standard from 4 000 kelvin to 3000 kelvin so it's no longer a quote-unquote approved product but a year ago it was specifically identified by them as such uh we are planning to move forward we've

0:36:19been working with staff they've reviewed the the location and the and the types of fixtures that are there and decided on the wattages that are appropriate and the plan is to start work this thursday the work is about 1300 fixtures the work will go pretty quickly it takes about

0:36:35five to seven minutes of fixture for replacement bucket trucks will come through like the one in the photo there they can work around vehicles that might be parked under the light we've worked with staff for an encroachment permit and a traffic control plan so those things are all in

0:36:48place uh we'll also work if there's things like uh working with us with the team on avoiding school loading zones during hours when the school's coming in and out so we coordinate those sorts of activities and we should be able to complete the work in in probably three

0:37:02to four weeks it's three to six on there but uh should be pretty be able to do that pretty quickly of course pending weather and as i mentioned we did about 25 000 lights last year we've we did a survey we got 1175 people to respond to a telephone survey and what we found in

0:37:20terms of their opinion of the new lights is that 78 prefer them 62 percent strongly prefer them 10 percent prefer the old lights 5 strongly prefer the old lights and about 12 percent had no opinions at all what what was the geographic area that participates in it

0:37:37these surveys it was central and western and eastern contra costa county and santa cruz county and a little bit in in the arroyo grande pismo beach areas where we started doing this from el cerrito probably in that mix no there wouldn't have been anybody surveyed here because we hadn't this is

0:37:52certain this was a survey of the places where we'd already changed the fixtures and we called them after installation thank you uh and that's it i'm very open to answering any questions you might have we do have more information on there's a specific website at

0:38:08pgd.com streetlight upgrade there's a phone number and an email address you can reach us the website has some nice videos to show how the installation is done gives information on the background of the program and such so that's very much available but i'm happy to answer

0:38:20any questions that the council might have have one go ahead um so it looks like the work is going to be pretty unobtrusive um but is there going to be notification as to where you're going to be working to a given area of the city when that happens our contractor is supervised by

0:38:38pg employee and the contractor or that supervisor will be in touch with city staff on a daily basis to discuss where the work's going to be done and do you know where we're starting i do not off the top of my head no we can get that information but all right thank you

0:38:53go ahead good evening i wanted to make sure that you mentioned that the light can can be dimmed if if preferable i i've gotten i'm sorry interrupt but the the the fixture itself that we've chosen selected to install has the capability of being dimmed we're not implementing

0:39:14that capability we don't have the the controls that would go on top of it to do that or the that would require some sort of wireless communication to tell it when to do that and things like that so the fit but but but when that day comes that will be another presentation

0:39:28talking about doing that perhaps but when that day comes we won't have to pull that fixture down and put up a new one the fixture will already support it it'll just be changing the part on top so that's a that's it's a future ready capability of the fixture but it's not

0:39:40something that we're implementing now or and i don't want to set any expectations there's there's no program designed or intended for that but we expect that's the direction that the things are going that's where the technology is going and we didn't because these are

0:39:51such long lasting fixtures they will last probably four times as long as a high pressure sodium fixture we didn't want to buy something that lasted 20 years but needed to be replaced for technology reasons you know three years from now or something okay well i know many of my neighbors on the

0:40:06north side of town of el cerrito are going to appreciate these new lights thank you oh great thanks with that dimming technology what what actually gets dim the wattage or the or the color that would be the it would be the wattage i mean i i don't i i i don't have specific expertise or knowledge on

0:40:25on that or how it would work but it won't be it won't be changing the color of the light it would be changing just the just like a dimmer in your house the light goes up or down you know the amount of brightness so it's controlling how many how much power is going to it

0:40:36and and can you tell us what environmental review the state uh public utilities commission uh required for this work uh i just know that we submitted an entire plan to them back in 2014 and that it was approved i don't know what specifically they requested from that are there are there

0:40:53particular environmental the the the concern that's been voiced most is the the the color of the light um intruding into homes which obviously these fixtures have less intrusion than current hps high pressure sodium but the concern is that the color of the light is is something that would be

0:41:13disruptive so just curious if that had been reviewed or analyzed in some sort of environmental review document nothing that i'm aware that we have done i have read i've read some documents on like the potential impact of blue spectrum light on our led lights on

