Regular City Council Meeting June 20, 2017

0:00:40we may go ahead and get started anyway okay good evening everyone this is the el cerrito city council meeting thank you all for coming we'll start out with the roll call council councilmember fideli president councilmember lyman here councilmember pardue ecomoto present

0:01:03mayor pro tem quinto and mayor abelson president thank you okay and now we will um do the pledge of allegiance or observation of a moment of silence led by council member gabriel kinko i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands

0:01:30one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and i'm going to do some switching of the order of the agenda because we have pair transit vehicles waiting and so here's what i'm planning on doing um and thank you for your uh indulgence

0:01:55um i uh i'm gonna go to i'm i will do all items but what i'm gonna do is go to the um let's see tell me if somebody tell me if you think i get this wrong place cheryl um go i'm gonna go to the item five a which is their sundar shoddy garden contest item 5b which is the animal services

0:02:33item and then go to the uh item on the senior center which is 7a and then i'll back up to the beginning of the agenda and get everything else in order are there any objections to that okay thank you uh with that then we will move to item uh 5 a which is the annual

0:03:04sundar shoddy garden contest award presentation and the presentation will be done by anna frankfort who's the president of the el cerrito garden club and thank you very much for coming thank you and for you i'm landry wildwood and i'm the head of the sunder shoddy committee and i'll be

0:03:28doing the president oh i'm sorry i just read from the agenda thank you for coming ah there short people so members of the council i'm here tonight to present you the winners of the 2017 sunder shoddy contest we have a display of all three of the winning gardens

0:03:58and again this year we have three equal winners each garden different and each one of them outstanding as you know the sunder shoddy contest honors the memory of an outstanding gardener and citizen of el cerrito who beautified this city for many years in summer and in winter with his beautiful

0:04:21displays he made a gift to the club and asked that it be used to encourage others to help beautify el cerrito by making gardens and since then the el cerrito garden club has joined with the city to honor people for doing just that this has been a really unusual year for

0:04:43gardens and gardeners for the first time in a long time we had plentiful rains gardens of all kinds have been growing gloriously and in honor of this bountiful year we have chosen the theme celebrating color every other year we've had to have drought-wise gardens this year we have

0:05:07gardens of all kinds we had more nominations this year as well probably because of the glorious colors out there 18 nominees in all that necessitated two rounds of judging by the members of the committee i'd like to introduce and thank our president for this year anna frankfort

0:05:33and our president for the coming year joanna perlman [Applause] their support for this contest has helped it to flourish and grow also want to thank cheryl morris for scheduling this presentation so early in your meeting so let me tell you the first person on our list

0:06:07krista krauss at 542 liberty street krista has been a winner of this contest before nine years ago she won and she didn't sit on her laurel she just kept going and her garden is an explosion of color next kathy bohrer 832 norvell kathy has been beginning a garden and creating

0:06:36a very drought-wise and also colorful place and her hardscaping is beautiful and jan jones at 26-12 to larry jan has watched her friends win this contest for years and tried her best and watched the prize go to somebody else so this year she got up the nerve to nominate herself

0:07:04[Laughter] and won i encourage all of you to go take a look at these gardens for yourselves you're in for a real treat and this september 14th at our first member meeting of the fall there will be a program about these gardens and the gardeners who created them i

0:07:28invite you to come and learn more thank you so much [Applause] hmm [Applause] would would you like to introduce each winner so we uh are the the ones so that we could associate a name or i'd like to ask the winners to come up and take credit for their creations kathleen

0:08:43kathleen bohr [Applause] okay thank you very much i feel very honored thank you would you like to do a picture i'll take a picture i'm sorry i couldn't do it i'll take a picture of that okay so do you want me to come down or what did they say they said yes um [Applause]

0:10:29hey she's left handed [Music] [Applause] okay thank you uh the next item on our um on the list of changes is to go to five b which is the contra costa county animal services department update this is being presented by steve birdo from who's the county exclusive community and media relations

0:12:04manager from the contra costa county animal services department madam mayor members of the council thank you for the opportunity to present tonight uh my name is steve birdo i'm the community media relations manager for your animal services agency contra costa animal service

0:12:21and um you know prior to our new director's uh start date which was november of 2015 there had been regular communications between our department and the city managers and the police chiefs of the cities we contract with we contract with every city in contra costa county with

0:12:37the exception of antioch which operates their own animal services agency but we know there had been these regular communications going on but there had never been an effort to actually come out to the councils and present to the councils about the services we're

