Regular City Council Meeting May 2, 2017

0:03:26she brought them that on thank you welcome to the el cerrito city council meeting this is our may 2nd meeting and we will begin with the pledge of allegiance or observation of a moment of silence if you care to join us i pledge an excuse me it's led by council member paul pavadilli

0:04:19see the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and um roll call yes uh council member fidelity here council member lyman president councilmember pardou akomoto present

0:04:47vice mayor quinto president and mayor abelson president thank you and now we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is council and staff communications are there any rochelle would you like to start sure so last week i was able to go to sacramento to see

0:05:14the hearing on sb 562 which is the single-payer health care bill there were over a thousand people there that rallied in support of single-payer health care for the state of california and it did pass its first hearing or its first hurdle the senate health committee

0:05:36and it will be going on to the appropriations committee next that's all any other reports that's all last week i attended a uh a ground opening uh ceremony for hana gardens which is right next door at the former trade way building and i was joined by my colleagues here on the city council

0:06:00an amazing experience to see an old building that's been here in the city as long as i have so uh i welcome the new building being built and and it will mean affordable housing for our seniors which uh we need uh so uh that's my point thank you okay greg yeah i'm excited to announce that the

0:06:25contra costa county supervisors voted today to move forward with marine clean energy or mce as a service energy provider for the rest of the county so that's really good news is this the unincorporated area it would be the unincorporated area but it as a result there's probably more cities that

0:06:47will consider that as a matter of fact uh i'd have to look it up but there's at least one city considering it tonight and another city considering it tomorrow night so um it is would be the unincorporated portions including places like kensington so uh yes first i'd like to

0:07:08do a shout out to mayor abelson for her efforts on earth day again this year i attended as other folks did it was a great event great fun at the community center and it feels good to give back to our city like we all did that day also i wanted to make note that next

0:07:24wednesday may 10th i believe there's going to be a public workshop in walnut creek on mtc's planned bay area draft 2040.

0:07:34and it's for public comment and it's uh to talk about how we grow in the county and i think a lot of our if our elsa readings show up and go there they'll see some of the issues that we the city council and the city is going to have to deal with so what's at the embassy suites at 6 30.

0:07:50thank you thank you and i would just like to add a little bit about earthing thank you thank you for the comment but i i do think it's really due to all of the people who work together in teams to make earth day happen and in a very exciting way this year there were just a great number of teams

0:08:14working together to do things that they thought were important to make our city a better place i have to tell you though about my favorite one and it was the two-year-old side uh and and it's not just because my grandson was at that side but because one of our staff members

0:08:35priscilla who also has a a child in that age group really got together and worked with members of the community to get kids started at a very early age and i can't think of any better way to celebrate earth day than by welcoming the youngest of our community into the fold and of course they can't

0:09:04you know knock down the scotch broom they can't do a lot of things that are very able bodied volunteers can do but they can do things in their own way and they did pick up pieces of trash and put them in their little bags that they had already decorated and and they did play on our playground

0:09:25equipment up at arlington park and one of the things earth day is all about i think is learning how to do it the right way as opposed to just you know it isn't just the volume of trash we pick up but the habits we develop in life and especially among kids and i'm looking at you rochelle because

0:09:45i know you have several kids cute cute kids several kids and um the uh so it it really is to me it was a great um topping for our earth day celebration that we had so many little ones involved this year and but i also want to thank all the other people who were involved and i

0:10:11particularly want to thank our staff members who gave up that day and worked at so many different project sites throughout the city so thank you everyone for making it a very special earth day in el cerrito so with that are there any staff communications not seeing any

0:10:37okay with that we'll move on and we'll move on to oral communications from the public on this is on items not on the agenda or on items on the consent calendar and we have seven speakers mayor okay um just so everyone knows there's a speaker timer up here and uh when you start to

0:10:57speak and you'll notice the podium's in a new location today to your left a green light will go on and when you have one minute left the yellow light will go on and when the red light comes on you'll know that it's time for the next person to speak so with that the first three speakers

0:11:14are sydney manchester jones followed by al miller and gary picorney good evening uh city council mayor my name is sydney manchester jones i'm still a resident of el cerrito and i'm a voter uh the issue i wanted to talk about tonight is the uh what's uh concerning

0:11:43the outer uh property that's going to be uh you know it's already been uh approved for the build the the units the 38 unit townhouse units here something that really hasn't been brought up and it's an issue i want to bring up tonight and there's five i think i believe there's five old

0:12:02properties uh or five old buildings on that property they're old buildings they're built towards the beginning of the last century and the issue i wanted to bring bring as far as the demolition is there's lead in the form of pipes and paint all through those buildings and there's

0:12:24asbestos as a fire retardant that's and and those i've looked at uh uh statements that have gone back 40 years on that property with mr biggs you know he's on that property for 50 years and that's that's never been addressed by him i talked with his uh sister recently she's a

0:12:43a reference for me for finding housing and she's a very nice lady she works for the the company and she me i think mr biggs is responsible for the demolition so all i got and she says he has not uh uh she told me a month and a half ago he's been looking around as cheaply a an

0:13:02outfit as cheaply as possible to to demolish those buildings and and deal with the the lead and the asbestos and cheap cheap cheap yeah it sounds like a sounds like a species of bird really she says that he's been doing you know he hasn't found anybody so if he's responsible for

0:13:22this i want uh really would like the city to be aware of this because otherwise there's going to be other agencies you know county and state agencies brought in there's lead and in the form of paint and piping in those buildings all through those buildings and there's asbestos and

0:13:40he's never dealt with it you know um so when those buildings are you know the demolition starts i hope that you know the city for one thing doesn't abdicate its responsibility in staying on top of this you know so that's the issue i wanted to bring bring up the next issue

0:14:03i'm going to i'll just touch on it briefly i'll bring up the next city council meeting is if there's going to be that that i'm all for there's consideration of dispensaries for marijuana legal marijuana dispensary medical marijuana that a certain percentage of that

0:14:21tax money from that from the city could be earmarked toward a drug and alcohol treatment center in conjunction with a uh maybe city funds in conjunction with a nonprofit it's being done in a lot of other cities you know so next time we'll talk about that a little

0:14:40bit more thank you thank you for your comments next al miller followed by gary picorney good evening mayor abelson staff and other council members my name is al miller i'm a resident of el cerrito i'm here tonight as the current president of the el cerrito library

0:15:01foundation to request that you develop a sustainable plan to increase the number of hours the el cerrito library is open in november measures b campaign for a new library many el cerrito voters clearly express major concern over the irregular and insufficient hours of operation of our

0:15:22library and erroneously believe a new library would be operated in the same manner since we will be in our current library for some time the foundation believes that the best thing the city council can do to demonstrate your commitments to providing the needed library facility

0:15:40and services in el cerrito is to implement a sustainable plan that increases hours of the operation of the library therefore we ask you to direct staff to work with our senior library manager our el cerrito library commissioner and the contra costa county library manager

0:15:59to develop several options for you that would increase the library operating hours and reduce or eliminate the days in which the library is closed on a new subject i also would like to add my thanks to mayor abelson for her leadership on earth day also i'd like to add my thanks to the

0:16:19city staff stephen pray who came out and walked the library properties with me several days before earth day and then arranged to have the proper amount of wood chips and wheelbarrows and rakes and shovels and brooms that we needed to do our work there that work site was hosted by the

0:16:44library foundation library was and jose and his partner who delivered and retrieved the wheelbarrows and other tools that were used it's support like that that without which a lot of the projects like ours would not be able to do i'd also like to thank the human

0:17:04relations commission for the event they held right here saturday morning on to give us an opportunity to learn how to stand up and fight against bullying events like that that human relations commission and the other committees and commissions bring to the city make a really strong positive

0:17:27contribution and i just wish more of the residents would take advantage and come out and be part of them so thank you thank you mayor abelson if i could i just um since uh mr miller just brought it up um we've already formally requested proposals from the county library

0:17:47system so we can so you'll be able to consider them when you look at next fiscal year's budget thank you okay good evening mayor abelson and council members and staff my name is gary pokorny i'm a resident of el cerrito and in the spirit of full disclosure i'm also the secretary of the

0:18:06el cerrito library foundation i fully support as does our whole board the request just made by al miller regarding sustainable increased and regular that's probably the most important word regular open hours at the el cerrito library and i join al and his thanks to the city

0:18:27staff and to you for your leadership on earth day it was a great event and the community is really much better for it as you noted but it wouldn't happen without your support and leadership so thank you for that the current schedule of only 35 hours per week at our library and a library

0:18:45that's closed on wednesdays and sundays is inadequate access for the many people who really need access to library services in el cerrito to provide a context for our request for more hours and more regular hours i did a bit of research and i think the cheryl put this

0:19:04piece of paper in front of you because i'm going to be referring to it not in great detail but it's it's interesting when you look at it it shows all of the 21 libraries that are in cities in contra costa county arrayed from those that are open the most to those at the bottom it does

0:19:22not include libraries in the rural unincorporated parts of the county and there are many of those and it does include richmond which is not a part of the county system but it's a city in this county and it's providing services on its own i learned that in all of contra costa

0:19:40county only two city libraries are open for less hours than ours antioch and panol they aren't even open the minimum 35 hours and i believe that's because they have declined to take on the operating and maintenance costs of their buildings which is why they're below the 35.

0:19:59on the other hand 15 of the 21 cities in our county are open much many of them much more than ours from a high in danville and arinda that are open 60 hours and seven days a week to a low of san pablo and moraga these are the ones that are above us who are each open 39 hours and six days

0:20:19each week for west county cities the range is from 24 hours a week in panel with three closed days to 40 hours in hercules and at the richmond main library with sundays closed in both cases in those cities richmond as i mentioned is not part of the county system for all 21 city

0:20:37libraries in the county the average hours open are 44 and a half hours per week that's essentially the same as clayton and for those same 21 cities the median library that is the one uh in the middle uh is uh open in oakley for 41 hours a week so my wife gene and i urged the join the

0:20:59library foundation and urging you to find a sustainable way to increase the hours and to increase the days that our libraries are open i think if it was somewhere between 42 and 45 hours each week we would be somewhere at or a little bit above the average and i think it would serve our

0:21:18citizens very well thank you for listening to this request it's made on behalf of families with young children teens adults and learners and readers of all ages who use and enjoy our library thank you thank you judith tannenbaum followed by steve lipson and howdy gowdy

0:21:41hi mayor abelson council and staff first i just want to thank everyone for the commissioner dinner friday night that was a really nice event and thank you i also want to thank you for the letter that you voted to vote to write in support of the nea and the neh and

0:21:59this week we found out that they both survived at least for the next few months i also want a second what al said about the hrc event on saturday it was really excellent and fun supervisor joya was there participating through the whole time as were many elsa readings

0:22:19mostly though i'm here to speak about and want to bring up in public the subject of the email that i wrote to you this week that i know cheryl sent on which is an idea for an el cerrito town hall that would let us all city council staff and residents look at the ways federal state and

0:22:38county actions might impact our city and how we can both insist on our values and also protect ourselves honestly i don't know if this is a good idea or a bad idea it seems like a good idea to inc to increase and encourage and the ways that we work together um but it i'm also aware of just how

0:22:59much you already have to do and staff has to do and i don't know about the ways to frame things so that it doesn't overstep in a political way um but given brown um act realities it was just hard to find a way to just check in with you to see it informally to see if

0:23:18this was a good idea or not so that's why i'm mentioning it here um so i'm hoping that either you can you know if it does seem like a good idea you can put it on a future city council agenda if it doesn't seem like a good idea you could have cheryl or someone let me know

0:23:34as i wrote you my model is the fantastic uh town hall that was held in el cibrante in december um and very briefly what i envision is an event that first would be a panel of of state and county um and federal really representatives or people on their staff um talking to and and some of you and some

0:23:59of you as well talking to us about legislation that um and kind of what they see coming down the pike then i imagine after that small groups of residents meeting with in facilitated conversation and one of you being in each of those groups and a note taker for for the best

0:24:21kind of follow-up the point of the town hall would not be to advocate for any particular position um on any particular topic but to kind of nurture the ways that residents and representatives work together especially in hard and unclear times i'm happy to create a more developed

0:24:41proposal if there is interest but as i say i'm not here to urge this idea on you but just to open the possibility and see if it is of interest and value so thank you very much thank you hello mayor evelson and council members uh my name is steve lipson i'm the chair of the el cerrito

0:25:07committee on aging and uh i'm here for two things first to echo the thanks for the uh commission dinner on friday night i thought it was a great event uh with excellent barbecue so thanks again for hosting that uh the other thing i'd like to i'd like to make a request

0:25:26based on something i learned on friday night and that is that the only time the commissions and the committees seem to get together is for the commission banquet for the dinner and in any organized fashion but i think the committees and the commissions in the city would be well served to have some

0:25:45mechanism in order for all the different groups to interact in some way and work together at least to inform one another of projects or concerns or initiatives um i i obviously i don't envision all the commissioners meeting like we did for the banquet that's way too many folks but uh perhaps if

0:26:09just the chairs of the commissions and the committees could meet uh with some clear defined agenda uh i would think it would be an effective and productive we'd see some productive outcome from that so i'm wondering if you think there's some merit to the idea and if so if there's

0:26:28someone in the city that i could talk to to see how we might implement something like this thank you howdy gowdy followed by sherry dropner and that's the last speaker slip i have uh good evening mayor abelson council members my name is howdy gowdy i live at [address removed]

0:26:52it's been two weeks since the last action to entitle the el dorado town home project that dis placed the oddest rv park and other long-term residents many of whom were elderly and of low income uh the negative impacts on this displaced community has not gone away

0:27:10and i hope you haven't forgotten the statements that some of you have made to work toward mitigating the impacts of this development following that meeting i reached out to all of you to encourage you to show support for using city resources to lessen the displacement impacts of this project i

0:27:29appreciate those of you who have spoken to staff about this and i look forward to hearing an update on this topic when they report back to you i hope that all of you will show support for this effort as it is the least that can be done to repair the damage to the community

0:27:46that was destroyed under our watch thank you hi good evening and mayor and city council members i'm sheri dropner and i'm here tonight as a member of el cerrito progressives and what i did earlier is i've distributed for you an invitation to come to an event it's for the entire community it's know

0:28:14your rights over a month ago you so courageously adopted a resolution for sanctuary city concerned about our public safety and we're trying to follow up by reaching every every neighborhood in el cerrito and this is going to be our first workshop the know your rights workshops are

0:28:34really meant to know what the rights are for immigrants in our community and to be able to share that with people that you know people that you work with people who know other folks it will be here locally at the el cerrita royale and i hope that you attend thank you

0:28:56yes okay thank you um so with that we'll move on to item number four on our agenda which is adoption of the consent calendar uh which is items four a through g which are include approval of the minutes the affordable housing week proclamation the bike to work day

0:29:20proclamation the may is mental health day the month excuse me proclamation the asian american and pacific islander heritage month proclamation and then there is an item on the landscape and lighting assessment district the and the summer 2000 consideration of the

0:29:44summer 2017 city council meeting schedule for the months of july august and september reducing it the number of meetings to one per month during that summer season which also accounts for the fourth of july and the [Music] reduced schedule and um for labor day in

0:30:10september um so is there a motion or a comment oh you want to comment yeah okay i so moved second okay we have a motion in the second ready to vote okay all in favor please say aye aye aye any objections any abstentions motion carries unanimously so that means that during

