Regular City Council Meeting and Special City Council Meetings May 16, 2017

0:00:37thank you okay thank you everybody for coming so we are convening a special city council meeting and we will begin with oral communications from the public and this is on items not on the agenda first of all are there any cheryl i have three slips at this time for the special

0:01:05city council meeting and i have michael fisher followed by al miller and cordell hindler okay and they should go to the to the podium or yes should just hand them them what how do we how are we doing this the podium might work well hello this i'm michael fisher and i also

0:01:29serve as the library commission or from el cerrito as well and i'm just reminding you of the importance of the library about the discussion that took place at the last meeting about that and hope that it that getting more hours for the library is high on the list of priorities for the

0:01:56city i'd also as now having taken off that hat and just as an elsa reed in general um speak for priority to the cert program as an important lifesaver for the city thank you good evening mayor abelson council members and staff my name is still l miller and i am a

0:02:30resident of el cerrito and i'm still the current president of the el cerrito library foundation at the may 2nd city council meeting you heard foundation board members and others make a strong recommendation that you develop and implement a sustainable plan to increase the number

0:02:48of hours the cerrito library is open tonight as you discuss council priorities for the next year i'm here to urge you to also develop a plan that informs the residents of el cerrito the steps and schedule you and city staff will take this next year to provide a 21st century library in el

0:03:08cerrito just as it is important for you to increase the number of hours our current library is open i believe it is important to have an identified plan to replace it this would enable those of us who are committed to support and help the city in this effort to maximize our support without getting

0:03:30cross-threaded with the city's efforts another reason to have a plan and implement it is that if the residents of el cerrito don't hear you talking about what you're going what you're doing to bring a new library to el cerrito i'm afraid that even the 62 percent who

0:03:48voted for measure b will begin to question your commitment to build a new library therefore i ask that you direct staff to develop such a plan as a high priority for this next year thank you and our last speaker al miller was our last speaker right at this moment oh cordell hindler

0:04:16so uh mayor abelson council members carter handler richmond some of the board members had some pretty good points uh because i i passed through the el cerrito library on a regular basis and i think that the hours should be increased because other cities uh have their libraries stay open a little

0:04:32longer so like san pablo richmond we we used to have our hours uh until they got ext cut back due to the budget um deficit so that's one thing number two is um when you look at the uh what what you're gonna bring into for revenue like the marijuana um uh revenue i'm thinking that it's

0:04:51something that is very good for the city because we're trying to like bring in some new revenue money into the city that's number two and then number three housing is uh because i mean at one of the previous uh council meetings that um one of the residents came to um to this

0:05:06meeting and uh had some concerns you know with housing especially senior housing uh it's like he just got forced out of his own out of his own home for um for no reason so i'm thinking that this is something that is it this is very important then also looking at the car uh program i mean if

0:05:24you look at uber and in san francisco i've seen uber cars go pass through there all the time and so i figured if they can bring all if they can have that in san francisco why not el cerrito because it'll like also generate some money so i'm thinking this is an opportunity

0:05:38for this money to be um to be put in to play and then for housing and then finally i have looked at some of the um if you go around around the the trail i have seen so much trash down there it's like unbelievable so i said we need to get this uh this place a facelift

0:05:56because where is the money coming from and i said we got like we got the environmental equality committee uh they pick up trash like when they have like you know like green days and all that and so i said this is something that um that you got really got to be put

0:06:09focusing on you know what can what kind of revenue it's going to bring in so i'm thinking that um and then um i'm thinking that this is an opportunity for for when y'all go into this session you got to figure out what kind of priorities are is bringing to the city so

0:06:23so with that said i'll be more than happy to give you more uh hopefully in my last 30 seconds so you got a life and then also you got to think about the the recreation centers we got kids that go there like every day uh after school uh for uh for various activities so i'm thinking that there's

0:06:40some money should be coming in for the classes thank you thank you so now we'll move on to the uh goals and priorities workshop and um i will turn it over to nancy this evening all right is this working i think we've got some success tonight that's great or at least i'm doing it

0:07:12more correctly than i was previously okay so thank you for taking this time to come back and continue the conversation that was begun two weeks ago i want to just give a little bit of a recap okay i think so all right sorry about that that's okay that's okay all right so

0:07:43just to recap um you'll recall that we spent time together two weeks ago talking about strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats really to set the table for this conversation about priorities the priorities that we're going to talk about tonight were identified and compiled reflecting

0:08:03the top three priorities you identified i think i'll walk us through this worksheet first and then sort of lay the table for what we're trying to accomplish so what we have here and there's a copy up on the screen for those who are visiting us and i think there are also

0:08:20additional hard copies available for those who might be interested um so this is structured in a way where we i have compiled the the the priorities identified by each council member uh including um those who are not here today so along the far left hand side um are the identified priority areas uh

0:08:42specific commons uh specific focal areas within those are in that middle column so up at the top we have maintaining concern the current functions uh new revenue streams a number of items related to san pablo avenue housing investment and facilities library cert program and a bike a car or

0:09:03bike sharing program so those were the main priority areas the second column there where it has a number at the top that's the frequency with which i heard that topic so it's not a ranking priority but it's in fact the number of times it was mentioned so for example the first one across the

0:09:23top maintain current functions uh one of our council members mentioned that one um the middle column has our the areas of focus we'll want to prioritize and discuss this evening what that means what that looks like but specifically what the council hopes can be accomplished in the coming

0:09:42year remember there is a longer term strategic plan that is in place that's the final column over to the right each of these priorities that have been identified actually fall within the existing strategic plan so this kind of allows us to provide some clarity of focus and priority

0:10:03within the the long-term uh vision and strategic goals so the alignment there is on the far right uh so that's that's the orientation to this worksheet before i move on are there questions on how this is laid out okay great so again i meant the the emphasis tonight is to have a conversation to

0:10:26talk about these priorities uh what they mean what success looks like but then specifically what the council collectively wishes the um the staff and the city to invest in for the coming year both in staff time and resources reminding ourselves of the conversation

0:10:46and the reflection of the the swat that resources are limited limit and resources are a consideration and a factor to weigh in on all of this um but so that's what we want to talk about for the coming year okay so i'm going to walk through these um individually and then

0:11:02um share some of the the comments and the ideas and then i'll have you guys talk about each of these different items and what it looks like for the coming year what what your hopes and expectations are after we go through this we'll see if there is some clarity

0:11:16about specific top priorities so the first one to maintain our current functions so you'll recall in our conversation two weeks ago during our discussion of threats and weaknesses there was considerable discussion around um constraints within the the city operating environment pers was the first

0:11:38one mentioned in terms of a threat also the condition of facilities uh and others and so the comment here was that recognizing that there are some severe constraints uh a priority a desired priority for the coming year is simply to maintain current levels of service

0:11:55so are there questions or comments relative to that discussion sure i i will uh start out by saying that that sort of implied within our overall goals and um i'm hoping that we wouldn't have to make that an extra priority for us to maintain the existing system so i'm uh

0:12:21for me i'm not certain i i'm assuming that we would maintain our uh our existing current level of services uh within our normal course of business so i i i appreciate the sentiment and we do all want that but it was not necessarily one that where we would take what

0:12:43limited extra hours we have to focus um staff on on that and i was just going to concur somewhat and and think that actually that could be blended into the investment in facilities it seems very similar to me and i'm i think we're talking about the city's infrastructure making sure

0:13:06that we keep those things the same or better improve upon those things and i think some of the spirit of this comment was to pay attention to existing assets and resources as well as service levels do you want to speak to that janet yeah it was mine my emphasis was on um

0:13:29service not buildings in in that comment so i was thinking in other words we don't want to reduce staffing levels that sort of thing and i was just saying um we do have since we did this we had the thing come up about the senior center that we may have to relocate it

0:13:55and we have no current planning in place to do that in our funds for example and it's a great example unfortunately of things you don't expect to happen do and so i already thought that we were you know with issues like purrs for example and um other things that

0:14:20just having the funds to maintain service uh and it's not actually wasn't even looking at buildings at all and that's i was not thinking and that's why the word facilities in there confused me a little bit because it is similar down to our facility's point it says in spite of right that

0:14:46these were some comments that were provided to provide context this is not exactly worded the way that it was but what it says is maintain our functions and then in spite of those outside factors so i guess the question becomes whether or not there is consensus on council

0:15:04as a principle in developing the budget for the coming year to focus first on existing uh programs and service levels and then you know beyond that additional priorities you know so that would provide some direction then to staff in terms of limited resources where to to

0:15:22spend first off other discussion or comment and i'll reiterate yes i assume that we are going to maintain our services so um it's a good reminder but it's the expectation that that i have all right let's keep going um so the next uh item which relates to the financial

0:15:50sustainability goal within the strategic plan has to do with revenue sources um and so there were three different council members who made mention of revenue um components and so that the three reflates to that kind of bucketing of that specifically three council members

0:16:10made mention of marijuana revenue the the bullet there is an additional comment um that was more specific from gabe who's not here tonight to provide additional clarity on his his thoughts on that the other areas of interest relative to revenue streams are looking

0:16:30at the um the question of a city charter whether or not to pursue that that opens up different opportunities for revenue potentially grant sources and then short-term rental ordinance and so those were three different areas of priority and interests that were identified i'll open it for discussion

0:16:54yes i put down marijuana revenue as my first priority and that was basically because um if i would have been able to put a four and a five on my priorities what i was interested in with the revenue from the marijuana is to hopefully be able to promote library hours

0:17:16and also um you know many people that live here and in the surrounding areas are so concerned about rent and rent control and i guess that would maybe fall under our housing and you know what i've been hearing from staff is that you know we lack the resources to implement

0:17:37a rent control program at this time um so if we had more revenue then possibly we'd be able to move quicker on that issue so those were my ideas behind having the marijuana revenue so in that case what i'm hearing that for the coming year to focus on the revenue uh that there

0:18:01may be other interests that you have um bigger picture longer term but for the coming year to do that focus on revenue okay greg sure you know for me um you know this revenue it was definitely my number one uh because without revenue you can't maintain the existing services you can't

0:18:23you know improve your public safety structure you can't improve your police force your firefighting force which are some of the basic uh services that we provide as a city um so you so in order to meet the needs that were which janet reminded us about the existing services that we need to meet

0:18:42you need revenue and and uh we're being pinched for revenue where we don't have the revenue today that we even had or [Music] we have more we have more revenue than we had before but our expenses have gone up greater than our revenue um as a result of uh the dispatcher contract as

0:19:00an example uh as janet pointed out the the uh potential need to relocate the senior center within the next 12 months or so these are costs we haven't budgeted for that potentially we need revenue for and so for me it was revenue and marijuana is just one of those choices one of those

0:19:23opportunities for us to increase our revenue um i did list marijuana revenue as one of example of increased revenue um but for me it's among many which potentially includes the city charter and the transfer tax that would come with it the parcel transfer tax which um we did have a transfer parcel

0:19:44tax for those that don't know this we we had one many years ago um and uh it was not necessarily uh done properly so we had to uh remove it um but it was a tremendous amount of revenue back in the um 2000s or even before that you know 89 through 2000 so it i would like to

0:20:07certainly pursue that um and then these others speak for themselves i have a question and it's for skye i'm sorry to keep asking skye all these questions here i got an email that looked like there was perhaps some uh issue i thought it was from myers novit actually that was talking about

0:20:29uh the state potentially putting a measure on the ballot to reduce the revenue from marijuana that would go to cities local in counties league i think police they send it out but they wouldn't be the ones supporting it um uh i actually have not heard anything about that if we sent it out i missed

0:20:59one of our own emails um so but there is also i mean there is the there's there are only two yeah um thank you um so clearly this is a this is a question for council member lyman and not for me um are they talking about reducing the sales tax portion or the the grants

0:21:22provision because otherwise there's no there isn't any revenue going to cities from existing revenue sources uh it isn't it is talking about the trailer bill uh prop 215 which uh as council member fidelity pointed out the league has come out with as well so it is about the trailer bill

0:21:43and which proposed changes are medical identification carts become optional sales tax exemption requires uh physician recommendation um i think that's for medical local agencies required to provide state with ordinances licensing schemes environmental regulations change so it i don't believe

0:22:03it specifically changes um potential for revenue uh but it but i have not read this in detail so just to be clear under exist under state law there there are two sources of revenue to cities related to cannabis one is um the the existing statewide sales tax would apply

0:22:24to non-medical sales and the city would receive its normal portion of sales tax from from those transactions and then there are the excise there's an excise tax which is both on sales and on cultivation different manners of calculating it proceeds from that go into pots of money

0:22:40that become eligible for basically grant programs cities have to allow for cannabis businesses to operate within the city in order to qualify for those grants but other but those are the only two sources of revenue that actually go to states and so cities and it would and i think that there would be

0:22:57a constitutional prohibition on reducing the flow of sales tax revenue to cities um from cannabis related transactions okay thanks okay comments on revenue just briefly i agree that the marijuana revenue is a good thing to pursue for short-term revenue raising for the city in the context of all the

0:23:25other rules and regulations that our city has to develop i mean it just will go along with the whole process my longer-term view for revenue is on on housing and redevelopment along san pablo avenue so that we can move on sales and property tax and it does will

0:23:39take longer but the more demand we get for services the more housing and the property taxes i'm should be a real strong goal that i have and that i put down here okay other thoughts on the specific items that are listed here for more of the short-term immediate

0:23:57types of revenue sources that could be pursued i'm hearing from a couple that emphasizing revenue and acquiring new revenue streams or increasing revenue streams is something that is identified as a really high priority for the coming year and certainly that in and of itself

0:24:18requires time and attention to to pursue uh janet do you have any other comments on on this particular item i guess the only comment i would have would be to talk a little bit about the development on san pablo avenue and the income it would produce we need to nurture that in order for

0:24:41that revenue to happen so it's kind of a it's an issue that kind of crosses both sections um if we don't nurture it then developers will go elsewhere and that's you know then we won't have that revenue so and i think we desperately want that revenue okay so so moving us into the next item

0:25:03which of course uh fits within that sphere of economic development as well as other sort of nice added elements which is relative to san pablo avenue this was another area where there was some consensus that there is a priority related to be laid on it and work to be accomplished

0:25:25there is a specific plan laid out for san pablo avenue as you're all aware and so working to support and pursue implement and implement the that that specific plan was identified more than once in terms of a priority that requires um obviously partnership with interested

0:25:48developers and partners in the in the area but as a long-term strategy for raising economic opportunity for the city that is an area of investment that is identified as a priority so implementing this specific plan was identified and there are a couple elements

0:26:08related to that they were identified specifically in the comments you know focusing on the complete streets portion but also an emphasis on housing which was an added element to the the specific plan uh and you know willingly that should anticipate then uh additional workload for for staff and so