0:41:30circadian rhythms and such as that there's a specific study that i could cite to you that comes out of harvard and and cambridge massachusetts where uh someone in harvard's medical school specific in circadian sciences studied this and just drew the conclusion very

0:41:47quickly that there's not enough light that comes into homes from street lights to have an impact there's your tvs and your ipads and things are having far more impact on your circadian rhythms than uh than a streetlight would and on slide two you had a table up there

0:42:02that had a wide range of wattage of bulbs and you and you talk about the various uh ranges of of the variable range of wattage the overwhelming majority is the lowest wattage uh replacing 70 watt bulbs with 29 watt bulbs can you give us an idea of where these other watt

0:42:23bulbs are going like this one that's 400 watts where they physically are in the city yeah or what types of places they're going i mean uh just curious what where we would need a 400 watt bob should i just just hand this i i have a photo a screenshot of a map that we've

0:42:43provided to the city that shows the location of all these i believe is there a way to get that electronically so we can get it posted onto our website or or do you have a website that that your information is sending uh residence to okay great thank you because because i i

0:43:09will say that the i mean that's a four i don't know where there's a 400 watt lightning involved in town right this red is resin for those that aren't seeing it at home uh the red is residential and most of the higher wattage look like they're in commercial areas and that's the norm but i i can't

0:43:28speak to the to specifically uh but we've we've got the data for you i'm happy to show you where each and every one is great thank you uh it was mr pollard right yeah just any other questions no great thank you very much thanks thank you that'll take us on to item four

0:43:52we we do have one speaker mayor sorry we have someone we have a speaker to this item okay thank you mayor lyman oh justice mike mayor lyman uh council members are credible handler richmond i really enjoyed this presentation i was thinking oh and i said oh this is wonderful uh is it we

0:44:13need some new lighting because uh because i go down like el cerrito like on a regular basis and and the lighting is so dim that's i can i can't even see it so i'm like so so things like this it'll be it'll be it's wonderful like to have like you know new street lights uh

0:44:29for our city because that way it's a lot it's more safer for people um who walk along the trail uh on on in at night uh because it gives it it'll make sure it makes sure that the lights are dimmer so i i like it so so hopefully y'all will support this thank you

0:44:49thank you cornell cordell um any other speakers on this item no seeing none we'll move on to item 4b uh arts and culture commission work plan presented by ms kasden current chair of the commission is that live okay good good evening mayor lyman oh you're gonna give you're gonna give the camera people

0:45:15a workout yeah good city staff and members of the public mayor has already introduced me my name is ruth kasden and i'm the current chair of the arts and culture commission of el cerrito the purpose is to present our work plan what um i'd like to do is talk about our

0:45:36accomplishments of the past year and then they will lead into our plan for what we hope to do in the coming year anyway it gets up on the board maybe a slight dimming of the lights is that no that technology may not be present oh there it is okay we we may not be

0:46:00is it hard to hear out of this mic i don't know if people can hear it at all sorry no phil donahue style okay thank you all right thank you so much okay we hope to provide emotional and cultural light as opposed to physical light on your street up on the slide is the arts and culture

0:46:26commission's mission i won't read every word on every slide in order to spare you death by powerpoint um okay so next slide please suzanne on the members of our commission i'm the chair paul the other members are paul fideli and paul is here this evening george gager molly hazen who is our vice

0:46:48chair heidi rand chris sterba and mr or miss vacant and we hope to have that seat i hope the council will get that seat filled soon anyway the first part of our program is what we have accomplished between january 2015 and basically last week one of the things that was important to

0:47:12us is the adoption of a poet laureate program for the first time in the city of el cerrito the commission adopted the program last october we've conducted extensive research you can see that we've developed a logo for it and we've put out a call for applicants and i understand that so far we've had

0:47:34interest expressed by at least six poets so we're really excited about that the other big program that we took on this year is dubbed a crew and that is our artist-in-residence program the el cerrito creative reuse program and what we are looking to do is have an artist in residence

0:47:58who will create art from re recycled materials and will kind of be working kind of closely with the el cerrito recycling center the funding for this is going to come from the one percent for public art we've also developed a logo which i just think is dynamite and

