Special Concurrent City Council, Public Financing Authority and Employee Pension Board Meeting June 14, 2016

0:03:20i'm going to convene the special concurrent city meeting city council meeting along with the public financing authority and the employee pension board meeting of tuesday june 14th here in the city council chambers will you please join me and council member quinto in uh pledge of his

0:03:44allegiance to the flag or an observed observation of a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all please let the record show that all five

0:04:07council members are present item two is council and staff communications and reports from closed sessions or such um do we have any i have some as well so i don't know who wants to go first okay councilman quinto back in june 2nd i had the honor to attend the 60th anniversary of the el

0:04:39cerrito uh gardening club and i got to sat sit with former mayor may ritz and it was an amazing event and i congratulate the el cerrito democratic and the el cerrito garden club for the 60th anniversary later in the day i also had the honor of opening of huber park and i haven't been

0:05:06there in many many years and to see that park uh uh just uh look so new after uh uh 40 years of not seeing it uh it's it's a great uh uh to see uh how old parks can become new again and uh former mayor leforce joined me at that event and i just would like to thank him

0:05:32and to thank so many of the neighbors uh in the huber park area in welcome me there and i um it was an amazing event thank you councilmember or vice mayor abelson okay i've been to a number of places recently and um most recently i was at the peds count 2016 conference

0:06:00in long beach which i found very invigorating and interesting and i saw every once in a while you see something that makes you think it's worthwhile to go to these things and i at this one i saw something that was that way and what it was actually was a new way

0:06:23of doing a sign and it was a sign you know how you see a stop sign or a yield sign or you know this line or that sign well these were signs that had people on them and then they had a message underneath and it's intended to be used by a jurisdiction in addition to the normal prescribed

0:06:48sign and it's to remind people who are traveling along that way that there's a reason that there are these stop signs yield signs and so forth so for example they have one that showed a a parent holding the hand of a child to remind people that in fact there were pedestrians

0:07:15in the area and they had any number of them and they were available for anyone who was interested in them on and have already given away my copy to the city staff but they were on in this software where anybody can use it it's open architecture it's called and so

0:07:43if we're interested in doing that sort of thing it's easily available at no charge and uh they're glad to also give advice on it from the jurisdiction that's using it currently or one of the jurisdictions and so anyway i thought that was a very interesting and worthwhile thing because

0:08:05it's the sort of thing i think that could make people think a little more carefully about what they're doing when they whizz around somebody or [Music] so forth for example i this weekend i was going along the aulani greenway actually i was in albany at the time

0:08:26but i went up to the stop sign and then i needed to turn left onto the sidewalk as it was a t intersection i had i had to do something and this bicycle starts to whiz around me on the um in the other path of travel and almost hit me um and it's the sort of thing that occurs

0:08:48because people don't really think about it they just think about oh i've got to get there a minute faster or 30 seconds faster and they don't think about the fact that maybe they should stop and pause and let the other person uh who's in front of them go and so these signs are a way of

0:09:12enhancing that and so that was one of the numerous benefits i got from going to that conference but i think the most worthwhile thing worth worth mentioning i also attended the league of california cities east bay division meeting uh in danville and our speaker

0:09:36was our was our state controller betty yee and she's an amazing speaker really if you've ever heard her speak she's got a fantastic knowledge base about finance and she [Music] gave us a lot of information and everyone i think had a really good experience and appreciated her

0:10:11coming and she lives i believe in alameda i'm not mistaken so she often will come to things in the bay area and so i've been able to hear her speak a number of times in terms of wic tac and ccta i'm not sure if i mentioned it earlier but ccta has decided to go forward with putting a

0:10:40measure on the ballot so there are next steps for that to happen one of the next steps is that it has to be approved by majority of the cities of the county and the majority of the population of the county in those cities so we're going through that process right now and do we have a date

0:11:02next week it will be here in el cerrito and it also has to be approved by a majority of the board of supervisors and so we'll see what happens and um if you come back here next week you can see the details and um let's see what else i also attended the policy committees

0:11:30like california cities both the administrative services policy committee and the community services committee and we heard a budget update which i guess has now if i heard correctly passed is it passed i think it has i heard that um and um so the um i'm not sure of some of the details

0:12:00since it did just pass and i'm not sure what happened between the time it was he at the league policy committee's end actually did pass so i won't say anything because i'm afraid it could be inaccurate but it's still i believe unless somebody knows more than i do

0:12:19has to go to the governor's desk for signature does anyone know if it did no i only heard yesterday that that much happened so i haven't had time to check it out and that's it thank you um councilman bridges okay um i i want to do a couple forward announcements uh

0:12:42july 4th is a world one celebration here in el cerrito at the cerrito vista park and everyone is is invited to come to a wonderful day of celebration of music crafts food games for young people so hopefully everybody can find some time to come down sometime between 10 a.m and 6 p.m

0:13:07on july 4th and then i want to thank the human relations commission for putting on a wonderful event celebrating the court case that made interracial marriage legal upstairs we have the sunder the dorothy and cindershotty history room they were an interracial marriage that occurred in

0:13:33nevada in 1934 so we have a long history of interracial marriages uh here in el cerrito this uh day was especially poignant because it was celebrating all forms of equity including sexual orientation and and gay marriage and it was a bright contrast to the tragedy that occurred on

0:14:02sunday morning um and we have several items in our consent calendar that speak to el cerino's position on this and and the human relations commission's event was very successful very well attended well over 300 uh people came and it was nice to have such a a venue for people to come and and share

0:14:26their times and and think about inclusiveness in our community so i do want to thank them and we will be adjourning our meeting tonight in honor of the 49 lives that were lost in orlando the rest of mine are i've i too have league of cities uh updates actually as long as i've started it uh i

0:14:48went to the environmental caucus uh the policy committee up there where we discussed uh a the plastic bag ban and the the league of cities which was neutral on the uh statewide uh ballot measure before at least the environmental uh policy uh suggested that we come out um

0:15:07the the the the ballot measure is poorly worded so i'm just going to say we want to uphold the laws that bag bans uh was the um recommendation from the environmental policy committee to bag to bag ban bags yes sorry um and uh the other thing that which i was going to talk about

0:15:34in this group because it potentially affects many people is the housing the proposed trailer bill that the governor was putting on to the uh budget uh which dealt with housing and it it i like council member abelson i don't know the status of this bill but i do

0:15:52know that as it was written and presented to us on june 1st it removed a tremendous amount of local control and allowed development housing development projects to bypass several review processes that the public has the right to uh to participate in and and so um i don't know the status of that bill

0:16:16at the moment and we'll be doing some research before next tuesday and is there any staff communications i think you said no okay that concludes item two we'll move on to item three which is oral communications from the public this is an opportunity for those who wish to speak

0:16:33to speak on items on the consent calendar or items not on the agenda so that you can bring us new ideas we limit it to three minutes we have a lighting system in front of me which is green for go yellow for 30 seconds and red please wrap up your conclusion comments

0:16:55um and are there any items that anybody is going to pull from the from the from the consent calendar that we can okay i i will certainly be emphasizing at least two of them when we do get to the consent calendar um therefore i would like to invite people to come

0:17:13forward at this time and fill out a card do we have any speakers yes mayor we have six speakers cordell hindler the first three are cadell hindler kendra zion and forrest mcdonald okay so mayor lyman uh council members uh city staff i am cardell handler a board

0:17:32member for uh park plaza neighborhood association i came last time to talk about some of the vacant properties in our city and i did some research too i went on craigslist to check out some of the vacant properties and some of them is like like like the former carol's restaurant

0:17:50it's it the prices has went up from like from a dollar a square foot to i have no idea so so i just look so i did some research on on vacant properties so number two uh i spoken with some of the businesses uh around el cerrito and and they have noticed that um that in the

0:18:08past they have had complaints regarding like people who are who have been loitering in front of their establishment and that's and that makes their business look not safe so that's number two and number three i had another incident um when one of my neighbors talked to me

0:18:25she said that she saw a couple of police cars uh in front of arko and i was like oh oh my i say i'll bring this up to the city council so and then let's see what else finally um i i had another comp one of my neighbors complained to me she said that that the police have always been coming through

0:18:42our area so so by next by next tuesday i will bring a visual map so you can see uh so so i can show you uh which areas that i'm referring to so that's pretty much it great thank you very much kendra zion followed by forrest macdonald and al miller hello city council members community

0:19:07my name is kendra zion and i'm one of the lead volunteers for your relay for life of el cerrito since relay for life returned to el cerrito in 2010 we've provided a community focused event honoring cancer survivors their caregivers and remembering those who've passed away from cancer

0:19:29relay for life provides el cerrito residents a place to come together to fight cancer to learn about the american cancer society's low or no cost programs and to provide a way for members of the community to support each other and honor each other this year's relay for life of el cerrito

0:19:52is saturday july 16th through sunday july 17th from 10 a.m through 10 am at sarita vista park we would personally like to invite all the members of the city council all of the el cerrito city employees and everyone in this community to this free event this year we've already raised over ten

0:20:16thousand dollars for the american cancer society and hope to double that before the end of the event the el cerrito police employees association have formed a team of 10 of 17 police officers and their fundraising efforts has already raised over one thousand one hundred dollars

0:20:36el cerrito's own doctor randy scheckman will be joining us to talk about his nobel prize in medicine which he received in 2013 for his cancer research playland not at the beach meri vista country club rialto theater kaiser richmond and many more local businesses

0:20:55have donated and sponsored this event including el cerrito parks department which has donated the use of cerita vista park as well as meeting spaces throughout the year totaling an in-kind donation over of over four thousand dollars thanks to your generous support we're

0:21:14able to support over 50 identified cancer survivors in our area along with a multitude of cancer survivors and caregivers in the community which have not officially been part of an american cancer society program with your help we're able to fight cancer by raising funds for the

0:21:34american cancer society research and programs but possibly even more important with your help we've been able to reach out to residents of el cerrito and provide them with free with a free community event where they are able to volunteer fight cancer learn about low or no cost programs

0:21:55remember loved ones lost and support each other thank you for your continued support of our community and this special event with your support relay for life of el cerrito will be a success thank you thank you and i i just want to confirm uh it starts at 10 a.m

0:22:15on saturday the 16th and goes for 24 hours right a team a team of volunteers can walk as long or short each individual can walk as long as short as each one wants and it concludes 24 hours after that so it concludes sunday morning sunday morning at 10 a.m great thank you

0:22:33brochure says 10 pm i will make sure we change that all right great next speaker please forest mcdonald followed by al miller and dave weinstein thank you marilyn city council members and distinguished guests as we just talked about for 24 hours more than 150 people

0:22:54are gonna walk and skip sing and shout and cry and laugh their way across cerrito vista park for the seventh consecutive year in a collective effort to fight cancer i'm to bring the fun chair for this year's el cevito relay event for life and as such i plan the on-site

0:23:09activities that help us celebrate those who live with cancer remember those whose lives were cut tragically short and fight back against the ravages of the disease that means i ask for a lot of things which is why i'm here tonight i do have a few requests of the council

0:23:23on behalf of businesses churches schools and homes of el cerrito first as kendra mentioned we invite each of you to attend the el cevito relay event at cerrito vista park and speak in our opening ceremony saturday morning to lead by example and encourage us to fight for what we believe in

0:23:41additionally we hope that you will recognize the importance of our efforts and support our event again next year with the same applause generosity that we've enjoyed since 2010.

0:23:50the level and of support and guidance the city of el cerrito provides each year is humbling and we're very grateful next we asked the city draft and issue a proclamation recognized in july 16th and 17th as relay for life weekend to help signify our partnership and our

0:24:06commitment to celebrate more birthdays and lastly we ask your help in painting our world purple by turning the exterior lights of city hall purple the week leading up to the evening of july 16th purple is the color of hope and with your approval we can transform city hall

0:24:22into a beacon of hope for survivors caregivers and everyone impacted by cancer thank you for your time thank you next speaker please good evening mayor lyman council members and staff i'm sorry i missed the loving event but i was taking part in another wonderful

0:24:44event one founded by several el cerrito police department officers some years ago it's called bike the bridges this year i was told when i was there that upwards of 700 participants were there they expect to raise over 80 000 dollars of the event the wonderful thing of this event at

0:25:09least for me even though each year the hills seem to get a little longer and a little steeper is it's an event that's held in the mar mostly in the martinez waterfront park and it's filled with uniformed officers from west county agencies and maybe even from some central county that i didn't

0:25:32recognize the sheriff county sheriff's people are there the volunteers for the county sheriff's department that are there and they're they're the ones that go find people when they get lost they were there so i'm glad that i didn't have to have them come find me

0:25:48but anyway it's just a great way to enjoy a wonderful day see some great sites all the way from martinez to crockett to vallejo to benicia the old benicia arsenal and back across the benicia bridge and i urge people to get their biking friends and pay attention when it comes up next year

0:26:11another event that our else real police force and others take part in and sponsor is the special olympics torch relay special olympics is the benefactor of the efforts from bike the bridges and the torch relay i think it's uh june 21st when the special olympics torch relay will pass

0:26:36through el cerrito on san pablo avenue i was told that the el cerrito relayers will pick it up about 11 o'clock at the wells fargo bank on the south end of town on san pablo avenue and carry it through the city on san pablo avenue up to richmond that's another way we can show our

0:26:59support for our police officers our police department and the wonderful job they do for us all year long support their efforts at fundraising for this special special olympics program and thank them in a way thank you thank you dave weinstein followed by carl mulligan

0:27:24hello mayor and members of the city council i'm here in my role as president of trail trekkers to report about two things one the hillside festival and two the sign plan we just did the hillside festival and several uh people were there including the mayor uh several

0:27:39members of the council i think it was a great success we had 200 plus people which doesn't sound like a lot compared to some of the other events we've just heard about but you know i wouldn't want there to be much more than 400 there and we're moving in that direction i think the

0:27:52good news is we have determined that this unlike music from indira this one is a keeper we'll keep on doing it every year as one of our core uh missions here at trail trekkers i'd like to thank the city staff parks and recreation and the environmental quality committee for helping put it on it was

0:28:11funded with fifteen hundred dollars from the eqc we pulled in donations of just over sixteen hundred dollars that'll help pay for a hillside restoration not very much considering last year we pulled in um from the music from madeira well over four thousand but you know this isn't

0:28:28the kind of festival that really is going to pull in a bunch of books we did get a very generous donation of a thousand dollars from um amy rogers who was involved with the friends with the library foundation et cetera et cetera it was so generous it even got myself

0:28:41and mary to pony up a little bit too so we managed to get up there um we have a lot of uh fairly ambitious plans to try to get uh outside sponsors for next year which should lower the cost of putting the thing on and we got other great plans but you know it was just such a great event

0:28:57people really enjoy it most of the hikes birds trees rocks etc had 15 sometimes 20 people it was amazing to me how many people there said they had either never been to the hillside at all or i've never been to whole large portions of it like the north part so it