0:26:28being mindful that if if implemented in a way that is um fruitful that there can be impacts then on on moving things forward other other comments related to san pablo avenue were prioritizing the support of development specifically around the the transit hubs but again part of the the

0:26:47specific plan and then also giving some simple and sort of less expensive facelift opportunities to san pablo avenue so aside from the specific plan being alert to to trash removal to trouble spots along the avenue and investing some resources in that direction

0:27:08so that that was this whole area was a big priority for many people uh i would like to open it up for your discussions i'll speak to it because i think it's real i think the topic is really important in our city right now um the um what we need to do to do i think this is the place where i

0:27:36came up what we need to do is to be able to handle the uh what appears to be a very large increase in the volume and um as such we have to really plan for that and i think that staff is already has already started that effort because we can't just do business as usual and

0:27:56get the job done um because of the volume so so we will the city will need to develop ways of doing large projects when we're used to doing maybe a kitchen remodel or you know something like that i mean it's a really big difference in scale and um so i to me the solution is to plan for that

0:28:22and how we will handle it and that's a thing we need to do now like right now not not two years from now but now so that as these projects start coming to fruition we will have a system in place to do that and um so i actually think that's probably my most important

0:28:44one because it will present a lot of it'll solve some of the other problems like the income we'll get um you know property taxes out of that that that will be huge um if the hotels go in we'll get um the uh what is it called the the transit tlt tax um so there there are these

0:29:12revenues that will be realized to the city and that will go on for many years you know for the duration of those projects um and you know we just need to be sure we do it right and i think we i think we have i think i totally think we have the people who can make it happen on our

0:29:33staff we just need to prioritize it and enable them to work on it okay so kind of long view looking to seek revenues through development along san pablo avenue but for the coming year to prioritize and focus on setting up a system that supports the creation of large

0:29:54developments and moves them through an in an expedited manner of some sort yeah i want to completely echo that and support that this is certainly one of my three that housing and the focus on housing uh development in the san pablo avenue specific plan area is going to require i think

0:30:13nurture development is what somebody said earlier so it's going to require the staffing and in support to pull it off and it and the housing that comes with it the businesses that come with it um are certainly the the end product that we're looking for we just need to be able to

0:30:32have the systems in place to deliver the plan that we developed many years ago so yeah i want to completely echo what the mayor has said fantastic okay so for the coming year that he'll give some extra focus for this particular priority era yeah and i want to echo that as well i

0:30:49think these blend together these goals because i agree on san pablo avenue development housing i view that as one big goal moving forward for el cerrito and by the mayor talking about getting ready i view retrofitting and improving our facilities our infrastructure for the

0:31:07influx of new residents and new businesses and that includes a library um is important i mean fixing what we have getting ready for the smart growth that we're going to be doing thank you for your comments and prioritizing this this was not on my list of priorities

0:31:29but i guess partially because i felt like this is something that we're already in the progress of doing um kind of like council member lyman said about uh the first maintain our current functions um i'm really impressed with all of the projects that are coming about

0:31:47and i look forward to implementing them and i do support having the staff having the resources and any additional thing that they need to make sure that this keeps going forward all right so i'm hearing some consensus around the table that continue moving forward with a specific

0:32:06plan implementing it but prioritizing the setting up the systems and support that's necessary for nurturing that development along the way okay all right um so then the next item that we had on our list here as was mentioned does relate back somewhat to the the san pablo avenue

0:32:27priority but wanted to make sure that it wasn't lost among that because it was articulated you know specifically and that is about housing and so with recognition that the implementation of the specific plan lays out expectations for that but then also mention of the inclusion

0:32:47ordinance um so is there any discussion then on this item yeah i'll say that this i may be the one person that uh brought this up and to me it's all part and parcel of the housing in the san pablo avenue specific plan and so it again making sure the staff has the resources

0:33:06to accelerate development in the san pablo avenue with without forfeiting um the some of the most vulnerable of our community and therefore the inclusionary ordinance needs to be part and parcel of that support and um uh acceleration of implementing our plan so

0:33:26they they are hand in hand as council member fidel just said a few minutes ago i they go hand in hand and so that they were they were put forward hand in hand uh by me and i you know where we can we should be providing the resources to move this forward all right excellent

0:33:49yes i think this is one housing is one of those things that is so urgent for so many people and it it really came home for me in this last week i have a friend that lives in the area that had um you know given a couple months notice she has to move and you know she has to potentially take

0:34:11her child out of school they're afraid of not being able to be you know to be able to keep her child in the same school that she's been going to for the year the years that they've been there and um and i i i was able to see like the fear you know in a more personal story

0:34:30that people really experience when they're being evicted and um and i know one of their criticisms that's in a neighboring city they were saying well you know the city council is not doing enough about this and i i spoke up for their city council and i said look you know it's a little bit

0:34:44more difficult than you might think but when you're that person you want it to be urgent you know and you don't want to just kind of have meeting after meeting where nothing gets done so um like i said if i is once we get the revenue and the ability to really move

0:34:59forward on this it's something that i'd like to prioritize all right thank you for that okay so let's go then on to our next priority area which was investment of facilities um and so with this there was a lot of interest as well on focusing on investing and investing investing in

0:35:22existing facilities as our thing has already surfaced as a priority um and so specifically the facilities related to quality of life and recreation opportunities that includes the pool fields the trails this predates the information around the senior center and then also

0:35:44the the public safety uh building facility was also identified um as a facility requiring attention and um investment whether that be um you know mediation type of investment or a new facility so let me open that up i i think this one um it is just that indication as i mentioned earlier about

0:36:10things happen and that you don't expect and that's what happened with the senior center so it probably was not nearly as high up on our list of priorities as it is at this moment um because it's we're not talking about upgrades we're talking about uh the sheer existence of the facility that

0:36:36provides essential services to for example people with alzheimer's disease you know who are and people who come for the meal program uh for whom it can be the only meal of the day that they have i mean we're talking about um our senior we're talking about lives

0:37:01and not just you know it's not just a a what what you could loosely call a wreck program you know it's it's people's lives about whether or not they're going to stay alive uh in the case of seniors sometimes so um we have a really um important um um i don't know what the word is but we

0:37:25need to we're going to have to work really hard and use our our skills at either retaining the senior center or in um relocating the services and we don't have we may not have much time to do it in so and we don't know so a lot of there's a lot of unknowns there and um

0:37:54i i think that the senior center performs a lot of essential functions for our community and for ev and people of all ages we provide services where students from el cerrito high go in and tutor seniors in how to use an ipad how to use an iphone how to use a computer one on one

0:38:25and that's an invaluable lesson for not only the senior but also this this students from high school you know they're learning about how to deal with other people they're learning about how to teach i mean i don't think enough can be said about a program like that can i ask you maybe to share a

0:38:45little bit about um what has just happened in the la what has changed last few minutes oh you oh no no i just went and testified about it right so just maybe just to give okay why aren't i back i'll back up okay what happened is that um we were notified that uh the city i mean

0:39:05i might get some of my facts wrong we were notified that the school district wants the senior center property back uh perhaps with in a year did i get that right that may of this year so nearly close to a year but a little less than a year yeah oh may it may have

0:39:28next calendar year right they there are there are those who want it back the the fairmont parents in particular they may want it back they've won it back 100 and um the question is whether or not we'll have time to find another location to provide the services and where are we

0:39:49getting the money for to do that so it's a very serious problem and we dial right services are even provided out of that center that center performs in a huge number of of uh provides a number of services for our city okay so this is new information since we were all together before it

0:40:11sounds like it's uh up in the air at this point but there's a possibility uh that they're going to be interested in reclaiming the property in which case there'll be some discussion and some direction required about how to address that and move forward how to proceed how

0:40:26to proceed okay so moving targets things are always happening all right great example of that right okay well thank you for that the update on that i appreciate that all right um so other so other discussion on facilities again thinking about this this coming year uh and what what ought

0:40:47to be prioritized uh within this given everything else that is sort of within this mix and the potential for for that change comments yeah i want to build on i think mr miller said it during his comment i want to build on that thought that we come up with a plan

0:41:04that talks about how we would do the library talks about the in in the context of new library hours how we're going to build the library but we now have to put into that plan a senior center we've known for a while that we need to put into that plan the public safety

0:41:22building so it it would be an overall plan that includes discussions about revenue as well as the implementation of that revenue uh to to deal with all of our facilities when we last met uh the park park and rec director uh outlined that there's all these buildings that were built in the 60s as

0:41:47a result of the funding measures that were put on in the 60s they have reached their useful life cycle it's time for us as civic leaders to step up and do the same type of investment in our community that people expect when they buy a house in this city when they move to the city they have

0:42:04some expectations that there is a firehouse that's not going to fall down and trap all of our equipment making them making it impossible for them to to then uh service our our uh community after an earthquake so um for me it's i know it's two separate lines or multiple lines in here

0:42:26uh but it for me it's all facilities are are essentially at least from a discussion of how to move forward with the facilities that in and of its self is one discussion okay so looking at the investment of facilities listed um in that blue line along with the library that was specifically called out

0:42:47develop for the coming year getting very clear in developing a facility investment plan if you will so what when how and including funding strategy and sources for that is what i'm hearing in terms of a priority for the coming year correct okay and i would second

0:43:05i don't know if we can really put the senior center into the same sort of mode because it's it's an urgency thing and the others aren't um well it sounds like and when i say that it's a maybe right it sounds like it's sort of pending the outcome of what the district decides to do so what the

0:43:27district says if the district says they give us three years then we may be kept we can have we have time for a process like this for the senior center but if they say they want it back in a year it needs to be on a separate track so so it sounds like it's sort of

0:43:47pending additional information coming from the district as to whether or not that gets incorporated into a broader facilities plan or needs to be somehow addressed in a shorter term time frame right okay thanks i was going to second what council member lyman said about all these

0:44:10facilities because i think these are our critical assets these facilities in el cerrito it's what they they're what make el cerrito great so i like the fixing at first concept of making sure what we have is either fixed or better than it is now and that certainly we can talk about our public

0:44:30safety building is one of that one of those things as well the one thing we don't have is the library it's the critical asset that we need to invest in in this community we need to demonstrate to the people coming here in the businesses that we're a real community

0:44:45and we have a real library and that could include the senior center over a longer term planning but i also agree we need a plan that that's been discussed here needs to be transparent with lots of public input and it's just really important that we begin that process and start talking

0:45:02about it because i agree with mr miller that we need to demonstrate to the 62 to 3 percent that we're serious about that um but let's look at what we have now the assets we have now let's fix those things make them make sure they're doing the pool make sure the pool is the way

0:45:18it should be and deal with the these issues of the infrastructure that we have okay i will just echo what the other council member said this was one of my priorities as well it was a really nice priority because it was able to include so many different things but

0:45:40our recreation facilities our public safety building the library these were all built i believe in the 50s and 60s that's so long ago a lot of residents here have have been here since then and have been able to enjoy those facilities all this time but it's time for a renewal and as you've

0:46:03seen with all the young families moving in here it's time for us to step up and invest in our community and renew these things and make them safe for our kids and make them able for us to enjoy for the next 50 or 60 years all right so is there then consensus around the table that focusing on

0:46:25the facilities and specifically for the coming year developing a plan and a strategy for for that approach um is a top priority yeah okay i'm just hearing that i just wanted to double check the the sentiment i was hearing i'm still i'm not getting a sense that anyone's

0:46:43agreeing with me that the senior center is on a different track depending on what goes on i think the senior center is unknown and it would be on its own track if we once we get more knowledge but if the district doesn't take any action we still need to do something about the

0:47:03senior center because it is a very old structure that needs to be at it the other refurbished which is that we have we may have to do something in within the next year complete we need to complete something within the next year or we lose the ability to have some part of the senior center function

0:47:24then then you know something i don't know because i i don't know that the district has taken action no they haven't taken action oh okay we don't know but the one of the considerations is to give us a year correct and be out but so if that's different than planning for a replacement library right

0:47:45replacement public safety but you know that's it's seriously i it sounds to me like that there is agreement that this could become a big issue that requires its own uh approach and own prioritization once there's more information kind of confirmed from the district and so my

0:48:05bet would be that should that be the case this would be coming back then before council with an update uh and with a request for action which could be some type of a different sort of um approach or process the what it's looking like the alternative would be would be that it

0:48:21would we would have to do that major change within three maybe four years so so we're not talking i mean we're talking about it a different time frame but we just don't know yet what it is okay um that part that part remains slightly undone okay so in the five minutes that

0:48:43we're being we have two more items um well unless i should ask the question though i sort of uh bundled the library into the facilities conversation so if there are additional comments that would be like that you'd like to make regarding um the the library separate from what we've

0:48:58already talked about okay just operationally the hours increasing the hours is a it's it's not the same as a as a develo a long-term capital improvement plan um however as mr miller pointed out it they should be potentially dealt with in a similar within the similar time frame

0:49:20or similar scope okay all right so the next one we have listed here is the cert program you want to speak to that one well i'm glad i brought it up because i'm i'm the one person that brought it up so i just wanted to reiterate that you know in 2018 if we have a major earthquake

0:49:42i think that we would look back at this tape of our goal setting and say why didn't we prioritize the cert program so i think it's something that should be looked at and should be addressed and i would like to see our city become one of the most earthquake prepared cities in the entire

0:50:00east bay and right now i don't feel like that's where we're at so i would like to see some of our leaders of the serp program be able to you know possibly come to the city council with any requests they might have and or suggestions on improving the program okay so doing doing a review and

0:50:21understanding how the program is currently working and looking for opportunities potentially uh within that is that am i understanding correct okay uh comments other comments i just i have one which was the last time i remember that we looked at the cert programmer that i

0:50:41looked at the cert program i thought it was maybe the best in the county in terms of the number and they're shaking their head yes in in terms in terms of the number of people trained in the cert program which i think is the way you measure it isn't it is or is it

0:51:15right but i thought we still had a larger absolute number so so perhaps the the uh an act in action for the coming year is simply to do a report out and maybe you do this regularly um already but to do an update um to make sure that everybody is is fully informed about the opportunities

0:51:35and what's available and what's working within the cert program and then you know if it turns out we're um not as robust appearing as we were back then and back then we were extremely robust looking i have to say because i was in conversations with other jurisdictions

0:51:54and we were talking about it because there was a lot of uh training going on in those days because of 9 11 i think as i remember um and um anyway that's my only comment it and i will say that i think we were on a per capita basis one of the better trained communities in the in the county

0:52:16um but whether you have whether whether you're better trained and still only have 50 per thousand people trained does not mean that you have enough people trained i think we're well below what you know anybody would suggest we need to have and there are some simple

0:52:34uh tools that potentially we need to to help get into some of the neighborhood places such as you know i've got a 55 gallon drum plastic drum of of chloramine water in my backyard but i i know that there's not enough water distributed throughout the community to get to that