0:48:21we've established some guidelines we've developed are in process of developing program expectations for our artist an artist stipend we believe artists should be reimbursed and we've started work on our rfq and we hope to get that out this year another big event that we had this year

0:48:44was our arts day festival last october 17th october is arts month and we had a big festival out in front of city hall on manila street some of the council members were there and we were so glad to see you and these are photos from some of the events we had we had music both

0:49:04classical music and a surfer band we had a poetry reading by kurt lumpkin a renowned poet an artist talk in our gallery a film screening a puppet show and the other thing that i really liked about our event was not only was it passive but it was active people got to

0:49:26participate in the art and we had a creative reuse crafting program a photography workshop sidewalk drawing for the kids oh yeah and food everybody got a chance to buy some food if they wanted to kind of in conjunction with that we created arts month street banners

0:49:49using um a kind of mondrian style logo and all of our arts events use that same kind of style so we have those banners now they were up last year and we hope they're going to last for 10 or 15 years so that they can come up we wouldn't want to have to spend the money

0:50:09every year we also stress in the commission and have stressed participation in city events and so in 2015's earth day celebration we had a creative reuse project as part of that we were also sponsors uh one of the sponsors in the fourth of july festival we provided a fifteen hundred dollar

0:50:38stipend for a professional jazz musician who worked with and performed with the el cerrito high school jazz band and we also hosted a booth which included our famous and beloved creative reuse program other music too we were co-sponsors of music for madeira that's a fundraising event um held by

0:51:03the el cerrito trail trackers and the money is used for maintenance and restoration of the madera open space we were co-sponsors of the el cerrito free folk festival at the high school last october and that was quite successful event and oh there's the oh the last slide before

0:51:27that was the picture from music from madera which had all kinds of music singing dancing instrumental and we were sponsors of the el cerrito high school jazz festival last february we were really busy weren't we paul golly okay in addition just last tuesday night we

0:51:48had a poetry reading at the el cerrito library jack marshall who is a renowned poet who lives in el cerrito did a poetry poetry reading plus we at the event we had hideo date a jazz guitarist who performed two sets for us i have to tell you this event was a roaring success the head librarian at

0:52:15the el cerrito library made this comment and i quote i roughly counted about 80 count them 80 attendant attendees which is absolutely amazing for an adult event here can you believe it we had about 80 people at the library for this so we were quite proud at the success of

0:52:36the event there's there's a picture i don't think all 80 made it to the picture in addition we got involved with film sponsorship and we sponsored the film domino caught in the crisis um this was at the rialto cinemas and um the director is eve ma a local filmmaker

0:53:03additionally we have a responsibility on the commission to jury the exhibitions in our city hall art gallery and we have about six different exhibits each year this is a photo from one of the recent ones and we just thought it was amazing by patricia beulit she made what paper dresses and every

0:53:29little item on the dress was hand put on there each dress had a personal story and at the reception she kind of gave us a tour and explained the meaning and significance of each dress and we just thought that that was really a very special exhibit in the gallery

0:53:49we've also had some bart related projects we assisted with the artist call for a muse mosaic mural at the del norte bart station which is part of bart's station modernization arts integration opportunities that's a hard one to say and in addition um we formed a joint subcommittee with

0:54:12the crime prevention committee to explore the idea of putting murals on some of the bart pylons along the ohlone greenway gosh we were busy all of this leads to so what are we going to do for you this year okay one of the one of the most important things we're going to be doing is going

0:54:37forward with the poet laureate program this is actually our call to poets their application if they want to be considered for poet laureate um is due i believe that's june 1st suzanne is due june 1st i understand we've got six at least six people interested we'll

0:54:57also be supporting events around the poet laureate once that party is selected next project will be going forward to launch our artist-in-residence a crew program we have to finish developing our rfq and select the artist we'll need to develop outreach materials

0:55:20program guidelines we're also going to have to procure a bin which will be at the recycling center which will hold materials for the artist and residents to use the commission this year will be considering hosting an arts day event perhaps similar to last year's event

0:55:43that should come up on our agenda in the next month or two and music arts and culture commission has to have music we will consider co-sponsoring again the world one july 4th festival we will be a sponsor of the el cerrito free folk festival consider co-sponsoring again the el cerrido high