0:29:13is valuable in that way in introducing people to the hillside the sign plan which has been under development for three years by the national park service is going to give el cerritos some of the really greatest science there'll be a large gateway signs at the major

0:29:26entrances to the hillside there'll be smaller informational signs there'll be little posts but throughout the city um on the urban trails as well as some of the wildland trails once this thing gets approved and we are putting the final touches on it we hope to go to the parks and rec

0:29:44commission in july i believe their meeting is july 27th and the parks and rec even though they haven't approved the plan yet they have approved funding so i believe we'll have funding for at least the portion in the hillside itself and maybe even for the whole city i'm not

0:30:00sure about that but i think this is a really great thing the signs they'll be available for people to look at july 4th at the trekker table thank you great thank you next speaker carl mulligan thank you yeah good evening uh carl mulligan el cerrito um just wanted to talk briefly about the

0:30:26led lights the new street lights um i personally think they're very bright but pg e has um accommodated me there's a big street light outside of my house and it was shining in my master bedroom in my living room casting light at least 10 or 12 feet deep into my house and they

0:30:41were very responsive and i just want to let you know that they dim down the light and they put up a shield although the shield does not stop the bulb from being visible from inside my house they seem to be working on it and i just wanted to say to the people in el

0:30:53cerrito if the lights are bothering you ask pg e and they might just turn it down or put a put a shield on there for you all right so thank you that's good information no more speakers mayor great that uh concludes item three oral communications from the public we'll move on to item

0:31:12four presentations we have a presentation tonight from the citizen street oversight committee annual report it's a presentation by matt kelly chair of the committee good evening mayor and council members i'm pleased to be here tonight on behalf of the el cerrito citizens street

0:31:31oversight committee in order to present our annual report to you on may 9 the committee members convened to review the fiscal year 2014 2015 expenditures of revenues collected under the city's pothole repair and local street improvement and maintenance transactions and use tax say that five

0:31:51times fast the committee received a thorough presentation from city staff on the council-approved expenditures of the revenues as well as receiving a presentation from the city's independent auditor for their opinion the committee found that the expenditures were an appropriate use of

0:32:11the pothole repair and local street improvement and maintenance transactions and use tax by human unanimous vote of the committee i'm reporting uh the findings tonight under section 2.04.320 c of the el cerrito municipal code in addition the committee members do recognize and support

0:32:34the count the council when authorizing tax revenue expenditures as budget amendments under resolution that they are confirming that these expenditures are an approp appropriate use of the pothole repair and local street improvement and maintenance transactions and use tax

0:32:53so that completes my report i'd like to thank city staff for their support this last year and i appreciate your time great thank you very much and we have one speaker cordell hindler so uh mayor lyman uh council members uh cardinal handler richmond i i enjoyed the presentation just now

0:33:20and i was like because i passed through el cerrito's streets and i was like every time i step on a crack i was like okay this this is not gonna work so i said i'm grateful that we got some pavement on the street so i'm i'm very grateful that i can walk on the streets of el

0:33:34cerrito without stepping on a crack so thank you to mr kelly for uh for that presentation so that's all i have to say great thank you all right we'll now move on to item five which is our consent calendar which includes five minutes of for approval from our may 17th meeting

0:34:01a proclamation recognizing june 2016 as lgbt pride month a proclamation designating june 2016 as immigrant heritage month 5d is november 8th general municipal election uh resolution codifying that will occur for uh city council and setting the cost for your ballot statement

0:34:35candidate statement 5e amendments to the city classification plan 5f authorization to expend expenditure with ssp data products 5g authorized expenditure with sunguard public sector and 5h summer 2016 city council meeting schedule which will be held july 19 august 16 september 20 with

0:35:00the request that we keep the first tuesday in july august and september reserved for additional meetings as necessary do i have a motion to adopt also move and i also want to state that i'm approving the minutes because i did watch the city council meeting on i

0:35:18streamed it even though i wasn't here second motion by barges seconded by abelson all those in favor please say aye aye opposed extensions let the records show it passed unanimously that will bring us on to item six public hearing there are none this evening uh brings us to

0:35:36item seven we do have uh two council items and one concurrent council public financing authority and employee pension board item at this time i would like to take up item 7b if there's no opposition to that from the council item 7b is city council wall of fame nomination subcommittee recommendation

0:36:02uh the subcommittee was uh council members bridges and and uh councilmember friedman and there uh well our united stand the recommendation is that david weinstein be uh nominated and appointed to be our newest member of the wall of fame i i will do a formal presentation if this is approved

0:36:26when it's presented but i think we're in concurrence that he's an excellent candidate that met all the criteria any questions of the subcommittee any questions no questions okay uh seeing no will go to the public for public speakers we have three speakers al miller dave

0:36:46weinstein and howdy gowdy good evening again three minutes is not long enough to express uh and describe david's involvement in the city for the years but i did want to acknowledge that i had the privilege of working with him and the friends of the cerrito theater

0:37:10when we were trying to convince your counterparts at the time to go ahead and renovate the theater as a theater and in the subsequent years since that has happened david has been very active in keeping the friends alive and keeping the friends engaged at the theater and

0:37:30engaging theater management to continue to support programs such as the classics that they that exist anyway i strongly support your uh recommendation to approve him for an induction to our wall of fame thank you thank you next speaker please dave weinstein followed by howdy gowdy

0:37:58uh mayor and members of the council i'd like to thank you for even considering me for this um high high honor i i really am a person who appreciates being you know getting my name out there and being being or being thanked for things so it's something that you know i feel

0:38:13very very good about i i really want to thank jenny hammer and the members of trekkers for i guess they're the ones who brought this up in the first place and i'd like to thank al and howdy and tom panis and garth schultz for weighing in on my behalf but i especially really want to

0:38:29thank my wife you know i had been on a couple of city committees recycling and waste task force dealing with whether the city should keep its recycling center but i didn't really throw myself wholeheartedly into doing something big in town until right exactly at the time

0:38:45when i left my job and i didn't have too much money i took a buyout and that's exactly when the theater came up for sale and if it wasn't for my wife who who had a good job and was willing not to give me a hard time for not making too much money and not give me a hard time for instead

0:39:00of focusing on making a bunch of money to spend a lot of time trying to save this you know warehouse and trying to make it into a theater again and you know none of this would happen so i really need to thank my wife mary a lot and i thank everybody who came here tonight to

0:39:14to watch me and to find out what you guys have to say thank you uh good evening mayor lyman and council members my name is howdy gowdy i live at [address removed] um i want to thank you for your apparent support of the nomination of dave weinstein to the wall of fame i think it's very

0:39:40appropriate and you've seen my letter outlining all the reasons i i think he is a very worthy candidate for this honor and so i won't go on much longer than that i just want to reiterate that comment and and also point out that i think all the letters that were submitted in support

0:40:00of his nomination really demonstrate both the breadth and depth of interaction that dave has exhibited in the city and i think that's that's fairly unique among volunteers in the city that he's gotten involved in so many different ways and in very you know detailed and thorough ways at the same

0:40:21time so thank you for your support any other speakers that like to speak on this item seeing none i'll bring it back to council for deliberations i'd like to move the nomination of dave weinstein i think as the speakers have said and his support for so many outstanding projects

0:40:46in our city to make this a better place to live he's a fellow who's always thinking of how he can be of service and our community is really blessed to have him here and contributing so much a second and i just want to make sure that people know that the wall of fame it's not an

0:41:06easy process to get nominated for and actually earn a wall of fame uh not an uh award i guess it's an award recognition we do have from some very strict guidelines they're in our agenda package uh so that uh you know this subcommittee was considering two candidates and and only

0:41:27one uh fulfilled all of the uh qualifications and and minimum requirements for this so i i do want to make sure that people understand that this is it it's not a rubber stamp process and i know that you guys went through uh through the all the qualifications to

0:41:43make this decision so i want to thank you and and welcome you for faithfully discharging your duties as a subcommittee we have a motion it's been second in any other discussion seeing none i'll call the question all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions let the record show it

0:42:00passed unanimously congratulations sir um with that we'll move back to item 7a uh proposed timeline just so people understand we will be uh tonight's decision will be codified with a presentation later in the summer worked out with mr weinstein um so it there is a another date i'm looking over

0:42:33the clerk to make confirm there is another date that you will be able to come and uh celebrate uh this the actual unveiling is that the night we unveil the picture yes so and a special resolution acknowledging correct contributions yep so so there is there will be another event for you to come

0:42:50and celebrate with so therefore we'll move on to item 7a a proposed timeline and budget for development of an ordinance regulating marijuana-related businesses captain not captain chief thank you mayor good evening mayor and council members i'm paul keith your interim chief of

0:43:09police so the agenda bill before you was crafted by sean moss and i along with a lot of collaboration from other staff members in the city the reason we're here tonight is to present this agenda bill and i'm going to start by talking about the background for the bill before you

0:43:28this was born about when a dispense a marijuana dispensary group approached city staff to discuss opening a marijuana dispensary in el cerrito at the time and still the city bans marijuana delivery dispensing and cultivation during our discussions with this dispensary group some council members

0:43:47brought forward a discussion at the last city council meeting to talk about whether the city should change the ban on marijuana dispensaries or whether other things should be evaluated about the current state of affairs in relation to the city's ban on delivery dispensing

0:44:02and cultivation last meeting the city council asked staff to come back with an agenda bill presenting a timeline a schedule and a budget to allow for developing an ordinance with due diligence analysis and public outreach the bill before you includes two different schedules that city staff put

0:44:22together that we hope addresses these requests from city council the first schedule represents a process that includes some reduced public outreach compared to other legislation that we've looked at at the city staff level so this would include public participation at city council

0:44:41meetings would also include a parallel processing of business applications at the same time as development of a city ordinance process the goal of the first schedule is to present a schedule that allows for the items that the city council asked for in the shortest amount of time that

0:45:00we felt would be possible or an approximation of the shortest amount of time the second schedule represents a schedule that includes increased public outreach and also allows for the development of a municipal ordinance prior to the development of application criteria

0:45:18for business licenses in el cerrito so this would allow city staff and also potential licensees to have a good understanding of what regulations would be in place that would identify the conditions for allowing a permit to operate a marijuana-related business in el cerrito

0:45:37staff recommends having a more robust public outreach effort in association with any changes to the current legislation in el cerrito and we also recommend using a consultant that has specific experience in marijuana laws and also relations with municipal governments

0:45:55from here i'm going to turn it over to sean moss our senior planner and he's going to add on our analysis good evening so staff is is seeking some very specific input from the council tonight the first part is whether the council would indeed like to proceed with a

0:46:17public process for evaluating changes to the city's existing ordinance related to the regulation of at this time medical marijuana sales but obviously um understanding as well that the regulatory structure may change as a result of of the november election um uh with the possibility of

0:46:41the legalization of recreational marijuana usage and sales uh in november so obviously understanding that the ordinance um that any public process to to develop a new ordinance would um be ready to to address that possibility um but it but at this time would be uh developed without that

0:47:07regulatory structure in place so um so that's the first part is is whether the the council would would like to to embark down that that path and then the other part is um if the council does wish to do that um whether you you agree with the staff recommendation um to proceed with the uh

0:47:34with the uh extended timeline the expanded timeline which staff feels is is represents just best practices for local government in terms of crafting new regulations and developing an ordinance to address these types of land uses um and also represents uh past public processes that we've had

0:47:59recently on on various issues from minimum wage to tobacco retail license the tobacco retail license ordinance and the smoke prevention smoke pollution prevention program as well it's also worth noting that both of these timelines include opportunities for public

0:48:19participation both during the the crafting of the ordinance as well as during the application process and we also feel that that's important because those those tens uh i think it's important to have uh public participation um in in both of those stages because uh of

0:48:44the differences um the the ordinance um the ordinance crafting the ordinance would obviously deal with the regulatory structure and would be more more broad than evaluating any specific proposals as far as locations or operators and the specific details of any proposals which are also important

0:49:07because there there likely will be very many site-specific what i mean to say specific uh characteristics that need to be taken into consideration with any with any proposal so we feel it's it's very important to have robust public participation during both of those uh

0:49:27distinct uh parts of any process um so that uh concludes our our staff recommendation or our staff presentation if you have any questions we're available to to answer them certainly i'll bring it back to council for questions of staff so um i have my first question is to

0:49:47address the issue of public input so if you were if we were to consider the expedited which is choice one um [Music] how much public input would be involved with with that particular scenario i think it would be much limited from the the expanded uh timeline so

0:50:12one i think one important thing to note is there's really no allowance in that condensed timeline for any additional public outreach in addition to the readings of the ordinance and and holding these these city council meetings so there would be there would be no additional public meetings um

0:50:33the um ordinance wouldn't be discussed at any boards and commissions um or anything like that so essentially um things that we're as we've done things in the past with the strategic plan and urban greening um and and the ordinances you fronts already that we did this past year and a

0:50:53half none of that set aside specific just for this one item would be taking place it would only be taking place in city council chambers as we went through that process is what i understand correct so there would be at least two opportunities for the the public to comment at the first and

0:51:11second readings of the ordinance but um in order you know in order to condense the timeline that much there's not really any uh any additional opportunity that's available can i just ask the city attorney about the the process do we have to what do we do with the moratorium in in

0:51:32conjunction with what we're doing tonight um does one have to precede the other or do we do it all encompassing no there would be no need to take any action tonight other than to give direction to staff as recommended in the staff report the moratorium um are existing provisions of the municipal

0:51:51code that that prohibit um dispensaries as well as cultivation and deliveries of marijuana um so if you direct it regardless of in fact regardless of which option the council chooses if it chooses either of the two options uh what we would do is prepare an ordinance that would among other

0:52:11things amend those provisions of the municipal code to remove the existing prohibitions okay and and then the next question i have um probably for sean is um could you just speak a little bit to the potential zoning sites that would be available i know you probably haven't

0:52:32looked in depth at that but if you could just give us a little snapshot perhaps well any specific sites would be entirely dependent on the the regulations that that were developed through the through the ordinance and ultimately that the council would adopt so the council would

0:52:52be free to you know establish buffers from sensitive land uses to establish minimum distances between these types of establishments i mean there's a whole variety of of uh land use regulations that could be passed by the council um you know using um you know to back the tobacco retail

0:53:11license as a model um it does establish buffers from certain land uses um you know there are some that are included there are some that are excluded um and so you know it would really depend on on the regulations that we the zoning ordinance currently has very different

0:53:28buffers for very different uses so it really depends on how you look at things and what you want to do okay and then um maybe this again is for um for sky but for attachment to the information that was sent to us from the office of the attorney general regarding

0:53:48i assume this is the potential draft of what is on the ballot more or less um it's a little unclear the money that's going to be accrued from the recreational will be going to um just the state fund but it it's not really clear to me and and maybe it's clear to