0:30:40the month of let's see july our only meeting will be on july the 18th in august our only meeting will be on august 15th and in september our only meeting will be on september the 19th and then in october we will revert to the usual first in third tuesdays of the month

0:31:07for so two meetings per month okay with that we'll move on to the next item on our agenda and um the first item there uh has is going to be i think rescheduled um as the presenter andy katz from east bay mud he is our director it was running behind schedule so we'll reschedule that one maybe at the

0:31:36next meeting if we can and then the next item which we hope to hear from tonight is from our contra costa county library commissioner who will give us a report and our commissioner is michael fisher if you'd like to come and give us the report now thank you mayor abelson and member of the um

0:32:01council i have already submitted i think it's part of the package the um report on activities that i've undertaken since my appointment in march in regard to the library i'd like to highlight a couple of items that were in that report and then answer any questions that you might have

0:32:26first in regard to library hours i joined the comments made by others here tonight for funding more hours and i'm glad to hear from the city manager that the process for at least getting the quotes for how much that would cost for certain items is underway the speakers tonight i think made a very

0:32:52compelling case for the increase to make our library more accessible to our community as i mentioned in my report the current situation also makes it difficult for our branch library to attract and retain library personnel because we cannot provide them with full-time employment

0:33:18having more hours will reduce or perhaps even eliminate this problem and in discussing it with our branch librarian she told me she was and i quote very positive that such a change will cause librarians to clamor at the chance to work here i must admit that i'm rather charmed by

0:33:42the notion of clamoring librarians i would hope that staff will work with me with heidi our branch librarian with melinda the county librarian to develop various scenarios based upon what we would envision as the needed communities within our city to be served by

0:34:10different hours that we would then present to the council the other issue i want to raise involves the visibility and accountability of the library in our city structure as we know the operation of the library the cost of the collection and the cost of 35 hours

0:34:34of operation per week is the responsibility of the county system and the building and its maintenance or the responsibility of the city and there is a currently a county library commission upon which i serve under appointment from you and that works with county library staff

0:34:56and the board of supervisors on county library issues i would like to suggest that the city council consider setting up a city library commission much like other city commissioners to work on and report to the city council on city library issues including a new library building

0:35:20this would ideally be a group of somewhere around 10 individuals chosen to represent different areas demographics and views about our library and i would hope that as your representative to the county commission that i would be chair of that commission and if the council is willing to do that

0:35:44i would be more than happy to work with city staff to present a formal proposal on this matter to a future council meeting and i'll be happy to answer any questions you may have on those or any other matters in my report any comments greg yeah mr fisher thank you very much for your

0:36:06uh your report it i found it a very good read i think all that reading you've done has made you a good writer um however i do uh with the comments that were made during uh public comment and in your report about more hours um i'm just curious if you have a thought about

0:36:27the shape of those hours we we certainly heard uh mr corney uh talk about you know shape but i didn't necessarily hear a strong opinion about what the shape might be and i was just curious if you had any thoughts on that i certainly have my own thoughts but that this is an

0:36:45opportunity for me ask questions well in terms of the shape i don't have any particular ideas at this moment as to the shape but i think it's something that we should work with both with the county staff so that we can determine for example in other count in other city libraries that

0:37:07are open longer hours what kind of uh usage they get during those hours so that we can help create a library that again will meet the best needs of our residents now i don't i don't have an answer on that but it's something that i'm willing to work with i know our branch librarians willing to

0:37:32work on that library staff at the county level will work with us on that and we would be willing to help provide recommendations and reasons as to various shape proposals for those hours excellent well let me just make a statement here as an opportunity certainly one of our

0:37:57strongest users when i've been in there in the afternoons is youth and if we do end up finding a way to to create more hours it certainly would be nice to have consistent afternoon hours that supports like core hours that supports our youth and is focused around the youth and

0:38:16providing them a safe place for them to do homework on a daily basis so certainly that fact that we're closed on wednesdays is something that i'm hoping will be included in or considered as some of the proposals come forward so thank you great well as you can see i've taken a

0:38:36note of that one any comments yeah uh thank you thank you uh mr fisher we appreciate your your work in this direction i'm really glad that the public has begun talking about the library again we had a tough november loss but we had a very high percentage vote in this town

0:38:57that wants a library and i think we need to begin talking about it again so we can talk about location amenities and the costs that it will be to our city i'm also excited about you know our looking at the our other sister cities in contra costa whether it's san ramon

0:39:13walnut creek and lafayette and san pablo beginning work on libraries and i think we can do similar make a similar effort i also want to you know thank the city manager and councilman quinto and some of the bart people for pulling together an effort to begin a study at the bart station

0:39:32elsewhere to plaza about a possible location and i think that effort will begin to start here in el cerrito soon so we can begin really looking seriously at some locations and i just want to continue that the public needs to really be involved we need to be transparent and we need to

0:39:49move forward the question i had for you mr fisher is on the city library commission idea that you came up with that is going primarily going to be once we get a library is that your issue or to help us get to a point of it would be all library related issues in terms of

0:40:08the city's concerned so it would be both working on the process of concerns that people have about a new library what should be part of that new library and then once we have the new library on an on an ongoing basis i think we need a face of the for the library within city

0:40:32government thank you thank you michelle yes the the difference in library hours um the county provides 35 is that a baseline for everyone and then do the cities alone make up the difference like in danville where they have 60 hours yes um and there are two cities that have less

0:40:59than 35 hours there the reasons for that is that those cities are not paying for the upkeep of the facilities but other than that it's a base 35 that comes from the county and then anything beyond that is funded at the city level thank you mr fisher thank you for your in-depth

0:41:24report i appreciate it and um i also want to mention that in your report i noticed that el cerrito is in the bottom of total hours at 35 hours and and we're closed on wednesday and sunday i see here in san pablo there are 39 hours do you know uh why they are able to have 39 hours

0:41:51and and we're just having 35 hours i haven't checked my guests would be that they are paying for those extra four hours i can i'll be happy to get that information to you but that's my understanding is that anyone above 35 has it because the city is paying for it okay

0:42:13i can jump in on that hi i can add to that i'm hi karen pinkis assistant city manager and i've been working with the librarians over many years as far as trying to get proposals and costs and how much hours would cost back in 2006 these cities most of the cities made a switch we were only

0:42:32maintaining the outside of the building the library is maintaining the inside of the building and we were paying at that point the library was only funding 29 hours we were paying the extra to 35. we made a switch 10 years ago so that they would use the full funding for hours and then

0:42:49we would maintain the entire building so that's how we got to 35 hours when it comes to the proposal what the librarians and we have talked about over the years is the days and times depend on staffing as well so say opening on a sunday might be cheaper because it might you could use part-time

0:43:06staff than opening on a wednesday where you might need full-time staff so we are going to work with them to develop a series of proposals that we can bring to you that would have different numbers associated with where the hours might they would tell us what they believe the

0:43:20best staffing for the library hours would be and michael and i have met and talked and we will be working in conjunction with each other to make sure we have kept each other informed on a staff and commission level so one more question um regarding the second librarian

0:43:40are you interested in are we going to provide services from a real librarian with a degree or will it be a library technician what are your thoughts on it i mean the staff currently are branch librarian although she is in a temporary position but has applied to be full

0:44:03does have a degree i think she has a master's in librarian studies and that is part of what the county provides there is other staff some of whom have library degrees others of them do not but um it's all staffed to be able to provide assistance to our various users of the library

0:44:30thank you so i have a number of questions that come to mind when i see this chart with the hours open and the days and so forth and the cities well cities are all different sizes and the locations of the libraries relative to schools probably varies equally for example

0:45:02our library is right next to fairmont school so i would expect and i don't know for sure but i would expect that fairmont students are large users of the library after school for example because it's right there whereas a student from madera would be less likely to use the el cerrito

0:45:25library and more likely to use the kensington library maybe i'm just speculating i don't really know and that's the point is i don't really know and it would seem to me of interesting to look at some of those things like who are the users where do they come from in other are

0:45:46they using it what's causing them to use what library is kind of what i'm getting at and um if for example we were to open one more day what does make sense wednesday or saturday or is it actually more hours on some day that it's already open i i don't know the answer and i

0:46:12don't pretend to but you know that's an interesting question i i will say you have obviously been reading my to-do list of information that i want to get those very questions so that when we come back to this council with proposals we can say doing this will meet an after-school crowd doing this

0:46:38will provide time for senior citizens so that we can just you know the various users and that's just two of them obviously but we need to get that information and it's what i'm prepared to do in the next short time okay and then moving on to your idea about having a library

0:47:01commission that's an el cerrito library commission we already have a library group in el cerrito were you thinking that would become this group or would there be two groups what were you thinking this this would be a separate group this would be a government a public a group that's

0:47:25really part of the city the commission the foundation and the friends both do wonderful work but they are focused on very specific items this would be i think a group that would deal with all library issues and there would be communication obviously with the friends

0:47:49in the foundation on that but um you know the the friends in the foundation are not uh part of the city government structure and i'm looking for something that would be so why um why are you looking for it to be part of the city versus part of the county when the

0:48:10county is the operator the county is only partially an operator of the libraries the city are two the county library commission is 24 or 25 members uh almost all of whom are from you know various you know from a different city and they deal with county-wide issues

0:48:35generally and um what we have here is we also have city issues that involve both city funding and the desires of our own residents for what should be part of their library and that's why i'm looking for it as a city group okay um let's see i already gave you my

0:49:02question about um you know looking at a chart of i would i think these are things that would be easy to produce by the way the number of residents the number of hours you know next to the number of hours the library is open and then the other question is and maybe it's just a yes and we already

0:49:26know the answer is is the city paying for the additional above 35.

0:49:34in all cases we know the city is paying for the edition and then the other question is what is the attendance on whatever you know from for the seven days of the week what's the uh average usage of the library absolutely that would be an interesting question i think

0:49:55absolutely and it's one of the things that we would do be actually before we come back with a uh recommendation for ours is we would do uh what we're calling the shape of those hours which which days would they be on and what does that mean in terms of different groups that use the library

0:50:21and the last thing i was wondering about was instead of it being just more hours open what about looking at more services in different parts of our community and i'll give you a simplistic example but just to show the point so let's assume that students at fairmont

0:50:46on average use the library more than students at um harding let's say okay let's assume that that's true then would we what would we want to do if we had some more money would we want to provide additional support for the students at harding or would we want to provide even more

0:51:15support for the students at fairmont now so the way if if we were to say yes we want to do the support for students at harding and the other schools um then we might say we'll do it on site at the school and have the librarian go there or some other ver you know some

0:51:36variation of that so what i'm wondering is if you're looking at alternatives um to having [Music] everything occur in the use of that one site um you know i have not looked at at that specific issue i believe all of the schools do have a school library and so what we can arrange between those

0:52:06schools and the library system i think is something that we ought to be exploring i know for example in walnut creek there the library works in conjunction with the ross more senior community to have what is in essence a delivery and pickup of of books between ross moore and the walnut creek library

0:52:35so you know doing something like that in terms of schools which i'm sure have more limited libraries is is again something i think that's a it's a wonderful proposal and one that i'm gonna take and run with even and that one probably can be done uh without a lot of money

0:52:58you know just the cost of having someone run run the books that might be an example of what this library foundation could um work on as its list of recommendations if that seemed to uh bubble to the top for example right you mean the the commission that i'm proposing right did

0:53:26i say the wrong word i said foundation i think i'm sorry i just wanted to be sure yeah you're you're calling it a it would i put the name of a commission on it because that's what this council does generally with with advisory i meant to use the word you were using i just made a mistake

0:53:46um so um so those are the kinds of things that you would look at absolutely which would in fact bring the most value to our community and and i don't mean to limit it just to children what my what suggestion i was coming up with it might be seniors it it might be

0:54:07um some other particular group that um anyway okay um so i um i think we've covered this pretty well and uh do we have any comments from the public no okay well i'd like to thank you for your report and um i um what do you see as being the next steps well if the

0:54:38council would like a proposal in terms of a committee or a commission i'm not sure what under the brown act has to be done in terms of of notice but if you're able to request of me that i work with staff to come up with a proposal i would be more than happy to do that so

0:55:06um we're pretty familiar with the process of uh forming such groups because we've been doing a lot of it recently um the topic is what we would be the difference and so that's where your expertise would be i think i'm just looking at [Music] so right now we have a report so i

0:55:36suppose it's under presentation so i'm trying to figure out if um this would be an action item here i think it would it would definitely be an action item i think it would be yeah i think i got one yesterday but i'll defer to the city attorney um yeah the the creation of a library board

0:56:08or commission would would require a formal action of the city council um so that's what we can do is agendize it well that's what i'm saying is if the council wants that agenda then that would be direction too right now if the council would like to do that would greg yeah madam mayor i

0:56:23was going to suggest that uh i that this is something that certainly could be discussed during item seven tonight about priorities and um i certainly will be looking to support it at that time so if you would like i could bring it up at that time and and make arguments of support in favor of

0:56:41such a working committee um the alternative would be that we could discuss it separately separately and give it more time and that could be part of our discussion in under that item item seven so yes others i agree i'm okay doing it under item seven okay okay okay great thank you very much for your

0:57:06report and um gives us a lot to think about and hopefully some action items great thank you thank you okay uh with that we'll move on to our public hearings you did show up oh hi andy okay andy did come okay okay so why don't we go back to phyto items excuse me 5a

0:57:34which is a presentation from our east bay mud director andy katz on the water supply infrastructure water supply update and innovation and rates um i i have to apologize we it looks like we blew our projector bulb so we're working on an alternative way to project your slide your slide

0:58:01presentation so does the council have it on their screens yes yes okay um and i think i'll sit with the computer just so i can but what it means though is our public doesn't have it i think right okay i'll make an effort to repeat some of the facts that are on on the slides

0:58:23it'll show to the viewers at home and i'm sorry to inconvenience you if you want to look on the towards the back you'll be able to see it back there so far that's not happening when you started are you seeing it in front of you andy i see it in front of me here when you start when you start

0:58:44they'll switch give a minute for technology to kick in how's that you could read anything that's relevant sure yeah i'd be glad to um you know we we are sometimes very uh in the pictures that we have we we do like to show people because our watershed is so far away uh that we like to um help you feel

0:59:10um uh what what it means to um uh do the work that we do um so uh madam mayor and city council thank you for having me this evening to present to your city council my name is andy katz i'm your east bay mud director representing ward 4 which includes el cerrito

0:59:31kensington berkeley and surrounding cities through north oakland so thank you for providing me to the opportunity to provide an update to the el cerrito city council on east bay mud's ongoing commitment to deliver high quality reliable water supply to the city and to protect public health

0:59:52and san francisco bay so today i'm going to be covering our complex water system our water improvements and our commitment to maintaining infrastructure through the impacts of the drought so before i delve into our water supply let me tell you a little bit about our

1:00:10water system and i uh so uh the our water system includes uh a complex aqueduct system that extends from party river uh excuse me party reservoir uh along the mccullum river the mccullum river originates in the far eastern edge of alpine county so when you hear alpine spring water that's

1:00:33actually coming out of our tap so don't be fooled by other labels we are alpine spring water of course we store it at party reservoir which is um nested between amador and calaveras counties so we're very connected to these foothill communities who host the uh the reservoir

1:00:53that we depend on our drinking water is stored in a party reservoir and then it is uh discharged through a dam through a party dam and then uh water that's used for flood protection maintaining the lower mccollumy river which you can see from comanche reservoir