0:56:08school jazz festival and also look to co-sponsor other music events as um as they come up we will again continue to assist bart with the station modernization arts integration and that will probably take the form of supporting the artist who is selected we will also proceed with consideration

0:56:35of the bart mural on the pylons project this summer we'll consider whether or not to go forward with it and if accepted we'll be developing an rfp or an rfq for that project a lot of the things that we talked about were kind of passive but i want to point out that one of the things that the

0:57:00commission wants to do is look as to help support actual working artists in the area help find places to display venues for their artwork we might consider pop-up galleries and to facilitate networking and resources for the artists and we're we're considering a film series

0:57:27possibly exploring an outdoor screening i don't think we're talking drive-in movies here but we'll see and then this is really where the active participation we would like to have not only artists but the community have a chance to participate in art and we're going to be considered the

0:57:48possibility of hosting workshops that foster active participation in the arts possibly even considering underwriting arts classes through the rec department and lastly we have ongoing projects in which we're always involved we administer the one percent for public art we jury the city

0:58:13hall art spa arts gallery space which we will continue to do and we participate in city events and i really want to thank the council for the opportunity to do the presentation and also i want to thank suzanne irla who is our staff liaison without whom i don't think we could function thank

0:58:33you everybody thank you very much for that presentation um does any is there any speakers who want to speak on this item mr hindler come on forward good evening again um i just i just i was just so i was just taken by surprise by this whole presentation i was like wow

0:59:01there there really is an arts and culture commission in elsewhere and i'm like i'm impressed so i think the presentation went really good so i love it so we have something quite similar to ours in the city of richmond we have an arts and culture commission um we they kind of do the same things that

0:59:16y'all do but a little bit differently so so i said to myself how about if richmond and elsewhere you know like have a collaboration you know uh because i'll be happy to work with you uh uh because i can bring this up to our to our arts and culture manager miss miss seville i can bring this up to her

0:59:32to see if it's possible we can have like a collaboration with the to have both arts and culture commissions uh working on on the on various projects that y'all be working on so i'll be happy to do that oh that's that's that's that's my two cents thank you very much any comments from

0:59:52the council okay another oh another speaker oh yes please come forward mr fideli i can't be here without saying a little something here and i want to thank the council for your support and the one percent is really making a difference in this town it really is and we're getting renowned

1:00:08throughout the east bay and the bay area for having a lot of arts full spectrum arts and music everywhere two things i wanted to say is can you imagine how how much better as far as arts will be in el salvador when we get a real library too and we can have art there and rooms to have art and new

1:00:24concerts and lots of media around also performance and arts in the city is good for business if we have a film festival if we have art celebrations we're going to bring business in and the longer we do it the better and more business will come to el cerrito and finally i want to

1:00:39thank ruth she's been incredible she's been an incredible boss thank you and and i want to at least thank you for this presentation uh it's nice to know what you guys are doing and what's on the horizon it's really informative and and this was the intent when we asked

1:00:57for chairs to come forward and give us annual work plan presentations it's precisely to be informed of the new ideas that you're coming up with like it crew um you know those these things that you guys are are considering and how we are able to support you with some of the

1:01:12policies that you might be coming up with that that is the purpose of these presentations so i want to thank you very much for a very successful what i consider a successful presentation to keep us informed of what you guys are are looking at on the horizon great

1:01:29all right with that um we will move on to item consent calendar items 5a which is minutes of our previous meeting item 5c community violence solution proclamation a proclamation declaring april 2016 a sexual assault awareness month 5d amend frazier and associates professional

1:01:51services agreement for community development department at 5e arlington boulevard and brewster drive safety improvement project a resolution that rejects the sole bid and authorized staff to proceed with engineering measures and re-advertisement and 5-f the centennial celebration

1:02:12planning task force appointments and i want to thank my subcommittee co-chair janet abelson on that last item so uh we have 5a 5c through 5f so moved second we have a motion and a second motion by friedman seconded by abelson all those in favor please say aye opposed abstentions let the records show

1:02:36that those that would be five consent items passed unanimously that brings us on to item seven which is policy matters we have item 7 a um so we have a presentation from our interim police chief dude thank you mayor good evening city council members i'm paul keith your

1:02:59interim police chief and i'm here to talk about the agenda bill to allow the city manager to explore the possibility of forming a jpa for taxi cab licensing on a regional basis so the concept of having a jpa for the contra costa region was formed by the county leadership