0:54:12someone else what the state board of equalization is going to be doing with that money i know that it's going to be funded for some drug education for some probably public safety information about driving under the influence or what have you um but will there be more specific information

0:54:33that comes forth to us at some point because sadly a lot of this decision is being based on money which i guess is the elephant in the room more or less i'd have to i'd have to re-review the um the provisions of the adult use of marijuana act to be able to directly

0:54:56answer what happens with with the sales tax portion of the revenue but there are a number of revenue provisions within um the statute the purpose i'm sorry the the statewide initiative and um uh but that but there are also um in addition to that local um options for revenue raising from from

0:55:20these types of businesses and so what the state what happens under the initiative including with the sales tax portion of it is not necessarily the only um the the only thing that might potentially generate revenue from this for for the city i think it's just based on our sales tax

0:55:38but the excise tax and some of this other money but there's all right but there are also there there are also local fee alternatives that are not precluded by it as well as the ability for the city to put a measure on the ballot to um adopt a local business license tax yeah

0:55:54and permit business all that would come to us yes okay um and then my last question is um from what i understand from staff although it's not really specifically stated in the the two options does ecwc have a particular problem with not moving forward in expedited manner

0:56:21based on this this um date of september first and i said can i ask them to answer that question they'll i think they'll have an opportunity to speak i don't know if we want to ask them at this time i think right now it'd be best to we'll just just be best to limit

0:56:39your questions to staff right now okay thank you then i'll withdraw that that's all i had councilmember abelson um the the question that's most in my mind at this point i think it has to do with um the um to comparing the two alternatives and where one has a lot of public input

0:57:13which is what we've been doing with other processes and [Music] having a um quickie you might say public process and what i don't understand is why there's an urgency about doing the that public process which to me is really important um could i don't know who could answer that

0:57:54skye i do i don't know that you're the right person but i'll start you restate the question the the question is why are we in a hurry well i think i don't think i don't think that the staff can answer that question for you i think if you'll recall this this came before the council at the

0:58:13movement of of two of the other members of the council so you may want to um i'll be glad to council members i think the reason there's a sense of urgency is because of the november vote on the legalization of recreational use of marijuana there is a provision in the law that

0:58:35puts those permitted dispensaries or facilities that are already permitted by september first first in the queue for the new system that gets set up once the law passes which most people expect it to pass that's a sense of urgency there's also i think business concerns that

0:58:59if the law passes and we're a year away from finishing our process then it may not be such a great business opportunity because there will be such a proliferation under the new law that our ability to get as much revenue as we possibly could would probably be less

0:59:24those are a couple of the reasons i think that also further i'm not sure why even in an expedited process we can't have some community meeting or meetings when we did the minimum wage ordinance we were able to do that in a condensed period of time and still have

0:59:45opportunity for some outreach meetings so i'm not sure why staff thinks that within a hundred days we can't schedule additional meetings other than just the council meetings that addresses um i don't know if that answers my question exactly because my question is

1:00:04is is why are we in a hurry um we don't normally i mean i'm trying to think of another process that we entered like this where i felt like we were in a hurry it just things took however much time they took and um we never talked about having a shortened process

1:00:33for public input i think we're just asking questions of staff now and we can get to comments later i am asking a question that is what i'm attempting to do um and um we've through maybe sean you're a good person to ask my question of because a lot of the planning processes

1:00:57that have occurred recently have i believe been through the planning department am i correct that's that's correct okay for example uh the tobacco retail license process that went to the planning commission i think in a couple of different meetings and they were able

1:01:18to give a recommendation to the council when the council adopted the ordinance and there were no public meetings outside of the actual hearings of the those bodies there were there i believe they were oh this is worse so we believe there was one and uh also there were the ordinance did go to

1:01:48various uh committees throughout the the process before it came to the council okay um uh because what i feel like is that we're in this hurry that we've got to get it all done and because of some money that we might make um and um what can what i sort of think back to is

1:02:15when it came up several years ago i do remember that the the actual issue at that time was where to locate a dispensary and um we had a lot of public concern about that particular issue about the location of where the locations would be that dispensaries could be located

1:02:43and so there was a lot of public concern is what i do remember then and if we um did a process where we did it so quickly that the public didn't wasn't even aware perhaps that we we're doing the process that's what concerns me i guess i don't want to hide this from anybody

1:03:11i don't want to hide anything from anybody actually and um and so i need to know why we can't do this in a thoughtful way that enables members of the public to ask their questions and express their concerns so that we get a full picture just like i feel we've done with many

1:03:37other items and [Music] so i um i don't feel this need for making money is is is a is a basis for for doing that i feel like it should be whatever we do should be a thoughtful process and the fact that we might or might not make money is not a reason that we would

1:04:12speed it up and i haven't felt that we did that speed you know we looked at things that way in the past have we well i i guess as as i kind of cited the other examples of of recent um policy discussions um they they were not as as condensed as this council member friedman did point

1:04:37out minimum wage which i i'm not as familiar with that but i think it may have been a slightly more condensed timeline but um i did want to point out that i think the difference between this process and minimum wage is in addition to adopting regulatory changes through an ordinance

1:04:58the council would ostensibly be also conducting an application process um and issuing app you know issuing licenses or permits at the end of that process so it's not we need to account for more than just the 45 days required to adopt an ordinance we also need to allow some time at the

1:05:20end for the application process and so that really squeezes everything and doesn't really allow for very much public comment other other than at the the council meetings in this in this process um i'm getting a little confused here sorry so that's a reason we would want to do

1:05:43it faster or or to take our time no i'm not saying i'm i'm i'm not saying that the the staff's recommendation is the expanded timeline which would allow a more robust public participation process that would seem to be more in line with other recent efforts like the tobacco retail

1:06:04license and uh the smoke prevention pollution smoke pollution prevention program and things like that okay thank you uh councilman friedman i don't have any other questions my my only one was about why we couldn't um have more public input in either option councilmember quinto i i truly believe

1:06:31public output is so important in this topic and if we can work on that i don't see a problem of the 120 day expedited process we're a small city this is in oakland this is in berkeley this is uh i believe the city of el cerrito can can do this in 120 days and and that includes a robust

1:06:59public output on the um input on this and and presentation um and and reaching out to all our residents um and that's my opinion on that one uh the two figures one has six steps the other has eight steps one of the steps that's not in the expedited figure one is public

1:07:23meetings can you um you know can you describe is the planning commission for example part of the public meeting process yes we would envision that the the ordinance probably would go to the planning commission during a study session where they would be able to to discuss

1:07:40it and make a recommendation to the council in addition we might want to have just some general community meetings you know there may or may not be a you know additional public outreach that the that the council wants us to conduct and i i think the other thing i'd like

1:08:01to add too is that we're going to be um asking the public for kind of different things at different stages i think the first one is their feedback on their thoughts about changing the ban we also want to talk to the public about what regulation would look like and then also about what licensee

1:08:22criteria should be included in the regulations as well so that the public also has an opportunity to talk about what kind of restrictions or what kind of things would allow a person to open the business in el cerrito and there's also the land use component that we touched

1:08:41on a little bit briefly about distances from sensitive sites and that's another area where we would like to get some additional feedback so so the public meetings would be a series of meetings where specific uh items would be discussed uh you know where feed specific feedback is being sought

1:09:01not not a shotgun of all topics it you would do it in some fashion with specific with a go with a plan basically i think that would be staff's preference and then the other thing that's item that's included in in the expanded figure two versus figure one is the results meetings can you the i

1:09:21think i did not see it described exactly what that would be and i was just curious if you could expand on what the results meetings mean if that's coming back here and giving us a briefing and another again another opportunity for the public to weigh in so results

1:09:35meetings will kind of begin as we go through the process the idea behind that is as we get uh public input on various parts of it we'll start coalescing that into what the municipal code is going to start looking at so there is some reporting back with city staff as that

1:09:51process goes so that is what those meetings are trying to represent in the schedule is that this is going to be discussing what we've gotten back from the public as well as kind of forming uh the core of what the municipal code is going to look like if i if i could add from staff's

1:10:06proposal um related to the zoning that the staff alluded to one of the challenges or maybe the main challenge we had in trying to do the expedited of running both things at the same time and having community processes depending on the proposed locations you can't really talk about the proposed

1:10:28locations until you get the zoning in place and so we can't really process the applications until the council and the planning commission ultimately the council approves where they're eligible to go and then the the organizations that might want to propose it's hard for them to propose if they

1:10:43don't know where they're allowed to be that's right and that goes to my next question um the difference between figure one and figure two for the ordinance readings and the vendor applications for the expedited process they overlap 100 percent and i'm curious why they even overlap

1:11:02significantly in uh expanded community process they the in the expanded process there's the ordinance application ordinance reading is only 25 days ahead of the beginning of vendor applications and i'm just curious why there is so much overlap between those two line items in

1:11:23the in the expanded that's a good point and that's something actually that that i i noticed as i was reviewing the the timelines today i i think it um i think your your point is is well taken in that you know those bars could could slide apart even more also if that was

1:11:43the the council's desire you i mean obviously you would you would definitely need to know um what the draft ordinance uh looked like before you could start accepting applications you know based on a certain criteria but it probably would be best to have that criteria fully adopted and

1:12:01in place um before receiving any applications and and i notice you you're diligent about putting the the durations on figure one and and those same durations may be hiding behind the the formatting some of these durations for example the city attorney's review being

1:12:2140 some days the ordinance being 75 days or something to that effect i'm guessing based on the numbers there's that are here some of these durations could be shorter absolutely but the sequence and the participation with the public is is the def differences between these

1:12:44two so that the two line items the public meetings where we go to a planning commission which meets once a month where we go to potentially other types of meetings the results meetings the the interplay between those meetings and the drafting of the ordinance those

1:12:58things the sequence is what and the and the extra steps the extra tasks is one of the major differences and then this potential sequence of accepting applications least after the second ordinance is read potentially those those i could see being some of the significant

1:13:17differences and i just was not seeing that as clearly as your oral presentation so thank you any other questions of staff at this time so um i'd just like to do a little summary of my understanding here so um there'll be there could be some public process um that's a little more expanded than

1:13:40what's in the number one version so from my perspective what i see is that we sort of have to have a consultant that's going to give us a little guidance here because we really don't have on anyone in-house that is capable of perhaps giving us the information not

1:13:59only about public process but also about planning maybe about zoning business outreach what kind of standards we as a council want to set what what this is the consultant going to tell us a little bit about market saturation and what our neighbors are doing what are the best practices again

1:14:18setting the standards crafting regulations drafting an ordinance so that you as a staff know what we want as city council giving you direction before we start giving licenses so a lot of this has to be done you just can't go to the public and say we might do this but we don't know where we're

1:14:37going to do it or how we're going to do it that can't happen that way it's got to be all this other stuff has to be done first starting with a consultant since we don't have that particular person here and and just as a global picture we also have a library measure that's coming up and

1:14:54we're also in the middle of budget so when i look at the expedited i don't know how we could do this even if we had a consultant that we hired two days ago i don't know that that we can kind of achieve that much for the particular time and place where we are right now today

1:15:12and am i is that sort of in a nutshell the way am i seeing it correctly i think that's pretty accurate i think that's accurate thank you any other questions seeing none will open it up for public comment there has been a request by the um the ulcerative wellness center to have

1:15:38just one presenter for an extended amount of time um so in in lieu of four people speaking for three minutes each uh they've proposed to have one person speak for five minutes otherwise we will honor the three minutes for all other speakers so i i do want to provide the applicant with the extra two

1:16:02minutes as a result of their decision to only have one speaker i have about six speakers would you like the applicant to go first or because they were submitted that that would be up to their their preference if they would like to go first that would be great thank you for accommodating us

1:16:29good evening mayor lyman members of the city council city staff and members of the community i am gordon galvin a partner in the el cerrito wellness center and i'm here tonight as a follow-up to our presentation on may 10th i'll begin my comments tonight by commending you for tackling the

1:16:46important issue of medicinal cannabis in your community and whether you should lift the ban and allow for a dispensary to locate in el cerrito there are two important issues before you and a staff report that recommends two options for your consideration tonight

1:17:04the first issue should el cerrito consider lifting your ban on cannabis and consider allowing a type 10 license a dispensary license to operate within the city and if you choose to do so then you need to craft an ordinance that would provide clear guidelines and

1:17:24parameters for how that dispensary would look and operate the second issue was to consider a proposal from our group the el cerrido wellness center to operate a dispensary at 1088 san pablo avenue as you contemplate your options this evening i would like to share my thoughts about

1:17:44what our group is proposing i must first explain why we attached an ordinance to the proposal that we submitted and outlined at the last meeting our intent was to provide your staff with a template a starting point for an ordinance that you will create it was not our intention to write the

1:18:02ordinance for you we understand the ordinance that el cerrito will ultimately adopt will be one that you create to provide needed benefits to you and your community and i'm sure there will be less misspellings we understand that your city staff doesn't have the available hours to take

1:18:22on this effort right now and even if you did have the staff time the general fund doesn't have the dollars to support that effort understanding this predicament we the el cerita wellness center would provide funding to support that effort if you so choose to move forward

1:18:40to clarify what we're proposing our group would cover your expense of hiring contract staff to assist your city in crafting an ordinance this ordinance would fit the culture and needs of your community and once your ordinance is complete we would ask that you vet

1:18:59our proposal if i could briefly summarize our proposal so that there's clarity one we are offering the highest return to a municipality in the state of california our conservative projections indicate a first year return to the city of a half a million dollars two

1:19:20an innovative model for dispensing medicinal cannabis with an emphasis on creating a clinical environment and providing community benefits that are unmatched in this industry this model is unique to our group and takes advantage of our partners diverse backgrounds

1:19:39three ownership and activation of a key property at 1088 san pablo boulevard this property is currently dilapidated and is an attractive nuisance we will invest significant capital to beautify the building inside and out and provide extensive landscape improvements

1:20:00and security four our company's affiliation with the major licensed growers in the state and the most trusted and respected laboratory for testing cannabis ensures that el cerrito patients will receive the highest quality medicine available today product labeling safety

1:20:20and security are among our highest priorities and five we are the only dispensary that has incorporated a sliding feast schedule based on the federal poverty guidelines this ensures that people of all incomes can afford their medicine finally i would like to address the

1:20:40concerns expressed by members of the community at the last meeting in no way were we trying to short-circuit discussion on this important subject on the contrary the opposite is true we intend to host community forums to further the dialogue and discussion about our proposal and what it means for

1:20:59el cerrito regarding overtures that this is a monopoly we welcome competition and we know that you have to start somewhere we would like you to start with us we will be a leader in community benefits and involvement provide the highest return for you we have agreed to purchase the property

1:21:19and make significant improvements and we will agree to all security and background checks and finally i just want to say that neighboring communities that have engaged in extensive rfp processes have ended up spending significant money and staff time and have come away with much