1:01:16down through the delta you can see the mercury river continues on into the delta where it joins with the sacramento river but our drinking water comes straight out of party reservoir and three aqueducts cross all the way from party reservoir delivering that drinking water in a gravity fed format

1:01:37down through the delta now those aqueducts cross the delta and that that does mean some significance for our community because when those aqueducts cross the delta that means that in the event of an eventual levy failure in the delta that our water supply our infrastructure is

1:01:54at risk and so um there are conversations around what happens with the delta and what happens with the statewide infrastructure and it does mean that if the state does something like the twin tunnels that may mean that the state no longer has a broader interest in maintaining

1:02:12the islands and the levee system in the delta that could leave east bay mud as the only stakeholder that that has an interest in the delta system remaining as is so uh we we do uh there are many challenges to maintaining the delta but we need to recognize that one

1:02:28of those for us is is the risk of levy failure and our aqueducts possibly becoming inundated with salt water which is corrosive to to the aqueducts so that's one of the many infrastructure considerations that we're looking at we provide a complex water system serving one and a half east bay

1:02:50residents from both contra costa and alameda counties and we also manage a wastewater system that protects public health in san francisco bay our staff are there managing it 24 7. we have control rooms we are uh responding overnight to main breaks if need be and for water uh we're we're serving uh

1:03:11you can see in the in the left-hand corner a 325 square mile area covering those parts of alameda and contra costa counties wastewater treatment includes el cerrito kensington and the richmond annex south through oakland and alameda ninety percent of our water begins as

1:03:31snowmelt in the mccollumy river watershed uh that uh water is stored uh at party reservoir then before traversing those 90 miles in pipelines to the east bay so uh here's what happens uh once that pristine snowmelt travels those 90 miles by gravity and is stored here in the

1:03:49east bay and then delivered or stored for your use so the water moves through a complex distribution system which includes five local reservoirs a treatment system that includes three inline water treatment plants and three conventional water treatment plants and

1:04:06a distribution system of 4 200 miles of pipeline 122 pressure zones 164 reservoirs 135 pumping plants and 100 regulators and that keeps our engineers very busy keeps our pipeline crews very busy that 4 200 miles of pipeline is enough pipes to span from here to new york and

1:04:30back and then to chicago or a pipe in every street in the entire bay area so so that is a a very significant network for us to maintain and we rely on very skilled staff to operate and maintain these facilities for for the public so our water supply is secured uh we've

1:04:55gone through a very uh uh uh distressing drought um for the four-year drought cycle that's been the most significant in our region's history at least human human occupied history so uh for to go through that severe drought period and have our storage hit levels

1:05:13lower than ever seen before and then now to have a close tie for the wettest year ever that we there's been some weeks where our engineers declare the wettest year ever on record and then there's some weeks where it falls behind to number two um but it it ranks up there and uh

1:05:30that that um the uh the change is uh is something that our system is designed to be able to address but it does um create some issues for our system so our current total system storage started earlier in this year as completely full and now we're at 80 percent uh full

1:05:50and uh that that means that uh we have uh plenty of water literally uh we we will our storage situation uh would be the same uh with with any any additional water or storage would be the same even additional water use our storage would be the same we have complex agreements with the fishery

1:06:09management agent agencies that require releases down the river so we have plenty of water to meet our drinking needs and to meet the environmental needs this year so that's in large part because our precipitation is at 178 percent of average so let's talk about investments in

1:06:28infrastructure many of the facilities and pipelines in our system were built between 50 and 80 years ago and we are in critical need of replacement so we are proud that our annual leak rate the american water works association and national association of water agencies

1:06:47has identified a benchmark of 20 breaks per 100 miles per year and calls that a well-maintained system we're about at 15 to 18 breaks per 100 miles per year so we're we're doing better than that benchmark but we we've identified that this is not sustainable that our current replacement

1:07:11has been at about 10 miles of pipeline per year and to really make sure that our system is going to be in top shape for the long run we've decided as an agency to ramp that up to 40 miles per year you know main breaks are very disruptive to neighborhoods and i know that el

1:07:28cerrito in particular has a paving ban and you would like to avoid disruptions to neighborhoods so i hear that and and that's actually we've we've worked with el cerrito on making sure that the paving ban is worked into our our wastewater um uh treatment system for uh inflow

1:07:47uh and infiltration uh in the way we do uh sewer sewer lateral replacements so we we're very familiar with el cerritos cerrito's strategy for making sure that neighborhood pavement stays safe and sound and so to to make sure that all of our neighborhoods across the district are

1:08:05avoiding disruption as much as we can we are we want to ramp up that replacement uh and go from 10 miles a year to 40 miles a year it doesn't happen overnight we we need to hire crews get the crews trained and make sure that we have high quality staff that are doing the work

1:08:22we also have to have the equipment on hand and but this is a process that we've been beginning and this is because we need to replace our infrastructure so it doesn't fail from under us a lot of our material is a cast iron pipe some of it is asbestos cement pipe those

1:08:42represent the majority of pipes in our system particularly the cast iron are from an era that's now old and is we're seeing most of those leaks come from cast iron pipe average 78 years old and it's three quarters of our leaks so uh we take uh we take that very

1:09:02seriously that's why we're expanding those nine pipeline crews we're adding uh one one additional pipeline crew in our next budget year and we we will be continuing to add more so east bay mud's pipeline rebuild program is all about ramping up that pipeline and making sure that we're

1:09:19keeping up with the times and investing in our aging infrastructure um so even though that that starts at one replacing our pipe pipe system at one percent per year that will keep us in steady shape even that may not be enough but we do need to balance the rate impacts with the community

1:09:37and and our need to invest in infrastructure so we also take seriously our commitment for exercising innovation when we deliver safe and reliable water so we have done some really exciting things with uh your your ratepayer dollars and they benefit our community and the environment

1:10:00i'm very excited about the purchase that we've made for carr ranch which is a large parcel about uh four four and a half acres in uh moraga um a large large area of open space that was vulnerable to development but also uh it run the area on that land runs into the

1:10:21upper san leandro creek watershed so if there were new development on that site new new uses on that site it drains into the water supply so it was a top target for us to acquire and we were able to do that by developing a conservation bank in pinol valley on orson ridge so

1:10:41panel valley is a large area of very pristine open space that was purchased originally as watershed land and it it is an area that has wetlands in it it has a habitat for red-legged frog and alameda whipsnake and we are selling credits to allow for investment from public agencies that are looking to

1:11:06do do minor scale development and by purchasing credits we're able to maintain that habitat and make it higher quality make those wetlands actual real wetlands and improve the quality of the habitat for endangered species in west contra costa county and throughout the

1:11:23the ridgeline through through the rest of the county so that's also helping so so that that bank is able to uh improve habitat within panel valley as well as help us make that acquisition at carr ranch we are always looking for ways to improve our energy efficiency in our

1:11:40whole system and we also have a very exciting program with energy generation at the main wastewater treatment plant we have a 10 megawatt biodigester and we are encouraging cities that are looking at being sustainable i know el cerrito has an excellent climate action plan uh is

1:11:59is a early early adopter of marine clean energy's expansion and we want to be able to provide those opportunities to you as a as a city eastman sells our hydroelectric power to mce so your ratepayers are benefiting from from our hydropower that is not always at full mast during

1:12:22dry years but has certainly been powering el cerritos customers this year our biogas opportunities are are very exciting um the future of making sure that our food waste doesn't uh pollute the atmosphere i think really rests on making sure that we're recovering that resource so we

1:12:42have at our main wastewater treatment plant and aerobic digesters that will be able to accept processed food waste what we need to do is identify partnerships between cities perhaps the private sector and east bay mud to be able to pre-process our commercial sector restaurants and

1:13:03multi-family sector food waste so that those food scraps don't become methane emissions into the atmosphere but they become renewable energy that we're able to deliver back to our customers and that's pretty amazing we've been doing that with wastewater gas for about a decade

1:13:20and i think it's time to expand that to our food waste so that our food is is not a carbon pollutant and it's it's actually powering our own homes we also have been very prudent in establishing a rate stabilization fund so that when we do hit these tough tough times uh the great recession knocked

1:13:40down our development fees by quite a lot and and during the drought we we've also had to ensure that we don't have as much rate shock and so we've relied on this rate stabilization fund to help balance out those those budget challenges so um east bay mud is now in the process of

1:14:01finalizing our budget for fiscal years 18 and 19. uh the board has spent the last several months looking at our long-term financial stability and infrastructure needs and we are focused in our budget on investing in critical infrastructure that we rely on every day

1:14:18so in order to maintain our critical but aging systems we must continue to invest in our infrastructure so while we've looked at how to how to keep our budget slim and cut costs where we can we are committed to maintaining our infrastructure because we can't afford

1:14:35for that critical infrastructure that we depend on when you turn on the tap when you walk down the street when when we want to make sure that our infrastructure is functioning we need to keep it rehabilitated so our customers have achieved really amazing conservation success during our

1:14:53drought in fact when i first got on the board 11 years ago we were delivering 190 million gallons a day to our customers that number now is 130 million gallons a day so through two major drought cycles our customers have have cut back quite a lot and i really applaud

1:15:16the residents of el cerrito for being a big part of that because we know that not just customers west of the hills customers with uh who are well-minded about uh what it means to conserve resources and i i know that that those values are shared very widely here

1:15:34in el cerrito and that's that's appreciated but it does have uh some effects on our budget so uh 90 of our costs are fixed so if uh even if um our water production has gone down significantly we still have to serve the same amount of customers through the same miles of pipe

1:15:57the same number of water treatment plants so we we are are still required to keep that infrastructure in place to avoid it breaking so that that does mean that we have had to take into account how uh how we're collecting our rates and make sure that we're able to uh provide

1:16:17affordable rates as best as we can so we have mailed out a notice of public hearing for our budget rates that we will be considering we've asked our customers to provide comment on a proposed rate increase of nine and a quarter percent uh for the next fiscal year and nine percent for the following

1:16:38fiscal year i asked my staff well what does that mean for people's actual bills because the rates are going up uh but people are using a lot less water so how are people really actually getting affected by it on a bill basis and it's actually much much better for a typical customer when

1:16:57you look at those figures over the last 10 years a customer's average bill has only gone up by about 4.2 percent so customers have uh been billed at about the the proportionate rates to what we would expect compared to our costs and our budget so i'm really glad that that means that

1:17:18we're doing the best we can to make sure that these rate increases are are handled equitably we have a tiered rate system that means that the people who use the most water are charged the most if it were up to me i would have a much smaller fixed charge but we have a board

1:17:34that goes from richmond out to walnut creek in danville and san leandro so i do hope that in future budget cycles we'll talk about rate design and what's most equitable for customers uh in el cerrito and cities like el cerrito um because i think that we we should be

1:17:55only charging rates that are the most equitable we we do charge the majority of our rates on the volume charge and uh and and that i think is is uh helpful for for residents here but you know again our fixed expenses are a huge part of our budget and it's challenging to have a budget when a dry

1:18:16year can dramatically compress our budget so so we do a lot to make sure that we keep our rates affordable we also have a customer assistance program uh as council members you are out in the community and and often times and especially in these tough economic times

1:18:32you're hearing of customers um with with personal distress and and you know wondering how can they get help for for many programs available to them uh in in the government and the community um so i'd like to um advise you that if you if you um are ever uh talking with community leaders who have

1:18:50um uh who make those important referrals to communities in distress know that if if a customer has roughly about double the poverty line it's technically 214 percent of the the poverty line or if they qualify for pg e's care program they're eligible for east bay

1:19:09mud's customer assistance program that provides you a 50 percent discount off of the water bill and a 35 percent discount off of the wastewater bill and our program right now is not retroactive that's a proposal that i've advanced to to be able to um once we meet a customer

1:19:25who does need that assistance to help them go back on their bill and get that assistance but right now you only get access to that program from the day that you sign up so it's important to emphasize if people are in need of assistance to sign up as soon as they can all they have to do is call our

1:19:43800 number actually it's 866 40 ebmud so 866 40 ebb mud ask for a customer assistance program application and we can send that customer an application and get them enrolled we also work with customers to arrange payment plans for customers who get behind on on rates

1:20:08who get behind on their bills we work with customers to avoid disruptions and service we want to make sure that people can afford their water bill also if people if people get behind or face a large bill because of a leak we take leaks very seriously we want to

1:20:25make sure that we prevent leaks but they can also really shock a customer's bill we it's only reasonable for us to provide staffing to read the water needle meter about once every two months but a leak can do a lot within those two months or especially if a customer's away for

1:20:43an extended period of time so what if a customer comes to us and has a receipt from a plumber that shows that they've fixed the leak we will credit that customer 50 percent back off of their bill once they show us that they've fixed the leak we'll look at their baseline look at their usage

1:21:01and cut that increment by half so that's our our appreciation to customers that fix their leaks and and keep an active monitoring of it during the period before the drought we would often find that about 15 percent of our water usage in the residential sector was from leaks so leaks can really add

1:21:21up into a lot of water usage and it's just wasted money so it's wasted water wasted money and we want to help customers save save on their bill so we welcome public input on our budget and rate schedule we're having a public hearing june 13th 1 15 pm at our headquarters at 375 11th street

1:21:41in oakland written protests can be mailed to east bay mud and they have to be received by the june 13th public hearing so we we welcome public input whether it's about this particular rate public hearing or about how we're managing ratepayer dollars in our budget in general

1:22:00so that's um and i did talk about customer assistance program just a moment ago we offer lots of rebates for customers who are interested in water use efficiency free water audits free devices and a home water report to help customers get a custom tailored way of knowing how to save really proud that

1:22:21our customers using our cash for grass rebate program replaced over a million square feet of lawn so we we upped our incentives during the drought our customers stepped up enormously and that's how we got through it we didn't know that we were going to have a wet year this year

1:22:40and it's pretty terrifying to think that if we uh if we keep having dry years and we know with climate change that's going to increase even more we need to make sure that our community is resilient and that we're uh as as a community ready to to do what it takes to conserve water uh and that our

1:22:57community will support the the actions that that our agency has taken to make sure that we're able to provide emergency water water for fire protection uh and reliable drinking water so um i really appreciate what customers in el cerrito have done um because it helped us get through that

1:23:13that dry period so uh with that i'd be glad to take more questions thank you and welcome back del cerrito um so the slide you had about the rate increase was really small so i couldn't read a lot about it um so i just want a couple questions you say nine and a quarter percent increase

1:23:34and and over how many years would that be so a one year nine and a quarter percent increase in the next fiscal year and then the next uh the next fiscal year would be a nine percent increase and what was the last increase percentage the last two years of increases were

1:23:50eight percent and seven percent so every year there's been some sort of increase in that range that's right we we've had as i mentioned because of um a history of droughts in the great recession we've had rate increases that were above what we were hoping the budget would be we do project that

1:24:09in the future our our budget will stabilize but because of our pipeline rebuild commitments we we want to make sure that we have an adequate budget for that so you made a good case why conserving water didn't lower the possible rates that we may be uh pursuing here

1:24:28is your new uh effort on infrastructure part of the reason it's nine this this high absolutely so uh so the investment that you're trying to do and convincing the communities that we need that is part of the reason for that that's right you know we see very up close what's happening with bart

1:24:45when they're not investing in infrastructure and we don't want to get to the point where we we we need a large emergency rate increase we we want to be able to do this gradually we want to make sure that we're responsive to the community's needs because we're seeing main breaks occur

1:25:03faster and more frequently than they used to even though we're below the benchmark nationally we still want to be as efficient as we can in maintaining our infrastructure just two quick questions your release policies have not changed you said or have they because of