0:52:52five seven eight days uh necessary before east bay mud who was here last time told us that they were going to how long they were going to take to repair some of those those those pipelines so to council member produce okamoto's comments yeah we can do more but i would like to

0:53:10know more about where we are and what it would cost us or what are some of the things we would need to invest in to take us to that next level so potentially this is the year to to learn what we potentially could do and maybe next year start implementing some of those things i agree with you i

0:53:28know we're under prepared the question is are what is it what is the commitment to get us to have our community better prepared and it's not just the city going out and buying stuff it's it's it's getting the people to understand what they need like what uh director cat said last time about

0:53:51we have 70 and 80 year old pipes in our streets a good shaker on the on the hayward we're not gonna have water at your house for over a week maybe three weeks um and and so and you may not be able to i know our director of stage is here you may not actually be able to flush the

0:54:08toilet without the sewage showing up in your backyard because your sewer line might be broken and cracked so there are our community does not necessarily know how poorly served we are at the moment with regards to some of these post-earthquake facilities utilities

0:54:28and if they did they would have chemical toilets and cut self-composting toilets and lots of water in their backyards because we will be poorly served post earthquake and that message i think we can focus on getting out this year and learn about what programs we we

0:54:46could potentially support in a future year okay great terrific um all right then so then the last one here listed is to do a car or bike sharing program uh these are programs that are often operated operated you know within the private sector you know the the lifts and the ubers of the world um but

0:55:10so the the desire and the interest here was uh helping people to move between transit hub locations and their homes within the city and so uh you know maybe that's an area that is simply kind of evaluating what the different what opportunities exist out there and programs

0:55:28i thought comment about it um i actually went to a lyft program that the senior center put on recently and it was held at the community center and the room was very full of people i i didn't actually get very good comments about it this is lyft by the way doing

0:55:50it uh that's because uber didn't even respond but um the uh anyway so uh the um the thing i got out of that for people with disabilities is that they're barely covered so you can't maybe you can get a ride if you're able-bodied but if you're in a power wheelchair you don't get served at

0:56:16all it's like zero from either one of these companies because they they don't go the extra mile so i don't know what this exactly means but i think we want to be careful about creating services that are not accessible to to everyone and um i guess that's my main comment on that

0:56:42one the other no there was one other one the other one is is that there there's some thought that they're playing havoc with transit ridership because people are using those services instead of buses or even bart and so what that will do is disrupt our system and in fact i mean they're not

0:57:08it's it has it down under environmental sustainability but if you have a bunch of these things instead of bart which is electric right or buses then in fact it's not an environmentally sustainable thing to do probably other comments okay all right well so those are the

0:57:34priorities um that we had listed we're at our time but thank you so much i mean i think this was really helpful to hear you know in the coming year what's realistic what is what is uh progress to look like uh recognizing that many of these items are going to take a much longer time to

0:57:51reach their full um their full potential so thank you and i think with this we're good okay thank you thank you very much uh good evening everyone thank you for coming tonight this is the regular meeting of the el cerrito city council we just finished with two special meetings

1:07:42um and uh at the first special meeting we selected carl grock for the design review board and at the second one we looked at the uh i can't actually see very well that far but is that the information that we look what we did is that we picked our three each council member picked our

1:08:10three top prior priorities offline and then it was compiled into a list and we discussed it and um that was what we did so now we're ready for the regular meeting and we'll start with roll call council member fidelity president councilmember lyman here councilmember pardue ecomoto present

1:08:39and mayor abelson here mayor pro tem quinto is absent this evening thank you okay um with that we'll go to oral communications from the pub public and this is for items that are not on the agenda so if you have an item that you want to talk about that's not on the agenda this

1:08:59is the time and you have three minutes the there's a little light system up here and it goes from green to yellow to red in the three minutes and the yellow represents 30 seconds the last 30 seconds yes thank you okay and do we have speakers yes we'll uh the first three are cordell

1:09:25hindler followed by al miller and howdy gowdy uh point of order it's supposed to be the pledge of allegiance first uh bye i'm sorry where did i top the next page it's after i don't know why it's for this section there you go carol i just told her that it's probably

1:09:44the pledge of allegiance oh you know what i was reading from the wrong i was reading from the wrong place uh why don't we do that so this is the pledge of allegiance our observation of a moment moment of silence and it's led by council member greg lyman please join me

1:10:02i pledge allegiance to the fly of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and jesus for all okay um so with that um we will go to council and staff communications why don't we start with

1:10:32the council oh sure um i had a really great opportunity this last week to go to our capital washington dc and i was able to speak on one of the topics where we're going to talk about tonight which is single-payer healthcare and i was there with a group of nurses and

1:10:58we were talking about single-payer healthcare not only in california but putting it forward as a option nationwide and the the time was really amazing we got to go from all the all these underground tunnels from tunnel to tunnel to all the senators and congressmen's offices

1:11:21which if you ever get a chance to do it was really fascinating and i would just like to thank our congressman uh mark desalnier who has co-sponsored the single-payer bill at the house level thank you greg yeah um i would like to report on a couple of things now as opposed to later one is um on the

1:11:45hrc i'm the liaison to the human relations commission and i'd like to announce that on sunday june 11th from noon to 3 p.m uh is loving day uh celebration let me make sure i got just gave you the right date yes it is um so that's right here at the city hall civic plaza which is outside

1:12:07the chambers here sunday june 11th noon to three we'll be celebrating loving day and on the saturday preceding that on so on june 10th at 10 a.m we'll be showing a feature movie loving at the cerrito theater so that's uh the movie loving at the cerrito theater saturday june 10th both of those are

1:12:30hosted by the human relations commission and then i'm also liaison to the crime prevention committee um who they just uh in their last meeting they um voted on a new chair molly hazen and a new vice chair spiked a clue and the they are working on a national night out national night out

1:12:51will be tuesday august 1st so they're definitely trying to recruit hosts to host national night out parties i believe we had 30 over 35 parties last year where you get visits from police city council and and city staff to tell you about how to be better prepared

1:13:19for all sorts of neighborhood issues and certainly given our discussion earlier tonight we should be making earthquake preparedness one of those topics for for national night out so those are my two reports okay paul thanks i want to remind everyone that this sunday

1:13:41is the fourth annual hillside festival from 10 a.m to 5 p.m and people are supposed to meet at schmidt lane by our recycling center and we can thank the trail truckers and the environmental quality committee for all their efforts in planning that we do a lot of talking about smart

1:13:59growth in el cerrito and it's i think it's smart to also celebrate and honor our open space and the great hillside and views that we have in el cerrito so hopefully everyone will come join them thank you and i have been busy so uh today i attended the meeting of the

1:14:17uh el cerrito chamber of commerce and uh there was somebody talking i mean the speech was entitled what is nerd crossing and he spoke about the importance of being protected from invasion from the cyber space and it was it was very interesting and informative and

1:14:45[Music] but i won't go into any of the detail because it was all uh quite detailed and then on last weekend i went to the barks and bells which is put on by the el cerrito police department the second annual burglary prevention expo and they had a series of things home security systems

1:15:12dog adoptions you could get one of the officers adopted a dog that she'll take home in a couple days from then and their support services from the veterinarian home strengthening services and activities for children so it was a great event and they plan to be back next year

1:15:37i also participated in a discussion on affordable housing with supervisor john joya in his office and it was well attended and we talked about what contra costa county and el cerrito standing together can do for affordable housing there are a lot of people there who

1:16:02do various things that are related to making affordable housing work and i really got a lot out of the session and i'm hoping that our city can explore some of the things that we learned at that session and i know it was attended by melanie mintz and also she here i didn't

1:16:26she's yeah there she is cat thank you who i understand is leaving is that we're sorry to say sorry at least i personally am very sorry to see you be leaving because you've been great but i welc i uh look forward to your having a great life in new york thank you

1:16:49i also attended the bike to work day and had you done so you would get one of these lovely bags complete with goodies um so it was at the el cerrito plaza bart station somewhere along the line i got this brochure that reminded me about the value of a service called

1:17:15you know you can call 911 you can call 511 you can call 411 anyway you can also call 211 and it's not as well known as some of the other services but it's a social service system and for people who are homeless or you know if you're worried about losing your house or something it's

1:17:38a place you can go to get things like showers food laundry case management health services all kinds of things so the number to remember is 2-1-1 and if you just call that number i'm assuming it will provide information that will lead you to services uh it's a really important um

1:18:02asset that they added a few years ago see here then um i think i also just came from a session with the west county school district at a subcommittee of the school board looking at the issue of the el cerrito senior center the property at the el cerrito senior center belongs

1:18:31to the county and they've been renting it to the city of el cerrito for a dollar a year they're wanting they're looking at the possibility of taking it back which means we will have no senior center at all and so i spoke on about the importance of the senior center in people's lives provides things

1:18:56such as alzheimer's respite it provides meals programs it provides paratransit services it provides huge number of classes that are uh and services that go on throughout the week there and um it also um provides such things as the sakurakai program that is a japanese language program that's

1:19:28held on the weekends so anyway we're very concerned about it we don't know yet what will be happening but um stay in touch i guess is about all i can say right now the um see if there's any i also attended um the uh contra costa mayor's conference on may 4th and um

1:19:57let's see there weren't a whole lot of um actions taken i would say that were of interest but there was a presentation by melinda cervantes who's the director of the contra costa library system and it was entitled a new strategic plan for our library system so i will leave it at that

1:20:24okay and so that concludes the council comments are there any staff comments nope okay thank you the so now we get back to oral communications from the public so the first three speakers are cordell hindler followed by al miller and howdy gowdy okay let me adjust it so

1:20:50good evening uh mayor abelson and councilmember staff cordell hendler richard what i just passed to you is um i'd like to invite the city council to the richmond promise second annual scholars celebration on on may 25th which is next thursday as from five until eight at the richmond city council

1:21:08um auditorium so that's one and number two is um i'll bring some flyers for a new show from conscious civic theaters called in the heights i'll bring them at the next meeting uh hopefully and then thirdly is um what i just passed around is um is um if you recall at the at the meeting last month

1:21:25about some of the the prices of commercial space uh in el cerrito i find them extremely so uh so the ones i showed you was um the one outside here by the city hall the the rental space is like close to fourteen hundred dollars a month and i said that's kind of reasonable but i say

1:21:42that's too much high so for me so i said this is something um that um that you might take a looking interest in like you like in the presentation you just saw about the housing and i said okay we can this is something you know kind of similar to that so i said this is an

1:21:57opportunity to bring in revenue for el cerrito so number three is um and then i'm still having some concerns about you know what what's going to happen to alta base because if that hospital keeps if that hospital closes where will people go i mean people might uh i mean you can

1:22:12go as far away from like as uh to lafayette i say that's too far out people could like people could like die like you know like within 20 minutes and i said things has got to change we got to keep out the base going because my niece was born in that hospital and i'll never forget

1:22:28that because if something happens to altar bates we won't have no hospital we already lost doctors medical center we do not want to lose this one because it is important it's a it's a historic um hospital and i said we got to do we got to figure out how we can get our keep

1:22:45our hospitals going so so let's see and then the other things are um there are other events that are coming up in el cerrito like um i will be attending the hillside festival on this coming sunday so so that's all i have to say so hopefully we'll keep activates going uh keep them

1:23:01alive so al it's your turn [Applause] good evening mayor abelson councilmembers and staff i just wanted to give a quick shout out to kudos to our public works maintenance people i was coming down the greenway last week i don't remember the exact day but where they have the newest

1:23:25uh re uh compost recycle and garbage collection container uh right by the community garden where the greenway splits so you're going south you go this way you're going north you're on the other side it had some rather obscene might be too strong because the kids use the word so regularly but in my

1:23:48day those were the things mothers threatened to wash your mouth out for saying written on the back of it and within two days it was gone i'd called the public works maintenance center and the young woman said she'd make out a ticket and a couple days later it was

1:24:05gone uh today as i was coming home from the chambers luncheon a bicycling south on the greenway i noticed that there was what appeared to be fresh water running down in the hill just before stockton where the greenway meets stockton again down across the uh greenway path and was you know just

1:24:29pooling there and it was just water running so again i got home i called the public works maintenance number and several hours later when i was up at the recycling center i saw a bill up there and he said hey i got your call i'll and we'll be out there tomorrow to fix it so

1:24:52with uh services like that it's it's the kind that you want to maintain mayor abelson and you were talking about earlier anyway thanks to the public works people for their great work thank you thank you okay are there any more audi gowdy all right good evening mayor and council

1:25:13members my name is howdy gary i wanted to invite you to extend a rebate opportunity to your city employees there is a fleet electric vehicle discount being offered by nissan and it's an additional ten thousand dollars to the already ten thousand dollars of incentives so it's over twenty thousand

1:25:33dollars of incentives total bringing a new vehicle purchased to thirteen to 17 000 which is a very good value for a new electric vehicle and a strong incentive is available over the next month or two and the city doesn't have to do anything to offer it to the employees other than

1:25:56just basically enroll and commit to making two outreach attempts they have flyers and things to to help with the um enrollments i encourage you to and encourage staff to um offer that to their employees and then obviously it is a fleet program and so city purchases fall into

1:26:19the same category um i also wanted to mention that there are three new cities that have elected to purchase a deep green 100 renewable energy in the mce territory their nevado quartermadeira and larkspur and i want to reiterate my encouragement to el cerrito to study the same statement

1:26:44especially in this 100th anniversary year and the eqc has our 100 percent renewable for the 100th anniversary campaign so we're encouraging the city and residents alike to opt up to 100 renewable power we were doing that outreach at the bike to work day and we'll do it at the

1:27:04hillside fest this weekend so mc has said they will do all the work to calculate the incremental cost across all accounts so they just need staff to ask them to do it and they'll do it so i encourage you to put that into action so thank you very much thank you um then the final speaker slip

1:27:29thank you is jackie dragon good evening council members uh my name is jackie dragon i'm from the california nurses association and i wanted to comment on item 4e support for california senate bill 687 nancy skinner's bill you've already heard from one member here tonight about the potential closure

1:28:02of alta bates hospital and how significant that would be for uh not only the community here in el cerrito but numerous communities around the east bay and we think it is extremely important for there to be stronger oversight protecting communities before we actually lose access to care so this

1:28:24bill provides some of that and would create some of that particular oversight uh in the interest of people and not so much in the interest of corporations that are driven for profits uh against the needs of our communities so we support your movement on in your resolution to support this bill

1:28:46thank you so much thank you and that's all i have for you okay thank you then uh we next move on to the adoption of the consent calendars item 4a through 4f 4a is the national public works week proclamation b is the approval of a green infrastructure plan framework

1:29:10c is a storm drain easement with 600 cv drive d is the transfer of the idaho apartments which is which are located at 102.03 san pablo avenue and the reassignment of the city loan e is the support for the california senate bill 684 skinner that was the one just

1:29:34mentioned save our emergency rooms act of 2007 and last f the quarterly cash and investments report i'd like to move items 4a through 4f i had comments to make before we move is it just a comment do you want to we could go ahead and second it and then hear your comment does that work for you

1:29:59okay okay somebody want to second it the motion a second emotion okay i also have a okay that's fine yeah item okay go ahead rochelle okay thank you um a couple points of clarification on the item i brought forward um agenda item 4e um one is that the um it is named save our

1:30:26emergency room rooms act of 2017 not 2007 which was just a little typo there and then also in the attachments there were two two points of data four and five which i had actually submitted for sb 562 so those are not in support of 687 but actually sb562 just as a couple of matter points of

1:31:00clarification and then i just wanted to make some further comments on sb 687 save our emergency act of 20 2017.