1:21:39less than what we're offering you we hope to have an opportunity to work with you and move forward to create a partnership that works for the city and the community of el cerrito so i thank you for your time and i'm available to answer any questions great thank you um

1:22:00now might be your opportunity to add ask that question um so let's see if i can formulate it correctly so um our choices that were offered to us could be a hybrid or a scenario one or scenario two so how does going to scenario two impact you if decisions are not made by our body by

1:22:23for september 1st what real significance will that ultimately have i understand about the permitting process and the legislation or the ballot measure that probably will pass but as far as your particular plan well councilmember friedman stated the first point i'll reiterate

1:22:46that so those communities that have dispensaries and have their ordinances crafted they will have priority status when the state ballot initiative passes and it looks like it's going to pass so that's one factor secondly we have identified a piece of property and we use the state criteria for

1:23:06distance from parks sensitive uses and schools and we found this property at 1088 san pablo and so that's why we've tied it up and so your option two that staff has put forward is a timeline that we're not it's not very clear but it but at the very least it says to me that we

1:23:28would have to continue to tie up this property for an extended period of time maybe six months or longer so for that reason because there's costs associated with tying up a piece of property so we're spending money and that's okay but we would want to know you know what where's the finish line is

1:23:47it is it a year from now is it 10 months from now because we can't realistically continue to hold this this piece of property indefinitely so that's that's a that's a big factor and as i pointed out we're willing to uh host community meetings and share with people our

1:24:07concept and our proposal and the details of that thank you thank you next speaker please cordell hindler followed by al miller okay so i still get three minutes yes sir thank god okay so mayor lyman uh council members i am cordell handler representing rich richmond heights and uh the richmond

1:24:37addicts neighborhood associations so when i came last month uh when uh when the elsewhere the health and wellness a wellness group came and i was like i guess i got a lot of feedback from the neighborhood groups and they're saying a medical marijuana cannabis they say

1:24:53hmm they had some concerns and i was like and they asked what were their concerns they said it was going to be whether it's not going to be near a school or any other building property they said they said it was going to be like near school but they said it's going to be

1:25:09far away from the school so i'm thinking that it's a wonderful opportunity because we want to generate some money into the city so so so the support so the feedback i got from the from the groups they're saying um that they do support uh having some some cannabis uh into their city so so

1:25:26i'm hoping that that the council would approve of this by next hopefully for next week so that's it your turn now good evening again i urge you to adopt the expanded community process for implementing any changes to the city regulations concerning marijuana related businesses

1:25:52i do this for the following reasons i believe the issue of marijuana related businesses and use in el cerrito has the potential to be the most controversial issue to come before a city council in recent years i also believe that the process city staff has used in a public outreach efforts on other

1:26:12significant policy changes such as the development of a new strategic plan the san pablo avenue site specific plan tobacco regulation smoking regulation and the minimum wage legislation has resulted in a better informed and overall supportive community i believe the people of el cerrito have

1:26:34come to expect the type of community involvement processes that they've seen in those others and changing to an expedited process would make mindy and our community ask why what's going on what's so special on this process another important reason for not using

1:26:52the expedited process was discussed at your may 17th council meeting that is the adverse impact the additional workload would put on staff even if they had consultants in contractor help to help them during the same time you're going through the budget development and

1:27:10approval process and grappling with the issues of a possible site and a ballot measure for our modern library support project for those reasons i urge you to adopt the expanded community process for implementing any changes i do want you know that i support a medical marijuana dispensary in the city

1:27:32especially one of the quality business model of the applicant that we're talking about for two reasons i support it one i think it supports two objectives in your strategic plan quality environment is improved for the people that need it and supporting economic development and

1:27:52increasing the city's revenues thank you thank you next audi gowdy followed by carl mulligan [Music] hi good evening mayor and council members my name is howdy gowdy so i think it's fine for the city to proceed with further exploration of these topics and i really

1:28:23encourage you to engage a wide and prolonged public process i think this is not a priority that needs to be rushed and it's it's not compelling to me that the city needs to sacrifice its well-established you know public outreach policies or you know efforts in order to

1:28:45meet the timing uh related you know to the applicant's needs um i read the packet a while ago and so i may be mistaken but you know it's 77 days to september first and neither one of these timelines actually stand a chance of meeting that as i understand it so it seems like the

1:29:08september first deadline is kind of out of range anyway and so there's really no compelling reason to to rush this we should be given you know a good thorough public process you know i think it's not compelling that we're going to miss an opportunity we're 20 years into medical marijuana in

1:29:31california and it's still something that is you know a viable business now that said it's it's kind of been a de facto recreational program as well as a medicinal program and so the you know things are changing this bond or this um ballot initiative is going to change the

1:29:51the scene and there's a lot of uncertainty and i think we're conflating a lot of different topics at once and trying to rush something through for a very narrow reason and um you know if anyone thinks this is going to be as profitable as everyone expects it to be it's going to still be that in

1:30:10a year or two years i mean it's this isn't just a gold rush that's got to be snapped up right now so i think we need to take you know the slow measured considerate approach that el cerrito is famous for and do this right and not rush it so um thank you very much

1:30:27thank you carl mulligan evening again carl mulligan i won't rehash what i said the last time suffice to say that i am in support of medical cannabis not just dispensaries but there are 17 different licenses that are going to be issued by the state and i think that it's important not to

1:30:53narrow the focus to just dispensaries or or deliveries there are i mean you can look up the different licenses they're they're designed i think to allow creative entrepreneurs and business people to explore different avenues and uh this is a new business and you're talking about it from a very

1:31:14financial perspective and i do appreciate the comments of the other residents here about about considering this over a period of time where you actually have a lot of input from the public and uh you have the time to review the different possibilities for businesses in the city

1:31:37some of them might be invisible you might not see them at all they might be strictly behind the scenes and with no public access to the buildings or the businesses themselves so i think it's important to keep your minds open and review this in in a manner that suits the public and

1:31:57again doesn't rush you guys into writing some hasty and ill-conceived ordinance thank you thank you next that was the last speaker would anyone else like to speak on this matter at this time seeing none we'll bring it back to the diocese for discussion council member

1:32:16friedman yeah um i appreciate the public input and i think that a lot of the points are very well taken and personally i do favor the expedited process but i can see reasons why we should modify that many of which were articulated well by the speakers we do have an election coming up and in

1:32:40that election we will have some new council members and we will also have a very important library measure on the ballot since even in the expedited process it was pointed out by a couple of the speakers won't get us to meet that september first deadline what i propose is a hybrid of one and

1:33:03two where we add in the elements that are in two that aren't in one and we get it done by the end of this year that would be close to 200 days would allow plenty of time for the planning commission and any other commissions involved to review the proposal and would get us

1:33:26to resolution whether we're going forward or not would give the new council the opportunity to make sure that they're on board with this rather than us getting it all established before they come in and frankly i don't see this as such a controversial issue we have had nobody

1:33:45speak against medical marijuana we got one letter against it we have 30 alcohol at least 30 places that sell alcohol and that doesn't cause controversy and i think almost every medical expert would tell you that cannabis is a much less harmful drug than alcohol

1:34:05and it does have proven medical benefits to some people who need it and i agree also with mr gowdy that a lot of people who may have a medical marijuana card are using it for recreational purposes but i don't have a problem with that um so i think it's an opportunity here

1:34:25and i appreciate that this came to our attention from the el cerrito wellness group we probably wouldn't have gotten around to this for a long time if they hadn't and so since we're not going to meet the september first deadline i think getting it done by the end of this year is

1:34:41reasonable allows us to have full discussion with all community members who want to weigh in but all the feedback i've been getting are people are in favor of this in 1996 when proposition 215 passed legalizing medical marijuana else readings voted overwhelmingly in favor

1:35:03and in the last 20 years i think support for both medical marijuana and recreational marijuana has increased significantly in terms of the timeline for number two we have a hundred days here for munico crafted and city attorney review now if we were doing something new that

1:35:23hadn't been done in 50 to 75 other communities maybe we'd need a hundred days but there are many communities some within uh blocks of our community who have had ordinances in place for many years so they know how they had to tweak them or how we could think about tweaking them so i

1:35:44think getting it done by the end of the year would be reasonable we could add in these steps make sure that we have a full public process and give time if there's other groups who want to compete with el cerrito wellness group let them come forward and see what they have to

1:36:00offer we aren't we don't want a monopoly and in a recreational marijuana act that's on the ballot they have specific prohibitions on monopoly control of the marijuana industry which i think is important because we know tobacco industry the pharmaceutical industry

1:36:24is looking very closely at a huge new profit center and that's not necessarily the type of business i'd want to encourage and the fact that this is a small operation that's very community oriented i think they'd have a good shot but you know we'll see how the process plays out

1:36:42so that's my proposal is that we do a hybrid process that takes the elements of number two and gets it done by the end of this year excellent thank you uh what i'd like to do is uh break this down into small incremental steps um and the first for me threshold question is

1:37:02do we consider lifting uh lifting the ban we did have a number of speakers both uh previously and tonight who all are as you say in favor of medical marijuana um so it's just sort of a straw vote do we before we give any guidance to to staff do we want to consider

1:37:24a medical marijuana distribution location one or more in el cerrito that's sort of a yes or no yes yes councilmember abelson i'm confused about the process i have to tell you that's why i'm i'm that it's not i'm i'm asking the question because we could all say no and then we're done right we

1:37:45don't we don't have to do anything i don't know i've seen i thought what we were doing is the the the process i'll get to that next year and then we figure out what we're doing do you want staff to consider a medical marijuana dispensary i want them to do the process that goes to the

1:38:02end of the year is that the question it could be two years it could be 20 months i don't mind them studying it for the ben for the purpose of figuring out the answer right okay but it bothers me on this or any other topic to have the answer predetermined before i do the study i'm i'm just

1:38:25asking if you want to have to consider lifting the ban the answer could be no and we don't lift the ban we don't even spend any time on it i don't understand a reason to to lift the ban [Music] uh i don't understand even the question because it seems to me if we lift the

1:38:43ban then we've already said there's i'm just asking if you want staff to spend time looking at ways where we might question that mark um proposed i believe and that is the next i would he's trying to break it down breaking it down just to a yes no question the next the if if

1:39:07the answer is yes that we we we as a council would like to have to move forward the band meanwhile no i don't want no that's not the question the question is do we research that do we go forward with spending time to i mean consider alternative ordinances during

1:39:21in between now and the end of the year i haven't that's the next question the timeline because the the question is a hundred days uh 175 days or 250 plus days that's the next question first question is do you want to consider it i've got at least four people who have said yes so i will

1:39:40move on to the next question the next question is guidance on the process of staff particularly the city manager could you live with that i live with what i haven't proposed anything yet 100 days that's not their that's not their pro that's not staff's recommendation

1:39:59sas recommendation i i'd like to be able to ask my question of the staff could you live with that this is my question the thing that mark proposed i think we will do the best we can with with whatever direction the council gives okay so so the question is that that i was

1:40:18trying to raise is what guidance do we want to give on the ordinance process and what i would like to say is that i would like to see a public pro meeting process i would like to see the results meeting processes that council member friedman has suggested including

1:40:32i would like to see as even the applicant said uh that they would um once the ordinance is complete they would they would like the proposal process to be uh to start so i would like to see the vendor application process to to to start at the conclusion of the ordinance process so so for me that's

1:40:55the process that's the sequencing that i would like to see um that's the type of guidance i think we should be providing tonight at and then we can get to we try and finish it in 175 days or 275 days um so so i council member friedman has suggested that we take all the steps that are in

1:41:17figure two and the one one request that i would make is an edit to figure two that the vendor application process would not start until the conclusion of the ordinance reading process and that that would be my request and that is what i heard the applicant uh also echo back to us

1:41:39did it not happen until after the ordinance reading correct so so line item seven vendor applications would begin after the ordinance reading concludes and that's just sequence don't look at the numbers across the bottom because that's just sequence but in schedule one it was simultaneous

1:42:00correct but we are we're i'm now looking at edits of schedule two ignoring the numbers across the bottom because that that we'll get to next do not make it simultaneous uh because uh for those exact same reason you said that we'd be nice to have the ordinance in place okay before we we before

1:42:19applicants begin choosing properties that they want to bring forward to us okay any any objections to that edit no i don't have a problem with that but i i don't want to micromanage the the process too much because i think once we get a consultant we may have a different

1:42:39timeline what i'd like to look at is the closing time not necessarily each element and that's and that's well this is this is important because it it does speak to um it does speak to the process in that okay so now let's tackle the big one which is our our goal of when we want

1:43:02staff to to get to that end product of of uh ordinance that's adopted which which is not of necessarily vendor application so that i'm just curious because what you were talking about council member was that friedman was the ordinance being adopted by the end of the year i believe is that is that

1:43:24correct the whole process the whole process in about 200 days versus versus 270 or 103 or whatever this is that thing goes over the line okay and it's about twice as long as number one and about you know two-thirds of what yeah two-thirds of two okay so so the again

1:43:50um and i'll make that a motion the motion is to uh ask give staff guidance uh on the sequence as well as the duration the duration being 200 days to the completion of vendor selection i have a motion vendor vendor selection is uh line item eight and so the the proposal is to to is that

1:44:16the end of that process would be 200 days all right i'm sorry i'm confused then which vendor of uh any purveyors in town yeah so we we would we would so there could be multiples okay and that's by day 200 conclusion by day 200 is the motion on the floor with the look at the dates i mean the

1:44:38time frame from one versus to the city attorney has i know it looks like it's 40 days and item two and only had 14 and the other i mean some of that as i as i as i put in my question to staff they they do they did testify earlier that they thought that some of the tasks could be shortened right right

1:44:56i mean even the ordinance reading was 30 and one and it's over 50 in the second one so yeah gonna buy some time right there so um i will second the motion that's on the floor for 200 until vendor application is that what you want to do the conclusion to that is

1:45:13the motion on the floor is to give staff guidance on the on the process using an expanded community process with the vendor applications starting at the conclusion of the reading of the ordinance concluding at 200 days under vendor selection concluding at 200 days

1:45:33i've got concurrence that i've read the motion correctly the motion maker has nodded yes the seconder is rounding yes so we have a motion by friedman seconded by bridges we have discussion on the matter calling for discussion seeing none i'll call the question all those in favor of

1:45:52a modified expanded community process as modified by the motion maker uh please say aye aye opposed abstentions let the record pass the record show it passed unanimously and with that i would like to thank uh interim chief keith and sean moss for their hard work on this

1:46:18matter uh for presenting this to us in a coherent way in such a short matter since we just met three weeks ago i really appreciate the hard work that you did on this thank you and yeah i'm not going to do a i'm not going to do a a bill i'm going to move on i had other

1:46:40thoughts but i'm going to leave them there let's move on to item c item c is our uh budget uh 7c is proposed fiscal year 2016 2017 and 2017-2018 biennial budget presentation uh we'll have a presentation from the city manager yeah sorry yes we took uh 7b out of out of