1:25:18the recent i'm reading it's thawing quicker than usual is that are you releasing more now than previously we have a joint settlement agreement with the united states and california departments of fish and wildlife and those govern how releases down the lower mokulumi river work

1:25:35so they're they're higher releases during wet years and lower releases during dry years to take into account a balance between our water supply and protecting the fish down the mekolomy river and the hydropower that you sell to mce is that from large projects or small

1:25:51projects that construction date of those is uh technically uh the statute treats them as small hydro so even though one of one of those facilities is 20 megawatt uh rated the other is 10 megawatt rated the law treats them as small hydro because if they're large they're not

1:26:11considered renewable correct right the the renewable portfolio standard would say that for new large hydro uh that that those projects would not qualify as renewable energy in the in this case the this infrastructure was built in 1930 and the the policy reasons for drawing

1:26:28that line uh were were unique and not necessarily applicable to east bay mud's infrastructure and i just want to say we have the best tasting water anywhere and my daughter away at college comes back and takes a glass of water and she's happy so thank you for that really

1:26:42appreciate that comment some of you may have heard in the community what's going on because we did we did take the orinda treatment plant offline for a few months if you can believe it we had never taken the orinda treatment plant offline for the entire history of the agency

1:26:59that orinda treatment plant supplies water to a portion of el cerrito in berkeley and and north oakland and uh and our entire system depends on that it's our largest treatment plant and we now have made sure that that plant never has to go completely offline again

1:27:18so we were able to test our system to make sure that we could rely on local supplies but we we built in resiliency when we did that that reconstruction thank you what is the outreach process that you guys are using to get the word out about these rate increases

1:27:36so we uh we're mailing every customer a notice we've designed it in a more exciting way in the past it used to be a pretty bland all text notice we actually have some pictures some bolder bigger print on it so we we do want our customers to learn about the agency and we're not just

1:27:55doing the the bare minimum legal text notice we're doing some more um highlights to explain to customers what's happening and uh was there some sort of projection beyond the next two fiscal years uh other than the nine and a quarter and nine percent was there a

1:28:12projection beyond those those fiscal years our staff have made some scenarios and it because that we don't know exactly what kind of year awaits us we we do generate those projections but we don't we don't adopt those rates for a future board to consider uh generally those

1:28:31those projected future rates are around seven to eight percent per year we do expect that on the time frame of about five to six years from now our we will have an adequate uh budget to be able to keep rate increases to around four to five percent so we we do see the day coming when when

1:28:48our rate increases will stabilize uh and and that will be when we when we're able to have a budget that is replacing 40 miles of pipe per year and and uh moving to well let me cover poverty line first what you said poverty line which form of poverty is that federal or is that our uh bay area

1:29:06property line which which form of poverty line are you using the uh the the benchmark for um for a customer assistance program is based on um i believe it's the federal and i'd love to actually get the specific qualifications in a memo to the council yeah that's

1:29:21pretty low the uh it is it is low and um the number for our viewing public the the federal property line i can't remember i don't i think it's 28 000 a year is the federal poverty line but i don't want to be quoted on that family of four so it's it's pretty low so

1:29:38you're looking at fifty four thousand dollar household revenue for family of fours is what would qualify a family to enter into the east bay mud uh con cap program customer assistance program and that that's my guess right but believe it or not it used to be half of

1:29:57that threshold and i had proposed taking it to the current threshold to match what pg e is ordered to do thank you uh thank you for that um your 40 miles a pipe a year is one percent of your 4 000 miles of pipe at that rate you've got a service life of 100 years

1:30:15because you're only doing one percent a year it takes 100 years to replace the system it would be 35 years to replace all the balance of your cast iron so we would be continuing to have those service leaks and and disruptions of brakes so you know i'm would encourage you i know

1:30:33you you're looking to get to that stable rate structure of four to five percent a year but um i can tell you that the amount our roads are broken up as a result of water mains breaking in our town is pretty disruptive as you pointed out and and certainly would encourage you to i

1:30:51know 40 miles a year sounds like a lot but when you put it in percentages which you did it's really not a lot per year so i certainly would like you to continue to con take that into consideration as you move forward uh last drought pricing some organizations some

1:31:08agencies are considering drought pricing and putting those into effect when there isn't a drought so that the next time there is a drought they can implement drought pricing because as you described as there's a drought as there's a reduction in use revenue goes

1:31:23down and it cuts into your infrastructure projects first so as we want to continue to replace infrastructures having drought pricing in place so that when the drought comes you are able to invoke a pricing and keep your revenue stable in a year and not rely on your 95 million revenue

1:31:42balance is that something you guys can consider and and certainly i'm encouraging you too uh yes councilmember lyman we already have adopted a 25 uh drought rate uh that is on the books so we've already had a public hearing and adopted drought rates that when we declare the

1:32:00appropriate stage of drought we have a four stage drought system and i'm not here with those slides because it's an extremely wet year so but we do we do have that system so that we're able to act nimbly without having an additional public hearing that's great to know um and and i totally agree

1:32:18with you about um the um how what we're doing may still not be enough um i think we are going to keep ramping up and when we are able to make a choice about whether we stop ramping up we will make that decision but that that that choice may be for four to six years

1:32:38away i think we expect to be rapidly ramping up our our reconstruction crews uh in the coming years thank you okay rochelle would you like to let us share your comments yes questions hello mr katz i just wanted to add on to what to what greg said which was you said you're

1:33:01reaching out to all of your customers about the rate increases and that also has the information about possibly lowering the rates for your low income customers is that correct so the customer assistance program is a enrollment-based program where a qualifying customer needs to

1:33:19submit an application to us that shows that they qualify and so we we have had community input about how to expand public outreach about that program we're looking at doing additional advertisements on bus stops targeted advertisements specifically to communities that we

1:33:39we know by geography would be likely to qualify and we've made it simpler for a customer to simply provide the documentation of qualification for the pg e program and automatically qualify them for us i i don't recall if we specifically mention the cap program in our rates

1:33:58notice it's not a normal requirement for proposition 218 but i i would agree that that should be something that we do in all of our outreach um we we do um a few mailings to customers per year in fact it it is something that comes up in our customer pipeline that's our newsletter that goes out to

1:34:19all customers so i thoroughly agree that we need to make sure that our outreach is successful um so that we're getting maximum enrollment thank you right it just seems to me like it you know bus stops and stuff doesn't really reach everyone if you're already spending

1:34:32money on mail it would be nice to just add that in if you could you know bring that back to your board as a recommendation if not this time for maybe another time yes i i would agree with that thank you and then i had one more question which was um i found the um

1:34:48the report on the levy to be quite disturbing in terms of how vulnerable we are here and i was wondering um kind of in general if you had maybe some update on disaster preparedness and you know if the pipes are breaking particularly here in el cerrito which could happen in the

1:35:05event of a major earthquake um kind of what some general plans are for that sure first on the delta so we we have looked in this in the situation uh we're actively participating in the in the proceeding before the state water resources control board where um this

1:35:22agency is conducting a very detailed proceeding perhaps before governor brown leaves office to examine how the whole bay delta conservation plan should operate and function what what scale of infrastructure would the state need and and then what operational considerations are there we're actively

1:35:44participating in that proceeding and raising questions around uh what what does that project mean for our contingencies and what our contingencies might look like is not not expecting that the state is going to be participating in uh repairing the delta levees when they

1:36:02fail and so we the alternative that we're studying is whether to build a a tunnel underground uh the delta um to to rebuild our our aqueducts under so whether it would make sense financially and and from an engineering perspective to bury our aqueducts under the delta

1:36:22and that that's an option that we can't afford to not study it would be incredibly expensive but perhaps less expensive than allowing our infrastructure to be at risk within the delta of course we are raising these issues before the state water resources control board and asking the department

1:36:41of water resources if the if they are given permission to move forward with the bdcp which which our board is is not um our board has many concerns with on a number of levels related to our communities environmental values if they are given that permission we want to make sure that our ratepayers

1:37:01are not in any worse shape if we do ultimately decide to do that tunnel thinking about locally it's very important that the city's disaster preparedness efforts advise customers about the realistic time frames for being able to repair water service we we can hope that we don't have

1:37:22a severe earthquake that that rattles our our pipes everywhere but we we do i anticipate a hayward 7 within the next couple decades i it is it is um the scientists have told us to expect that um so what we've done as a result is we've made sure that our priority

1:37:41infrastructure the uh the the tunnel that goes through or the pipeline that goes to the caldecott tunnel are we our treatment plants our wastewater treatment plant those are all prepared for hayward 7.

1:37:54but our smaller lines that are under underneath the streets many of them are older and we also just know that there will be a lot of soil movement during an earthquake uh we know that it may take uh most likely between three and seven days and it may even take for for some

1:38:13some customers might not get water service up and running until 10 days but generally the the time estimate that we advise is three to seven days we think it's important that every household have one gallon of water per person per day of this drought cycle or excuse me of

1:38:29this emergency preparedness period so um so i think that that type of planning and thinking would be really important i get disturbed when we we do it we do a survey of our customers every other year and i asked for this question to be included in that survey how many

1:38:47how many customers are prepared with enough disaster water and it's really only about 50 percent so i think in all of our planning and anticipation about what will our community need we we need to make sure that we have uh increased community awareness that we need to have enough water

1:39:06for our personal emergency use they sell containers at rei that are refillable or many different sports goods stores i think many customers could benefit from just buying bottled water although there are refillable options available and bottled water will have to get replaced

1:39:26um tap warp or bottled water would have to get replaced um every um three to six months to make sure that it's still in good condition to drink so um so but this is a very serious issue uh thank you for bringing it up thank you mr katz mike my question i have one

1:39:43question and my question is because of the warmer weather and the snow melting at a faster rate now is east bay mud are they um is it with the infrastructure that that we have right now with east bay mud do you expect any flooding at all or or um yeah is everything going to be okay in

1:40:07the delta are the the infrastructure that goes through the delta is has that been uh up to code so while we're not going to have any more um accidents like in norville yes we we have uh partnerships with pg e who owns the reservoir upriver of us and uh we have conversations with the uh the other

1:40:30uh water users downriver of us and uh we take our stewardship of comanche reservoir very seriously it's a it's a large lake for a reason to help manage flood control if we were not managing that that reservoir properly there would be a risk of flooding the communities of lodi and

1:40:48near stockton so we take that very seriously and that's why our operations department monitors uh the uh the the the water storage upriver and precipitation patterns to to do a very careful balance because we don't want to just let water go down the river but we also need to make sure that we're

1:41:07not putting public uh safety at risk okay thank you so fortunately we've had no no incidents and this is one of the most challenging years we've ever seen thanks so much as a last question uh and i'll try to be really quick because we're we're getting behind schedule i think uh is

1:41:26one of the things i've heard people talk about is and there it's like bewilderment puzzlement they don't know what to do and that's about they can first of all they can see that we had drought period they can see that we have had a lot of rain this year excessively large amount

1:41:47and they don't know what to do about their yards what would you say to do about their yards in terms of single-family homes i see yes so wise water use is what we say why is water use is what we say so does that mean i don't think people know what it means i mean if you have plenty of

1:42:08money then you can hire a landscaper and do something fancy but a lot of people don't think they have that kind of money or they don't know what to to do but what would they're kind of a loss i think is what i would say and where can they go for information about

1:42:33should they like water their yard should they not water their yard what do they do about this stuff that maybe is grass that's growing in their yard now um if it's like my yard it's questionable whether or not it's grass it's green it's green but i don't know if it's grass um and so

1:42:54if not you know mode and all that it certainly will be a fire hazard but maybe there's a better way and can you direct them to that better way sure officially we have uh repealed the drought restrictions because the drought is over but we we do know that we will see new droughts so uh for for

1:43:15customers who might have had a large parcel which is not really characteristic here here in el cerrito uh we would suggest other alternatives to simply replanting a very large lawn but for a small lawn that doesn't use a lot of water i think that that is really a

1:43:36personal personal homeowners decision about how to manage their their property but we do make a guidebook that has really beautiful plants and landscaping so we have a native plant landscaping guide that's available on our website for for order and we we make that available in all of

1:43:56the public libraries in our service area so anybody can go to the the public libraries in the community and browse through the book and get get thoughts and suggestions about what to do we also do provide consultations through our water conservation department and they can

1:44:15provide advice about how how to do outdoor irrigation in a low water intensive way so we were able to provide personal customer assistance in helping customers make decisions for themselves about how can they have have wise water use all of the time because we know that this won't be the last

1:44:35route there will be a new drought and and there are uh costs at both both you know personal time costs as well as uh landscaping management costs to going back and forth so we we totally encourage customers to uh make the make that transition to a low water footprint if they choose um but we

1:44:56we don't have any regulations right now because we we do have enough water for for for our community so what is that website um so it's available um through ebmud.com so um i think a a customer could search um on the uh the website for uh landscape and if they were able to

1:45:18do that search they would get the um the web page for that for that guide great thank you and thank you thank you very much for a lot of information uh i think people are you know i think it'll be really helpful to people as they go forward and thank you for coming thank you for

1:45:38having me and i'm also available for follow-up questions my email address is my name andy dot cats k-a-t-z at ebmud.com so if any members of the council or or members of the public would like to follow up about something i've said or maybe didn't cover i'd be more than happy to get get

1:46:00feedback or additional questions andy.katz at ebmud.com okay great thank you very much have a good evening okay and with that we will move on to item number six public hearings and we have a hearing on the master fee schedule revision for the fiscal year 2017-18 and

1:46:27this is a regular public hearing so we have a process and we will follow that process which i think all the council members have on there on the dyas and it starts out with a mayor announcing the public hearing so consider that i have just done that and the next item is a staff

1:46:48presentation uh from shannon collins the accounting supervisor madam mayor if i may i know after this many people may be staying for the goal setting session and yet i'm worried that we'll be starting the goal-setting session quite late so i'm wondering if i just wanted to find out what your

1:47:13thoughts were with regards to the goal setting session tonight before we get too far into this item i'm hoping that this won't take too long actually okay so that we can we need to get through this i believe this this is we need to get through this so we should

1:47:33i think just go ahead and get it okay get it done okay um thank you very much erin thank you good evening my name is shannon collins oh i'm sorry shannon and i'm the accounting supervisor with the city of uh el cerrito i'm here tonight to provide you with the fiscal year 2017-18 annual master fee

1:47:52schedule as you know the master fee schedule includes all of the city's user fees charges for services and business license tax rates and is revised annually adjustments to the fees are intended to cover char changes in the city's costs of providing services the pro proposed 2017-18

1:48:16master fee schedule reflects a recommended three percent increase for most fees representing the city's increase of providing services some fees have held constant while others are proposed for changes based on demands for services and some new fees have been included in

1:48:34an effort to trend with current markets and allow the city to be competitive with regard to the services provided also included is the updated business license rates the municipal code it takes that the rates calculated using the consumer price index changes from the prior year

1:48:55the cpi change was approximately three percent and is recommended that business license rates be increased by this amount the new rates will go into effect july 1 2017 and any additional revenue will be included in the fiscal year 2017-18 budget department directors are present from

1:49:20each of the city's departments and are able to address any specific questions you may have regarding the master fee schedule as it relates to their specific areas thank you okay so the next item on this list is to take questions from the council regarding the presentation

1:49:43and the report i had i had one question um i just wanted clarification on what the fees were exactly for the police and fire in terms of hourly rates for the various leaders like chief captain et cetera i think the police chief can actually answer that question