1:31:15um sale and or closure of non-profit hospitals i like to open up by saying that several years ago i had seen a presentation on how hospitals were growing into larger and larger conglomerates companies were going in and buying smaller hospitals and then what they

1:31:41were eventually doing particularly in minority neighborhoods and low-income neighborhoods was closing down those hospitals and that you were finding less and less hospitals in those areas and i remember when i heard the report of course feeling very bad in my heart

1:32:00that that was happening but also kind of thinking in the back of my mind well that's not going to happen to me and and i'm sure that probably most people that live here in el cerrito you know seven years ago would have would have thought the same thing since then as you know

1:32:20we've experienced the closure of doctors hospital and that really served our community and even if it wasn't a hospital that you went to on a regular basis what it did was it provided you emergency room services and a lot of services that were now lacking they provided heart attack stroke and

1:32:45trauma services now along with the pending closure of alta bates hospital we are now in further danger of not having services close to us but also the services that are close to us or somewhat close to us being very impacted such as the richmond kaiser they've already been

1:33:13overloaded since doctors hospital has closed down and if ultibates goes forward with its consolidation and i'd like to be clear about that they plan on taking alta bates hospital and moving it to the summit campus location and providing services there so providing their maternity services

1:33:36they're providing their emergency services there but that's a long way for us to travel to get to those services el cerrito is already experiencing longer transit times with ulta bates intact since the closure of doctors hospital i'd like to point out where you should go

1:33:57or where you can go currently since the closure of doctors hospital because i think that the public is not aware of how piecemeal our healthcare system has become you're fortunate if you live in el cerrito if you have a stroke because at kaiser they do treat stroke services

1:34:15but if you have a heart attack you need to go to summit in oakland if you are somehow in a car crash or something and you get a trauma you will be airlifted from el cerrito to john muir if you were burned like someone was recently burned here in el cerrito they

1:34:36were airlifted to santa clara that's how far you have to go to get these particular services so when it comes to like we were saying in our previous meeting about the expectations that you have when you move into el cerrito and what's going to be here what's what kind of school services

1:34:55what kind of library services we're now also looking at what kind of hospital services are going to be available to people that live in the city of el cerrito time transit time is life and death and transit time is also increasing your potential for permanent disability

1:35:18so nancy skinner's bill senator skinner would require for a non-profit hospital that operates to obtain consent from the attorney general before both producing services so that's important because there used to be a cardiac catheterization lab at alta bates hospital used to be you could go

1:35:42to alta bates hospital if you're having a heart attack they've already shut that down so we want to stop the elimination of our emergency services and also stop the or stop the entire closure of hospitals around us as well and make sure that the attorney general uh declares that it is

1:36:04safe for a hospital to close before it closes within a community i'd like to thank nancy skinner our senator on her leadership on this issue and hope that the community would continue to support this bill and that the council support this bill as well yeah i just had a um i agree with

1:36:28councilwoman pardo okimoto on this the importance of this i had a technical question on the letter um i think the bill is in suspense file now an appropriations committee and we should address this letter to the chair chairman chair lara and to the senate pro tem because the

1:36:47bill will be sitting there for a while and i think we can see the congressman and the governor on this bill until it gets to the governor's desk okay okay that that's a change to the motion yeah so we uh so we have to pull it okay so we'll pull it and that's item

1:37:06for e so i'd like to amend my motion to move items 4a through 4d and 4f second okay ready to vote on that part yes okay all in favor please say aye aye aye the opposition in the abstention motion carries uh unanimously uh noting that uh council member lyman is excuse me council member quinto is

1:37:34absent okay now we'll go back to item e the support for california state senate bill 684 and i i'd like to amend it to uh address it address the bill to uh the appropriations chair senator lara and to the senate pro tem kevin de leon and then to ccr congressman and and our

1:38:01governor on that so point of order mayor by may um in the resolution at the bottom of the page one you are revising the now therefore be it resolved clause could you please uh make your changes in the now therefore be it resolved back the other day yeah you got this

1:38:19little your last page attachment that that's where it says now therefore be it resolve the city council the city of el cerro hereby supports sb687 and directs the city clerk to send a copy of the resolution and a letter support signed by mayor elson ii and if you could please help us to

1:38:35senator lara and to senate pro tem kevin de leon and then to cc assemblyman tony thurman and governor jerry brown we could copy all these people right yes we can see mark desogne jerry brown nancy skinner and tony thurman skinner should probably be addressed to her too

1:38:53that we support her bill okay did you get all that information yes i will thank you okay okay so we have the motion is uh stated and there was a second okay and the motion was by i don't think there was a there was i'll second them okay okay so the motion was by i think he's

1:39:15making the motion you're the motion maker i made the motion too okay the motion is by fidelity the second is by i'll second it okay the second is by pardo okimoto all in favor please say aye in the opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously noting that council

1:39:34member quinto is absent thank you okay now then we're done with the consent calendar and we're ready for presentations and there is one and this presentation is on support for senate bill 562 the healthy california act and we have a presenter nell bennings off and if she would come to

1:40:01the podium or unless you need to come over here i don't know how it's set up it's all set up it's all set up okay great and nell is from healthcare for all of contra costa county disappointed huh okay okay yes thank you so much for inviting me to speak and welcome

1:40:34here my name is nell benningshof and i'm a resident of richmond but i live right on the el cerrido border i want to thank major abelson and councilmember purdue okimoto for allowing me to make this presentation this evening so many organizations have come together

1:40:58under the name healthy california to achieve the goal of achieving universal health care and on this slide you can see that there are some 150 organizations and a lot of californians who believe that everyone has a right to guaranteed healthcare one of the leaders in this is the

1:41:21campaign for a healthy california over 65 unions and community organizations including the california nurses association which is really leading this effort and i know there are nurses right here in the audience that the alcor alliance which is made up of organizations that are specifically

1:41:42working towards getting universal healthcare here in california healthcare for all california california one care and the physicians for our national health program i'm a member of healthcare for all which is the grassroots organization dedicated to achieving this

1:42:04healthcare program here over 350 people in el cerrito have been or are currently on our email list and many of them are members of hca and again several of them are here in the audience tonight there is a lot of uncertainty and fear right now when it comes to our health

1:42:29care the administration's plan for health care reform is disastrous and while there aren't a lot of details we know it will be much leaner and meaner version of our current healthcare system and that healthcare system already has people struggling to afford healthcare

1:42:49so this questions how do other countries deal with hair care and how do we compare so on this slide here you can see prices for hospital physician services pharmaceutical and diagnostic imaging at the very last line you see the cost that was calculated for the year that

1:43:15this is based on in the united states and then you can compare it to the other countries above it and as you can see it's always higher and sometimes much higher in the united states as in other countries when it comes to the prices of pharmaceuticals they gave the united

1:43:37states a value of a hundred and then kind of calculated out what percentage of that would be paid for pharmaceuticals in other countries and again as you can see in some cases it's like double the amount here that some other countries pay for that service health care was a big issue in our past

1:44:04election and for a reason health care is still largely unaffordable or insecure for many the companies that provide insurance under the aca can still raise their rates without any consequences in terms of cost containment there are no controls to prevent skyrocketing rates by greedy insurance

1:44:29companies insurers take 20 to 30 percent of the top for items that have nothing to do with health care such as lobbying advertising conferences and of course executive salaries the insurance companies act as the middlemen who deny care won't give pre-approvals or pay for

1:44:54certain medications canada and the uk are blamed for rationing care but rationing care is alive and well in the us as well and in addition to the insurance companies that ration we do it to ourselves because we cannot afford the medical care in the tiered aca system the bronze plan

1:45:20has become the standard because that's what people can afford in terms of the premiums however they could spend over one ten thousand dollars in co-pays and deductibles before their insurance pays a dime and in california it's estimated that 1.5 million undocumented immigrants

1:45:45don't have health care and additionally they're about the same number who don't have insurance for various reasons but often cost is the main issue so three million people in california still don't have access to the care they need in california people have diligently

1:46:10worked for almost 20 years to get single-payer legislation passed and here are some of the highlights single-payer bills were introduced first in 1998 senate bill 2123 and then again in 2003 that was sb 921 but the first successful bill sb 840 was passed in 2006

1:46:38but it was vetoed by governor arnot schwarzenegger it was reintroduced and passed again and again it was vetoed in 2008 then due to the implementation of the affordable care act no more single-payer bills were introduced until 2017 when sb 562 the healthy california act

1:47:03was introduced the city of el cerrito has passed resolutions in support of single-payer bills in 2003 5 7 9 and 11.

1:47:18you can download a full write-up of the history there's a lot more detail if you go to our website healthcare for all org and if you go to our chapter face page contra costa county you will find it there so what is the interest in single payer in a poll that was done

1:47:46earlier this year 97 i'm sorry 76 of the public says that lowering the amount of individuals pay for health care should be a top priority and as you alco can see there is a growing interest in medicare for all program a program that already has a positive track record

1:48:12has an administrative cost of three percent and provides a lot of services but what now what now is the healthy california act sb 562 which was introduced in february 2017.

1:48:32these are the key provisions and let me just read some of them at least so a simple plan that guarantees health care to all residents of california it saves everybody a lot of money billions of dollars no more insurance company premiums no more co-pays no more deductible

1:48:55it will eliminate bureaucratic waste it will be inefficient and really save a lot of money patients can go to the doctor and provider of their choice doctors nurses and clinicians with your input will decide on the health care services it will be funded by a progressively based

1:49:20premiums or taxes and it will be funded funding an independent public health authority that pays for the care the theft harley funds will be preserved and it will provide comprehensive benefits and those benefits there's a whole lot of them and they sell include but are not

1:49:46limited to everything listed on this flight a slide i'm sorry so in an outpatient medical dental vision prescription drugs preventive cares etc also ambulance services mental health medical equipment rehab services transportation chiropractic acupuncture adult day care

1:50:14etc so how it will work single payer will replace how the services are paid for all sources are funded like the aca money medical other federal and state and employer and individual contributions will be collected by one independent public health authority and that authority will also distribute

1:50:50it it will pay for all the medical care and related services provided so our money can be better spent than we currently spend it we already pay for 70 of all the health care costs and insurance companies spend 20 to 30 percent of their revenue on non-health related expenditures

1:51:21healthy california will reduce the cost through the consolidation of our tax dollars lower administrative costs and negotiating directly with providers and prescription drug companies what does it mean for our communities it means guaranteed benefits and no barriers to care

1:51:47it ends the mean testing benefits will not be determined by income or eligibility everybody is automatically covered if they live in california all the medical aca and chip benefits are included essential community clinics and other providers will have predictable and

1:52:09stable funding and patients can go to any provider of their choice for businesses it means lower cost more equity certainty and security the current system is unsustainable worse if benefits are taxed employers providing coverage will significantly reduce their current cost to predictable

1:52:36and fair financing it creates a level playing field for all businesses in a fully transparent system and it relieves businesses of benefit administration burdens and costs real healthcare cost control means new resources for crows or freedom to start new business

1:53:00and for the worker no health care takeaways improved benefits and hopefully higher wages finally get health off the bargaining table lock in comprehensive benefits no more deductibles or co-pay money saved from lower health care costs can now go to wages but it will preserve the theft harley

1:53:26funds retiree healthcare benefits are covered help fund pensions it ends plans that exclude family members eliminate narrow networks and surprise medical bills it creates a reliable independent funding stream for public health services and workers can change jobs without

1:53:54losing insurance and losing your job doesn't mean losing your health care so cities here and also especially in this area already have passed resolutions in support of sb 562 as you can see albany berkeley emeryville los angeles oakland richmond and san francisco

1:54:22so i hope that the city of el cerrito will also consider joining the other cities and pass the resolution this evening and i assume that many people you can lift your hand if you're in favor of the city council passing this resolution thank you very much thank you um are you able to address any

1:54:47questions if anyone has i can certainly try okay are there any questions go ahead now thank you very much for your presentation tonight it's wonderfully received i do in reading through the packet tonight there is on page 11 of 20 a section 10 called opposition and i

1:55:10would love to have you address some of these oppositional arguments you know where i know you can so um there's three that i underlined that um that opponents are putting out there and it'd just be great if we could you know get something on the record that shows

1:55:29that there shows the arguments against these one is that there will be significant job loss as a result of the bill a second is that the singer pa single payer costs are unsustainable and the third is that government-run healthcare is less efficient and effective so i was just

1:55:47wondering if you could touch on on those three and i can repeat them for you if you would like maybe one at a time sure the the first one is job loss will result from this bill um that's true there will be people that will be losing their jobs and they will need to be retrained and

1:56:04the bill as it is stands right now has provisions in there to fund for retraining on the other side i also want to say that many more new jobs will be created especially in the medical field because now people will be able to afford and get care and therefore the need for those service

1:56:25providers will increase so so the the jobs that are lost are um in the i'm assuming in the insurance industry but there will be as many or more health care industry jobs that would be created right and it will not just be in the insurance industry um you know i as a matter of

1:56:45fact my job was working in software providing software for health care um you know benefits payroll etc for businesses well those jobs very nicely will be going away but of course i mean programmers etc there will be other places you know systems that they can be

1:57:07working on there will be there will be a lot of shifting but it will be healthy it will be jobs that will need to be replaced and other jobs that will be gained the the second one was single-payer costs are unsustainable and i'm not certain i'd understand their argument

1:57:25there but i was hoping that you might i think that probably should read medical cost pharmaceuticals or unsustainable the a study is being done and will be giving to lara how to fund the bill and the senate appropriations meeting will be next monday and it's my understanding that a bill

1:57:48will be amended before monday to show how this will be funded so how the new system that we're envisioning will be funded and therefore you know we will have to be of course paying for it i would expect that initially the implementation the cost will be larger but if you look at the

1:58:14benefits it will be like startup costs that will be recouped later so that's um so your response touches on one of my other questions on page 6 of 20 of the attachment the fiscal effect is the header and the text says this bill has not been analyzed by a fiscal