1:47:11order so that so that we could um have dave and his uh friends move on so thank you for coming there will be unanimously by the way and and there will be another opportunity for you to come when he when the actual proclamation is awarded okay mayor members of the council i'm scott

1:47:36hannon your city manager i want to thank you for the opportunity to be here to talk about and present our proposed biennial budget for the next two fiscal years um overall it's i think overall we're comfortable saying that most things about the budget are quite

1:47:57positive our revenues are solid our expenses are stable for the most part and i'll get into that we've filled a number of vacancies that we've had over the last few years we're starting to increase capital investment again and our reserves are going in the right

1:48:19direction uh there's always a need for more but after the last seven years we're really happy to see most of the numbers trending in the right direction in terms of what i'd like to cover tonight i'll briefly do a budget overview and i want to always come back to our

1:48:38strategic plan and our goals i mentioned that during this period we will be celebrating the city's hundredth birthday and as um certainly the council and many of the staff know i've just had a 15-year anniversary here so i wanted to take the opportunity since we're often

1:48:57rushing from thing to thing to do a little bit of a look back as it relates to our 100th anniversary but also my 15th and then i'll get more into the city finances including the overall operating budget as well as the general fund which we typically focus more on and then touch

1:49:17on all of the departments and talk about next steps so in terms of the strategic plan it's i believe it was last year that the council revisited the plan and made some adjustments but we still as staff and as hopefully as reflected in the budget book try to come back and ensure that we're

1:49:41following the goals that have been set by the council and just briefly those include to deliver exemplary government services achieve long-term financial stability or sustainability deepen a sense of place and community identity develop and rehabilitate public facilities as

1:49:59community focal points ensure the public's health and safety and foster environmental sustainability citywide and so when you go through the budget book you'll see that we try to tie what we're doing back to those goals and then as best as we can we try to put our resources behind those goals

1:50:19in terms of our 100th birthday as you obviously know the city council selected a centennial subcommittee that will oversee the celebration plans working obviously supported by the staff with many more things to come but we want to start that theme because it's going to be something that we're going

1:50:40to pick up and and run with over the next year year and a half in terms of my look back i often think you know as staff we don't either either have enough time or make enough time to sort of take a breath and look back on you know the things that we do and particularly the things we think we do

1:51:00well and there's a there's a fair amount of it that we've we do and have gotten done in the last 15 years i mean as you can see from the pictures some of the more notable things are obviously the cerrito theater this building i think about my time with councilmember abelson and

1:51:18councilmember friedman in 2001 we would be sitting right now in that room and the community center it's how soon we forget that there was there was the 21 years in trailers prior to this building we've obviously done a lot with infrastructure particularly along san

1:51:36pablo avenue and fairmont avenue we have our award-winning i think one-of-a-kind recycling centers we've done so much with our gateways and our identity as a city and it seems so long ago now but we actually during this time constructed the new swim center additionally

1:51:58as you recall we passed our voters past measure a which has essentially allowed us to go from the bottom five to the top one or two in the bay area in terms of our street quality and 95 percent of our streets have been redone or repaired uh in the in the time since

1:52:16the measure passed additionally you look around the city and how much we've done in terms of playgrounds parks open space rain gardens and it it really does go on and on when you look at other things particularly around public safety on the next slide in terms of our police

1:52:36department in this time span we've implemented our canine program our traffic division which includes motorcycle officers as well as bus officers many of uh if not most of our officers are now bicycle certified in the fire department all of our rolling stock vehicles and

1:52:55equipment are relatively new or new or very new including as you can see the picture of our ladder truck which we like to always point out that the department staff and particularly the chief went out and essentially got that truck uh at a million dollars grant funded

1:53:14um it's also important at times to remind people that during this time period we implemented a paramedic program where it was only 15 years ago where you wouldn't have paramedic response on our engines and in most cases our engines are the first ones to respond to

1:53:32medical calls so it's made a huge difference in terms of life safety in el cerrito and that's really been done very creatively and at minimal expense to our to our residents and businesses moving on there are a number of other things some of we've alluded to tonight are

1:53:52smoking ordinance which is probably one of the most progressive in the country as it relates to our budget we've gotten really good at winning budget rewards as well as uh awards about our financial statements we implemented our one percent for art ordinance which is resulting in more and

1:54:11more public art we implemented our school resource officer program which everyone is familiar with and during the same period largely due to our current city clerk we've done so much better in regard to openness and transparency and all of our records are online um the legislative history the

1:54:32building permits the building plans um and there there's still always more to do but uh it's sort of our our commitment to open government and data um is really transformational when you look at this period um particularly for council member friedman who loves planning um we i we

1:54:53don't want to forget that during this period we did the san pablo avenue specific plan our urban forest management plan our active transportation plan our climate action plan urban greening plan our complete streets and our ohlone greenway master plan and there are probably

1:55:08a few others i forgot um but but it but it really does take in a lot of staff time and public time and community involvement to get all those things done and hopefully they lay the guidelines and framework for us to go out and get grant money and money to get a lot of

1:55:23that stuff implemented and that's what you'll see in the next few years when you look at this budget you'll see the capital number up again that's that's because of grants we're able to get which which is directly related to the plans in terms of challenges in the future

1:55:41um we've talked over the last years about pers and our pension costs for those people who follow pers we anticipate significant increases again and that's something that we really see in the second year of this budget we have to continually manage changing technology we've done what i believe is

1:56:02a remarkable job with only two staff people uh dedicated to technology and uh our uh it manager james chan who's been here since i've been here will be retiring so that's going to be a big change for us in this budget we ask for approval during this fiscal year next fiscal year

1:56:24to hire a third i.t person the demands are continually increased um public safety alone could probably use more than the one person that's been dedicated to it with the the constant desire for record keeping online access more and more desire from our constituents for quicker

1:56:45more available information we have the constant challenge in balancing our demands to improve and increase services but also save money and when i say save money as you'll see while reserves are improving i think we would all like our reserves to go up even higher and it's a

1:57:04balance of how much to save and how much to spend in terms of our police officers we've talked over the years we have to continually focus on how to best recruit and retain our officers and as it relates to that um maintaining our school resource officer program which we think is been

1:57:24absolutely fantastic is going to be that much more of a challenge because i'm not sure whether the council let alone the public is aware that we've been notified by the school district that they will not fund the third officer next fiscal year we are not yet prepared to commit one

1:57:42way or the other about that third officer that officer will either be assigned ultimately to the school resource officer program or patrol but that'll be something that we'll need to discuss with you all in the future as well as the school district because we're really

1:57:56disappointed um in that just in that decision because we think it has just dramatically impacted the environment in both the middle school and the high school and we think it's a small amount of money to pay for giving our students a real proper place to learn in terms of our objectives as has been

1:58:18mentioned tonight we plan to come back in july to take steps to place a measure on the ballot in november for a new library we will be implementing and overseeing the general election in november that'll largely be our city clerk or almost entirely be our city clerk um our goal

1:58:39is to internally automate a whole array of things around payroll benefits onboarding applications code enforcement permitting to make our folks more more efficient and more responsive again as the technology is tested and becomes available and provide more access online to our

1:58:59services for our businesses and residents and we also want to start looking for funding hopefully outside funding because our general plan is in some sections is has gotten outdated and of course i'll keep harping on the 100th birthday celebration all of our staff is

1:59:19looking forward to helping support the committee in that additionally we have we hope to complete our new storm train master plan and identify what storm chain projects will need to happen we will oversee not so much oversee but work with and try to help facilitate

1:59:39what we what we see as a significant development along san pablo avenue that we believe will occur over the next year to two years based on the number of applications or pre-applications or discussions or property changes that we're hearing about we feel really strongly that we need to

1:59:59develop a long-range plan for our parks play fields open space and recreational facilities that is not included in the budget at this time because we just haven't scoped it and bid it out so we don't exactly know the cost but you can anticipate us coming back during next fiscal year

2:00:18for authorization to go forward and again we are going to be actively recruiting constantly for new police officers tying it back to our specific plan or strategic plan on the next slide we try to match our resources to the goals and as you can see the majority of our resources go to

2:00:43public safety and providing exemplary service there's there's a whole lot of overlap between these goals so you know this is trying to be somewhat representative of the resources and you can move things i mean everybody wants to provide exemplary service so you

2:00:57could say that's 100 but we thought it would be helpful so you can at least see how we visualize our resources related to your plan goals in terms of the organization it's largely staying the same there's no significant changes in our structure or departments so it's what it'll remain as

2:01:19as i believe you're all familiar with moving forward to the numbers we're going to talk about the citywide budget first and then the general fund and the special funds i will say at the risk of being redundant or repetitive i mean the assumptions for one are largely similar for the

2:01:39other i mean the general fund makes up um a significant portion of our overall budget and is our really day-to-day operating fund whereas the special funds are really targeted largely towards public works so when we talk about staffing and how those things change it's largely similar

2:01:56in both the operating fun all the operating funds and the general fund so when we talk about key assumptions um we ha and i'll get more into this in a little bit staffing has increased we have done a significant amount of hiring this fiscal year we still are assuming that we have about 11 vacancies

2:02:15next fiscal year over the last few years as you're aware all of our employees are now contributing eight to twelve percent of their salaries toward our pension costs recently as part of dealing with our long-range property management plan and our installment payment plan

2:02:35with the issues that we are having with the state department of finance and redevelopment uh you authorized a loan between the municipal services corporation and the general fund to help us implement the installment payment plan that's a one-time number in terms of salary savings we were a

2:02:53number of years ago at an all-time high of almost two million dollars and this year it's about nine hundred thirty thousand dollars of that 539 000 is in the police department based on their current staffing levels and where they're likely to recruit and retain

2:03:08uh next fiscal year that number will hopefully be smaller but it we thought that would happen this year and it's bigger this year than we thought it would be and for the first time in a significant number of years the general fund is contributing 164 000 dollars to capital

2:03:24improvements of our largely our facilities and uh play fields play fields playgrounds uh parks we'd love that number to be a lot higher because we think the needs are there but we think with developing the plan in the future we we will find it'll help us find a way on how to fund it

2:03:47uh the fire department is fully staffed once again operationally although we do hold three positions vacant and this is consistent what we've done for years and years and years it's it's more cost effective to not hire the additional three positions but rather fill them with overtime and there's no

2:04:02objection from the staff to do that we will still use contract help in some areas including economic development planning and housing to deal with uh the workload and as we're trying to find a way to backfill for the loss of our redevelopment staff we do i mentioned already mentioned the

2:04:26master plan for facilities we are projecting about a 237 000 surplus next fiscal year and that during this time period our reserves will increase to around nine percent which is up from the little below five percent we were at a couple of years ago so we are happy about that

2:04:47um getting into the numbers i'm not going to spend too much time getting into the weeds you all have the the book and the detailed numbers so as you look at the numbers i'm going to talk a little bit about some of the assumptions uh on the revenue side property taxes

2:05:04have been up significantly that has to do with during the prior time periods those uh properties that were reassessed downward during the recession have been put back to their prior levels and in terms of property sales as you're aware um home prices have gone up

2:05:23just dramatically they're well above now where they were at their prior peak and homes generally in el cerrito are selling for 15 to 17 above asking price so we we are obviously seeing that um we're also seeing that in terms of commercial property and we do expect the

2:05:40property tax numbers even better than we have here if the properties that we think are changing hands on the avenue actually do change hands sales tax has been steadily increasing not dramatically increasing but it's steadily it's steady and sound during the prior period you see the bump

2:06:00that's when measure r was passed and we started collecting that revenue the council previously approved the master fee schedule at three percent and then in the other property lines uh throughout you'll see an increase which is a bump related to grants related to capital projects

2:06:24uh overall on the citywide side similar to what you'll see in the general fund the expenses for related to the capital and related to the grants are up equally on the revenue and expense side personnel largely drives the increases all all employees are subject to cost of living

2:06:44adjustments this year whether they're in collective bargaining agreements or subject to the management resolution and again the change has to do with the number of vacancies being filled during this fiscal year and then being full-time next fiscal year and then i

2:06:59believe three three positions or so being filled at some point during next fiscal year in terms of spending by department you can see there's a jump related to capital and that's grant funded so we our staff has done a great job as you know over the years of finding grant

2:07:17opportunities um this is largely related to projects around both bart stations that we were taking the lead on with bart's support is driving a big piece of that again it's our spending is consistent with what it's been in prior years with police and fire by far being the two biggest

2:07:39departments when we look at the general fund which is our major operating fund i think most importantly the thing people like to look at as i mentioned is the increase in our projected revenues we i think there are while there are some issues around our timing of revenues and

2:08:01revenues receipts we are pretty comfortable that we can get to around the nine percent mark during the during the budget period and related to that as you can see in the two years we have projected surpluses we would again love those surpluses to be bigger but we thought that was the best we can do

2:08:21without council direction to change some of the levels of service we might be providing in terms of the general fund revenue there's one thing i want to point out that was brought to my attention so i want to clarify it's it doesn't actually change the bottom line at all or it's the total tax

2:08:42number for 1415 actual it's actually the same number that's in the book but within those numbers the property tax number that you see in front of you this 6804 that is the same as the city-wide revenue number in the book we actually had the general fund number a little bit

2:09:02higher than the city-wide number and that's been corrected and the the balance has been moved down to other taxes so that way general fund revenues equal city-wide revenues in terms of property taxes so if you're really looking very carefully at the numbers you might see that little

2:09:18discrepancy again it doesn't change the bottom line at all our revenues again we believe are all doing fine when we look at our revenues as already mentioned we have strong increases in property taxes and property reversals the one area where we have gone in the other direction and

2:09:40once again we'll go in the other direction as we've brought our utility user tax revenues this seems to be a theme i'm looking at councilmember bridges because she always makes a face when i say this but we brought the utilities or tax revenue projections down by another 200 thousand dollars um

2:09:54we in looking at it in spite of the fact that the utilities obviously raise rates the migration away from either cable tv or landlines and just the changing technology is just outpacing any of the rate increases as it relates to our revenues again fees were increased by 3

2:10:18and we project our grant revenues to increase in terms of general fund expenses when you look at the chart it's largely driven by personnel we have 11 vacancies as i've mentioned uh which is almost a million dollars in salary savings uh we've assumed three percent cost of

2:10:39living adjustments for the employees for many well three percent for many of the employees others are governed by collective bargaining agreements but it's they're typically around three percent i mentioned the fire department vacancies and the police department

2:10:52vacancies already and in other cases expenses are really still relatively flat or increase increase very modestly in terms of staffing as we've talked about staffing drives our budget and we're between 75 and 80 percent of our budget as staff uh we are our the head count that we are

2:11:15requesting is 177 almost 178 i did want to point out that in fiscal year 09 which wasn't that long ago the city council approved 192 positions so during the last seven years we have actually eliminated 14 i have roughly 14 positions that aren't even reflected on