1:03:19academy this is an area that management teams from a number of jurisdictions in contra costa county found that there was a way that they felt we could better deliver deliver government services in contra costa county so currently cities and the county they license taxi cabs on a jurisdiction

1:03:39basis so for example in el cerrito we have about 46 companies that rotate through the licensing process in our city now you may be thinking where are all those taxi cabs they're not all here at the same time but being licensed in el cerrito allows you to pick up customers

1:03:54and also wait for customers in el cerrito so what that means is a company that isn't licensed to pick up customers will not respond if someone calls them on the phone they have to be licensed to actually pick somebody up here but it also means that a taxi cab company

1:04:07that's based in hercules if they wanted to pick up customers outside of hercules would have to get separate licensing in each city that they'd like to operate out of what a jpa would do is create a regional authority to license taxi cabs for the entire region and for every agency that

1:04:23is a part of the jpa and that would allow that jpa to be responsible for licensing and permitting the vehicles and drivers conducting background checks conducting drug testing conducting vehicle inspections and also approving rates for taxi cab services so currently the police department is

1:04:40responsible for the licensing of taxi cab companies and i can tell you it can be a lengthy process it frequently involves multiple visits by taxi cab permitees to the police department to make sure that their taxi service complies with the elements of the el cerrito municipal code

1:04:59although we we do take in fees for taxi cab permitting it comes out to be about 245 dollars for each taxi cab entity and we regulate about forty six agencies so it comes out to be about ten thousand to twelve thousand dollars a year that we take in in fees we also spend a large

1:05:16amount of staff time uh just handling all of those license applications so we feel at the police department and our representative on the board that has been working to develop the strategy for this jpa that taxi cab companies and also residents will be better served by

1:05:33having a regional service and allowing a number of taxi cab companies to be available to our residents and also having a robust licensing program on the regional level that will mirror the types of things that we do here when it comes to background checks and making sure people's licenses and

1:05:51insurance and vehicles are up to the standards we expect so approving this resolution will bring us to the next step which is exploring the possibilities of the jpa before we enter a jpa we will come back to city council and present what that would look like to you

1:06:12and you would have another opportunity at that time to decide whether or not el cerrito should join a joint powers agreement for taxi cab licensing go ahead council member yeah i have a son-in-law who's a taxi cab driver so i learned a whole lot about the industry but i'm not going to bore

1:06:32you with my no no i limited knowledge right but i have a couple questions so um are other options perhaps having uh just reciprocal agreements among the cities so that a license in one city is good in another and or using an existing body like the transportation authority as

1:06:54opposed to having to form another entity there are our city attorneys offices and representatives are looking into the concept of mousse between organizations so that is something that was also looked into one of the things that we found is that there are a number of different people

1:07:13that run taxi cab companies and so sometimes it is hard to serve the various populations that are involved in the taxi industry and we feel that taxi cab companies themselves may get better service from one organization that is just dedicated to two licensing taxi cabs

1:07:31one more question what about uber and lyft is it the possibility that cities could pass ordinances once the jpa is formed that the jpa would have authority over them also i'd say it's a possibility and that's certainly something that we can take with us to conversations at the jpa

1:07:50level yeah i think it'd be great so so this is going to be the entire county right not just west county correct yeah it's the entire county and the 245 dollars um was that per company or per cab it's typically per cab because they're individual operators for the most part

1:08:09we have 46 different entities and they all are pretty much one taxi cab one operator yeah does alameda county or other counties do this too marin county also has a similar jpa for licensing of taxi cabs in their county and so part of this was based on that it actually originated from the

1:08:28county uh controversial county management association so leadership academy but i thought the management association gave them the seed to develop the idea nope i was wrong so so the leadership academy is a group of managers that get together and tackle problems they see facing the county so

1:08:47that's where so that's where this uh germinated from based off of what marin county has done so um you also said that if you were licensed in the city of el cerrito you probably couldn't take fare to hercules you could take fare anywhere from the pickup zone so you

1:09:04could pick up somebody from el cerrito and take them anywhere but once you get there you can't pick up a fair and bring it back to get your money unless you're licensed there got it okay thank you sure member abelson um yes i've had a bit of experience as a passenger