1:58:35committee you're you are suggesting that that analysis is ongoing and will be available shortly well the financial study was conducted and should be available as my understanding this week to senator lara okay excellent the last oppositional argument is that government-run health care is

1:58:56less efficient and effective and of course we've demonstrated through several programs government programs that we have good you know state-run systems so just curious if this this argument holds any water if you have any uh comments that you would like to add with regards to

1:59:15this opposition oppositional statement well i'm dutch and i grew up in a country where we had universal health care and it was of course paid for by the government and i've lived here for over 40 years and the system has continued to provide health care now i must say what the

1:59:38government always needs to do is it needs to be realistic and modify the systems and if we look at all the countries that have single-payer systems or universal healthcare i should say not all of them are single-payer necessarily they have succeeded so i cannot see

2:00:00why the government would not do a better job with what we currently have especially like you say the va is doing it medicare is doing it so by expanding medicare to be medicare for all i'm pretty sure that we can do a better job and what the insurance companies are

2:00:20doing thank you well yeah thank you i i just have one question um the bill the way it's written now the implementation date is january of next year 2018 and some are criticizing it that we should have that financial report first to see how we might pay for this

2:00:38absolutely so do you think the bill might be amended in the next batch will there be amendments to it's by impression that it will be amended before it goes to the appropriations committee which is monday to include the financial component as well and that date

2:00:55will change possibly well i don't think that it ever said that it would be implemented maybe that it would be passed but it will you know you won't be able to implement it on day one it will a commission will need to be formed it will need to be basically the plan of implementation

2:01:17will need to be developed okay thank you how do you envision this bill affecting local governments in particular well speaking for richmond where we have a real issue with the budget and one of the big costs and i'm sure it's here as well but hopefully less so is

2:01:41employee costs but especially retiree cost health insurance benefits payable to retaries is a big component of that if a single-payer system would be implemented that would lessen that burden and i think that is true for any governmental agency there are so many

2:02:06cities etc that that are having very high pension costs including those benefits that will be helped thank you okay um any more questions shall we hear from the um public now do we have public speakers i bet we do yes we do we have quite a few speakers okay um how many uh about eight

2:02:33eight okay um so we do have a a thing now that we seem to like which is if you agree with the speaker go like this and from by sitting up here what we see is how many of you there are but it doesn't disrupt the speaker so if you can join us in that we would be more than

2:02:57delighted and you can hold up your sign as a part of that um the um anyway would you like to start calling the speakers please certainly cordell hindler followed by judy ballinger and thoralid erdahl justice mike so good evening again uh council um carter handler richmond i think that was an

2:03:21excellent presentation so when i got out of this is because um that the the cost of health care as um is is soaring uh not only in the united states but in global and i figured okay if this is like um because when i saw it on the screen it was like the cost of health care is like has

2:03:40skyrocketed so i'm thinking that this is an opportunity for um for what i um for revenue to uh to come in because this is important i mean for health care i mean especially like um people who are who are like who are losing their jobs and like because of the of health care so i'm

2:03:56thinking that this is something that uh that i would hope that this council will like will take into into consideration like pass this resolution so they can be part of the uh of the uh of the change of we see in el cerrito so i'm asking that the council would approve would be part of the the

2:04:12resolution and then we'll take it from there your turn judy good evening city council my name is judy ballinger i'm a retired nurse i've lived in el cerrito for 40 years and lived in richmond growing up now explained a lot of this wonderfully i really think that this is a

2:04:36case of what do we what do we value do we take care of the sick the poor the disadvantaged we need to cover everybody and we can do it for less money so i urge you to like you have in the past support this bill thank you thoroughly erdahl followed by bippin walia and jackie dragon

2:05:03good evening city council my name is toriel erdahl i'm a nurse at alta bytes hospital where i've been for well over 30 years and i'm also somebody who grew up in a country with single-payer health care i grew up in norway so growing up i had access to very good

2:05:21health care government funded and one of the questions that that you had asked earlier had to do with how affordable a system like this could be and as it is under the current system we are spending more money in this country per capita on health care and we're getting much much less

2:05:46we still have millions of people in the state of california with no coverage and then we have people who have coverage but they're under insured they're afraid to go and have regular health care they don't go to regular checkups they don't fill their prescriptions because they can't

2:06:05afford it so even though they're insured they're not getting the kind of health care they need and that ultimately becomes very costly also because if people wait on taking care of their health care issues they become emergent and in an emergency care is much much more expensive and the

2:06:28human cost if god forbid a condition is not properly cared for until it really unravels um there's no dollar sign that we can put on that so just real quickly i work in labor and delivery and in adult debates we're high risk labor and delivery and we take care of a lot of patients who come in with

2:06:50what we presume is our conditions that are pregnancy related we deal with patients who have pregnancy related hypertension pregnancy related diabetes and i say assume because for so long women have not had regular access to health care so the first time they have

2:07:12been told they have high blood pressure or high blood sugar is when they're pregnant and then if we don't have good coverage for them after they give birth they disappear off the radar again so we're presuming that it was just a pregnancy related issues but issues like diabetes

2:07:31issues like high blood pressure can lead to very very serious health concerns you're more like likely to have a stroke you're more likely to go into kidney failure these are very very serious conditions that if we could take care of the diabetes and the high blood pressure

2:07:55at an earlier stage we wouldn't have such serious issues to deal with and because of impala which regulates regulates access to emergency care because we have to screen everybody um who has an emergency who who presents in the emergency room that's cost that's absorbed either by

2:08:20the hospital or by the hospital and the taxpayers and the human cost again if people have these conditions left untreated and as a result they're very very ill no longer able to work my time is way way past huh i'm so sorry i think i made my point i think we understood what you were saying though

2:08:48good good evening city council and members and mayor my name is bipin walia i'm here to support sb 262 and get your support on it which i feel simply means that build means universal healthcare for all californians i want to start off by saying that we are told and we do tend to claim as

2:09:11americans that we have the best health care system in the world i do believe we do have the best health healthcare system in the world but the access to that healthcare system is very limited so essentially we have the best ct scans we've had the best mris we have the best

2:09:28hospitals but people cannot get to those things people come to my i work in the emergency room and i see people come in a little too late where a diabetic patient now has to get an amputation because they did not have that twenty thirty dollars to get the regular diet

2:09:47that is needed they did not have twenty dollars copay to get that insulin a person who has high blood pressure does not realize that if they are not taking the blood pressure medication it is going to lead to stroke just for 10 15 copay the person is denied health care

2:10:08this universal health care that we are asking for is going to fix that it it is the step in the right direction the money can be found we are waging wars on countries this is our own people we can't find the money there has to be a will to get there as a nurse i can tell you many stories

2:10:29every single person in this room i i believe has health insurance my coworker and my very best friend her husband at 32 had a heart attack i can show you the text from her now i called her i said hey i'm gonna go to the city council i just want to ask you how much was the bill

2:10:50the bill was three million dollars they're still paying for stuff they are well to do both of them have excellent insurance he still has to take medication one pill just one of his pills costs 80 dollars god forbid if he loses his job where are they going to get money from these are

2:11:13not poor people this is people like you and i we are hard-working people we deserve something better than having this stress oh my god if i lose my job how am i going to pay for this i think the single step towards that would be having universal health care we will find the money we can pay for it

2:11:34we will pay for it but we just need to take that step and say we support this and then things will work out thank you thank you jackie dragon followed by alyssa king good evening mayor city council members my name is jackie dragon i'm from the california nurses association

2:12:02at a time when those holding power in the federal government are looking to repeal the affordable care act an unconscionable choice that could double our states uninsured to 7.5 million people we have an alternative in california sb 562 would ensure healthcare as a basic

2:12:24human right for all californians nurses as you as you have just heard see people in their work every day who are suffering because they lack health care when they need it some of these people they are as you've heard good hard-working tax-paying people some of them are veterans who've

2:12:45maybe fought as far back as world war ii defending our country but now they're facing losing their quality of life or even having their lives cut short because they don't have access to care people are losing their homes to pay for care to stay alive a horrible choice to

2:13:05have to make people choosing between medicine and food delaying or foregoing treatment as you heard say for diabetes one day that costs a man his leg on another day some of you may have actually wept as i did listening to a clip of jimmy kimmel as he thanked the incredible nurses and

2:13:26doctors who saved his critically ill newborn baby just a couple of weeks ago in los angeles and he said through his tears no one's financial situation should prevent them from saving their child's life it's basic i think we all get it and we have a chance to do something about it

2:13:46california can have a more humane system if we have the courage to pass sb 562 by pooling what the state already pays for health care services and using california's significant bargaining power to negotiate bulk discounts in a single-payer system we can protect all

2:14:05californians and set a model for other states to follow of course that means private insurance companies go away along with those insanely high paid executives and they will fight this they will spend millions and millions to fight this governor brown will need to see our

2:14:22strong commitment across the state to realize universal health care insurance here for all californians and that begins with cities like el cerrito affirming this path the california nurses association fully supports sb 562 and your resolution in support of it this bill will bring about

2:14:43a monumental change in california one that can lead to an even more amazing legacy ensuring health care as a human right for all americans thank you council member pardo okamoto for your leadership on this truly life and death issue thank you the last speaker slip is alyssa king

2:15:11i'm much shorter than jackie good evening my name is elisa kang and i'm an organizer with the california nurses association i just wanted to invite all of you council members and audience to join us on friday may 19th we're going to have a lobby day and rally in sacramento in

2:15:32support of sb 562. as you all probably know um the first vote on sb 562 was in the senate health committee and there was a hearing recently in sacramento and it did pass and so the next step would be for the bill to go through the senate appropriations committee which is coming

2:15:49up soon so to show that el cerrito residents and others throughout california are very much in support of this legislative important legislation great way to demonstrate that is to join with nurses and other community advocates to rally and support sb562 so we have

2:16:11buses leaving from throughout the state on this flyer there's a link where folks can go to to reserve a seat on the bus the rally will be at five o'clock but at one o'clock we're asking folks to join us at the capitol west steps for lunch there'll be a training and also

2:16:30legislative visits to key legislators and that five o'clock we'll have the rally and buses will leave sacramento at around 6 30 p.m so i'm going to pass some of these out if anyone in the audience would like copies of the flyer please come see me and i hope to see

2:16:48all of you there in sacramento on friday thank you thank you and that's it yes okay thank you so now we'll go back to the council for any comments first of all sure i'll start so so much of um what i believe has already been said so i won't repeat a lot of that but

2:17:19i just wanted to um piggyback off the comments that i made for sb um 687 uh sb 562 um would actually improve our hospital closer situation um and that's not something that i think gets talked about a lot it has the sb 562 has the potential to help the residents of el cerrito

2:17:48by opening up that possibility of a new hospital coming to west county because the way we have our health care system set up right now is like i spoke of before health care systems are consolidating and they're moving away from poorer communities they're moving to

2:18:08communities where people have private health insurance and the the highest paying health insurance plans is where the hospitals are centering themselves so if we had a a health care system based on population where no matter who you are you you pay exactly the same amount into the system

2:18:31then all of a sudden there is an incentive for hospitals to base themselves around population centers which is really where they should be based anyway so that's one way in which sb 562 could help el cerrito it will also in my belief help control health care costs that we

2:18:53are paying here at the city as health care costs are one of those things that keeps skyrocketing year after year and we would hope that we would be able to take some of those savings potential savings and pass that on to the residents in the form of enhanced services

2:19:11to to meet some of those goals that we were talking about earlier today and of course uh just to reiterate on on some of the things that that people have already said you know peace of mind to our residents that they won't lose their homes because of unpaid medical

2:19:31bills and that they won't have to choose between things like buying their prescriptions versus their rent versus eating health care should be a human right and that is something that i believe holy in my heart after my 17 years of working at the hospital down the street and my 16 years of being a

2:19:56registered nurse everyone should be treated equally and everyone should have access to health care and we should start a new era as leaders in the state of california and leaders in the city of el cerrito to push this forward and make sure that everyone is taken care of thank you

2:20:18thank you have any comments yeah we've been here many times before uh we've had uh senator kewell and senator leno's bills as as was articulated here before moving this trying to move this bill forward universal coverage i want to thank janet abelson for continuing to bring this before el

2:20:44cerrito over the many years and as a senior citizen i don't know if some of the other seniors in the audience remember senator kennedy he was a pioneer in this s3 was his bill and as a personal note i used to work where councilwoman pardue okimoto just came from

2:21:05for his best friend senator tani who was our california senator on health care issues and senator tiny supported the universal health care system and i was very happy to join his staff until he took his name off of the bill because he thought it was too expensive

2:21:21it became a big issue a lot of forces in the state capital the national capital as we all know fighting against that long story short is that senator tony lost his re-election bid to assai hayakawa and lost the support of the agent in our na in our state and other places so it was a very

2:21:41bittersweet time to work on health care issues but that's decades and decades ago we're still fighting this so we have to be honest it's not going to be easy to pursue and to win this there are a lot of legitimate issues on both sides there are finances and tax issues

2:21:59there's implementation issues nothing is going to be cheap but the time is critical now for us to take a stand in el cerrito in california because we're redefining health care again in our nation so it's important that we do that and all of us are walking toward the next

2:22:16health crisis in our life and it is better that we have this system in this bill that we can walk toward than what we don't have and finally i just want to say we have to stop talking about health insurance and talk about health care we have to care about the people in our

2:22:34nation and our state and so i'm very excited that this this i would support this bill thank you very much janet and rochelle for bringing this forward and i want to uh also thank both of you for bringing it forward i i know i have voted uh in uh to support the sb 810 and janet i'm

2:22:52certain that you have voted um every time since 2003 in support of this um so i i just want to thank you guys for bringing it forward again and i do have i wouldn't be doing my job if i didn't have some minor changes in the now therefore be it resolved clause i would like to change it from

2:23:15here by endorses to hereby supports sb 562 that makes it consistent with the title um and then i just i would like to get the opinion of my esteemed partners with regards to the be it further resolved that we send a copy of this resolution to i'm wondering if we want to send it to

2:23:37the authors senators laura and atkins and co-authors assembly member thurman and state senator skinner so i'm just curious we want to make sure that the authors laura and atkins know that what we've done so those would be the two changes to two changes that i would uh

2:23:57suggest but i would like the motion maker to be miss pardo okamoto um sure i i would i would agree with those so um do i make the motion for the original first or you can make the motion with those changes okay and the committee chair that it's going to be heard in next week

2:24:16should also know so it can get on the right sure do we know the name of the committee chair is an appropriations committee so it would be lara again so they need to know the committee that we're supporting it soon yeah okay right so i make a motion to pass the resolution to support sb 562

2:24:39with the amendments that council member lyman has made are you clear cheryl what those are yes absolutely right and is there a second to the motion i'll second that okay so there's a motion and a second and any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye

2:24:59hi i think that was a pretty definite yes and it's unanimous noting that um member uh quinto uh was unable to be here and i'm sure he would have done the same had he been here um so with that we will um thank our audience we'll take it just a second but if the council could stay up here so that if

2:25:27people want to leave the room at this point they can feel okay about it thank you all for coming [Music] interesting and nell i'd like to thank you in particular for the work that you did on the presentation thank you okay that will move on on our agenda the next item is six public hearings the

2:26:01first one is a which is to confirm the diagram levy the assessment for fiscal year 2017-18 for landscape and lighting assessment district number is there 1918-1 staff report on this indeed 1988.