0:12:50providing to you and your residents and give you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have so um with that i'm here and really appreciate the opportunity my hope is that i'm brief educational and able to answer all of your questions so i'll just let's come down here

0:13:15all right so let's start by telling you a little i'm going to sit down since we're here let's start by telling you a little bit about our department field services those are the officers that you see in the field um you see our trucks one of the unique things about our

0:13:30officers is that we are one of only two counties in the state that actually our officers are law enforcement officers we routinely go on assists with local fire departments local police departments including your own and we also help out with code enforcement our officers

0:13:48they carry sidearms they have powers of arrest just like any other law enforcement officer so us and orange county are the only two counties in the state that operate like that and that's a great service that our field officers are able to provide to the county and our residents

0:14:04our shelter operations those are the people who take care of the animals when they're in our shelters our medical services staff they are they work miracles every day we're not an acute care facility we're not your local veterinarian where you would bring your animal but every single day they are

0:14:19performing acute care procedures whether amputations or nucleations um to save lives on animals that are otherwise neglected or abandoned our clerical division that's the division that you're first going to touch if you try and get in touch with us whether you walk

0:14:35into one of our shelters and you talk to somebody at the counter those are our clerks if you call on the phone and you talk to any of our staff most likely that's going to be a clerk our volunteers no animal service agency would operate without them we have over

0:14:47300 volunteers who every week come in and give their time and their talent they perform critical tasks such as the animal socialization they walk the dogs they socialize the cats they run the lost and found table they run our mobile adoptions on the weekends we

0:15:05absolutely could not operate without our volunteers in our administration that's our director our deputy director administrative services officer uh and myself so wanted to come here primarily to tell you how we're serving you guys so uh in terms of our highlights of services provided to el

0:15:24cerrito in 2016. you see there are two areas where we're most coming into el cerrito and that's deceased animal impounds and stray animal impounds we did 163 stray animal impounds we did 188 deceased animal impounds we did 47 noise animal and inhumane ordinance investigations

0:15:45those are bites those are attacks of animals those are animal cruelty and neglect those are things that our officers go after and enforce um right here in this community we had 36 rabies exposure events and that doesn't mean somebody contracted rabies it just means that a domestic animal

0:16:03came in touch came in contact with a wild animal that may be a carrier of the rabies virus in that situation we work very closely with the health department to make sure we get the animal tested the wild animal tested and um that if there is any rabies scare we work with

0:16:19the the health department to get them to get the individual into the rabies protocol and treat it um we had 11 local agency assists here i believe most of those were with your police department and but we've also supported your fire and code enforcement division as well

0:16:36important to note for your purposes every year our fees are set to raise consistent with the consumer price index the cpi um now this will happen at the end of this month when the fiscal year turns over uh into the 2017-2018 fiscal year and it's going to go from 574 per capita to 594 per capita

0:17:00that's how you guys pay your animal services fees now i need to i'd be remiss not to mention that most bay area municipalities are paying around eight dollars and seventy cents per capita for their animal services uh antioch is paying eight dollars and eighty cents

0:17:15where i live in marin county we pay eleven 11.70 the the average for the bay area is eight dollars and seventy cents and the reason why we're so much lower than everybody else um is because back in 2007 2008 when the economy tanked the department extended an olive branch

0:17:33to our contract cities and we said look we're going to freeze this cpi increase we know you guys are having tough budget years um things are tight all around so we'll freeze this however when the economy recovered nobody ever um remembered to unset that freeze so in

0:17:492015 we reinstituted the hike and then we did so again in 2016 and that's the reason why we're about three dollars below what everybody else in the surrounding areas are paying for their animal services again i i will mention our officers provide greater services

0:18:07than most other animal welfare municipal animal welfare organizations so you are getting kind of a bargain there just to gl our department at a glance our animal intake was 11 243 in 2016. um we reunited and we're very proud of this we were able to reunite 1269

0:18:25of those animals with their owners that's that's better than the national average for return to owner and we're seeing our rto as we call them rate go up um we did 3 400 public adoptions we did 3 500 adoptions to transfer partners those are other animal welfare groups

0:18:41that are in the county there are there are hundreds of them right here in contra costa county uh we implemented a new return to field program for feral cats these are cats that when they come into most municipal shelters they were just candidates for youth euthanization

0:18:55euthanasia youth in for to be euthanized how about that um ten dollar words damn um and in in our in our at country house animal services what we're doing is we're working with the communities that they're coming from to return them back to the communities and making sure that they're healthy