1:09:19in taxi cabs now and then and i find that the service varies quite a bit i've actually had pretty good service from el cerrito taxi drivers but when i go to some other parts of the county they refuse to even give me a ride they in fact they refuse to give anyone

1:09:39in a wheelchair a ride the company i mean like the particular companies do and i'm wondering if that can be part of that agreement that there are rules that they have to in fact pick up people in wheelchairs particularly manual wheelchairs which are the easiest ones to pick up

1:10:04that seems reasonable okay so i'll add that to our list okay and then i have a question because some of the jpas that i'm familiar with um actually have i mean they have staff so they have real costs and um what were you thinking would happen with this particular jpa who who's going

1:10:24to do the work of the jpa the concept for the jpa is that the jpa would have staff and would set fees to cover actual expenses of operating uh the licensing and regulatory functions that they undertake so do you see the cost of operating do you see the cost to who will who ultimately would pay those

1:10:49fees the user of the system the the rider well i think that's some taxi cab companies may find that it's more cost effective for them in a regional model especially where you have uh like right now a series of smaller cities like panel hercules richmond san pablo and el cito if you wanted to

1:11:09operate in that this region you'd have to get five different licenses so the per license cost may increase but that may still be less than the geographical area that they want to provide services to so i guess what i'm wondering about is so if you have a model where there are employees

1:11:31they also need somebody has to be in a building so you have to have a building and you have to have a payroll system you have to have a blah blah blah and um so have all those costs been factored into [Music] anything that you've looked at yet as a group i think it might still be early in the

1:11:54process for uh ironing out all of those issues and i don't know that they've settled on any hard numbers yet for what it might cost for licenses and also what overhead might cost some of it we'll also realistically depend on the conversations as they talk about forming

1:12:10it what our expectations of the jpa are going to be i must say that as a as an occasional user of the system and i have a friend who uses it practically daily and i sometimes go with him to his ride and help him to his right he happens to be blind um that um it's a you know it's a really

1:12:34important part of his life to have that available it all it just seems like a i mean i don't know about the cost side of it but the um having a consistent standard i think would be a really great idea and i think it makes a lot of sense to have one system rather than all these

1:12:56little systems like we have 19 cities um and then we have the county i think that's right is in our uh in our county and alameda county i think has 12 cities plus the county so and we're right on the edge so we why would we want to restrict our ridership to one county or the other when we live

1:13:22right on the edge you know so so it could even be maybe bigger than just one county it might be the two counties or i don't know what you know right now but the the point is i think it could be in a very it could be a very efficient way of operating and i'm glad you're

1:13:39exploring it and um also i think it would be a great opportunity to look at systems like uber to see if they should also be um handled in a system that's similar or the same system so um thank you for doing this sure my pleasure um you talked about uh roughly ten thousand dollars of revenue

1:14:03that we get from these 46 different uh in cabs basically individual cars is that the only loss of revenue that we would experience there's also business license fees and it's not clear exactly how that would work with the jpa whether there would just be licensing fees involved or

1:14:20whether business license fees would somehow be incorporated but currently we collect about three thousand dollars a year in business licenses business license fees for uh taxi cab companies okay is there any erosion of standards or we talk about consistency but is but is our

1:14:36level of expectation potentially higher than some of the other communities and so we would we would have all talking about the wheelchairs as an example of a standard is there is there a potential that will have an erosion in standards well i would like to think that

1:14:52some of the negative experiences people have would be risen to the level that we expect from the taxi cab companies that operate in el cerrito i know from experience talking with our record staff that it's not necessarily easy to get a taxi cab permit at el cerrito there's a lot of steps that we

1:15:07require tax cab operators to undertake so my hope is that perhaps agencies that don't have as much oversight as we do the jpa will bring them up to a higher standard and we'll have a better kind of uniformity among taxicab operators because of that right i think that there

1:15:27i would not enter into the jpa thinking that we're going to lower standards any in el cerrito um it would be my intent to bring everybody up to what our standard is minimally would you um characterize this as a loss of local control or or there will still be the opportunity to opt out of the jpa

1:15:43and go back to our existing program um i don't think that anything that we're undertaking here would is irreversible for us there's certainly things there's no there's no loss at the police department that we could never bring back i mean we have a municipal code about