2:26:25well there we go hi shannon collins with the i'm the accounting supervisor with the finance department city of else rehab i'm here tonight for this public hearing in order to present to the council the fiscal year 2017-18 landscape and lighting assessment district number

2:26:431988.1 engineers report in order to provide you and the public the opportunity to ask questions regarding the diagram and proposed levy which were listed in the list of charges that were made available to review on the city's website and at the city clerk's office

2:27:03the engineers report includes a per parcel fee for residential parcels of 72 dollars and other classes of charges are outlined in the report as well upon conclusion of this public hearing it is our wish that the council accepts the engineers report and adopt a resolution

2:27:23confirming the diagram and set the annual landscape and mining assessment for fiscal year 2017-18 as 17 72 dollars per residential parcel and other class charges as they appear in the engineers report um as an expert in this area i would call uh public works director

2:27:49yvette um here who's here tonight to answer any questions with regard to this matter she'll she'll answer the questions if there are any if there are any okay are there any questions yeah i've got a question and i know you can answer this question it's a softball

2:28:09okay are we increasing this amount this amount actually was this increased i don't believe it was no yeah the answer is we haven't increased it in the decade because we can't so yeah so yeah no we haven't increased it because we can't um so thank you all right thank you for your report

2:28:31um are there any uh questions from the council regarding the presentation or report i guess you kind of went ahead and did that right yeah any others nope okay then with that we'll open the public hearing are there any um public speakers no requests move to close the public hearing

2:28:51okay second okay all in favor of closing the public hearing say aye aye aye that was unanimous and the hearing is over um next we'll um see if any written communications have been received no i haven't received anything okay and are there any additional questions

2:29:14or deliberation from the council no i move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito confirming the diagram and levying the assessment for fiscal year 2017-2018 for the landscape and lighting assessment district number 1988-1 second okay um all in favor please say aye

2:29:38aye any opposition any abstentions motion carriers unanimously noting that council member uh quinto is absent okay with that we move on to the next item which is b uh it's a fiscal year 2017-18 storm drain annual report and method of collecting storm drain fees

2:30:01is there a um see here is there an another person shannon collins there we go so i'm here again tonight for this public hearing hearing in order to present to the council the 2017-18 storm drain annual report in order to provide you and the public with the opportunity

2:30:22to ask questions regarding the report and the methodology for collecting storm drain fees this report was made available for review on the city's website and at the city clerk's office the annual report asked that the 58 dollar fee for each single-family resident property be

2:30:41continued in order to provide funding for the reconstruction of the city storm drain system and the associated debt service for acquisition construction reconstruction maintenance and operation of the storm drain facilities upon conclusion of this public hearing

2:30:56is our wish that the council accept the 2017-18 storm drain annual report and adopt a resolution in order to direct that the storm drain fees be collected on the property tax rolls okay are there any questions yeah i've got one unfortunately i think it is for ms ortiz this time

2:31:17um i know having reviewed this report nine times that the 58 dollars is the appears to be the maximum amount we can charge per parcel and it does say in here you know what we are able to do but given the new uh stormwater regulations that are out there are we collecting enough money to

2:31:39cover all of our obligations so the storm drain fee has been set at 58 for many years in the original ordinance and right now we use it purely to do maintenance and improvement of our typical storm drain infrastructure pipes inlets things like that but we the green infrastructure plan that we're

2:32:03about to embark upon will identify additional expenses to implement these other types of green infrastructure such as bio retention facilities within our public right of way so that will help us determine whether or not we need to collect additional revenue to satisfy the requirements

2:32:24at this point the funding that we have available is just enough to cover maintaining our existing system great thank you that answers my question do you have any questions no paul do you have any questions okay so with that uh we will open the public hearing do we have any speakers no mayor move to

2:32:46close to the public hearing second second okay motion by lyman second and bipardu okimoto to close the public hearing all in favor please say aye aye any opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously um and have there been any written communications received no

2:33:08okay thank you um are there any additional counsel questions or discussion if i may i'll make the motion resolution i move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerro adopting the fiscal year 2017-2018 storm drain annual report and directing that the storm

2:33:27drain fees for fiscal year 2017-2018 be collected through the property tax rolls second okay there's a motion by lyman seconded by uh pardue okimoto to um take the to pass the mo to approve the i'm not sure what i want to say here approve the storm drain report in fees

2:33:52for 1718 all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposition any abstentions motion carries unanimously noting that councilor member lyman is absent i assume the council member i'm getting tired councilmember quintos is absent um okay then now we're on to our third

2:34:18public hearing uh which is item 6c which is an update of accessory dwelling unit regulations and um now this okay so we have a public hearing so is there a staff presentation there you go moved good evening mayor abelson uh members of the city council i'm margaret cavanaugh

2:34:43lynch your development services manager before you this evening is a brief presentation of the new accessory dwelling unit regulations that we have before the city this evening in your packet was an exhaustive table i think of the existing ordinance and the proposed ordinance and what was required

2:35:02to be changed and what was recommended so i'm just going to highlight that and try very hard not to read very much of the presentation this evening as a brief background and as many of you know the state of california finds accessory dwelling units a very positive uh action and has passed a

2:35:21number of laws to facilitate their creation um last year uh the legislature passed two more bills um listed in this slide that became effective on january 1st the purpose of the regulations before you this evening is primarily to comply with state law staff also took this opportunity to

2:35:42clarify some of the existing terms in our current ordinance to make them clearer for everyone staff and the community to understand and finally we brought forward some minor changes that were meant to streamline um any possible discretionary action that was needed

2:35:59um this was a goal actually listed in our housing element that's currently in effect as that exact action and it's also on my planning commission's work list for this calendar year so we thought we'd take this opportunity to check both of those boxes the items that are included in tonight's

2:36:20presentation and in the draft ordinance were intended to be non-controversial in nature and therefore very straightforward i want to point out that we are aware that will be additional modifications coming forward um two accessory dwelling units and other housing conditions in our city as

2:36:37part of the affordable housing strategy and we look forward to continuing this conversation so this is meant to just gather the low-hanging fruit as it were just to take a step back and make sure that the acronym is actually defined an accessory drilling unit is a

2:36:53secondary unit or a subservient unit on a lot with complete independent living facilities for one or more persons they're typically created through the conversion of existing living space or as an addition uh either as an addition to the existing home or as a detached structure

2:37:09here is a great example of a detached extra structure typically in the backyard and here is a much more generic what an attached accessory drilling unit can look like this might be the most underneath slide for the presentation but why they are important i think they are such an effective way

2:37:34to increase housing options in our community while not changing any of the predominant single family detached neighborhood character they provide de facto affordable housing for renters they provide a source of income for homeowners they provide a housing resources for

2:37:52extended families for college students for folks moving into the community trying to stay in their single family home and rent out part of it um they're really a wonderful multi-level uh asset to the city can i just interrupt it looks like we've blown another projector bulb so people

2:38:14we do our web screening we are web streaming it right now so if you have a device you can watch it on your phone right at your seat and also on the back excuse me and because i lost my visual i'm going to be a little more verbal but not much i'll try because again the staff report is

2:38:31online and there is a lot of detail in that document and as you say the presentation is web streaming to start with there are many items or many themes in the existing ordinance that are not being changed are proposed to be changed for this evening those items include

2:38:52where they are allowed they're allowed in any residential district in the city meaning the rs or single family the duplex or the multi-family the requirement that the legal owner occupy either the primary or the accessory dwelling unit is also not being asked to be changed this evening

2:39:10the type of unit which is this is specifying what we mean by accessory drilling unit is not being changed and the need to add a deed restriction to your property uh to your real estate property stating that you won't sell it it's not a duplex you can't sell it separately you have to live in one of

2:39:28the units and that it's a binding condition on successors to that homeowner are all exactly as they've been since 2008.

2:39:38there's one minor change and i'll slow down and read this just because i know some folks are following along without the visual um the planning commission heard this regulation at their last meeting and they've added a number of minor changes that were in your packet

2:39:54one of the changes that seemed small but i think they were i know why they added it and i want to explain one of the goals for an accessory dwelling unit is that it basically be compatible with the primary dwelling it shouldn't necessarily look like it fell from space that you bought a

2:40:15shed kit at home depot and dropped it in your backyard we want it to be a lot more thoughtful than that and there's ways to do that very financially effectively so um sorry but so there's ways to do that um and so this is an older finding that's in our current zoning ordinance it says it must be

2:40:32visually harmonious and compatible the planning commission wanted to make that much clearer they just want it to look at all compatible so they asked me to change it from and to or for folks following along with the slides other planning commission changes or edits are going to show up in bold and i

2:40:50will highlight them verbally as well so what is changing uh floor area discussions the development standards the parking requirements and the level of review on floor area the basically not required to change but it's something that we wanted to bring forward and clarify

2:41:16um for all the users of the ordinance including the community members that are trying to meet these these requirements um basically it should be a maximum of 1200 square feet um the real numerator in this conversation is it shouldn't exceed 50 percent of the habitable floor area

2:41:37of the primary unit um it also cannot go below 150 square feet just to touch on that for a second that's very small the state regulations are also talking about junior accessory dwelling units lots of cities are looking at this differently we've always allowed that

2:41:53size and what that really is is a large bedroom so if you were just trying to add a bedroom with a kitchen so it has to be a kitchen by building codes if it's basically a kitchenette a bathroom and a bedroom onto your home we can give you the full benefit and protection of an accessory

2:42:09dwelling unit that is the reason we let it go that small we wanted to make sure that the homeowner had the flexibility to add what they wanted to add up to 50 percent of the square footage of the primary building uh this is another clarification um the current code language is in your packets

2:42:32but basically we've always said since 2008 that we wanted the accessory units to be subordinate to so um for an uh accessory dwelling unit on an interior lot meaning not on the corner of this uh block we want it behind the uh the primary unit to the extent possible and that got

2:42:53into a lot of conversations by what did you mean by behind so we wanted to make that really clear from the get-go so it's listed on the slide but basically um it's completely behind it it's partially behind it at least 20 feet back which is the exact setback we have for garage

2:43:09doors too in our in our city or in the rear half what we're trying to do is accommodate folks with irregular lots we're trying to give them the spirit and intent and let them design to the maximize their private open space in the backyard and the size of their accessory drilling in it

2:43:26ms kevin if you go back to that slide i just want to recall the um the what was what would have been when we had the developers that are the family owners that came in and they wanted to build a primary unit behind the existing uh house and the existing house was less

2:43:47than 1200 square feet and they wanted to do so by making the existing house that was in front of what would then become the primary house and accessory dwelling is that still that concept still an exception or what what is how would that be played out in this current

2:44:07ordinance uh we could accommodate that um and in the proposed ordinance it would be an administrative use permit before the zoning administrator because it's not um that ninety percent of what we see is the primary house is already there and someone's adding something somewhere

2:44:23right um any relief to these development standards um to the development standards to the parking and to the architectural compatibility are granted in the proposed ordinance with an administrative use permit and i'll get to that later and previously it was a conditional use permit either

2:44:41conditional use permit or it may not have been permittable it honestly would have been a very challenging it would be probably been the purview of the planning commission and it would have been a very challenging um recommendation to make based on the way the findings were written

2:44:57so the case that we did take up i can't remember the street would be more readily permittable under the new ordinance that's correct okay great thank you um more clarification language really just for so when we say corner detached units i realize that's planning speak

2:45:19for these are the lots on the corners of the block um again we're just trying to put the primary dwelling first so it's we try to explain by behind means the front yard setback which is it's helpful when someone's sitting at their home at 10 o'clock at night and trying to design

2:45:33this right this is what we mean this is what we want you to do if you have a lot where that doesn't make sense please submit it the way it does make sense and let the zoning administrator hold a hearing and have that conversation so this is really um best case scenario and for lots that are

2:45:48not rectangular and found in the zoning ordinance we wanted to leave a lot of flexibility in this ordinance um for development standards for attached units um again just on the subordinate issue for the accessory dwelling units we wanted to say okay at least put the door either

2:46:08on the side or behind in the rear there's a lot of accessory dwelling units in el cerrito that you actually go down the stairs and enter from the back but if it doesn't make sense to do that you can have it on the front but let's put it just 10 feet back so that again

2:46:20people going by on the street the neighbors the community reads this as a single family dwelling for example with the accessory dwelling in a completely combined therein if someone's adding an addition uh to accommodate a disaster dwelling unit um they can now add it to the front of the

2:46:43house which is something that's uh was harder to do before with the door being stepped back or if they're adding a second story we asked them to put it towards the back of the dwelling unit again if that doesn't make sense due to topography or some other architectural challenge we can grant

2:46:59relief to that with a with an administrative use permit this is a requirement from the state of california the if you have a garage and you are using that footprint that structure to create an accessory dwelling unit um you may now do that as of right that's that's by right now um

2:47:20of course uh the building code would apply so when you have a lot of our garages are built right on the property line so we would have to work with them to have a fire one hour fire rating on that rear elevation they'd have to have windows that were not right up on the property line you have

2:47:38to be five feet off so the building code would still apply it would still be a safe dwelling but that they are allowed to convert garages as a new part of this ordinance so when you convert your garage it seems like a good time to talk about what the maintenance of the existing parking for

2:48:01the primary structure now becomes in el cerrito currently you have to maintain the parking spaces you have or the required minimum parking spaces you have so if you have a single family detached home and you have a two-stall garage we want you to maintain that um

2:48:20if you have a one-stall garage we want you to maintain that we're not asking for an audition but we're asking for that to be maintained mostly to keep the neighborhood character in balance however if you have to convert that garage or carport to create the accessory drilling unit

2:48:37we want to make that very simple you do not have to replace it with covered parking you can park it in a simple parking pad in the driveway tandem to the garage basically anywhere on the lot as long as you keep the parking you had net and for the primary dwelling um so

2:49:00um for parking uh related to the exhaust the new accessory dwelling unit the planning commission wanted me to forward their strongest recommendation that they don't believe that any parking should be required for accessory dwelling units if that doesn't uh please the council

2:49:19the existing ordinance and staff's recommendation at this time was to just uh every accessory dwelling unit requires a one off street parking space again it can be put anywhere it does not have to be in a carport or a garage it could be basically anywhere that there's a