2:11:36here and then you add the 11 that are vacant you're talking about 20 a change of as many as 25 staff people and you can imagine 25 staff people for a city our size goes goes a long way i don't envision in the foreseeable future um really getting below the 177 getting

2:11:55above the 177. i i hope we actually get to the 177 at some point but i don't see us ever going anywhere near the 192 again um as much as we all try to forget about the dissolution of redevelopment and how unfortunate it's been for our city and many other cities it is important to

2:12:17bring up periodically as the council is aware we are waiting for our second lawsuit uh which is on appeal to be heard in sacramento and as of at least last week we didn't have a date i'm looking at the city attorney but we still don't have a date for our appeal

2:12:34the general fund has you know annually still about six hundred thousand dollars behind since we've lost the redevelopment agency we did prevail in our first lawsuit with the state our our housing position that was funded by redevelopment will remain vacant and as

2:12:51you realize has been coming up more and more at council meetings housing and particularly affordable housing is becoming a bigger and bigger issue we are going to try to backfill in the short term with consultants and specialists as much as we can as we look at our housing element and

2:13:07look at housing regulations in the city we used to also provide more training for if you remember we did entrepreneur training small business training um we're not we haven't funded a number of that for since the agency went away and we're not proposing to fund it now

2:13:23and um unfortunately it just leaves us with there was an additional million dollars in redevelopment money that was available to help with economic development that that's gone so we are you know doing our best we can with limited resources to try to help uh along san pablo avenue particularly

2:13:41moving into the departments in city management as we mentioned during the the discussion and ultimate passage of the minimum wage ordinance that we would be coming back with adding a position in the city manager's office that would work on the minimum wage ordinance

2:14:03working with the other departments on better enforcing our smoking ordinance working more on legislation which we really don't spend enough time and then supporting our current staff with increased community outreach and social media and things like that that we just have not

2:14:18had the time and we really want to do if the if the council is going to make these legislative changes we want to make sure we can support them properly and that's what this staff person is doing i already mentioned we would be adding a second a third position in

2:14:34technology i do want to thank also as an aside thank the historical society i know who's worked with our staff to help with some of the pictures that we're trying to that we're sprinkling in throughout the book to tie it back to our 100th anniversary fortunately we don't look quite as grim

2:14:53as that group 99 years ago maybe at the end of this meeting we'll look that grim i yeah i was going to say it it looked pretty much well it looks different but they all they wear ties um it's a new day it's a new day they were all men too did you notice that the

2:15:15woman in the front row she's the clerk they were all men in terms of the city management budget uh that they're really the only changes in uh personnel which is just rolling with the new staff and the cost of living adjustments and any salary adjustments in terms of community development

2:15:39the major difference for next year is adding back a second analyst position as you recall it used to have three positions we've been going with none and then one and now we're trying to put back the second one at sort of the middle of the year uh to focus on advanced planning and

2:15:58um economic development and similar the the theme that you'll see is we're trying really hard to keep most expenses relatively flat and then personnel riding up with inflation and any new hiring that we do in the finance department i'm glad to say very glad to say after

2:16:20working through the budget in the last month is that we have a new finance director starting on monday and finance will be fully staffed as you see on the chart uh which is something we're really excited about and i'm sure the staff is really excited about in terms of the fire budget uh the one

2:16:40change or one edition that i would add or there's two financing uses you see are up a lot that has to do with uh the council authorized or will authorize no i'm sorry has already authorized um the refinancing of the redevelopment agency bonds and that'll move into the city side and then

2:16:58i'll hit the financing costs hit the expense side and the additional property taxes as a result will hit the revenue side additionally uh in the professional services we've included money for a new uh fee study to take a new fresh look at the master fee schedule partic with a

2:17:18particular emphasis on the building fees to try to simplify simplify those uh so we hope to be coming to you relatively soon a contract for that study we want we do want to get it done before the next master fee schedule on the next page you see our old ladder truck

2:17:41the fire department largely remains the same uh as i mentioned we have we're going to keep three vacant positions the department has hired a number of people uh due to retirements in the last two years and so they're going through a transition of both new staff and promoting staff from

2:18:00within which we're always happy to happy to do and when you go through the budget book you can see how much training and what the emphasis for the department is in the coming year the fire department budget is similar to the rest of this department's funded largely by the general fund is driven by

2:18:23personnel costs and um additionally our contract with with kensington where we provide ezra where we provide fire service for kensington and that contract rolls with the expenses for the fire department police structurally remains the same no new positions we are hoping to

2:18:48use a corporal position to focus on spend a significant amount of their time on code enforcement on complex code enforcement issues working with community development and other departments we also as you're aware i've had a number of uh we we have and will have a number of

2:19:05meetings related to body-worn cameras and that's something we plan to bring to council during the year is authorizing us to implement that program in addition to everything else that the department is doing around training particularly in light of everything going on the last year

2:19:21around policing and interact interactions with the public i did want to point out in personnel services you can see the big increase in the police department budget i picked this one because uh it's our largest apartment you can see the big jump in personnel and that's almost entirely

2:19:39related to pers so that is something we're going to have to deal with uh next year uh as i mentioned um all of our maybe i didn't mention it yet but our collective bargaining agreements all come up during this budget period uh public works uh we are happy to say that we are

2:20:01at least proposing to put back our environmental analyst as you're aware our prior analyst was promoted and we didn't fill that position uh because of our climate action plan and and any number of other initiatives we need to do we feel in order to stick with our

2:20:20stick with our goals as a city we need someone focusing on the environmental issues whether that's water energy purchasing on and on so we hope to be recruiting a new person for that position during the during the fiscal year as you're aware the public works department uh

2:20:38for the most part oversees all of our capital program they've identified in the book about 36 projects 20 of which are funded and we hope to see in design or construction if you look at the graph you can see the active construction contracts doubling recently and we hope uh

2:21:01as we staff up and get our plans done um we'll be really much more competitive for grants and the ability to to really re-energize our capital program even beyond what we've been doing you can see on the next slide some of our major projects they're around the greenway and the bart

2:21:25the interface of the bart stations and the greenway our street improvement program will continue we have a number of parks projects uh upgrades to the swim center and uh store our storm drain master plan and in public works in terms of their expenses what i want

2:21:43to hire what i want to highlight is you can see that between 2015 and 2017 the big jump in their budget um as you're aware you know as things got tight i think public works by far took the biggest hits um during the budget and and really carried a lot of vacancies and really

2:22:08limited what they can do and last year in the prior year the council authorized us to start putting more money back freeing up the special funds to do what they are supposed to be doing and start having the general fund do some of that some of the back filling but we're

2:22:26really happy to see that uh number up by over a million dollars because i think it'll really show uh for for our city in terms of recreation you can see recreation has always been really popular in el cerrito that is el cerrito and in the rec department the structure

2:22:49is largely the same as as you're familiar with there will be some new new faces replacing folks that have been around for a long time in terms of the recreation budget it's the one department that i want to include um revenue numbers because i i've i continue to find it

2:23:10amazing that our department because it's so innovative and creative is able to generate almost four million dollars revenue for a city our side our size and while it doesn't cover a hundred percent of its costs um i think compared to most recreation departments it covers

2:23:26significantly more and while not every rec program is ever going to cover 100 percent of its cost i mean it is i do find it amazing that um the rec department has for everything it does it has a very small impact relative to the entire operating budget of the city

2:23:44um again similar to other departments most things remain relatively constant and um there's some small increases in in staffing but other than that i mean most things are pretty are relatively flat and you know throughout this throughout the staff we are really trying to keep uh

2:24:04our belts tightened and focus where there is money on the staff and keeping the staff here and making sure that we're competitive um with our neighbors because one thing that has changed over the last two years is uh particularly in police but we see it everywhere is that cities are hiring

2:24:19and they're hiring a lot and there are a lot of competition for the best staff right now so uh we have to be really cognizant of that in terms of open items i've already and and possible direction um i've mentioned we do have upcoming labor negotiations next fiscal year

2:24:38um and that's something we'll obviously be coming back to the council on and that's reflected in how we did the second year budget we will need to have a strategy related to those negotiations but just in general about the likely calpers increases we are as i alluded to um

2:24:57struggling with you know how much to spend and how much to save we would like over time to push the general fund reserves up to 15 it's my hope um that during this two-year period there is going to be significant one-time revenues that we have not included in the budget around

2:25:16development um that will help get that number back up over 10 but but that does remain to be seen and there may be others that you all think of that you want us to focus on so for the council's consideration the reasonableness of the assumptions in the book we tried to show that it's consistent

2:25:38with your goals and vision for the city and then it's consistent with a general council policy for next steps uh i'm here as well as uh representatives from all the departments if there are questions or comments or clarifications that you would need or would like

2:25:58tonight we did try to get you the book the budget book out a couple weeks in advance i know it because of our abbreviated schedule in june and hopefully that was helpful in the past we have often handed it out the night of the budget meeting so we tried to get ahead of that we

2:26:15realized there have been some changes on the fly over the last few weeks but um in terms of the actual two-year budget numbers they have not changed although we continually clean up the book i welcome any comments you may have as well as tomorrow night we meet at the

2:26:30financial advisory board um we'll we will make any cleanup items up that anybody finds we'll get as we always do between the proposed and the and the final uh so we'll be asking you to consider the budget for adoption uh we are planning to do that on the 21st next week at your regular

2:26:49meeting if for some reason based on input tonight or between now and the next few days we could schedule another meeting for the 20th or the 22nd if you feel that that's necessary as always i want to thank the residents and businesses of the city for their support and trust

2:27:11the council for its direction and leadership the financial advisory board they have already met twice that i've attended and i'll be there tomorrow night rlr staff who stop who find time to work on these on the budgets in the midst of everything else and i think you all know and are familiar

2:27:34with our department heads and what a great job they're doing in terms of leading our city and their dedication to the city of particular note karen and shannon stacy and suzanne all jumped in the last couple weeks to get the book produced and checked and hopefully

2:27:53as accurate as it can be so with that we'd be happy to take any questions or comments as you can see we once again won in the most recent years both the budget awards for both our financial statements as well as our budget so we hope to can do that again after this

2:28:11year so if you have any questions or comments or direction we're all here for you thank you questions for staffs council member bridges so from what i heard you just say um one of my questions is going to be fab hasn't made comments but preliminarily they have seen this once or twice

2:28:33they've they've had um the budget numbers for i want to say a month okay i mean it's evolved um and they've been getting uh the book as quickly as you have okay i just wanted to know if they had any other comments but i guess we'll stay tuned for that um i think it's already been pointed out

2:28:54that um page 27 in the text there's a um a statement that says we have nine vacancies but that's really supposed to be 11. i think you already knew that um so the two so sros that are currently being funded are being funded by the school district but not the third but the funding that we

2:29:15have for the two that we will have is still from the school district correct funding source all right um the online systems i think is really good i think our residents our staff and businesses and with business license and all that um i think that's going to be a nice

2:29:31upgrade for us and um i don't know if james is going to be around to help with that i don't think it's actually functioning yet but i think that's really a good improvement so i just wanted to comment about that because it's something that i think we've been looking forward

2:29:44to we all have known for years that lad isn't really contributing to what it should be as far as the fields and buildings and parks and what have you so i think having a master plan is actually a really good thing and i would like to put my two cents in that i think we should move forward with

2:30:06something like that we've done a pretty good job with some of our fields we've done a pretty good job with some of our playground equipment but i think our buildings are pretty much lacking and i think the other big hit that we had this year was the problem that we had

2:30:20with our trees that you know we had to take out a lot of trees out of our parks and from what i can see there's probably a few more that need to go um so if we could have some sort of a plan and and budget for that that would be good because it's just been overlooked for a

2:30:36little too long and it's a nice asset for the city um and of course i'm not going to let you go by without once again commenting on page 23 about the uut that actually um on page 23 i actually think that in 1718 it did increase a little bit you increased it but it seems like every

2:30:57time we have a mid-year review um it gets knocked down so i don't let's see 20 duh hang on yeah so it went from 30 uh 3.1 to 3.2 i mean it's not a lot of money but i don't know why it necessarily increased so since you brought it up i thought i'd just hammer it one more

2:31:20wishful thinking yeah i know exactly and i don't imagine it will go up in reality and then my last comment about body cameras i think we've been we've talked about that a little bit or at least i've talked to the acting chief about that and i think we've been looking forward

2:31:36to him from what i understand that has been budgeted but my question about that is has it been budgeted for both the cameras and the storage capacity i mean is the whole kit and caboodle or is it just the cameras or i don't know which is more expensive if they're 50 50 or if the storage capacity

2:31:54is real really where the money is or it's me uh paul keith your interim chief of police again uh the whole kid caboodle okay thank you so and storage is uh more expensive than the cameras but i thought negligibly negligibly sole so storage comes out to be about 76 000 the

2:32:12cameras are about 55 000. okay all right thank you sure um anyway so um i'm glad to see that our reserves went up we kind of knew that from our mid-year budget review and it's probably a little higher than what we thought so that's really good and i think it's um

2:32:34good thank you for in particular your hard work that's what i'm here for uh councilmember friedman any questions yeah um can we go to one of the first few slides where you have the organizational chart please the overall one yeah keep going there we go okay my question is about the city attorney

2:33:16it has city attorney reporting to city council i know technically that's true he essentially acts as our attorney but we don't negotiate his compensation we don't review his performance we don't directly set up his work priorities you do that and i guess we de facto

2:33:34delegate that to you as the city manager but i think it would be it needs to be clarified because if we are his direct employer we should be doing these things and we're not well i would say you do set my compensation and do negotiate it um just in the budget there's the line item

2:33:54the city council approves the contract with my firm and that's negotiated um process and um the city council has not reviewed my performance for some time but ultimately the city council is responsible for doing that and we can set up a new performance evaluation if

2:34:10that's the case but legally i the city attorneys does report to the city council i mean there is a most day-to-day coordination of course occurs with the city manager um but ultimately the city council the city attorney is appointed by the city council and reports to the city

2:34:27council and and we did do the hire because i remember i was personally involved yeah i didn't mention that i wasn't around at that time but i remember when we had a shift from uh howard stern to uh no janet no well yeah howard janet back before you jan barely yeah i think it just needs to be

2:34:50clarified and if we are you're if you report directly to us then i think we should do some of these things that we don't currently certainly we set your work priorities when we say we're going to have a medical marijuana ordinance and then you have to do a lot of work on it or minimum wage ordinance

2:35:08etc so i just think it needs a little bit of clarification um other than than that i think my major concern is on the reserves in uh expanding revenue scenario which you articulated extremely well to only be able to go from nine percent to nine point two percent doesn't seem like

2:35:34enough i would love to get to ten percent and uh you know eventually when other things take place one of which might be revenue from uh medical marijuana or a variety of other things we should be able to get over that 10 percent but do you see any way we could get to the 10 i know our

2:35:54ultimate goal is 15 percent like i said i i mean the the best chance medical marijuana side is development along san pablo avenue and and we typically in building and planning particularly try not and and in property taxes try not to budget for development that may or may

2:36:15not happen unlike any of the years that i've been here we think a lot will happen that's that's not really reflected in here um i think that's if that if a significant portion that happens i think we'll push over 10.