1:16:02how we license taxi cabs as far as the severability of the jpa i think that'll be part of the formation process to include language on how an agency would opt out if they're going to opt out of the jpa great so um i can't really answer that right now because they're

1:16:15not at this yeah we're just giving you authority to start so i understand we just but is this an opportunity for us to i think express some of the things that uh we're interested in um finally uh limousines and cars for hire like the you know the super shuttles the

1:16:30airporters the things like that are they currently covered by our current taxi cab ordinance no they're in a charter they're in a different category altogether from taxi services so um taxi services by their nature are a highly regulated industry so um that's one of the things that taxi cab

1:16:48companies generally tout is that they have drivers that have background checks and that they're insured at the proper level and that they've been inspected by police departments and so the two industries are while they deliver pretty much the same service the way they go about it is just regulated

1:17:04differently so the short answer is no that's different and and uh at at this point is there any opposition from the industry or has has there been any outreach to the industry to engage that part of this is engaging stakeholders on this and i believe at the group level

1:17:21there has been some degree of that uh forming the actual jpa there's going to be a lot more interaction with taxi cab companies as we go so i don't know personally what the reaction has been so far great thank you very much sure have one more question oh yes um do we have any

1:17:38um i don't know what they would be called gypsy taxis or rogue taxis in el cerrito you know every now and then we get somebody coming in in a taxi but doesn't have the sticker and so when we find out about it we cite them for our municipal code and and deal with when we find it but i

1:17:53think our instance of people masquerading as a legitimate taxi company is fairly rare i think a lot of people that would engage in that industry are moving towards the uber or lyft model and just becoming a charter service okay thank you sure if there's no speakers i'll make a

1:18:11motion if you would please yeah um first of all i applaud this effort and okay we're sorry i apologize we do have a speaker we've never seen him before yeah as soon as i raised my hand i was like wait a minute there is one so okay so i do take a taxi like you know every now

1:18:32and then and i figured okay we need we got good taxi services in our city but to my understanding that um i've spoken with these uh taxi cab companies uh some of them are based out of like you know in other counties like pleasant hill dublin pleasant uh lafayette all of them and i and i asked

1:18:52them and they said where are your tax caps located some of them are like either east county or based out of somewhere else but uh i figured this is a good idea because i used to i used to ride a cab like every now and then but now i figure it's getting to be such a

1:19:10a habit because i figured nobody don't take taxicabs these days uh except for business people so i figured okay so i will i do support this but um we need to get more um more more taxi cabs you know involved with them how they um where they get their license and all

1:19:29that stuff so thank you so much thank you all right um i want to say that i appreciate this effort and i want to make sure that some of the concerns we raise that council member abelson's concerns regarding people with disabilities in wheelchairs and also that the jpa will address the

1:19:55uber and lyft and such things that's not part of the resolution but i just want to make sure that we don't forget those concerns i'd like to move the resolution to the city council of the city of el cerrito authorizing the city manager to pursue the potential formation of a regional

1:20:10joint powers authority for the regulation of tax recap services within contra costa county sector we have a motion it's been made by friedman second and billy bridges uh discussion all in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions let the records show that passed uh unanimously

1:20:29uh that brings us on to item 7b which is a wall of fame subcommittee appointment for the consideration of at least two applications that we received and i'm looking at the end of the diocese at the two ends of the diocese to see if you guys will um step forward and and take care

1:20:51of this item since council member bridges is on it i will do it thank you you never get this ceravonic committee together that's right all right we're all in um do we need a motion for that subcommittee yes okay so um if i could get a motion for the subcommittee of bridges and

1:21:13friedman to take up the wall of fame subcommittee of 2016.

1:21:17i'll make a question emotions made by quinto i got a second oh a second seconded by abelson all those in favor say aye hi jan are you going to vote you're going to abstain any abstentions seeing none let them let the record show that they pass unanimously let's see

1:21:42that brings us to uh item eight which is council assignment and liaison reports i have two if no one else has any um i you have a slight one go ahead please i just wanted to to mention that i'm as you probably know i'm on the contra customer transportation authority and i just wanted to let you

1:22:06know that things are pretty hot and heavy in terms of looking at a potential new sales tax measure that would be added to the one we already have and i don't i don't feel i can really tell you what would be in it because we don't i don't feel we really for sure know yet