2:49:36paving surface right so in the driveway in a parking pad and there's a number of exemptions to that required parking on the following slide so pursuant to the new state law if you're within a half mile of a bart station or you're within a half mile of a stop that serves public

2:49:58transit then you do not need to add a parking space for your accessory dwelling unit the state of california offered those ideas to us but they did not define what public transit meant so we took it a step further and defined the 15-minute headways during the weekdays

2:50:18we suggested 20 minutes or more on saturday sundays and holidays the planning commission thought we were being too conservative and said 60-minute headways go ahead um i read this one this roman numeral ii [Music] and it struck me that we have that type of service on the

2:50:39arlington and that type of service on richmond street and san pablo avenue since the distance between the arlington and richmond street is probably right around a mile is there anywhere in el cerrito that doesn't fit roman 2 actually yes when we reviewed the ac transit

2:51:02website it appears that the so the 72r yes um everything on san pablo means this the arlington did not meet it um because of the because of the non-peak headways yeah so the 60 minutes is what the 60 week sorry the you're saying the peak headway or the the weekday um headway because they're

2:51:2420 minutes yeah and and the idea that again that staff was working with is it should be in lieu of a car so it had to have um service that was um very urban in nature the 15-minute headways are better again this is a line that the staff created if the council would like to

2:51:46open that up it would definitely be within your purview is that true of the one-half mile as well no i believe the half-mile is actually from state law okay one of the other issues when were thinking about whether the arlington line would be included or not or should

2:52:02be included or not is the topography so i happen to live in that half mile gap between navalier and the arlington and it's a it's a very as you well know it's not a a walk that one can do easily or on a daily basis unless you're in you know far better shape than i so

2:52:23we didn't want to say a car wouldn't be needed um but there are a number of exemptions and i'll cover some more on the next page where um we could see reasons for people not to have to put a parking space on site for an accessory dwelling unit so there there's another issue with

2:52:40the frequency on the transit if you uh go up to um for example mira vista country club it turns out it's not within three quarters of a mile very light in the evening so the reason i know that is i was trying to get a pair of transit ride because i can't really

2:53:05use the transit that does go near there but it doesn't run at a time anything would end it you know it stops running much earlier so you might want to put something in about that i don't know personally i like the idea of reducing the parking requirement i know

2:53:27in my neighborhood people use their garages for storage yes you know so even if you make people put in one that doesn't mean they'll use it that way that's correct um so the area surrounding the marijuana country club would not be exempt from providing a parking space under this

2:53:50series of exemptions but you'll find that most of those spaces would be possible most of that area would be possible to get an exemption in the next slide so bear with me and see if i address it i don't know that i'm interested in i'm just pointing out that that's the way it works sure yes

2:54:07yes um and while we were having this conversation and we started talking about a half mile um it's not clearly defined anywhere uh and the currently under the zoning run is what you meant by how we measure a half mile so again for the sake of clarity we meant a straight line

2:54:24not following the gis street lines from the property line containing the accessory dwelling unit to the qualifying transit stop so i wanted to state that and then how we would measure it from up our building but again that's just to help the folks that are trying

2:54:38to do this at home as much as possible and we're always available for calls you know during the workday other reasons why someone would not need to provide a parking space for their new accessory dwelling unit the first three are the state law coming into our ordinance which is

2:54:54if it's in a historically significant district we do have one of those it's a campus so that's not necessarily immediately relevant to our city the summit k2 campus but if we ever had a historically significant district designated no parking would be required uh

2:55:11if the excess we're drawing unit is attached to or does not increase the footprint or the existing primary residence or existing structure there's basically if it's invisible another parking space is not required um if on-street parking permits are required but not offered to the

2:55:26accessory dwelling unit that does not apply to our city but someone was parking in the city of berkeley and they had a residential parking permit and they were told that they were not eligible to have such permit they don't need a parking space um the the last uh reason listed is um

2:55:46the staff's recommendation as modified by the planning commission we felt that if there was available on street parking it seemed to waste to grant parts of the of the property to the parking of an accessory dwelling unit so we started out by saying a simple parking inventory

2:56:06could be done by a layperson showing that there's available on-street parking and the planning commission took that and actually went a step further uh making it we don't so typically in an ordinance you don't write this something very specifically it's something that

2:56:20staff would tell the person to do with the counter but the planning commission felt so strongly that this was a very viable and important alternative they crafted that what they mean by available on-street parking is there's at least two spaces along the curb that are at

2:56:36least 20 feet long within 300 feet of the property line that are vacant at on a week night at 7. so honestly that's a great el cerrito resolution if you've got up by the mira vista country club there's a lot of on-street parking available at seven right depending on

2:56:53what street you're on um if they can show that we will not ask them to accommodate the parking on site so that's the um that was the recommendation of staff and the planning commission um took to it very strongly and then took it further um so anyone could just draw take a

2:57:11photograph show us those two spaces times check it for seven o'clock and we're done okay um so currently to um council member lyman's point um if you uh you can get an accessory dwelling unit permit if you meet all our development standards in place in a zoning ordinance

2:57:31uh without asking for any exceptions you could that's a buy right or ministerial permit today if you wanted exceptions for certain certain standards like parking it was a conditional use permit before the planning commission the planning commission felt strongly that that level of review

2:57:51wasn't necessary so we basically took so if you want an exception to the development standards listed tonight the parking requirements or the architectural compatibility so if a neighbor feels it does not match and the staff can't make that finding it the recommendation of staff is that this

2:58:12be brought to a zoning administrator hearing those have been very successful we've started those as part of the san pablo avenue specific plan we can notice them we can hold them 21 days from the moment we know that someone needs one so we don't have to run on a

2:58:25standard planning commission or design review board schedule it's held in the hillside room in city hall we have neighbors sit down and talk about the project and what their concerns are and we're usually i don't think we've ever had to deny our continued project because we couldn't

2:58:39find a resolution so it's a very friendly it's still it's still discretionary i still i am the zoning administrator um but that person is assigned by the community development director but we find it's a very hands-on straightforward way to set people down if there is a if there is a

2:58:54concern and find a way to to offer a solution in this revised uh development standard uh approach right now um if you're not in a specific plan we do ten day notice uh two interested parties um in a specific plan we do a 21 day notice i think you'll see us moving towards 21 day

2:59:13notice throughout the city but it seemed like a good time to introduce that so if somebody needs relief to a standard we would hold it at the zoning administrator level we would notice it 21 days in advance so people have time to think about it and come to the meeting and we would still mail to

2:59:29everyone within 300 feet of that accessory dwelling in it the other minor change is that typically a zoning administrator's decision can be appealed to the design review board but since this discussion this policy is always that with the planning commission um and most

2:59:44of this if anybody was concerned or wanted to appeal a decision um it wouldn't be a design to review decision per se it wouldn't be what the design review board does typically so it seemed logical to move it right to the planning commission for an appeal if one has been

3:00:00filed just a word about short-term rentals the state law does allow cities to prohibit the use of accessory dwelling units as short-term rentals we have already made the interpretation that a short-term rental of less than 30 days aren't allowed in our city bed and

3:00:15breakfast are and there's a section of the municipal code that allows for that so um we have not we are keeping a bright line between those two you may hear that conversation come up later on in this year but at this point it's it's um it's moot here finally other sections of the code that

3:00:31would be amended in this action are anywhere that it used to say second unit basically so section 19 has a number of section 8 also has a few those are just to make sure that we're internally consistent in the municipal code they're not substantial changes they're

3:00:47literally just making sure we're using the right jargon again i guess to conclude the purpose really was to come into compliance with state law um we saw the opportunity to clarify some terms and make the implementation clearer for everyone and uh finally to address our housing elements

3:01:07goal and our planning commission's intent we wanted to streamline the discretionary review when it was still necessary thank you i'm sorry that that went on a little bit longer that i meant to hopefully i covered most of what people were trying to see and couldn't and i'm

3:01:21glad to take your questions i have a question um on on tv on occasion i see this program called tiny houses or tiny houses this or tiny houses that um if could a tiny a tiny house that would look to make like could be installed under absolutely absolutely yes yes

3:01:45that would be a great way if someone so they're not there's different price points but if you were trying to do a modular tiny home and you if you didn't have a skill set that involves carpentry for example that would be one great way to accommodate an accessory dwelling unit

3:01:58in your rear yard and it doesn't require any changes to anything that i haven't over at least no additional changes to any code we have would be required that's correct okay paul yeah um just a couple points i think this is a really good product i think it's timely and it's a

3:02:18big deal it's being discussed throughout the state um and i like the parking changes and provisions here i think they're very logical a couple questions um the only buy right thing that we have in here is the garage is that true are there any other buy right so if someone wanted to do a detached

3:02:42accessory dwelling unit and they could meet the setbacks which are very flexible um they had a rear half of the lot they found they had enough parking on on the street um it was 12 feet or less in height and was between 150 to say it was approximately 50 of the size of the

3:03:00primary dwelling that would be by right it's only if somebody needs relief from our standards that it becomes a discretionary permit so there's a number of folks actually waiting to submit for their express accessory dwelling units that will probably be permittable

3:03:14by wright as a result of this ordinance when it and if it passes you mentioned the compatibility the style the look of this how would you implement that very subjective someone showing up and saying that's not compatible so i um professionally i have a a strong opinion

3:03:30about that so as long as i am your zoning administrator um no actually but it's it's uh it's up to in the end the director and the city manager but when we look at these cases i try very hard to not regulate the design of a single family home or an accessory dwelling unit

3:03:50i love unique architecture i love there's a there's my favorite example is there's a fish house in berkeley on the flats that's adorable if it meets building code if it's safe i am i try very hard to find a reason to be able to support it however if somebody painted a

3:04:08school bus orange accessory dwelling unit that's shown right into their neighbor's dining room window we'd have to talk so what i'm trying to do is find that it's somehow compatible so if you have a mid-century modern home it'd be great if you had a similar roof line to

3:04:24your accessory dwelling unit or a similar vernacular but i will not get into mutton size and million window coverage and things like that because i want people to be able to express themselves but neighbors input will be important too absolutely so that's one of the

3:04:41things that we can handle very easily at a zoning administrator hearing if someone what we usually hear is the window lines right up with my bedroom window or i rarely hear i don't like the way that looks i hear a lot more of um that's losing our privacy you know

3:04:57that's right up on my bedroom window that kind of thing we can move windows we can realign them we can do clear story windows we can do little things that people are usually glad to do to be approved that's usually a great it's basically it's a negotiation around a

3:05:11table okay um this may be too big a topic to open now but you mentioned the short-term rentals and that that's not open for discussion can you say why and why is that as a part of this ordinance it's not it's not decided in el cerrito so short-term rentals are a recent

3:05:32phenomenon to the state of california we've studied them we've the planning commission's had some discussions about them staff has been looking into them but they could do their home their own home short-term rentals not the adu at this point you are not allowed to

3:05:53rent out your home as a short-term rental for less than 30 days in the city of el cerrito we would be naive to say that's not happening um and i think it's a conversation that may appear in our work plan in a year or so um it's just a matter of um i think honestly professionally i've

3:06:11been taking a wait-and-see attitude towards this in terms of whether or not um it was going to be a a way that we were losing rental housing in the city we were having unintended consequences but i sense the director would like to add to that topic it is a topic but the one clarification

3:06:28just because planning language sometimes is is specific bed and breakfast are allowed which can be a short-term rental so if you for example live in either the accessory dwelling unit or the primary unit you would be able to do short term rentals kind of bed and

3:06:42breakfast style but to just rent out um the units individually if you are not living there even your home for short term you can rent it out longer but this is something we want to revisit but it's been in the zoning ordinance that way is that going to be part of the next survey

3:07:03study that you're talking about the next report the affordable housing strategy so the affordable housing strategy is going to address that somewhat because it does try to balance um there's different perspectives there's not really a consensus on this because of course one of the things that

3:07:17short-term rentals does is enables someone to live in one of those and have a good income source however there's also some criticism as you might know because it does take something off of the longer term rental market so from an affordable housing it might make it more affordable

3:07:33for the house for the homeowner but it might make fewer rental units and so i think that we feel that we don't um some communities are very strict on these some are in cameron uh county communities don't want short-term rentals um i think that when we've tried to look

3:07:48at our ordinances we've felt that we know that there's people out of compliance and that there's people doing short-term rentals so it's an issue that needs to be addressed and you talked about it in your goal-setting session as a potential revenue source um so i think

3:08:01it's one that we need a community dialogue on okay thank you okay i have a question yeah so um just to clarify so the planning commission said that they didn't recommend any parking for the accessory dwelling units correct that's correct their their first recommendation to you was don't don't

3:08:27assign parking space i don't require a parking space for new accessory dwelling units they basically left it open to the council at its pleasure to decide to follow that recommendation or follow the one per with all the exemptions okay because it seems to me just from

3:08:44reading all the exemptions that as you go through the list you can pretty much exempt it for any reason almost between the geographical area and then the very specific parking street parking distances um are there some areas in el cerrito just to to clarify again that do not

3:09:09have street parking and is that why this it was recommended there are sections of the city that are um they have a lot of multi-family housing um they have so when you drive by whether it's during the day or in the evening there are very few on-street parking spaces available that's that is

3:09:28true okay okay if i may okay okay go ahead okay i'm staying with the parking theme uh 20 feet it seems uh pretty long for vehicles um and so i was just curious what uh if that if it consisting identifying two approximately 20 foot long or i mean 16 foot if two if driveways if two

3:09:58driveways are 16 feet apart that technically wouldn't be a 20 foot space but i know my 12 foot long mini can park there and be very happy there and you're a mini driver so you know you understand that a 20-foot parking space is actually almost two cars well two smart cars um

3:10:16so i'm just curious where that dimension came from and if there's a way to soften that i like uh council member pardo okamoto i'm i'm probably having some difficulties not taking the primary recommendation from the planning commission and so i'm i am looking for potentially

3:10:35a little more uh flexibility for for our community to put in accessory dwelling units that are not car reliant um so i'm just trying to figure out what if there's a way to potentially soften this up from you know 40 feet 40 feet a typical lot is 50 feet wide if you put

3:10:58a 12 foot driveway in it you now only have uh you know 38 feet of frontage in front of your house so this requires that you could not use the two spaces in front of your house as a result of your your lot line so i'm just curious where 40 feet came from it was um so the

3:11:19basically the dimension of a garage space or a 90 degree parking space is 10 by 20.