1:50:13i know he's not here so the fire chief can answer it good evening madam mayor council members i'm lance maples i'm your fire chief the police chief stepped out but i'll do my best to answer this for you the hourly rates and those in the master fee schedule that you see there come from a

1:50:32foundational study that we did it was called the maximus study i want to say 10 years ago and that set the foundation for what an hourly rate was for one of those ranks that's a fully burdened hourly rate the hourly rate benefits pension medical everything that adds up so if we had a

1:50:52situation where someone either wanted an officer or a firefighter at their location for an event that's the hourly rate that for a fully burdened one-hour period of time for those ranks okay so that it's like if you sort of like a kind of an extra thing that you're out on versus just the

1:51:12hourly you're getting paid every hour for every day of work correct if it's something above and beyond what we would usually do or we had a situation where say we responded to a a commercial fire at chevron where we build them our true hourly rate we would build that

1:51:27corporation that hourly rate i see okay i i just wanted to make sure that i understood um exactly what it meant thank you from great question no no questions i'm going to ask i know the answer but i want to ask the question anyway with regards to the building fees i

1:51:44understand we have a study rate study ongoing can you give us a outline of our overview of that real quick actually i have to ask the community development director for that one good evening my name is melanie mintz and i'm the city's community development director and i think at the last meeting

1:52:04or the meeting before that you're awarded contract to willdan financial services and they have already started so they are beginning with a cost allocation study and then they will be on site um observing and interviewing to determine um how many hours how much time who is

1:52:19involved in different fee-for-service types of activity and i believe that we're hoping to come in around july august so it'll be actually after you do budgets we might need some adjustments um and that was the basis of my question will we be changing these rates again

1:52:37sometime after that study comes out yes uh we fully anticipate that you'll be doing that so we'll be asking you to do that thank you so we we kept them as you can see relatively the same with the three percent held some the same but mostly we knew we were going to be

1:52:49looking at it fresh um and that those fees would go into effect soon after the beginning of the fiscal year [Music] yeah just uh on that point i um was wondering whether or not we should include that as one of the whereases and the resolution that we have before us

1:53:07that we already have an ongoing study and even though we may need to change we're still going forward with this i saw it kind of missing from the resolution i could see that i mean it could be again the the fee study that we're doing is only going to be covering

1:53:19community development related fees um it'll be a full cost allocation study as there's other departments that are also involved in those services but we're working on a few fronts here so i think you could add that as a whereas community development fees will also be

1:53:32that that's probably appropriate especially because that does affect the building trades and others who are often looking at and just a couple quick points i was really glad to see that the commercial improvements were not going to be raised this year um for economic

1:53:44development purposes in town it was a really good decision and i'll make a point about the recreational issue when we get to that um the one issue i had and city staff was able to respond to me is the concealed weapon fee going down really concerned me initially when our

1:54:01tree fee was going up i'm thinking why are we doing this and and i was told that that's a federal regulation is that correct and we need to meet okay that made me feel a lot better and on the business fees who implements what's the percentage of those in town that you think

1:54:21pay that fee and how do we implement that they are doing that we have at present about 2300 businesses that actually pay that fee so raising it we're confident that that will will continue to get the good attendance on that yes okay thank you okay so with that i think we're ready to open

1:54:50the public hearing and um so i will do so i have no request to speak mayor okay there are no requests to speak okay that concludes public testimony motion to close the public hearing okay their second second second okay all in favor please say aye aye any opposition any abstention motion

1:55:14carries unanimously with that we move on to additional questions and then council dilemma deliberations are there any questions from the council not hearing any is there deliberation oh um just the amendment to the resolution edition additional comment do you have proposed

1:55:36text i don't okay let's see if there's any other deliberation is there any other deliberation okay so why don't we um move on to item number eight action and work on the um wording and i'm gonna do that and i i notice that the probably the logical place would be the the second whereas

1:56:00where the city council desires to update currently established fees and is also undertaking a study to blah blah blah blah of community development fees i'm seeing a nod from the back yes right okay as simple as that did you did you it's simple to you but it we have to make

1:56:21sure the clerk gets it yeah it would help um if you could just repeat that recital for me with the with your amendment in it whereas the city council desires to update currently established fees to cover inflation and city costs um and is also undertaking a study to determine construction

1:56:46fees community development fees all right thank you um if i can modify it's not really construction fees so it's you know permit all kinds of permits and inspections so i think we just say community development fees thank you uh does the city clerk have that language

1:57:09yes i do thank you okay great so is that a motion yes that's a motion okay i'll second okay uh so motion by fidelity seconded by lyman all in favor please say aye aye any opposition in the abstentions motion carries unanimously um and uh that did include exhibit a to the

1:57:36resolution right there's a note here um attachment exhibit a is the master feed schedule schedule do we have to read the title no you do not need to read the title and and the adoption of the fee schedule which is attached to exhibit a was was done by the adoption of the resolution

1:57:57okay great thank you okay so that concludes that item so now we'll move on to the next item which is 7a which is the parks and rec facilities master plan con consultant award [Music] good evening honorable mayor and council members i'm chris jones your recreation

1:58:55director this evening staff is requesting that you adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with rhaa for the preparation of the el cerrito parks and recreation facilities master plan through public engagement plan review

1:59:11and asset data collection the master plan will provide a framework to maintain rehabilitate and enhance the city's networks of parks facilities recreation and open space assets and will include current unfunded park and recreational opportunities it will also evaluate the effective use

1:59:31of the city's financial and physical resources and opportunities to implement recommendations in the for expediency this is what we'll be talking about tonight uh this is an example of uh i've listed all of the major parks and facilities in town for park and recreation

1:59:59and to illustrate the point of the age of our system i focused on the buildings much like our water pipes our facilities are several decades old many most being in their current state as a result of the park spawn passed in 1964 although some are constructed earlier

2:00:22and you'll notice the ones that were [Music] by and large most recent or as a result of the passage of measure a in 2000 which mostly focus on the rehabilitation of the swim center for a little bit of background if you look in any city budget for the past several years in the cip section you

2:00:46will find both funded projects and unfunded projects the funded projects on the left are mostly having to do with specific grant funds sometimes local measures and then the unfunded projects on the right tends to be a pretty consistent list of of items that remain unfunded but

2:01:12because they don't have specific funding for them outside of the general fund it also highlights kind of a conundrum that the park and recreation commission often has and staff and probably city city council too when some funding becomes available how do we know exac how do we know what the

2:01:33community's priorities are how do we know what will affect the most people and how much is it going to cost and so this plan should should help answer those questions i think you're well aware that um el cerritos parks and recreation facilities are well loved and heavily utilized here

2:01:56in in town uh the recent national citizen survey found that just over 80 percent of residents have been to a park in the past year just over 60 percent have been to a recreation center and i think that while the we're still reaping the benefits of el cerro's forebears in the 60s of the

2:02:19vision they had for their park and recreation system it's probably clear that things are a little different today than they were in the 60s and our needs and demands evolve as well as they will continue to do so in the future on the other side of the equation we are dealing with our aging

2:02:48infrastructure and backlog of deferred maintenance and as these facilities age the the price to maintain and rehabilitate these facilities continues to go up i won't get too much into the details here in the unless there's any questions currently for example the the uh center

2:03:15photo is of the el sorio community center roof uh it's definitely um getting past its prime it would be a really big ticket item to replace when that what that time came and currently the only way that the city would be able to do that is to use its reserves so the city has done a number of recent

2:03:44studies that really both call for and reinforce the need for a parks and recreation facilities master plan um [Music] you will be touching on i'm sure more tonight is the strategic plan which one of the main goals specifically calls out developing develop and rehabilitate public

2:04:04facilities as focal points but i think it's also worth noting that of this plan potentially could help further all of the strategic plans goals and several of its identified strategies closely related to this master plan would be the urban greening plan that was completed in 2015

2:04:29several of its goals align with [Music] improving the park and recreation system and rehabilitating it but it's also important to keep in mind that urban greening while having areas of overlap with this was not focused specifically on park and recreation facilities

2:04:52and didn't necessarily look at all aspects of that system and we do have additional plans that the city has completed which passing this uh or which implementing this master plan could either help fulfill or further the goals identified in these and other plans

2:05:20um this is an example of uh data that was gathered for the urban greening plan and um a point that the park and recreation commission made was that we've already done so much work recently engaging the public and gathering data we don't want to start the entire

2:05:40process over and so this is an example there's a lot of data here that would be done in a parks master plan and that can be incorporated into the plan but it's not everything for example the opportunity inventory identified on the lower right in the urban greening plan

2:06:02[Music] again didn't take in all aspects of you know priorities specific to park and recreation facilities it was really opportunity inventories that were in line with the urban greening criteria that was decided by the state so we have we have some stuff that we

2:06:26can take and use and not do again and we have some other work to fill in the gaps the goals of the plan seem pretty uh simple and straightforward but they will really um help us further the goal of having a sustainable and enhanced park and recreation network throughout the city

2:06:55not only engaging the public for current needs but analyzing trends and demographic research to see you know what do we need to accommodate future needs you know el cerrito traditionally has um has had an older population and now we see that there's a lot of families with

2:07:19young kids moving in and so how do we you know what does that mean for for serving them in at our parks and facilities we want to collect the data and evaluate conditions of parks and recreation facilities we know they're old we know there's issues we don't exactly know

2:07:38all of the issues and we don't exactly know how much it would fix to both rehabilitate and then maintain those rehabilitated facilities and we want to establish a prioritization methodology and criteria if there is another measure ww if there's a state park bond

2:07:56and el cerrito gets a little bit of money what should it be spent on what do the residents want it to be spent on are there any legal issues out there that need to be rectified um so that we're not exposed to liability um this plan would help create that prioritization methodology and finally

2:08:18um so that this just doesn't become a plan that we stuck on the shelf and say sorry we don't have enough money we want to conduct an economic analysis and develop a strategy to fund implementation and develop a strategy that the community can support and that would be looking

2:08:35at any number of revenue options including if we build certain things how much money should that make and then we can roll that into our analysis briefly about the process that we established a selection committee of staff members and two park and recreation commissioners

2:09:04an rfp was developed and the selection committee reviewed it we released the rfp to over 60 landscape architecture and related firms we received four on-time proposals and we ended up interviewing three and uh rhaa was unanimously selected by the selection committee after that

2:09:27process so why rhaa they have over or close to 60 years of experience doing this kind of work in communities in the bay area and beyond they actually have historical ties one of their founders is responsible for the uh the concrete turtle that we seem to be talking about

2:09:52a lot these days at fairmont park and then also barbara lundberg who's here from rha can talk a little bit more about this but but they really brought together a group of expert subcontractors to focus on the specific uh goals and areas of this plan to make it as effective as possible

2:10:16and then we really felt that rhaa under had a comprehensive understanding of our needs and challenges you know we're an older city a built out city we've done a lot of planning work so how can we balance vision with an asset management and data collection document and

2:10:38you know how can we utilize what we've already done so that we can focus on what we haven't and then finally they've proposed a focused public engagement plan we will form a citizen advisory committee that will kind of help steer the process a little bit and provide

2:10:59check-in at each point there will be no less than four public meetings the stakeholder interviews and then presentations to the park and recreation commission as well as city council eventually they'll help staff and volunteers go to public events and give information about the plan process

2:11:23and then also conduct online surveys as well as social media outreach and if i went too fast i apologize [Music] i'm certainly here to answer questions but first barbara lundberg from rhaa has a a brief presentation thank you chris um i just want to say how very pleased and excited we are to

2:11:50have been selected to help you with your parks and recreation facilities master plan as chris said we are landscape architects and i want to introduce the team that we have put together for this project in addition to me from rhaa we have lauren ivey who will be our

2:12:11project manager and she's had experience working on parks and rec master plans corty hill my partner will serve as resource principal backing me up if needed mack five will david ross is here from mack five and david is an architect and he will be doing the facilities

2:12:35evaluation and the firm he works for mac5 will be providing the cost estimate information additionally to our team we've got lauren livingston and julie spear from the sports management group and they specialize in recreational planning and then there is doug svenson from applied

2:12:58development economics who specializes in public uh funding and financing okay chris next next slide and i just want to briefly tell you what our this is just kind of a cartoon of our process we start first at understanding who you are then we look at your core values and that's through the

2:13:24community outreach um and then the effort is to articulate a vision for a flexible and balanced park system and then establish a direction to implement implement the vision that is realistic and sustainable so thank you chris thank you and if you have any questions

2:13:57questions from the council i'll start so yes um i think it's a great proposal and i'm familiar with rhaa's projects and think you have a great sense of place so congratulations on this um i was wondering how much city time do you think will be involved in contributing to assisting their efforts

2:14:22chris well i you know we wanted to get this right um i think it would be an extensive um we would devote some an extensive amount of time especially at the beginning to help them um collect the data and to give any insight that we can uh into the issues that they'll be studying

2:14:46and and your efforts together to finish out a picture of our city and what opportunities we may have okay um i i just wanted to say that i i like the option and opportunities for revenue raising in this and i think similar to what i'm hoping for in the library where

2:15:03we have community rooms where we can rent them out and get some revenue back will be a great opportunity and i just want to say the clubhouses at our parks are really important and a lot of the people are saying not to get too in the weeds but the two doors if we could open it out and make

2:15:18it an indoor outdoor opportunity way more rentable for a lot of folks and if you're going to double it up i think it's a great way to bring some revenue in but i think the clubhouse investigation and recommendations will be really nice and finally i was just wondering what um

2:15:36are you going to talk is the ch are the change order something we should know about is that something i didn't see it spelled out here it's basically uh just contingency for um if we if there's a scope change or if something comes up during the process that requires

2:15:52uh further investigation or work thank you yeah thank you i'm not familiar with our aja so i'm just curious what the acronym stands for stands for royston hanamoto ali and abby and those were the founders i assume those were the founders and they actually um did quite a few parks here

2:16:14in el cerrito back in the late 50s and 60s you know the last time we did them the uh how do how do you deal with up-and-coming sports that aren't necessarily sports that are common day-to-day i'm going to use lacrosse as an example and pickleball right because those are some that that

2:16:36are changing rugby even to some degree is changing our landscape and we have got different users how do you build in the flexibility of these un unforeseen sports well um part of what the sports management group will be doing is an a trends analysis which they will identify some of those

2:16:56and i think that in in terms of you know looking at your actual facilities your sports fields to look for as much flexibility you know we overlay fields on you know so you can have like for instance um soccer fields can be one big soccer field or a number of smaller soccer fields and we will

2:17:17also look to incorporate um sports like lacrosse fitting into that that model and and then um following up on uh council member uh fidelity's question certainly one of the controversies that's common out there is um artificial fields and lit fields and just wondering

2:17:39because i know that um as you know my background um i know that the adult uh use from 7 p.m to 10 30 11 p.m is a is a pretty significant revenue generator when there are lights but it's it's certainly not something that is available if there are no lights so just

2:18:00curious what what are some how far afield are you going to look at uh you know our our resources and and scheduling them so that will be part of the study that we'll do and it will be part of the needs assessment you know you know speaking to either you know specific

2:18:18sports groups or um you know sports organizations to you know see you know if if there is a need and we can look at then actually they make um you know artificial fields are are good for all year use and they do make lights nowadays that are more directed you know it's still it's a

2:18:43community issue though still and and now moving from outside to inside gymnasium space and future sports like netball yeah uh that is a co-ed sport that that potentially is something that you know could be uh up and coming in in the united states so i'm just curious what what type of

2:19:03resources from the on the indoor space that you might look at whether it's we had pictures of couples dancing what are some of the indoor spaces that you would be looking at um well i think you know we need to assess all the facilities that you do have and then you know based on that

2:19:21analysis based on uh trends analysis for you know various types of recreation we would be looking at whether or not you have a facility that could accommodate that or it could be a recommendation you know in the future you know to build a gym okay and then um the assessment part caught my ear

2:19:46the mac tech report was that something that was provided to you guys as the basis for the assessment of our existing structures yes so for those that don't know the mac tech report was 2003 2005.