1:22:26but i just wanted to let you know that i am going to meetings practically weekly on the subject so it's taking a lot of time of a lot of people and there are a lot of studies that have been done so i think it may be close to wrapping up but i'm not really positive about

1:22:46that so i just wanted to say that to to that end should we have an actual agenda item to to so we can have discussion on that matter at some point in the near future um if if it's your pleasure i mean there's no they don't know that there's wictac usually is the

1:23:11group in the west county right that does that uh that um it um but it sounds like if it's hot and heavy which i certainly um get vibrations of that as i go to the county uh mayor's conferences um if there's some sort of direction or guidance that you require uh

1:23:32is now or is the next meeting sometime appropriate for us to give you guidance to actually tell yeah you can't tell it's because it's going on every week yeah yeah it's yeah so i just wanted to let people know that it was happening and uh it may be something that we put on as a standing

1:23:50item so that we can have well it is a it is i believe covered by this item isn't it for me to report you can report but i'm not certain we can uh take up a matter of giving you action i don't think we can take an action item in accordance with your report so i i'll

1:24:06talk to this to the city manager i'm i need to act under the wic tax direction i think yes because i'm sitting on ccta as a member of woodtuck correct not as a member of the city council but your action at wic tech could potentially be governed by our actions yeah wood tech is not

1:24:27meeting weekly on this right it's ccta that is um so i just wanted to let people know that um because there's because i meet we're having so many meetings it seems it seems that i need to do something it's actually been quite a frustrating process i'm sure it has been but um i'll

1:24:50leave it at that for the moment thank you sure it has been um i will report on three meetings that i've gone to recently specifically as liaison one is the west county integrated waste management authority i will say that we are working our way through the joint powers

1:25:10agreement process and that included this last week talking about county the county having a voting seat the county is currently one of the agencies but it has no vote power consistently we have over the last two years encouraged the county to become a voting member there are some

1:25:34legal reasons the impediments keeping the county from becoming a voting member we did give authorization for them to continue the the process of working out the legal steps to allow the county to become a voting member that did lead us to a discussion of the number of votes

1:25:52and i can uh say that uh i hope i represented you well by saying that uh that the uh the fact that there is a proportional representation system in place now uh where richmond gets because they have 50 of the waste flow 50 of the revenue uh they have three sevenths of the the vote

1:26:17um and i uh encouraged that the ongoing method of voting should be representational of the proportional to uh to co to the representative members and there was a third item that we discussed and i it's escaping me as to what it was um but those were the two that were

1:26:44controversial that i wanted to at least bring back to you guys uh here in local i went to the human relations commission and to the design review board at the design review board uh essentially i provided the staff with a written presentation for them to read and it covered

1:27:04primarily i covered the library to get them up to speed on the library issues and at the human relations commission i participated uh long enough to get an update on our campaign against hate in town and there they were considering a movie they actually have acquired the movie and are looking

1:27:28at also a facilitated discussion a facilitated dialogue around the movie uh and so they are they're trying to figure out how to do that because the quote for the official um uh facilitators was rather expensive in their mind and i also was a got a report from overlapping members we have one member

1:27:56that's also a member with the naacp subcommittee on crime on on the hate crime and the naacp did uh procure signs and those signs were presented to the the rest of the commission on uh last wednesday i think it was and uh that was something that uh judging from i i think

1:28:21i left before that matter the decision was made but judging from some of the reports that we've gotten since then there was a commitment to uh printing signs that we can put up in our site our community our homes um so i just wanted to report out on the progress of that

1:28:36yes we're printing up new ones so um councilmember bridges i did see yours there you know recently so um so that's that's the reports i wanted to provide what does the sign say uh it's based on the um i'm drawing a blank on the i'm trying to stop i know it's not in our town

1:29:00not in our town stop hate together correct and we would also have the city's uh website address on it for more information correct so it's something that would be distributed to people who are interested correct in displaying this in their in their windows it's their 15

1:29:19inch roughly 15 inch square heavy stock paper so they're designed for internal uh display internal mounting for a window display so all right with that we'll move on to item nine which is uh convening a city council closed session uh i this uh closed session is a conference

1:29:44with labor negotiators pursuant to government code five four nine five seven point six uh the we will be discussing the city manager performance so we will recess upstairs you