2:36:32in terms of the budget i think short of you saying don't hire somebody or don't do something um that we're reflecting in here and cutting back on some expenses and no i i don't um i would need some further direction i think we spent a lot of time trying to get the number

2:36:53um up over um 200 000. i think if you look at the original department submissions um that number was over 2 million so it takes weeks to get it down to 200 000.

2:37:08so i really think we have to look at what we do on the expense side i'm i'm really reluctant to push the revenues harder than we have um i i think if they're better than we think then like we did this year we don't we don't spend it and the number goes up so well the other the other concern for

2:37:30that is with the our problems with the dof and then also calpers i mean there's a big question mark there so even though property tax and other things might go up it might get eaten up by these other things that's it councilmember quinto yeah i have a few things i also have a concern about

2:37:58the reserves right now you said they're at uh by the end of the year possibly 9.1 and and i really would like to have that at 15 and i know that sounds like an impossible uh goal but i i believe that we can do this in a combination of what you said you know adding more businesses

2:38:21here on san pablo avenue more housing and i want to make sure that we work hard in doing that and that's my goal to make sure that we never get below six percent ever again that was dangerously low and i believe in making sure we have the funds and we don't go broke um my other

2:38:42concern is as councilmember bridges mentioned is the body cameras i want to make sure that our police have the necessary means to protect themselves and my colleagues and other cities their cities have had that already and mentioned to me that there are grants available to pay for all of that and so

2:39:03i hope staff can look at that and we can all look at that together and make sure they have that if they want that also i do like the idea of automation and bringing the office services like payroll to the 21st century and i think it's about time that we do this so i'm all

2:39:25for that as well my concern is so right now you're saying that eight to 12 percent of pers of of employees pay for uh their pensions then is that correct so all employees pay for eight to twelve percent of their pension costs what is uh what is the norm and that

2:39:46what is your goal and uh in the in the long range that right now is the employee share so if you know again everything is going to be subject to negotiations and if you go beyond that number you'd be asking the employees to pay what is typically the employer's share

2:40:07so that's not there there are certainly cities that have done that okay that's something we would have to look at okay i do like the idea of trees um driving out here in the flatlands through my neighborhood we we have a lack of trees i'd like to make sure that we can use

2:40:32other non-profits like the sierra club to help us plant trees that are available through different non-profits and i see our neighbors in richmond and and oakland and berkeley doing that it's important for el cerrito to do that as well at my park at canyon trail park uh we do

2:40:53have a lot of trees have that have been down and not replaced and uh yeah so the importance of trees the flatlands is one of the main goals that i'd like to work on as well thank you i have one more thing i just also wanted to acknowledge that we received a statement from eqc that was

2:41:14on the dais tonight and that they were going to begin to explore enhancements to the city's environmental preferred purchasing policy and they continued on saying they believe the city's environmental policy should be a high priority when it comes to the budget and purchasing that

2:41:33following such policies can lead to immediate and future cost savings so i just wanted to acknowledge that it sounds like we'll probably hear a little bit more about this from them um this coming fiscal season but um just wanted to acknowledge that this was here and

2:41:49wasn't part of the book councilmember ableson questions i would agree with what was just said about the environmental purchasing policy [Music] i actually think we've done a pretty good job of using recycled materials on our paper products when i've looked into it

2:42:15and i appreciate that but i always think we can try harder on things like that i was really pleased to see the positive turn of of our finances uh this year relative to last year i do have to make a comment about the trees it was just at the tree committee meeting last night and this is

2:42:41not a good time to plant trees because of the water shortage and unfortunately a lot of trees are dying and it's mature trees it's a lack of water so i think we might although i think we all want to plant trees i think we need to realize that we have to do it when we

2:43:07you know you know when we're not in a drought situation right i um i wanted to mention that uh the cities of richmond berkeley and oakland um they're in the process of planting right now and and especially during the rainy season so um seeing all the planting that they're doing

2:43:25um you know i truly believe that we can do this well my i'm not sure if our with young i mean we need to start out with young trees we need to do that but we need to it's very important to do it at the right point in time and um and we and right now things are dying

2:43:48and that wouldn't normally die usually if you water a tree for a couple of years then it gets well established and you don't have to do that and these are trees that are beyond that two-year period so anyway i just wanted to bring up what the tree committee was

2:44:08um saying about it and um i could consider them the experts since i think a lot of them have phds in the subject which is rather amazing tell you that there are trees okay i'd like to move on if i'm if i might the um the reserve level is a vast improvement in a relatively short period of time

2:44:32over where we were and that's that i think is very good news i know that that if it can quickly go up it can quickly go down so we do have to be careful about what we do and i am hopeful that by encouraging the businesses that appear to be um coming del cerrito and the

2:45:06properties that look like they may exchange hands and be developed on san pablo avenue i think that's one of the most positive things that we can encourage to happen and support in happening to make that happen i think it is is really the key to making things go up

2:45:33i do think though that um anything we can do in our um in supporting the approval of applications and and so forth in that department losing my voice i'm sorry um i think that that will help make that happen and encourage people to want to do that kind of development

2:45:59in el cerrito and i think i have to stop talking right now see my voice sorry okay it's okay so i've got a series of questions and comments as you might imagine uh i first want to thank you for your work and and uh shannon and stacey for their support of you that this is

2:46:20continues to be one of the more readable documents that are out there um one of the and i've had the occasion to look at a number of different cities budgets i i want to again uh thank you and direct uh people viewers from home or an audience to appendix six where there is a

2:46:41um 27 29 31 page uh report of of all of the different line items that go into our budget uh that that you can use to verify numbers that are in the book uh which which i did do um so uh i and and i want to point out the in in your letter i want to highlight a few

2:47:05things page two you say that the new challenges have emerged including an increased homeless population a shortage of affordable housing and the advent of online short-term rentals so i want to acknowledge that those are things that we are taking seriously as we move

2:47:23through this budget um and and you talk about some of the of the things that uh the achievements uh delivering exemplary services etc under insure the public's health and safety i i would encourage you to include the passing of the smoking ordinance the passing of the minimum

2:47:41wage ordinance and and our housing element which was adopted recently those all do indirectly or directly address public health and safety so i certainly want to do that i want to highlight the last bullet under overall challenges which is developing funding sources for

2:48:01a new public safety building and library to replace the current aging and outdated facilities i i would suggest that you add a senior center to that list between those three facilities we we are looking at 50-year plus structures for for some of our uh critical services that we provide to the

2:48:25public our public safety building our library and our senior center under key objectives uh you you have on page six you have a a a bullet in here improving the delivery of services and confidence in the planning and building division through providing better public information more

2:48:45efficient online services and establishing innovative programs for solving complex zoning issues one item that the county has done that supervisor joya mentioned to me was an amnesty program for um [Music] for improvements that were done without necessarily the appropriate

2:49:06permits in the amnesty program that he's talking about is waiving any penalties as people come forward to get past work permitted so that all of our housing stock is as safe as as we want them to be in compliance with building codes so so i was curious if if that's what establishing innovative

2:49:26programs included it could be okay um i would like to echo uh comments from my fellow members about the master plan for the parks um and and trees and although a drought is not necessarily the best time to be plant a tree there are um there are planting techniques that can be done

2:49:47to reduce the amount of water that's needed planting from acorns planting from very small seed stock to that end i would like to encourage a um and this goes to public safety and i see the fire chief in the back there scribbling this down feverishly it's the removal of the

2:50:06eucalyptus trees in the hillside natural area not only is it a hazard from walking on the the trails from the eucalyptus seed pods uh but it's it's they're invasive and they're only getting larger and they're known uh to be a fire hazard so i would like to see some sort of effort to

2:50:28to deal with under under this key objectives i would love to see some sort of effort to address habitat conversion in the hillside natural area one of the things that when you when i go around this year as mayor and i'm talking to various people that comes up is pedestrian safety on

2:50:47our our walkways and so i've not seen in here any emphasis on sidewalk or street trees or vegetation that's encroaching on sidewalks so that's one area that that i would hope that uh the rest of the council would uh support me that that i know sidewalks and street trees to some degree

2:51:13depending on whether the resident planted them or we planted them it depends on who that the responsibility is um is not always known by our residents uh who's responsible for what and uh there but there are certain pedestrian corridors that are integral to our pedestrian

2:51:35management plan our active transportation plan that that the city should be taking taking lead on and i would like to see some of the use of some of our funds potentially to go towards that on page eight uh the fire department while fully staffed it says three authorized cover

2:51:53positions will remain vacant in chart d on page nine it says four or the number is four that contributes to the eleven um do you do you do you know which it it sounds like it's three but but there may be a four three firefighters but there's an administrative staff person

2:52:11that we've not filled excellent thank you moving on i would like to emphasize on page 19 as part of the budget process the following sentence the annual budget is the city's service and financial plan for the fiscal year a planning tool that matches the services desired by the community to the

2:52:38resources required in order to provide those services so that's the that's that is the whole point of this annual budget process is to match our what we want as as residents to what uh is available out there i wanted to confirm on page 23 i think you brought this up in your presentation

2:52:58that uh on table two one the values that are listed under fiscal year 2013 2014 for property taxes or various taxes we'll be changing that i wanted to confirm that's what i heard 1415 1415 okay um is citywide is it's actually fine for city why general fund uh was over property tax was overstated

2:53:24by a little so that is dropping down to other taxes to be more consistent okay and so citywide and general fund property tax revenues are the same great staying on that chart there is a line item called fines and forfeitures in the lower portion of that table there's a there's a

2:53:43line item for fines and forfeitures 326 000 uh next fiscal year 341 uh 9 980 uh in the next fiscal year um on if you could i didn't find anything on page 24 that sort of described what fines and forfeitures were i was hoping that you might be able to add a description of that and uh

2:54:08and and a basis for assumption of what uh of what that was um and and how you arrived at that to that end the assumptions on page 24 i felt were were appropriate so i want to thank you for outlining that moving into some of this the expenditure side on page 27 and in your in your presentation

2:54:38this evening you you mentioned that the the personnel costs remain relatively flat however when i look at the table 2-3 the first line item which is personnel between current fiscal year that's ending at the end of this month and next fiscal year it's almost a million dollar increase

2:54:58and between um that fiscal year that starts on july 1 and the fiscal year that starts july 1 2017 there's a almost a 1.4 million dollar increase you say it's remained relatively flat but that doesn't that's not what the numbers would would reflect and i'm just curious

2:55:20uh is it is it is am i reading it incorrectly maybe the number of personnel remain flat and it's the benefits that go up maybe that sentence is i mean relatively flat may not be the i don't know the best terminology um i'm trying to do the math but i mean i think

2:55:39it's relative four percent increase between uh 15 16 16 17 and almost a five percent or a little over a five percent increase so four percent over yeah over 48 million dollar i you know we could i could rethink that okay thank you um i do want to highlight and and this is um

2:55:58for residents at home to understand that when we go through our negotiations approximately a year from now we will have changes to these budgets on page 27 no salary adjustments are assumed for fiscal year 2017 2018 at this time as the major collective bargaining

2:56:19agreements all expire so any increases are yet to be determined what this means is we haven't negotiated any of our labor contracts for next year to put anything in here uh prematurely is negotiating too early and so uh this it but it also means the counter to this means

2:56:46we will be negotiating with them and any increases will have to be reflected in future budget adjustments in table 2-4 uh and this is where the number geek and me sorry for those at home that don't have the book in front of them uh in table 2-4 on page 28 uh police which is department 20 and fire

2:57:12which is department 25 the department subtotals for um for this is expenditures the department subtotals can be found in appendix 6 on page 9 if you choose to to dive into this and there's slightly different numbers than what is put into this table so i would ask that you

2:57:33verify those numbers my guess is the transfers are being treated differently yep that that's probably the truth um and uh to that so that that's for both uh fiscal years 16 17 17 18 for both uh department 20 police and department 25 fire um i i know i've asked you this uh the the

2:57:56six million two hundred and eighty thousand three hundred and seven dollars for both fiscal year 16 17 and 17 18 um the some of the the majority of that is substantiated in uh chapter 12 i think it is which is capital um but i would love to see a description of

2:58:18what that is it's the same in both years however that's not quite the same in table two 12-1 so i don't know if 12-1 also needs to be revised uh in um where is that table here it's coming up uh in on page 31 under the description of fund balance uh the projected

2:58:51table two 2-7 the second paragraph says projected end ending fund balances for fiscal year 1617 increased by 1.4 million across all funds what that suggests is that the bottom number in net change should be a positive 1.4 million instead of a negative 287 when we discussed this earlier

2:59:15you mentioned it has to do with the way the debt service funds are handled and and i'd like to have you confirm that and adjust this table accordingly going forward the table is correct that the 1.4 million is wrong oh okay so so we are we are so the 1.4 million is is wrong so we

2:59:40are actually showing a a decrease and to be clear on that that's a decrease as a result of using some of the special funds for example uh the measure a parcel tax fund is is decreased by um capital improvements that are projected so so that negative number the negative

3:00:03287 uh is accurate but that's a that's reflecting capital expenditures yeah all funds great thanks um just a it's a again minor in on page 32 you said staff estimates that about a million dollars annually is being lost as a result of redevelopment dissolution in your presentation tonight it was six

3:00:26hundred thousand um and in the next paragraph uh it it 1.2 million i believe that salary savings due to unfilled should be 930 000.