2:19:582004 report that went through the whole city and did an assessment of all of our structures the condition and the cost to refurbish them and we have them and granted it's done in 2004 dollars so it's not necessarily a financially accurate report but i in my time on the council i don't

2:20:15think we've implemented a lot of the recommendations from that report and i think that's you know we're going to be taking a look at that you know since that report you know have things gotten worse you know and you know it's it's updating that report excellent and then your schedule i did

2:20:31look at your schedule and it does take a approximately 12 calendar months with you know quite a bit of outreach it looks like next winter during the holiday period so i'm just curious how um rigid you plan to stay to this calendar it has to be flexible excellent thank you

2:20:54okay of course yes uh i'm aware of your work and i i have uh memories of climbing on that turtle that's still there when i uh when i'm taking barton i see that there um it's the only thing left at that park the the monkey bars and the uh bubble is all gone yeah and uh but um

2:21:17i was looking at the list and uh you mentioned uh on the list is uh skateboard park and many of our new uh uh residents are skateboarders and and uh they have asked me are we gonna get a skateboard park any uh ideas on uh have you worked on skateboard parks before yes and we

2:21:38recommended one just uh we're just completing the newark parks recon wreck master plan and yes we're looking at um uh providing a skateboard park for them in one of their parks so i mean that's part of you know that the assessment that we will be doing is understanding what the community need is

2:21:58and we're going to look at where the best place to put that would be thank you someone just asked me yesterday if we were going to have a skate park here in el cerrito and they were advocating for it so it'll be interesting if we can if the public will come up with that

2:22:16and i guess that would be my question is how are we going to do public outreach what's the plans in terms of gathering public for information we we've got several tools as chris mentioned we want we need an advisory committee we'd like to select an advisory committee

2:22:33which is kind of a broader spectrum of the community and then to get input um we'll be interviewing stakeholders um which consists of you know like sports groups and you know other um community groups that are interested in you know recreation uh there will be community meetings

2:22:58actually you know boots on the ground you know in a room making a presentation breaking up the community to you know it's it will be a workshop environment will where we will have um the community actually you know directly participating in an activity to come up with a

2:23:18recommendation and then there's a potentially a web-based survey which would be a like a survey monkey that is you know on your website that we can ask the community to you know go online and you know take that survey and then i think you know finally there's there's um social media

2:23:43um i know you know what is it el cerrito next door would have um you know advertising a survey or advertising participating in a community meeting so we've got several tools for community outreach throughout the whole process thank you i guess one of the things i'm wondering about is

2:24:11looking at first of all what is a park i i don't know if that's where you would start but i it's kind of where i start what is the park and what do we mean when we say park um and to me it means a number of different types of things and a number of them we already have

2:24:32and some of them for me at least only exist in my mind there are things we don't have and one of the things i think we really don't have is a trail where you can feel like you're out in the wilderness for lack of a better way to say it and i was wondering if you had

2:24:53if that would be covered by this project yes definitely okay and uh would that be using some land that we already own probably it yes or a connection you know to another um open space that perhaps you don't own uh-huh that's okay okay and um then i assume one of your criteria when you

2:25:21get by the time you get done would be to look at um ages you know to to make sure there's something for different groups yes yes that's i mean in terms of a trends analysis that's one of um the upcoming trends is to have activities that are multi-generational where you could have children you know

2:25:43adults and seniors all participating in an activity together great and um let's see what else would i add to that i think it's pretty clear i'm pretty i'm really excited about uh the work you're about to embark upon uh i think it has been a long time and i think

2:26:03our parks have served us well and i think they're getting in a lot of ways worn and so this is a great time to be doing this project and so thank you for your interest in doing it thank you okay and um so this is an action item i believe right okay mayor abelson we do have one speaker we

2:26:30do okay let's robin mitchell my name is robin mitchell i live at [address removed] and i'm on the park and recreation commission i participated in the selection committee i heard all the proposals from the different firms and rhea definitely stood out as um and one of the things that i thought was

2:26:59really good about their proposal that none of the other applicants really addressed is that they actually paid a lot of attention to the fact that the city wanted to do a facilities assessment so they made sure that they have an architect they have a cost estimator none of the other proposals

2:27:17even came close to doing that so i think they're you know they have a very they put together a nice team they're not just um relying on their in-house expertise they put together a very well-rounded team so i think it's i'm very excited about the plan i'm excited about this

2:27:34firm and the proposal they put together and the one thing that i want to make sure that happens in us and this this sort of was something that i was trying to get to happen with the urban greening plan also is to try to figure out how to get to the underserved populations that won't come to a public

2:27:51workshop that probably wouldn't fill out a web form and i don't know if we really have the answer to that but i think there's a lot of people that use our parks that use the ohlone path that we never hear we never get input from them about what their needs are and so

2:28:05somehow i'm sure that rhaa will help us figure out how to get to those populations so anyway i think it's going to be a great firm and i think i'm very excited about the plan getting put together so thank you thanks okay yeah i want to build on the speaker's comment

2:28:23and let you know that that on sundays and actually weekend days uh out here in the dmv parking lot there are people playing qriket and they are part of that under underrepresented uh community and so it may be that you need to come out and actually um you know see where

2:28:42uh various things are going on and to build on your comment uh mayor you know there's our parks provide many services and in some ways you know we have open spaces being used for community gardens or open space that's being used for a number of things and i know

2:29:04you know anybody who's been on the park and rec commission knows that our signs say um no model airplanes rockets and i can't remember what the other thing you're not supposed to do um but there are certainly people using drones and and uh you know so we certainly want to make sure that we are

2:29:24thinking through what constraints we want to have on certain locations and what things we potentially want to accommodate in other locations like a bike park horse type thing for uh training our our high school mountain bike team for example um so there are there's a wide variety

2:29:46of things that people look for in el cerrito and and certainly where if there's a pocket park that can provide some little bit of uh aspect of something we certainly need looking for great minds to help us understand how to best use our facilities thank you okay

2:30:05and any last comments the council okay so ready for a motion motion i'd like to move that we passed this resolution i'll second okay um all in favor please say aye aye the opposition in the abstentions motion carries unanimously wonderful with that we will move on to item 7b

2:30:33which is the city council goals and priorities work session but just to make things just so we don't have to keep going back and forth why don't we do item 8 first and then we don't have to you know i think it'll be faster so are there any um i go to like to go

2:30:53to item eight briefly are there any city council local and regional liaison assignment reports none double checking oh i i i have a my i met with my economic development on the liaison to that committee and i think there's an effort to work with our arts and culture commission

2:31:21a variety of issues that might over time help to raise money and build economic development along san pablo avenue so that may be coming back to a city council soon great okay nothing okay great so we can consider item number eight done and then we will adjourn the meeting the next

2:31:42meeting will be on tuesday may 16th at 7 pm in these chambers the meeting is not adjourned now but immediately after we do the city council goals and priorities workshop which we're going to be doing down below thank you everybody and we'll just move down [Applause]

2:32:4645 [Music] just thank you foreign um in the restroom we have one slip so far from mr miller test test hmm okay well is this working yep okay uh we'll start out with our public speakers would you announce them show uh al miller followed by howdy gowdy good evening again i'm still al miller

2:36:00because of one of the comments i heard in your previous discussion of an agenda item i just wanted to briefly remind you what the else real library foundation was founded to do our primary goal our objectives were to assist the city in informing the residents of el cerrito of

2:36:20the need for and the benefit from having a new 21st century library and the other one was to raise funds to support the new library such as establishing an endowment you know new libraries like walnut creek when they got a new one the programming opportunities are infinitely greater than the old one

2:36:44we expect similar things to happen here so one of our goals is to create an endowment that they will ensure that there are funds to assist in programming at the library in the future another one was to raise money raise funds to assist in putting things in the library that a bond fund may not

2:37:06be able to do because of the various rules on a bond funny and the other one is to just get more of the community involved in the new library process through their donations and contributions thank you good evening council members my name is howdy gaurier um so

2:37:35i guess i want to first thank you for doing uh this type of um activity i i think that it would probably be better if this were done in the future as sort of a special event that was able to be accessed by more of the community i think starting at 9 30 at night is not the optimal so i

2:37:59hope you'll look at ways to to bring this forum to more people in the future um so i mean there's countless topics that i'm sure you're wanting to consider um i'm just going to return to a couple that i've talked to you about before only because i think in terms of

2:38:22operating the city they provide opportunities to you know actually save some some money and and maintenance costs but first i will thank you i recently met the new um environmental analyst hire and i think that's going to be um a very positive new resource for us um on the eqc and just

2:38:50the city in general and and meeting our climate action goals and i hope that you will keep climate action you know implementation as a high priority moving forward one of those examples that i alluded to in terms of being able to save money is actually putting a

2:39:13very forward-thinking determination toward growing an electric vehicle fleet in the city it's it's not an expensive thing it's actually going to save you money on operating and fuel costs over time and the vehicles are very affordable up front as well so i i don't think

2:39:37i would have been before you a couple times on vehicle purchase issues but you know i think this is actually costing the city money now and these decisions are lasting a long time and have big implications and and we really need to have a more you know aggressive

2:39:56effort to adopt this likewise i think the statement of moving the city to 100 renewable energy is a very important leadership statement and meeting our climate action goals and um and then you know having just listened to the recreation uh plan discussion clearly there's a huge

2:40:23unfunded you know legacy there that that needs to be addressed and i think it's great that this planning process is happening and i think you should be thinking forward about being able to fund the implementation of that so thank you very much so now now we'll begin the uh formal

2:40:52process i guess and i'll turn it over to our uh i forget what we call i'm sorry facilitator thank you wonderful thank you so much and i think that mike's warming up um nancy hetrick with management partners and i'm delighted to be here uh tonight and i appreciate the both the public

2:41:13participation here tonight and the comments as well particularly the comments about interest in participation and engagement i know that's been a high priority and continues to be a very high priority for the council and for the city the city adopted and then revisited and updated a

2:41:31strategic plan that has been serving as a road map and a guide over the course of the last many years beginning first in 2013 renewed in 2015 so about mid-cycle through that process which is a very inclusive engaging process in formulating that first step so i point that out and i know that

2:41:50council has been reviewing and contemplating updates and discussing the elements of the strategic plan over the course of the last several meetings including progress that has been achieved on many of the items a strategic plan is a long-range plan it's not something that will be

2:42:09accomplished in a single year but it really has a longer vision just as the park's master plan will provide for the city moving forward so i i mention all that uh in an appreciation for what we're trying to accomplish this evening and that is to provide an opportunity to talk about you

2:42:29know what are the opportunities and challenges facing the city currently a newly formed relatively newly formed council and looking forward to the next budget cycle so specifically within the strategic plan or items that are of interest and importance to you what should be the priorities for the

2:42:47coming year um so that's the purpose for tonight we sort of outlined two key objectives that we are going to work our way through and i'll be sensitive to time i know that that it's going to become late so we'll start off with sharing thoughts and ideas really in a

2:43:03brainstorm format about what's working and what can be improved by reflecting specifically on the city's strengths limitations or weaknesses opportunities and threats and we'll walk through each of those individually but the idea is to have an opportunity to share observations both as long time

2:43:23council members and newer council members about those things that are both challenges and opportunities from that then we'll move into the conversation about top priorities for the next year and again recognizing that there are many things that are contained in the

2:43:39strategic plan that will continue to be contained in the strategic plan with progress being made but what are the most important things for this body for staff to pay attention to to resource and to prioritize for the coming year so that'll be the second part of our

2:43:55discussion uh any questions on any of that and does that make good sense and is this mike even on i'm not sure all right well let's go ahead and jump right in i certainly don't want to stall or delay on time um so i want to start off with the question about strengths

2:44:14um so you know what do you see as things that the city as an organization as a representative of the community and also the council is doing uh really well what are some of the strengths that you experience and observe and karen's going to graciously provide notes here for us

2:44:37do i do i need to use this i probably do is it working okay okay the one of the things that seems to be working well is our new specific plan and the reason i'm saying that uh is that we've had lots of indications that there are people interested in doing development in el cerrito which has not

2:45:03happened um i guess in my lifetime on the council before so that it is a big change and i'm very excited about it and even if half of the things happened not all of them i'm still very excited about it so i think that's one of the things that's working really well and i'll pass it on

2:45:23so that we can get around to everybody some of the things that are working well i think our staff does a really good job of outreach and uh listening to the the community i think we've we do a very good job of balancing the the community's needs right now and so i'm very pleased with

2:45:51what our limited resources have been doing for our community and you know the way we've approached some of these uh very difficult decisions we've made recently with regards to sanctuary city dispatch um and as we move forward with a difficult decision with regards to

2:46:14marijuana we i feel we're doing it in a very um thought through process that allows us to make good decisions and so that that's one of those strengths great absolutely right as i mentioned to you nancy in the kind of the pre-question interview that we had i as one of the new city council members

2:46:45i'm really impressed with the great planning documents that this city produces on a variety of topics that i care about and i said i can't find much fault with many of those i'm really great on the climate on san pablo avenue active transportation all these things

2:46:59are very very well done and i like the way we test them against future actions that we take we have with our goals we test anything that we produce to those goals the other thing i was going to say is as a kid that grew up here is the place making of this of el cerrito has really

2:47:20incredibly improved uh coming from a city that was comfortable but not memorable by any means to a place that's pretty memorable with arts and good-looking art and um events so i'm very pleased about that i was going to say that one question i had in the beginning is uh

2:47:41our goals will depend on how how how balanced our budget is and what we can afford to spend and there are a lot of challenges in that direction so i don't know if we're putting that on the table as well okay the limitations okay thank you i appreciate the point

2:48:01because that is one um the goals that has been articulated as a priority for the community so one thing that always pops into my mind first when we talk about our strengths is our recycling center um it seems like you know nowhere else i've ever seen i was even challenged by some of the

2:48:21recycling center people like can you name another place like this and i was like no i can't you know so i think we're a real leader on that as well as our our overall climate action and commitment our partnership with mce i think that all of those things the city is really

2:48:41ahead of the game and a leader for the region and maybe even the country right and really reflecting the value of sustainability so i think um compared to most cities the other cities surrounding us we're we're in much better shape our parks our school our our senior our

2:49:06programs um so many people use our programs and we have a lot of new residents here uh they're very happy with the services and uh it's it's a new generation of young families that i've never seen in the whole time that i've lived here since 2001 to have a new generation of

2:49:31young kids that attended public schools here and there are other choices of schools that they can attend so uh for for a small city i think we're doing quite fine and in providing uh these uh different amenities um and i know many of them have bought their homes at premium

2:49:50prices and they would like the the same amenities that they had when they were running at the inter sunset or the or the richmond district or noe valley and and uh and uh we're getting it done here in el cerrito and and uh and people and are are talking about that and that uh so i know i rarely hear

2:50:12anything uh uh bad i hear uh what can be done better um and i'm very proud of the services that we have here excellent so quality of services that are provided to the community and also i heard participation rates also something that you're uh pleased with are there other strengths janet