3:11:24we can go down to 9 by 18 without any any harm done the as much as i do love our mini uh both of our minis um i also own a minivan and that car takes all of 18 feet to to park so um you could add anything you'd like but including um two parking spaces that can accommodate full-size cars and we can

3:11:54like you know we're happy to go on the field and say is this at least 18 feet is this at least you know there might be circumstances where um i would i would suggest you quantify the number only so that people aren't saying i you know i drive a moped i'm fine i

3:12:08can fit it in here and you know so we're not in an argument with the next car the next owner might not so i definitely understand that a distance is here that's why i was saying to approximately 20 foot or two approximately 18 feet i'm i am willing to to to put a hard number in there but i

3:12:26would love to have you have some discretion about it so because i don't want that person at 11 o'clock at night throw up their hands because they can't get to they can't get 40 foot of curb they can only get 39 feet of curb so so i you know i just i would love to provide some

3:12:44uh you know flexibility in there uh to demonstrate you know and and it doesn't speak whether these are consecutive or you know ones on the odd number side of the street and one's on the even side of the street so i'm you know this isn't this isn't this isn't quite as useful as

3:13:04you know somebody who's you know two in the morning trying to figure out if they can do an accessory dwelling could figure this out but i so i do want to try and provide a little flexibility for both you and somebody because frankly i think you know even even in my neighborhood there are a lot

3:13:22of people who walk to bart and we're a mile away and 500 feet up vertically so um there are in the last five years there's a tremendous number of people who have adopted the philosophy of a walking depart at least downhill um correct so so i i certainly would like to try and

3:13:43soften that up uh to to promote i'm not certain i'm willing to go as far as the planning commission wants today although i'm tempted by it um because that is i mean i i have realtor friends who would strongly recommend that we eliminate accessory you know parking for

3:14:02accessory units we would we would have a tremendous increase of housing in our city with that simple planning commission recommendation um so i'm i'm i am struggling with with you know with their recommendation and staff's recommendation a point of clarification if it helps at all um it's

3:14:23so it's within 300 feet so if the fifth if the typical lot is 50 feet wide you can go quite down any particular block on either side and to be clear they don't have to be consecutive correct so it's really if i can find two spaces within 300 feet in any direction of that house and

3:14:40remember you can park in the driveway correct so that's um it that it's not meant to sway one way or the other i just wanted to make sure that i understand so i mean i would be leaning towards to approximately 18 foot long is the way i would you know be leaning

3:14:54tonight if not to eliminate all parking requirements but i but i will that and then i just a question there's a designated car share vehicle pickup location within one block of the accessory dwelling is that state required they didn't um let me double check that

3:15:19uh but it's not that they um we can broaden that language a little uh to make it more applicable but let me grab the one block is a really short distance that's that's why i was curious what and we only have currently i i've been researching this we have one at the chevron

3:15:37uh at the corner of potrero in san pablo and we don't have many houses within a block of that so this this this current [Music] requirement would is not very useful for us it's uh let's see cities from this is the analysis of uh page two of your staff report cities

3:16:01must waive parking requirements for accessory dwelling units that do not increase the footprint of existing structures are located within one mile sorry that's one half mile of the public transit or one block of a car share vehicle station or in a historic district so that is language taken from

3:16:16the state law state law that's what that's the way i that's the way it read which is which is that it's that such a short distance does is very limiting yes um and then the only other thing that and i would potentially promote is the 15 minute or more frequent peak

3:16:37hour service i have to say that there are a lot of people who commute to san francisco using the arlington bus services and if that if this the way it's written knocks the arlington out i would i would have to defer to my transit expert miss abelson but i would have to to suggest that

3:17:00potentially considering 20 minutes if that's not if the 15 minute is not a state requirement it's one that we're putting on i would again trying to get as close to what the planning commission wants without going all the way to no parking um i would i would like to

3:17:18the number that's usually used i know it is for for such things but that's so i'm i defer i mean i'd love to use something that did encompass the arlington bus line because i think we would get quite a few accessory dwellings in that in that area if we were to allow the arlington

3:17:38bus service to be a a qualify for that parking exemption i'm not aware that there's a bus on the arlington that runs frequently to san francisco how often does it run uh starting at 6 15 i think it's every 20 minutes until 8 15 going inbound i i don't know the trade it's the trans bay

3:18:03but i don't know the schedule unfortunately i'll stop my head but i think it's every it's h that's h i think up there i'm looking around the room to see if that's the h that isn't a whole lot of frequency because the people the rest of the day and a lot of people don't go to san francisco

3:18:22right and i last i heard you can't get on a san francisco bus except if you're going to or coming from san francisco they don't allow they don't like it to be used for local service they they do allow local service but they charge you they if if you get on not telling them

3:18:43that you're going local they charge you the the full distance um but it is possible to use it for local ready maybe to open the public hearing yes we're not very far along on this okay so uh do we have any public speaker slips yes we have two requests to speak howdy

3:19:01gowdy and tom panis okay yeah sounds awesome yeah good evening mayor abelson and council members my name is howdy cowdy um so i support this adu policy revision um as written and i also support it going further in in the affordable housing study i think there's more opportunity

3:19:36to um to make this type of housing more uh well it i think it's important to um incentivize this as part of our affordable housing strategy because you know as good as projects like ohlone gardens and and hana gardens are those are coming in at you know just under

3:20:01five hundred thousand dollars per unit which is a lot of money um it's good high quality um housing but i think we need to augment that type of project with um prod you know housing that can add units at a most affordable rate and i think the uh accessory dwelling unit has that

3:20:25potential it's already doing that to some extent but it needs to be refined to get you know the most potential out of it and i think it can be done you know responsibly in a way that doesn't change neighborhood character and and so we should look for much more aggressive opportunities to

3:20:44engage that and you know for that reason i'm i'm supportive of the um the planning commission's suggestion of of just waiving the parking requirement i think you sort of hinted at it it's we have this patchwork of um of policies that get rather nuanced trying to come up with all the details

3:21:07where you would and wouldn't need parking but in the end most places would be permitted without a parking space and you know it maybe is worth just making the statement that parking shouldn't be required for this and see if we end up with with an issue i think the point about

3:21:31short-term rentals is important because obviously as we incentivize this type of housing it is going to become more attractive to do that and i think we do need to engage it as you know a permitted opportunity that does bring revenue to the city and perhaps helps our

3:21:49affordable housing initiatives so those are my comments i mean also i think there are structural things that need to be changed in you know making the code a little more flexible things like composting toilets and gray water systems will help you know reduce hookup fees and make it more feasible

3:22:13and to the point on tiny houses i think there's a lot more nuance there because most of what is called a tiny house is technically an rv by code and so it's not meeting the standard construction codes because those construction codes are not very amenable to very small spaces just

3:22:37in clearances and things like that so i would encourage you actually in the future to consider you know having a type of adu that is sort of a temporary adu which is high quality architectural rv spaces that could be tied down the wheels could come off it could look exactly like you know

3:22:58good high quality housing but is technically classified as an rv just because it it involves different uh legal requirements and but there's lots of discussion to go on in that kind of topic so thank you thank you are there any other public comments yes mr panus

3:23:20good evening mayor abelson members of the council and city staff my name is tom panis and i live at [address removed] el cerrito i'd like to comment briefly on the transit frequency conversation that's going on and also maybe correct a couple of things i thought i heard

3:23:35the transit service on richmond street is only trans-based service during transbay hours on the arlington it's the h during during transbay hours but it's the seven which runs every half hour uh the rest of the day during weekdays um i'd also like to say that we have terrific service from the plaza

3:23:56bart station of fairmont out colusa to downtown berkeley that runs every half hour and i think people like those services very much and i think i realize that's not 15 minutes but i think most people consider that a very adequate service thank you any other speakers no okay thank you um

3:24:21so is there a motion to close the public hearing so move your second second thank you so there's a motion by alignment seconded by pardo okimoto all in favor please say aye aye any opposition or abstention motion carries unanimously the emotion the um hearing is closed

3:24:48noting council member lyman is absent i assume you'll have that in every place that needs to yes thank you okay so now we're on to additional questions and council deliberations um the uh comment i would make on transit frequency is those are numbers that have been developed by mtc

3:25:13for transit frequency and for determining uh tlc transfer livable communities designation and for um the um what's called a pda and so those those are defined they're not defined by us those are defined uh at a regional level at minimum um but the um are there any other questions or

3:25:48comments any sort here yes i i just i tend to agree with the planning commission that there shouldn't be any um parking required i think there's so many ifs ands or buts and and you know during my campaign one of the things that i was told over and over again by

3:26:11residents here in el cerrito is that the city is hard to work with and i think if you had to go out and you know show that you had this amount of space and like you said maybe fell short by two feet and got denied i think it's a lot of hoops to jump through to basically get to the same place

3:26:31i'd be more in favor of you know eliminating the parking and then if it became a problem later then maybe we could um re address it at that point um so that's i would be willing to make an amendment to uh the regulations if um and see what other council members think

3:26:56about it are there other comments i have a comment i'm totally happy with not um with you with uh not requiring it at all and um what's there today may not be what's there tomorrow in terms of cars my neighborhood is a great example of that you know first there were my kids and they got

3:27:20cars because they turned 16 and then they moved out and then the you know the car cars went down now another neighbor um has the same situation going on so the cars are up and you know then they'll go down when the kids are gone so it's sort of an ever-changing sort of thing and

3:27:41so to devote that much space when it could be devoted for better uses to me just seems like not the best use of resources in our city and i think that ultimately what we're trying to get at is to create an easy way of creating more housing in the space that we have in our

3:28:07city and there's only so many things we can do about it we can create um [Music] projects that are more of a more significant size down on a place like san pablo avenue but up in the hills there isn't very much we can realistically do but we could do the accessory dwelling unit so if we

3:28:30want to make it possible to do them then i i would agree with what you said about the um just do what the planning commission suggested and um and not require parking for the accessory unit and are there any other last comments before there's i would i would go along with that i think it's uh

3:28:53i i in my campaign i didn't quite have the same i had some concerns about not enough parking but i think this is courageous and i think if we're going to get some pushback but isn't it true we only get about seven seven of these built a year and we're hoping for more

3:29:12right and maybe if there's a problem with parking we can fine tune this later but i i love moving in the direction that the council remembers saying here i would go along with that um to the specifics if we are going this route um i would like to i know go to the parking maintenance

3:29:34i think it's f which is which is parking and and the first paragraph of the proposed suggested amendment uh says the development of accessory development shall not reduce required parking for the primary dwelling i'm assuming that that paragraph would remain and then under the next paragraph where

3:29:56it says parking exceptions those two words would potentially be struck and the remainder of that introductory paragraph or the or the good chunk of the inductory paragraph no parking space shall be required in conjunction with the creation of an accessory dwelling unit period

3:30:14is is that the with that satisfied i'm seeing nodding from from um is that the specific edit that the planning commission would have made because it doesn't look like they made a an edit to this extent it didn't make a proposed text edit but that's that completely um

3:30:34is in alignment with their spirit and intent um i it is a bold i'm going to take my council members comments and say it's a bold it is a bold move uh and it's consistent with some of the bold moves we've made in with regards to the san pablo avenue specific plan and the parking

3:30:56requirements that we made there and i i do believe um if it becomes a channel if it becomes an issue then we can we can come back before you and make the change um is this the time for a motion mayor sure um and i see mr woodruff looking at me i'm trying to figure out what my

3:31:25was there suggested text in here for us i can't no i'm looking for the actual resolution is there a resolution in here there is an ordinance no there's no there's no requirement for resolution there is the ordinance do we have to make a change to the ordinance to and make this the change

3:31:40the text change we're discussing tonight i think that if you um move to introduce the ordinance after reading the title um but with the direction to accept the planning commission's alternate recommendation not to require off-street parking for accessory dwelling units

3:32:00there is actually some bolded wording in the ordinance as attached that actually shows what the planning commission recommended and we would also confirm that the um that we would conform the the section headings and we would make sure that the text regarding not reducing part the

3:32:18existing parking for the primary unit um is retained but if you look which is which is which is arabic arabic three on on under so i'm now looking at the actual ordinance so so in the actual ordinance there is e which is parking uh we would strike arabic number one

3:32:42we'd strike arabic number two if if i'm and then we just go straight to parking maintenance or actually we would keep two with the no parking space she'll be required in conjunction with the creation of accessory towing actually if you look right under number one parking

3:33:00required yup there's a statement no parking spaces are required for accessory dwelling units i believe if i'm understanding correctly that was the that was the planning commission's alternate recommendation is simply to place that wording into the ordinance and everything after that would be

3:33:14deleted uh what page of the ordinance are you on i'm on a page uh page four under e parking number one parking required yup immediately under that there's bolded text that states no parking spaces are required for accessory dwelling units or comma so i believe the planning

3:33:36commission oh you're in the you're in the sorry you're you're in the planning commission you're in the staff report it's the planning commission i'm sorry it's in the resolution yeah sorry i was reading from the resolution where they're sorry that is correct from the

3:33:51planning commission's resolution yes sorry i had scrolled down too far because i was looking at the commission's recommendation but that was what they had recommended yeah so so um i'm i'm moving an ordinance of the city of el cerrito amending various sections of the el cerrito municipal

3:34:06code related to accessory dwellings with edits uh to the parking section that remove the parking requirement for an accessory dwelling unit and maintains the parking maintenance section of section e of the ordinance i think that's adequate and we'll make sure that it that it that the the organs

3:34:33that comes back for the second reading reflects those changes okay so you've so moved and now we need a second there's one other change should i wait there's a correction okay you need to make changes now just on the front first page the where i think we have the

3:34:49wrong date for the public hearing may 17th it says here instead of may 16.

3:34:56not a big deal you said that's 2016.

3:35:02oh that's not and today's the 15th at least for another couple more hours it's the 16th it's the 16th yes oh i've been wrong all day oh okay so that wasn't referring to tonight's hearing that's why i got that okay so we're okay on that okay okay so there's is there a second i'll second

3:35:22that okay ready to go okay uh all in favor please say aye aye the opposition in the abstention motion carries unanimously and the motion was by lyman seconded by fidelity with uh council member quinto absent okay um we're now down to item number eight as there are no policy matters

3:35:49item number eight is city council local and regional liaison assignments does anybody have any they haven't already given yes okay go ahead yes um since we last met i have represented us at the um west contra costa integrated waste management authority also known as

3:36:09recycle more and i am pleased to say that the other night we authorized the authority authorized moving forward with an agreement with the household houses waste pickup at our recycling center so we are we soon will have household houses waste pickup at the recycling center which it'll be one day

3:36:36a week i believe it's going to be tuesday um but look forward to us finally implementing household houses waste pickup at the recycling center we did do a workshop on our annual budget and we did authorize [Music] the authority to uh venture out and do some additional

3:37:05projects these are projects that would be funded from revenue that was left at the authority so those projects wouldn't necessarily increase our cost there so we are moving forward with some like the high diversion study uh some indoor recycling programs that would promote at

3:37:24multi-family dwelling units promote recycling so those uh were some of the actions we took uh the last meeting that we potentially will see a benefit to el cerrito oh okay and i don't have any additional ones so with that the meeting is adjourned thank you one and all for coming our

3:37:46next meeting will be held on tuesday june the 6th at 7 pm in city council chambers you