0:19:14they have access to food they have access to water etc the things i'm most proud of are two thousand over two thousand low-cost vaccinations provided to residents of contra costa county we had over five thousand low-cost spay or neuter surgeries provided to residents

0:19:28of contra costa county and we had just under 600 police fire and code enforcement assists um won't spend much time on this this is a metric that shelters in the animal industry are are gauged by it's called the live release rate um it's the number of animals that come into your shelter

0:19:47that leave alive as you could see we've been trending upwards in recent years as of today our live release rate is 85.6 percent um so we're doing a very good job part of that is under um director ward we've put a renewed uh emphasis on life saving so the reason why our live release rate

0:20:09is good the reason why we're doing more adoptions more rtos we're implementing new policies and programs started with updating the mission statement to reflect our priority on life saving we closed the night deposit boxes those were it was basically regulated animal

0:20:23abandonment if we're the agency that is supposed to enforce animal abandonment laws we couldn't be allowing it the night deposit boxes were a place where people could just come and dump animals and then they'd sit there until the next morning and then somebody get them we

0:20:37don't know anything about the animal which makes it harder for us to adopt that animal or find a good placement for it so we close the night deposit boxes they remain open to your local law enforcement they'll call our dispatch we'll give we have a lock box out there

0:20:49they give them the number and we have somebody there on the scene to receive the animal um we increased our staff for deceased animal pickup seeing how that was one of the primary activities for el cerrito that that should make you guys pretty happy we used to have one staff

0:21:03person doing the whole county as it is right now we have one staff person in every beat every day so we also hired our first ever chief of shelter medicine most veterinarians in the shelter environment are contract veterinarians we saw a priority to bring in our chief veterinarian so that their

0:21:25values and their vision can reflect in the road map for our department and as we look to the future um and very important for you guys to know we just did do an update of our barking dog ordinance it passed the board of supervisors last week essentially the the barking dog ordinance as it stood

0:21:43was one that left um people on both sides feeling very unsatisfied in short the way it worked is if my neighbor's dog was barking i would call up animal services would take my information and just send a letter to the person that's all we could do at that point

0:21:58then after nothing happens because nothing really ever does happen in that situation they come back to us they get a neighbor within 300 feet of the nuisance to file a complaint and then we send an officer out that officer has to sit there for 10 minutes and listen to

0:22:12the noise nuisance for a period of 10 minutes or longer these things are generally happening in the evening our officers are generally getting there in the afternoon so they're not hearing the nuisance so it's the cyclical process that happens so the new ordinance is basically a civil citation

0:22:30process so the first couple of steps are going to remain the same but once we get to that third step one neighbor can cite the other and then they're brought into animal services for administrative hearing after that hearing we could choose to administer fines or however we

0:22:43need to mediate that but beth's vision with this ordinance was that these things should never be coming to us in the first place these should be handled over a kitchen table and so since that wasn't happening we wanted to facilitate that process ourselves knowing beth i wouldn't be

0:22:59surprised if she had cookies and milk at the table again our return to field program is is going great book buddies program those pictures up there what we do is we have such an opportunity for enrichment both with humans and with animals at animal shelters so we're bringing in school age

0:23:17children on saturday mornings before we open to read to the animals and we put a chaperone with the children so that their the child is enriching the animal and the chaperone is helping the child improve on their reading skills it's a it's a super project it's really great

0:23:34to be around and we're really proud of it we started a running dog program to get some of our more active dogs out we increase marketing and public education which is why i'm here tonight we have a licensed amnesty program going on you may see our new commercial on comcast it

0:23:47started airing last week license and microchip your pets we're coming up on the 4th of july biggest day of the year for animals to become lost best way to ensure that your pet gets back to you is to make sure it's licensed and microchipped and then finally our pet retention program this

0:24:02is safing our contract city's money we were able in 2016 to keep half of the only area that we have to control in terms of intake is owner surrender we are mandated by law to take in all sick injured aggressive potentially dangerous dangerous in under 12 weeks of age the

0:24:19only option we have to say no we can't take this animal is for when somebody says this is my animal i just don't want it anymore so what we did was we put into place a program that that through intervention and resources is helping people keep their animals and

0:24:35as you can see from these stats we've effectively kept more than half of the animals that came in to our shelters in 2015 out of the shelters through just basic resources and intervention we're doing this in partnership with tony larussa's animal rescue foundation and

0:24:49it's wildly successful so finally opportunities and challenges we have great opportunities here in contra costa county to increase low cost spay and neuter vaccination programs to address the pet overpopulation problem that's the big issue with animals in contra costa county is pet