3:00:41on a table 2-8 when i look at total revenues for current year and this may have to do with the whether it's a 10-month projection or a 12-month projection in tables 2-2 and 2-8 and i believe there may have been text in both of those that said you were using may or may not have been using full year

3:01:06projection like you know no sorry it's in this paragraph it is in this paragraph for this table only the 2015-16 numbers were used rather than the then amended to better reflect current year projections so that so when i look at the general fund revenues on tables 2 2 and 2 8 they are different

3:01:26and they're different for that reason correct and and that's true of expenditures as well i did pull out some some old kaffirs to see how our since this was a two-year budget it's our first two-year budget that we've had we've not had actuals for 14 15 13 14 and 14 15 reported to us

3:01:48before so i did pull out the kaffirs to look and see how they would compare and what i noticed for comparing it to table 2-8 is that the unassigned ending balance deficits uh are identical for fiscal year 1314 and 1415 as what's presented in the kafir so i appreciate

3:02:11that however going to tables 2-8 which is revenue and table for general fund and table 2-9 which is expenditure to general fund there are differences and you've you have explained the difference to me is that it's as a result likely as a result of certain uh funds

3:02:36debt service funds not necessarily being accounted properly but i would love to see that love to have you come back and explain that to us uh next week the differences you're talking about yeah what why the the kafir 4 2013 2014 the kafir is is less like by almost 730 000

3:02:59which i guess is a a good thing that we had three quarters of a million more revenue the kafir was 28 million 248 249 000 while um your numbers from the back of the book is 28 million 977 thousand so it we have more revenue than than what the accountants accounted for

3:03:24and that may be again as a result of transfers or some other fund as you alluded to well i would also say and actually during the meeting i got an email on this from from the principal on our audit team um just to reminding us again that the the kafir and the budget are not the

3:03:40same documents so they don't always match and they're they're they're accounting for different things there may be audit adjustments that occur sort of after the fact so i mean we are we are comfortable that they tie back to each other if you had a bridge document

3:03:55but there are audit adjustments that our auditors make that may be reflected in the finance system ultimately but the you know but the budget and the kafir are prepared under different accounting rules and are different snapshots um in time but we are our auditor is

3:04:12comfortable as are the finance staff with you know the numbers reported in both and then we could try to provide a you know a little bit more clarity if you like if you could because as i as i mentioned when i look back at the actual cash on hand which is the unassigned

3:04:27ending funding balance deficit um you know is back in table 2.8 that matches up perfectly to the audited numbers so clearly um you know there is is a link there is a tie and and there is accuracy in the in the numbers you have uh but i but it since this was the first two year um

3:04:47the biennial i did want to do a little more research on that um i now going into past general fund into the specific funds um the major operating funds you uh talk about on page 38 the first bullet the top bullet in the second column is measure a swim center fund

3:05:08206.

3:05:10um i was unable to find a detailed sheet on uh on fund 206 so i'm hoping that you can add that before we adopt the final budget it'll be in the final book yep we'll put it in but yeah the accurate number is reflected in the budget appropriation but yes yes we can add it yeah

3:05:32descriptive sheet and it could come to us next week as a standalone if you want to do that uh i do um i did look at some of the assumptions in your expenditure assumptions and what there's a persistent increasing three percent per year thereafter in in many of the assumptions

3:05:56and in in most cases uh and that's not necessarily true in the gas in the 201 but in in many other cases the um the overhead transfers are identical in the the next fiscal year and the second fiscal year so i would i agree that you have increased them by three percent but i'm not

3:06:22certain that they increase each year thereafter uh if that was your intent we'll clarify um and that's and that's true on several of these funds going forward the you have in uh funds uh 202 and 203 202 is npds and 203 is landscape lighting and assessment district

3:06:48you have statements about annual shortfalls demonstrate the amount of revenues from other sources that will be needed to meet the clean water regulations under 202 and annual shortfalls in future years demonstrate the amount of revenues from other sources that will be needed to maintain

3:07:02current levels of landscape and lighting services under fund 203 actually the surpluses are positive in these in both of those and i highlight that because when i look at gas tax fund 201 there actually is deficit deficits in not only our current fiscal year but in the next two

3:07:28fiscal years and i was just curious if that annual shortfall warrants a a discussion in gas tax fund 201.

3:07:38um it it doesn't we aren't we still have a starting balance that allows us to do that so i'm i'm not certain that an explanation is necessary but i did want to point out that in that that case there is deficit spending over the next couple of years [Music] well

3:07:59um at the transportation authority what we've discussed is that um because of the rise in electric cars and alternative fuel vehicles that there is a decreasing amount of revenue that will come from that and they're talking about maybe they need to actually develop a use tax

3:08:23rather than a fuel tax for covering the costs of highways so it is it is of conce of concern and it's likely to continue and get larger so so in that online page 39 yeah the uh the first the under the revenues there is a slight increase between 16 17 and 17 18. there's a fairly large

3:08:52there's almost a 10 decrease between 15 16 and 16 17 but there is a slight increase between 1718 would you recommend that that increase not be i wouldn't i wouldn't put an increase in there after the discussions that i've been involved in no unless there's some information

3:09:15about transfers occurring at different you know and related transfers i've heard similar comments so i i would support i would ask you to reevaluate the revenue projection for taxes that uh somebody contact the transportation authority and and just see what they would

3:09:39recommend for a number um because it is it is of increasing concern sure and just just a reminder that um you're you'll only be approving one year and although you're pro budget book you won't we we will revisit the whole second year when we come back practice them

3:10:02and it could be by that time some major passes like that you know maybe hasn't even been developed yet or some legislation passes that will in fact [Music] cause the thing that i just described to happen because they are talking about it um and i think i don't have many comments until

3:10:35we get to um have a i have a formatting comment um in each of the departments you do have uh line items for the various funds and such but it doesn't sum anywhere in tonight's presentation you did a you did have a um like a summary for several of the departments and i was

3:11:06if not this year maybe next year if you could see a way to try and add all these numbers up so we can bring them forward on page 117 i wanted to bring this forward as part of my discussion on removing eucalyptus this chart is a wonderful chart of city tree pruning by fiscal year

3:11:29um and and what it what it suggests is that the more trees we prune the less cost it it is per unit so i just wanted to um since since uh tree trimming is one of the ones that i have had my ear bent on quite a bit um and that concludes my comments uh so i want to thank you for for answering

3:12:04those answers answering my questions i have one more first of all i want to say anybody who wants to understand what we do in city government and el cerrito needs to look at this document it is really much more than just a budget is a work plan to implement our strategic

3:12:23plan and it sets up all the priorities for the city for the coming in this case two years so this is a tremendous amount of work and all city staff had to contribute to this and especially thank the city manager for the last two months has functioned as our de facto finance

3:12:41director and treasurer also on top of everything else so really complement uh all the staff for the work they put into this and to implement the vision that the community and the city council established it through our strategic plan the original one and then the

3:12:59updates of it so thank you all very much for tremendous work um my question is regarding the tobacco ordinance enforcement on page 55 on the city manager's strategic plan alignment it's mentioned but on page 94 the priorities on strategic plan alignment for the police

3:13:25department there's no mention and i think this is a situation like council member quinto referred to grants may be available for the trees there may be grants available to help us with enforcement i appreciate ms ayrla and increasing our education of merchants in the community on the

3:13:46ordinance but it would be great if we actually had some resources available to enforce the existing ordinances and make sure that the ordinance which is a model and in fact the county has just adopted many of the provisions that we had in our ordinance that if we

3:14:07could step up our enforcement then we would really become uh even more of a model for leadership there and i know with all the things the police department has to do that this isn't going to rise to the top but i'd like to see it somewhere right with that we'll um

3:14:30without any more questions we'll go to public comment we have three requests to speak cordell hindler followed by howdy gowdy and nicholas arzio i almost fell asleep during the whole presentation so cuddle [Laughter] so cut well i'm sorry so codel handler richmond um

3:14:55i was looking at the presentations and um i think it seemed to be pretty good so so and i did did when i did notice that uh that swim center i was like yes we finally got a swim center how great so now so that was one so one of my concerns is uh and i think someone

3:15:12brought this up so i said some of these these vacancies that's been um that's been like eliminated so i said hmm i wonder how we can fill those gaps and i say hmm put in some heart getting some some young people to be working for um with those departments that i

3:15:29said oh that'll be excellent that'll generate bring bringing some revenue so i'm thinking this is a wonderful opportunity so so i would hold that thought till next week until you adopt um the plan so howdy all right good evening mayor lyman council members my name is howdy gowdy

3:15:57um so i do want to thank staff for you know this very comprehensive document um and thank you to council for acknowledging the letter that eqc sent and uh you know i wanted to reiterate that we're very interested in um encouraging the environmental thoughtfulness to be

3:16:22you know incorporated into all the city's business um but i you know i really appreciate the um uh in inclusion of um the environmental analyst position being filled i'm very pleased to hear that that's a possibility and i look forward to to seeing that come come to pass i think

3:16:48the environmental quality committee could really benefit from having you know more staff resources to interact with and i think i've kind of seen the um you know what we were able to get done you know come and go with with that position and um and so i'd really

3:17:10um encourage that uh that to take place um and you know just as a few examples uh i mean there's endless things that such uh an individual can work on but you know i think really helping us to implement and monitor our climate action plan are very important um elements that we need to

3:17:34get back to and and really uh continue to to work on so um you know there's there's a lot of little things you know i continue to advocate that you know the city should be looking at greening its its fleet of vehicles and adopting environment electric vehicle use more than it has

3:17:56and a very small thing that could help that is just you know budgeting for the resources to install dedicated charging stations i think the problems that the city's had with ev charging is sharing it with a public station so you know that's just a few thousand dollars that's something that

3:18:12could you know help give us more opportunities in the future to save money because it is you know lower operating and maintenance costs it can even be right now lower upfront costs so it's um you know all these things they have good potential to save the money especially especially over time so um

3:18:34you know there was damage to our solar panels at the community center from a tree falling and i'm concerned that you know that's i know it's supposed to be fixed by um you know insurance but it's like it's been months and i'm not sure really what the status is on

3:18:52the production implications of that because you know we are paying a debt service and maybe more electricity than we otherwise would so there's many avenues that need to be you know attended to so thank you very much thank you next hello i'm nicolas sarzio um i heard a

3:19:19city council member lamenting the city's current nine percent reserves and uh mentioned that the addition of more housing units on san pablo avenue might act to increase those reserves through i guess a net gain in property tax and i also heard the city well the first thing i'd like to say is

3:19:42that we should remember that just a couple years ago our reserves were at uh much less than nine percent so there has been a significant uh increase in reserves over the last couple of years i also heard the city manager say that he doesn't like to make projections

3:19:58about an increase in property tax related to increasing the number of housing units and i i have a similar concern with the san pablo avenue specific plans regulations including uh unlimited density i'm not sure if i would like to know whether there would actually be any net gain

3:20:24from any new structures built because with with the addition of new people comes increased demand for city services including more police more fire more maintenance on facilities more parks so if there's a lot more people added and there's a certain amount more

3:20:42property tax added will that amount allow for an increase to the reserves as the council member suggested or will it not and i think that's something that should be analyzed thank you oh one more thing i also like to echo mayor lyman's concern about the removal

3:20:58of invasive species in the hills including eucalyptus trees and also perhaps monterey pines or any other trees that propose a danger of green uprooting which can be a real danger to passers-by or buildings if the tree would were to fall over onto it without any notice thank you all

3:21:18right thank you any additional thoughts at this time is there any more speakers sorry no would anyone else like to speak at this time okay um coming back to council is there any more discussion i do have uh one other item that i wanted to that i forgot before that i would like to bring up

3:21:43sorry al but this this it's one that i um in on page six uh complete a fee study for building and planning and established development impact fees so future development pays its fair share of its impact on our city uh the the last speakers talked about balancing

3:22:00development with the with the increase in demands does this is there a way for us to um the conversation i had with one of the stage representatives suggested that steej only does incremental assessment of their sewer system as a result of each incremental development

3:22:21is there a way for us to potentially work on it in a more programmatic way to to address the the comprehensive uh changes that the development the san pablo avenue specific plan promotes and and that that that was something that i had written now that i'd forgotten to ask

3:22:39previously i think we can look at it and i would defer to the city attorney but i think we also need to be careful about you can't charge particularly the building fees we need to be careful about not charging for fees for not charging for projects that don't materialize correct so we really

3:22:54i think we can build in projections for um the expense side as well as the revenue side and have those reflected in the new fee study okay great did you get enough guidance tonight does there anything you need us to to uh do a straw poll or a five head nods or anything like that

3:23:21no i don't i don't think so i would just say as you you know if you continue to go through the the material please feel free to send questions or comments so we can try to get get answers out uh prior to the next meeting so i just for the public maybe it would be nice to um state what the

3:23:40what is likely to happen in terms of process yeah my understanding is that we will meet again uh next week and there will be a agenda item with a resolution that authorizes the city the city a a budget will have a separate resolution on the gan limit um and uh that collectively those two actions and

3:24:07there might be even a well actually for the municipal service corporation we'll have to do it in the pension plan pension board each one of the right so we'll have a number of resolutions that will bring brought forward forward to us next week that constitute adopting our budget

3:24:24um and that the actual budget we adopt will reflect the comments that we gave tonight and then after that they there will be a a nice uh budget book wait this is the wrong one that's the current one is this one i think there'll be a nice biennial budget book that's produced that is the adopted that

3:24:45represents the adopted budget thank you um with that i will conclude item 7c which was a concurrent city council public financing authority and employee pension board item and we'll move on to item eight which is council local and regional liaison assignments and reports

3:25:12nothing yeah i think i already did mine earlier i think you did looking to my right all right i will be attending uh the next abag meeting this week and uh hopefully at that meeting we will find out uh uh specific dates on the merger with mtc and abec excellent um west county

3:25:37west contra costa county mayors met and um we had a presentation from richmond on ways to use their litter tax that they're going to be bringing forward to their residence in november to pay for their new uh national pollution and elimination discharge system so they

3:25:56they are using uh they're they're following in the footsteps of san francisco to use a litter tax essentially to try and implement cleaner water also the west contra cross county mayors we signed a letter to the governor requesting funding or at least research of funding

3:26:18associated with cameras along highway 80 to address the ongoing gun violence on the freeway subsequent to that letter we did have a meeting with the secretary of transportation who oversees caltrans which monitors the any improvements in the right-of-way so they they are

3:26:46responsible for overhead signs cameras license plate readers whatever what might be instituted the secretary of transportation also oversees california highway patrol they're responsible for persecution or prosecuting that not persecution prosecuting prosecuting

3:27:06criminals that that have this violent behavior in our highway they have members from both caltrans region four which is here in san francisco as well as uh golden gate uh section of uh california highway patrol were present at this meeting uh we were briefed on their

3:27:26efforts to close some of the crimes and potentially put up some of these [Music] monitoring devices for the purposes of closing cases the meeting did conclude that caltrans with the department of transportation being the lead on trying to solve these cases and figure out how to

3:27:52improve our data collection for the purposes of solving crimes on the freeways and and hopefully there is an ongoing uh set of meetings locally that will be occurring at a higher frequency so that although the next one was not scheduled until july um there was there was an effort to move

3:28:15it forward so i'm not keeping abreast of all the task force meetings that are getting into the nuts and bolts of this but it may have already occurred or be occurring later this week also i on our behalf i attended the contra costa mayor's conference and our speaker did not show the major

3:28:35action we took was to extend the term limits of the current library commission to allow them to explore the what the library commission does and and potentially reform at it and we filled a few regional positions on one of the ones that council member friedman vacated which was the economic

3:29:00east bay economic development alliance and one of the airboard positions and that is that concludes my presentation on uh regional items and unfortunately we've lost most of our audience but those that are reviewing at home we'll hear that we'll hear that we are adjourning this special concurrent

3:29:24city council public financing authority and employee pension board meeting uh we will be meeting again uh on tuesday june 21st which is a week from tonight at 7 p.m and i enjoy adjourned this meeting with a moment of silence honoring the 49 lives that were lost in orlando on

3:29:47sunday thank my you you