2:50:32one of the things that i keep hearing about from our neighboring cities that that makes me feel really happy is that we seem to be introducing more affordable housing into el cerrito projects than they are able to do in our neighbors neighboring cities and this is what i'm hearing from

2:50:53neighboring cities so i i consider that to be really an interesting thing and i'm really proud of our community actually for supporting us in doing affordable housing and we you know we've gotten really positive community response every time we've tried to do an

2:51:14affordable housing project and so if you think about our affordable housing we've got the project over behind marshalls was the first one in recent years to be completed we have the one going up next door to hear the senior housing project that uh and both of those are a hundred

2:51:35percent affordable minus the one residential unit for the caretaker and then you go over even to a project like the one going up at el cerrito plaza and it has some affordable housing so you know you go from project and if you look on the list of what might happen in el cerrito you also seeing see

2:51:56it and what's causing it is a combination of factors uh you know it for example this specific plan that that uh gives bonuses for or the uh you know like you can have extra height if you do affordability for example things like that incentives programs and as well as i think a state program is

2:52:19helping to fund that but anyway we're willing to go ahead and do it is what i think my biggest point would be and i'm really happy to be in a in a community that does it that way so the commitment and support to affordable housing is a strength of the the community any other

2:52:37strengths that we want to make mention of yeah you've got a mic that works yeah um i think it maybe goes without saying and we're so used to it but an enlightened police and fire department i mean they really are part of the community part of the family care about the budgets that we have care

2:52:55about our neighbors important to mention those things absolutely right absolutely right other strengths that's important dan definitely the services that our fire department uh provides especially with the wheat abatement and and up on the hills there a lot of the neighbors very much

2:53:22appreciate what they do just as a former member of the human relations commission i really appreciate the city's commitment to diversity and inclusion and respect for all people um i mean that's one of the reasons why i'm living here my husband and i often tease i won't say

2:53:47about where he works but we never say we're going to move there because of lack of all of those things that i just mentioned so i i feel like this community is very welcoming and and committed to making everyone else here also feel welcomed another important value i think that is

2:54:07articulated yeah i want to build on the the fourth bullet which is planning documents um in you know in in you know we have the strategic plan um and we have all these planning documents and tonight we've initiated another planning document so i i do think that

2:54:27it definitely is a strength that we are able to produce high quality things that get us out there and ready to implement um you know and it includes things like we invested in our pavement when we needed to and we now are the talk of the bay area about our pavement so um and it and

2:54:48you know it's a little thing uh but when people come into el cerrito they they notice it um and that that's a i mean it goes back to the place making idea that paul brought up as earlier so all of our planning documents are are really high quality and timely so

2:55:08thank you for that and certainly forward thinking and planning and having those resources and tools and having a council that commits to those and uh seeks to provide progress and support progress in those areas is the best practice that you should be proud of uh and and not

2:55:23every city takes the time to invest the effort and the the time that you've put into such plans to be commended just to play off of what greg just said is that i think elsa else readings are willing to pay for the quality of life the services that they want and we're willing to step up and pay we

2:55:40want you know lighting we want pavement we want the swimming pool we want a library let's step up and and pay for those things one community all right well in the interest of time unless you have one more quick comment go really quick uh this is one that i think is about the

2:55:56environment we live in and that is transit and we're a community that's quite supportive of transit and it really makes a difference in the bigger scheme of things especially in you know when we're talking about affordable housing we wouldn't be talking about affordable

2:56:18housing uh if we didn't have a good transit in our cis city and we don't have good transit in our city we have fantastic transit in our city at least down on the avenue so i think that really is something that we can be proud of right and the assets that are available

2:56:37too as amenities for for your community in and out of the city all right are we good to move on to the next and i don't mean to rush the dialogue but i want to make sure we have adequate time for the priorities discussion as well all right so moving on to the the next which is

2:56:52uh as you had started to allude to what are some of the the limitations constraints um weaknesses that get in the way of being able to move the needle um forward yeah and the reason i brought up planning documents because our good former mayor mr friedman said at one point

2:57:15enough with the planning let's get along with the delivering and so you know we have great plans um and one of our challenges is to come up with the funding to move it forward so that that certainly is the is the deal i heard you tapping it's on now sure all right that's good though so

2:57:37so get to action is your point so some of the limitations are lots of great plans but dot dot dot okay other limitations um we have great staff and and a great police department and fire department but for a small city without any industry we have small businesses it's

2:57:56hard to pay them and give them the benefits that that they can get if they worked across the street or across the bay or drive seven miles down the road so um i would like to find um ways of providing more revenue and and for our cities so uh we can pay for these future uh

2:58:22uh costs that we have like calpers so a limitation uh not surprising here is resources you know always a constraint um you can do a whole lot right but if you had some more you could do that much more so at constraint we'll come back on the opportunity side there

2:58:40did you have a comment um i'd like to echo what gabe said in terms of staffing um you know as we've had ideas pop up over the years that seems like it be it kind of comes back to staffing staffing staffing you know that's a great idea but you know we'd have to hire more people

2:58:58to do that and you know we already have people doubling up on jobs here in the city so it would be great to have better staffing um so that we could implement some of these great ideas yep no i hear you hear you it's not not alone in terms of cities that are constrained by resources

2:59:18other weaknesses constraints limitations that you observe um i i too wanted to just raise the concern about calpers that's an issue every city's going through and it's a big big concern so it hits all of us in every level and it limits what we can do what we can

2:59:40where we can move in the future and one thing that's changing is el cerrito has had a lot of open lots i think with affordable housing and transit and that economic development that's that's changing i'm hearing we have good plans moving forward we don't have a library i'm real

3:00:01concerned about that that's been a solid thing that every community has had that makes a community better and that's something that we're working on too so i'm optimistic about that okay all right go ahead well if we're going to go down the uh limitations of of not having

3:00:18certain uh amenities for our our residents there's the uh senior center and certainly tonight we talked about uh a plan to look at our parks and rec our our community center is is aging we had a whole list of clubhouses that were built in 1964.

3:00:39we've got the pool buildings are already starting to deteriorate from various reasons we've got fields that are out of date we've got the public safety building that is aging we've got the public safety building next door police and fire station next door there that

3:01:01that is not um up to code and up to snuff with regards to what we do in in this day and age and some of the services it could provide to both the public and our our staff so so as long as we're we're going to throw the library out there i'm going to remind us that there's a number of other

3:01:20facilities that you know are listed in our budget table 12-1 you know we talk about some of the facilities that are out there that are as seen in presentation tonight from our parks director are aging in and in much need so so local so local facilities local amenities and

3:01:44assets that are aging need attention needs some tlc um when we get to the opportunities and certainly there's already some some work underway to help move forward in identifying what those priorities are and and to build on the pavement discussion before it it's little things

3:02:02that like the recycling center oh yeah you know we had a recycling center and it did a lot of the same services but now we have a great recycling center and people know about it we had a city hall that was in trailers we now have a city hall that we're in people notice these improvements and

3:02:20they add value to our community they add value to people wanting to be here just like the pavement just like the new pool did you know 10 plus years ago people recognize the fact that we resurface our tennis courts on a really regular basis people notice that um that they're not there's not grass

3:02:38growing up in the middle of the cracks so these these um little things whether it's casa sarita that people are taking their kid to and where or is the the community theater across the street from every people recognize these buildings are getting old and and it really makes a difference

3:02:59to to have those whether it's the library the senior center we really need to start thinking about improving these structures so that our community has better uh better facilities and and therefore a stronger community right moving into some of the opportunities

3:03:29so taking the time to do that i'm sorry about the mic this is not really cooperating very well with me um okay did you just have to stop turning it off so a thing is this one working sure doesn't sound like it um the uh i'm talking though the thing we haven't talked about that i

3:03:54hear lots of complaints about is traffic and what we do have a lot of uh is traffic and uh congestion and the pollution that comes from that and um you know if you look on lists that's usually there is one of the more significant uh problems that people are concerned about so um

3:04:20that i would say is a serious one and then um not everyone maybe is interested in it but our seniors who live up in the hills who are no longer able to drive don't have a very good way of getting out we do have a small dial-a-ride system but it can't handle the need that's there at

3:04:44even you can't come even close in my opinion to handling the need of our seniors who are no longer able to drive and live up in the hills and there are a lot of seniors i believe that are in that situation so that's that's something we're lacking so i get a limitation on

3:05:05the resources that are available to support the demand right and so and in thinking about weaknesses and i'll come right back to you um i want you to be thinking about you know what are some of the the limitations that you have within your organization and and within

3:05:22your control which is also you know the threat the external threats like calpers or like increasing senior populations those sorts of things are also critically important and we'll come to those as well but i also want to make sure that they're we're thinking about

3:05:36some of the internal things that are our limitations like we were mentioning with resources and staffing me i want to i'm going to echo and build on the thoughts that you you were just talking about because certainly as i went around last fall docking door-to-door

3:05:51traffic and transportation was the number one complaint that people had and they really wanted to go back to el cerrito from 20 years ago and and could we stop building uh and adding residents and and interesting enough you know we aren't at our peak population our peak population

3:06:09was several decades ago but it but for whatever reason traffic now is is something that people are noticing and complaining about and it may not be el cerrito origin trips um and i and finding solutions and you are spot on with the the seniors that and our dial-a-ride

3:06:30my father lived with me for the month of february and and he is unable to drive and we had days when we had to find ways to for him to get around el cerrito just in el cerrito because the dial-a-ride service was not available so these things that are potentially

3:06:50available they go hand-in-hand if we can work on reducing the traffic we potentially are solving some of the transportation issues that uh our community needs and so i don't know how they necessarily go to hand-to-hand but they certainly have the opportunity to

3:07:11to work together i agree with council member lyman growing up in the hills i also remember there were buses up there and there were buses up in the neighborhoods and yeah we have gone through having buses all over the city to having just a few on san pablo avenue

3:07:36i don't think our residents are are they they would take the bus if it was there again the number 68 the number seven uh the line the 67 that would go up stockton um i've heard from residents and they would like these back um i know ac transit doesn't have the funds but i'm hoping

3:07:57you know with with new talk technology we can use rideshare programs in the future that that will take seniors up and down and and and kids as well you know kids used to take the bus and and uh now it's not available anymore and we need to let our ac transit directors

3:08:16know that we want this back and and so a related limitation is sidewalks um our walk scores people talk about walk scores and even in my neighborhood which is uphill i'm i'm seeing a lot more people walk and they're not walking on the sidewalks as much as they should be uh because the

3:08:37sidewalks are not in level our streets are better than our sidewalks um and so that's that's something that definitely needs to be uh that's a limitation our sidewalks are are actually putting people in their cars as opposed to walking right so or even on bikes probably but just yeah

3:08:57okay uh any other limitations things that are we'll come back to threats which are sort of external in nature those things that you don't have control over but certainly impact you um but are there any other limitations constraints weaknesses that we want to make note of before we go on

3:09:16to opportunities okay good we'll go on opportunities and and i know it's tempting you guys have already started dribbling in on the opportunities and so we want to think back on the limitations you've identified some of the challenges that you've already surfaced whether it

3:09:35be related to transportation um the availability of resources those sorts of things and turn them into opportunities so what are some of the opportunities that you can envision for the city to echo what greg said in terms of um well all of our buildings that need to be rebuilt

3:10:02particularly some of the buildings that that house like our kids during after school which i can say i personally know and then also the public safety building across the street one of my things that i'll keep going back to no matter how many times i come up here i will always be talking about

3:10:24safety and earthquakes and disasters because you know i have a medical background and this is something i think about all the time and it i don't want i want to make sure that our first responders are able to get to us and not have problems in their own home before they're able to get to the rest

3:10:41of us so um and i'll i guess i'll leave that for my first comment okay so the first opportunity to prioritize the investment into facilities whatever that might look like whether it's upgrades to make them safe [Music] okay other opportunities um just a couple off cuff odd comments is i think as

3:11:17we're moving toward develop greater development and housing and the needs that those things bring i just want to make sure that we at the same time make sure that we preserve our open spaces on the hillside that we're going to get a lot of pressure from new people coming and we need to

3:11:37guarantee that they will have trails and they will have creeks and they will have the view that elsa readings in the past have had i think another key thing that el cerrito needs to do and this involves the great art community we have is we can build our economic development with key

3:11:53annual events whether it might be a film festival or an ice rink at the plaza bring people in every year this is something we can be a draw to our region by having key annual events and i think the plaza and the downtown area that we call it there's a lot of potential down there

3:12:13around fairmont and around central to reshape a real centerpiece that connects up to the plaza uh there's some hindrance with some banks i don't want to say it but big thick buildings that don't open the space up banks again right and we can open that up there's a great place for to

3:12:34centralize our retail our effort and that will draw people in um and and again finally the um we can build demand for these services that we're talking about up and down san pablo avenue by the housing that we're bringing the people that come in we can build demand for the retail one

3:12:51builds off the other so that's very exciting stuff outstanding okay this is i'm having flashbacks to lots of i mean these have been priorities they continue to be sustained priorities for the community the place making and having that central hub and the resources uh available

3:13:09i have a long list sorry that's okay um increase the library hours i mean we've got an opportunity we've talked about it tonight already about an opportunity to increase the library hours and um you know go start down the steps towards replacing the library we we've got uh it's already in our fiscal

3:13:30year 2019 budget but updating the general plan is something that is impor important for us to be moving towards to promote the types of small infill projects and and other things that i think would benefit our our community uh historic resources inventory and order

3:13:49and ordinance um that is again in fiscal year 19 budget a heritage tree ordinance we are starting to lose some of our larger trees and not because they're old but because they're on private property a short-term rental ordinance just yesterday or today uh san francisco settled with some of

3:14:12the short-term uh rental companies and and so we should be uh taking advantage of that as a potential revenue source uh an inclusionary out housing ordinance uh to protect those that are very vulnerable we should be working towards that um you know the a purchasing policy that

3:14:36incorporates environmental issues as a criteria maybe a transit solution the oakland's got the broadway b maybe we should have the san pablo c you know something that goes back and forth along our three miles that isn't amenity that gets people you know you park once and you can get

3:14:58up and down the avenue uh you know in in a way maybe that reduces the traffic uh i would like to see us reduce this goes to something uh paul said earlier reduce invasives in our our hillside natural area we've got a fuel load up there that i think is is not necessarily

3:15:18particularly comforting and i would so i'd love to see us make some investment in our open space up there and then now funding on the funding side you know look at ways funding ways funding plans for the reconstruction of some of these decrepit buildings including the pools the maybe a

3:15:40gymnasium as we discussed earlier and consider the funding opportunities from some of the different types of marijuana uh businesses that we could potentially accept in our community so you know those are are some of the opportunities i see um and you know when we talk about

3:16:06funding for facilities it looks really small up there but it's it encompasses a lot of things because potentially you've got to look at um whether it's a partial tax on ad valorem tax uh potentially going to uh a um from a to a general law city from a general to a

3:16:28charter city and having potentially a transfer tax so there's there's lots of different things that could go that you've got different funding mechanisms that could potentially distribute the revenue so it's not all sales tax it's not all parcel tax it's not all

3:16:51um different one type of funding mechanism so looking at a variety of strategies to generate new revenue there's a variety of mechanisms that could be pursued potentially each one requires analysis and testing to make sure that there is an appetite and a willingness to support those

3:17:11but different strategies do you have a comment i can tell no you don't i was going to say that greg said my whole list so i i i don't have much more to say you went before me i didn't i didn't know we were going through the whole list okay um aside from what greg already said so

3:17:35ditto to most of that um i think the only thing that i have left on here is kind of echoing back to our our safety and i'd like to hopefully put a little more effort into our community emergency response team i think that we're doing a good job now but um i think that our firefighters could use

3:17:57some support and i i would love to be able to do that okay do you want this one oh i forgot i didn't hear that's okay it doesn't matter um one of the things that i'm actually pretty excited about and had major x pass in the election we probably would be talking about implementing right now

3:18:20is the complete streets planned on san pablo avenue which gives us an opportunity to move a lot of non-single occupancy car traffic around on san pablo avenue in our city and combined with the higher density housing that it would appear is going to appear there

3:18:46we'll be able to move more people around without moving more cars around and i i think that's really going to be the thing that really changes our city in so many ways because if you've got a house up in the hills the only thing i can say about it is you've got a house up in the hills you

3:19:08know and that it is what it is but if we have a piece of property down on the avenue we have a lot of opportunities and not just for housing but a lot of fred a lot of other things and um and we can have uh underneath that retail typically and uh so it's it's that i think is pretty

3:19:29exciting to to me and within 10 minutes we have to extend the meeting i believe yes and so i think all of the um [Music] the thing that we have to figure out is these are all great ideas and we have to figure out what's the most important but it isn't exactly even that it's because different

3:19:55things come from different funding sources so some things we can have you know we can have lots of this and lots of that but other things we have to pick do we want this or that because they come from the same pot of money and so i think that will be the challenge

3:20:13that we face in the fut you know in the near future about what we do is um and also we're going to have to stretch our city staff even further in order to implement these solutions no matter how many contractors we hire we still have to use staff to do the essential um

3:20:38activities related to those events sure and remembering that in the in the short term with limited resources which we've identified as uh a limitation or constraint currently there's with each choice there's potentially an opportunity cost right so there's a trade-off of do we spend our

3:20:55time and resources money here or do we do it here today um i i agree with janet especially regarding the san pablo avenue uh uh plan and and making sure that that when we build these buildings and these homes that that they are up to date and they have um charging for their evs

3:21:18we need to change things around and add these things and and then put some ordinances on that this has to be built if you're going to build a multi-uh unit building and have in their garage a place where they can charge their cars and also have perhaps at the bart station's

3:21:42car sharing programs and i see that in other cities and in parts of san francisco and it seems to be working well i've talked to my colleagues in in san pablo richmond and albany and they are keen on adding uh el cerrito and their cities to the next phase of bike sharing

3:22:01there's a new program that an attorney in san francisco uh told me about and it's about having a bike share program that you can actually take your bike uh to your home or to an area near your home that's gps and someone in that area can pick it up the next time and and

3:22:22some finding creative 21st century ways of of uh doing these things the transportation i think we need to do with our buildings as well and in our infrastructure so some forward thinking as there's new development and opportunities for reconsidering my opinion most of the people that will move here

3:22:45and these in the housing on san pablo avenue will most likely take transportation and if they have to use a car they'll they'll do a zip car or something like that before we extend the meeting i was wondering if there is a good stopping point tonight and we could potentially

3:23:05given some of the comments we had tonight uh in move this to another night so that we could have it potentially start at an earlier hour and and um potentially improve our participation so i'm curious if if there is an opportunity for us to consider a stopping point tonight another night

3:23:26and um let's just find out okay okay uh what do we have left to do right that's what i was going to say maybe i could share through the next steps um and so we wanted to make sure we went through all of the opportunities which we're getting there um reflect on some threats and i

3:23:44think we've already touched on some of the biggies calpers being one of the big external threats uh and then turning our sights on to top priorities so recognizing that there are a whole host of priorities that are in the strategic plan and that you've kind of illuminated

3:24:00here in terms of things to work on but to get a sense of the group on what are the top priorities for staff to again in that opportunity cost equation to prioritize so what we were going to do was to have each of you individually identify your top three priorities

3:24:20share those out collectively and then have a conversation about where there are common items where there are differences and reflect on that so perhaps we could stop now and then everyone could you could uh give everyone these lists and then we could look at them and

3:24:36identify within that list or maybe i think we would prefer it would be within these lists because then we can do a better comparison but if you know if it has to be something new i suppose it you know that's okay too um and then we'll come back at a future time

3:24:54um the win um maybe just one of the one of the things that staff is looking for is as we're continuing to plan forward for our fiscal year which is coming up in june that was one of the one of the reasons that we wanted to um be sure to hear all of your thoughts as we go forward

3:25:18okay there may be a number of people at the next meeting on other topics well we could do it if we start at the beginning of the the meeting perhaps and if everybody can provide their top just three top three items to me in advance then i can pull those together we can

3:25:34send them out and we can then move the conversation along you know just in the interest of making sure we have ample time for talking about what they mean and where there is similarity you mean at the at the meeting that meeting or a different meeting at the next council meeting

3:25:50okay that's the one where there may be a lot of people um actually we already needed 15 minutes public caring for another item related to the um design review board design review board so we could start at 5 45. is that okay with the council everybody okay with 5 45 next time

3:26:35oh wait i don't have a response here 5 45 okay he's not going to be here you're not going to be here at all um what what do you want to do about it well i mean we can continue i'm asking gabe okay and and then you wouldn't participate in that part of the um okay but i want him

3:27:09so that's okay with you is my question real really okay so then for the rest of us can we be here at 5 45 yes okay so i think we have direction yeah let's go through threats really quick do you need do you need 10 minutes for threats i do think that that's a good

3:27:26stopping point so i'm just curious it's a clean break okay so what is there somebody that will extend the meeting ten minutes five minutes okay so i would like to move that we extend the meeting to 10 40. yeah that's good is there a second all in favor please say aye aye aye any

3:27:42opposition st abstentions motion carries unanimously all right great uh so we can go so first of all i just want to make sure that we didn't miss any opportunities we were sort of still on that topic when we took a quick pause and i want to make sure we haven't

3:27:58cut anybody off on that topic okay great so threats so these are you know i like i like to use calpers as an example because it's a big one but these are external threats that could get in the way of your success or things to be mindful of um and to be alert cal calpers was

3:28:17mentioned already increasing traffic could be another example those sorts of things right but to be that's right but you need to be astute and mindful about conversation right what's that recession or depression exactly right yeah i have two two big ones um uh federal concerns about sanctuary cities

3:28:45even though i don't i think we're gonna win uh about anything right federal government yes this administration about anything including marijuana um implementation of those issues so those what both revenue one's a revenue raising the other is uh could take money

3:29:04away from us okay excellent those are nice and specific those are good examples of threats i want rochelle to go first because i'm going to steal her natural disaster thank you [Laughter] by the way i was going to steal it he's ready to pounce on that yes that's certainly a threat and

3:29:24something to be alert to right greg did you have others too or just michelle's [Laughter] wow go ahead it's too smarty smarty pants here um international crises you know what i mean yeah just you know things that might put us back you know not prioritize some of these

3:29:52things but bigger international issues international issues and their their effect on the city of el cerrito or international issues maybe nuclear war i don't know world war ii we were a huge labor hub for for productivity you know at the manufacturing boats in the area so we

3:30:15can just but just because uh it's not doesn't have to be nuclear for us to potentially have repercussions here uh to whether we are for it or supporting it or against it the repercussions uh could easily be felt here okay cyber attacks you mentioned uh rece you got that

3:30:38recession depression the economy taking insurance you know that your recessions are cyclical right and so are there threats um this is the downer way to end by the way well it wasn't my schedule [Laughter] uh i'm thinking of the climate yeah i'm so excited i was gonna say next the effects of

3:31:01climate change and yes sea level rise sea level rise wet the the weather pattern changes water shortages she got hers she gets hers oh eager one [Laughter] um anyway i think that's a serious problem and having traveled around different places in the state uh during this uh last

3:31:34year especially during the periods when it was raining i saw really big problems happening i mean you know what flooding that was immense flooding my the last time i went to like county on my way back 101 had a major landslide and they fixed it took a week a day

3:31:59later it happened again it's just huge right so landslides in the context of natural disasters and it isn't just that that's going to happen to our neighbors we have things like that happen to ourselves so i think that saying um natural disasters is um fire yeah you know it i mean that

3:32:24there are these things called natural disasters and then there's this what i would call a super disaster which and that's what i think is something that we have to be concerned about and meaning climate change and the effects on right water we heard water earlier today

3:32:44right and the implications of that okay and it's happening aging the aging of our uh of our society and the um then the issues that come from that right the demands on resources and facilities and movement and access and all those things all bundled together whether it's you

3:33:10know income issues or mobility issues or lack of medical issues or you know there's there's all sorts of you know our population is we are not steady state right it's also the um aging of our um facilities right we captured that under the limitations i think too yeah under

3:33:32okay the limitations concerns that's right from the audience but i'll also say that the closing of the hospitals around here um it's it's something that affects the city and yet we have limited control over it right external threat yeah right yeah yeah i saved it for here but it turns

3:33:57out that i saved it for the wrong thing there with the limited no it would be a limitation i think it's a limitation it might be an opportunity um and and i think rochelle touched on it earlier about staff limit staff limitations um you know we are constantly it feels like we're constantly

3:34:17hiring um and uh that the resource isn't necessarily the rev the the ability to pay people it's the it's the process of getting people in and and that may be a a limitation i know it where i work it's a limitation the process of hiring is so daunting retention staff the whole works

3:34:46management array is a big topic of many concerns in a lot of areas okay so higher selection retention are there other well well you triggered that thought are there other thoughts in terms of um kind of whether it's training and development or knowledge or any of those other things

3:35:07related to staff that are limitations currently or is that um more on the strengths category the loss of key personnel yeah okay so that actually might be a threat right it's an external it's an external threat i mean it's a that's a that's a we had a very emotional retirement um

3:35:35at the last meeting and that's outside of our control to some degree right it certainly impacts everything all right i don't i don't like the loss of stat the loss of staff that that retirement is much better you can see retirement how about that we know what we know we know the intent

3:36:01all right any other threats it's a pretty healthy list okay any other um comments on the others because we're going to do we're going to summarize these and we'll send them out [Music] with the expectation that you'll come up with three again one two three tops

3:36:21three top priorities that you'll send back uh to me and i'll compile those and we'll then have a conversation about those use more guidance don't let her off the hook well a priority priority should be can be broad and or sp specific or right or is it what are the things that to you

3:36:41are most critical that staff spends time and resources on in the coming year so those i mean that can be um broad or specific it you know follow the direction yeah i'd say then you'd be picking up a little piece of thing right are we that's what we would be doing in the next year well we'll

3:37:04talk about so when we come back together we'll have a conversation about what does that look like what does that mean to you in terms of the priorities itself so that we can get some clarity about expectations and what that looks like but thinking in mind that the time frame

3:37:17here is for the next year uh because this is planning for the next fiscal year and so if that helps to think about the context and you're not going to redo all of your facilities for example in the coming year um but there may be you know something that you think is

3:37:33really critical to spend time on whether it's identifying funding for a specific facility or prioritizing um efforts on the sort of sidewalks or whatever it might be so so i just want to again in our remaining time make sure we know our assignment we are using this general brainstorming session

3:37:53as the guidance but we potentially could pull something apart to focus on for the next 12 months or conceivably could go back to the strategic plan and find something in the strategic plan that that actually we is a subset of this or overarching concept of one of these things so we're

3:38:13not limited to what's on the board or one set of what's on the board but obviously the whole point of why we discussed it tonight is because it's something on our minds and is something that we value and we feel is part of the values that embody our our community

3:38:28and so it should really be it should link up to something we've discussed tonight because these are the things that you've identified as important the process here and what the reason we wanted to do this type of an exercise was to stimulate the thinking around what do we really care

3:38:48about you know what's important what do we value but in this kind of a conversation there certainly could be things that for whatever reason somehow didn't hit the discussion radar um that really are important to spend time on uh and so you shouldn't feel limited to

3:39:02raise those if there are but what i'm one of the the exercises i really want to emphasize is the the prior the limited number i mean there's there's so many things but the idea is saying well hey that's not that's true those are all important but you know if we're looking at limited resources

3:39:20where is their consensus to say we're going to need to move the needle in on this item or this area does that make sense okay and madame if i may in the minute we have left um are these materials going to be made available to the public prior to the next meeting so that the so the public

3:39:37could come at six o'clock and and they could give us their three for example you have a strategic plan that represents a long-term plan that you're going to continue to work on that was a community-driven process and this is really about within this group with the strategic

3:40:00plan and these items what does council want to focus on okay okay so will it be will there be public comment prior to the next workshop i'm hearing that that's not the exercise i understand that so what does the council want to do i mean if we want to get the council

3:40:26thought on it that that's one thing if uh we want to turn this into a um so we would be continuing this item to six o'clock on uh well no this item would be this item would be continued to six o'clock you'd have a special meeting at 5 45 then you would have this special meeting

3:40:49at six o'clock and then we'd have our regular meeting at seven the council meeting this would be an item on the council this would be a continuation of this item to a special meeting is what i was thinking that way we don't have to have additional public comment

3:41:07oh because we've already had it correct oh that's right we already did it do i do how how long is it how long an extension how long an extension do i have to make 20 minutes just for this explanation you did it to yourself councilmember lyman i guess you will need to extend for at

3:41:28least a couple of minutes while you hash this issue out yeah i moved again you will need to extend since we are at 10 40. so just for five minutes move to extend to 10 45.

3:41:42would be more productive if we did it in more than five minutes we don't have to use them hopefully hopefully we won't need five minutes okay uh good evening i'm skye woodruff your city attorney um so since this would be continued to a special meeting you have and you have

3:42:11already um given the public an opportunity to address you on this item you could conclude the item um without you could structure things so that the public basically has an opportunity to address you on regarding the special meeting after you have concluded this if you

3:42:31wanted an opportunity to speak to conclude the council's consideration of it first but if it's scheduled as a special meeting there does have to be a place on the agenda for the public to speak um but it doesn't have to come before you have concluded this item does that make sense

3:42:49okay so um decide what you're proposing is to move this item to a special meeting on may 19th the public has already sorry i forgot what day it is um so yes may 16. so you're talking about moving this to continuing this item to a special meeting on may 16th as i've understood it

3:43:21no that is not the question i'm sorry so i'm getting to the let me i will restate the question um what's being proposed is to continue this item to a special meeting on may 16th the public has already had an opportunity to address the council on this item the council has the option at the

3:43:40special meeting on may 16th to conclude its consideration of this item prior to hearing from the public because it will be a special meeting there does have to be a place on the agenda for the public to speak so either you can set up the agenda so that the council

3:43:58can conclude its discussion of this item and then hear from the public or you can hear from the public before you continue your deliberations [Music] you are proposing um having the item begin at 6 00 pm it will be a special meeting because it's at a different time

3:44:28from your regular meeting so what would the council like to do i'd like to hear from the public before our special others no one else wants to have a comment we can go still remember we'll have the the priorities will have been compiled and those will be what we're looking

3:44:52at for our discussion we can still certainly accept comment but that'll be the focus of your conversation will be there i thought he said i thought skye said we had an option so rochelle no one made a comment about what you said so i'm assuming they're happy with

3:45:09it so i'm gonna i'm gonna move that we continue this item to may 16th with public comment preceding uh council deliberations second all in favor aye any opposition abstentions ocean cares unanimously um okay and that will be at 6 00 pm did we say that sure i remember saying it okay

3:46:46you