0:25:04overpopulation and um right now we're really the only game in town in terms of low-cost vaccination in spay and neuter we have an environment right for collaboration with local animal welfare groups like i mentioned there's hundreds of them and we are always willing and

0:25:19wanting to work with all of them we have a hard-working committed staff and volunteer corps in a very supportive engaged community our challenges as we focus on life-saving um we need to balance the complications with length of stay as we're as we're not euthanizing we are holding animals

0:25:37longer and that brings upon its own kind of realm of complications that's something that our chief of shelter medicine and our director are working on dealing with and um you know continues to move in a very positive direction we need to update the processes and

0:25:51procedures and bring the department into the 21st century we're doing a lot more with web-based licensing stuff like that to make it easier on the public we need to increase staffing we need to reduce the volume of animals and our physical facility constraints need to be

0:26:06dealt with as we experience the continuous both human and animal population growth here in contra costa county before i finish just want to give you five easy ways to support your local shelters adopt always consider adoption as the first option as i mentioned please ensure your pets

0:26:24are licensed and microchipped licensed and microchip pets have higher percentage of being reunited with their owners volunteer at our martinez or pernil shelter whatever your time whatever your talent we're going to find a way to plug you in um sign up to take a tour of either one of our shelters or

0:26:38both come learn about the amazing things that our staff and volunteers do every day see what i like to call compassion in action beyond that for the council members i'll also offer you the opportunity to come and take a ride along with one of our officers that's working in your beat

0:26:53area which is the western beat um and and certainly like us on facebook and i mentioned before [Music] when it comes to low cost vaccinations so i've brought with me some vouchers we're getting other people vip pet care in particular to honor our rates um and so they're a great partner

0:27:15in the community they've they've uh committed to doing that so i have a ton of vouchers here for you guys to just give to your residents and and make sure they can get their animals vaccinated uh in an affordable way the other thing that i just wanted to close with is

0:27:29we're getting a lot of calls about animals locked in hot cars we've had a number of animals die just in the last two weeks alone because of that so i brought some of those flyers if you watch the news we're going to be doing we're going to lock me in a hot car tomorrow for some period of time while i

0:27:46provide education around there is a new law that's been passed at the state level that allows people to take direct action if they walk into that if they are around that situation so i'm going to be educating people about what what the law says why you shouldn't leave your dog in a car

0:28:02and what you could do for help so um with that i will take any of your questions okay are there any uh council questions go ahead go ahead i do uh mr birdo thank you very much for your presentation tonight and um we've had a speaker come before us several times suggesting that

0:28:21we be active in our animal shelter because the conditions were not up to his standards and i'm just wondering if the it sounds like you're on the right path towards fixing some of the things that he certainly brought to our attention but you know the volume and and the

0:28:42facilities are certainly ones that money can help with to some degree and so i was just curious is the rate increase that you are affecting the maximum rate increase or could the county have gone higher the per the cpi um that's the most we can raise it that that's through board order and so if we

0:29:00were going to go beyond that we would need um i believe a board order or some type of measure or something like that none of that's currently being discussed right now we're in the phase where we're actually doing a cost analysis looking at what it takes for us to do business and

0:29:16addressing the future population growth of of the animals and and you know while our intakes year-over-year are going down as the population continues to rise we're going to balance out at some point so right now we're doing an analysis seeing where we are and i think within

0:29:29the next year or so more fruitful discussions will start coming up about around um kind of putting pencil to paper with that please keep us informed as we potentially could help you get the legislation passed at the board level uh in order for you to get the fees you

0:29:45need to operate a good system absolutely thank you other council questions thank you very much for coming it's very good that you give the update and come out to the cities that you serve we all assume this these kinds of services are happening it's nice to hear about them

0:30:00and it sounds like there's a lot of new ideas that you guys are coming up with and beginning to implement them so congratulations we were just at chrissy field on father's day at the parking lot and saw three cars walking to the beach where the dogs were in the car and we

0:30:14were concerned about that and finally i just want to say that if you run into trudy a russian blue 12 year old cat will you give me a call let me know absolutely have you called have have you called our shelter it's been a long time but okay i will let you know thank you for the

0:30:30service thank you very much my pleasure one question i have is if you see a hurt animal on the street like a a squirrel or a possum would they call your office your your department if it is a possum or squirrel in the public right away yes they would call us if it is on private property if it's on

0:30:55private property there's another agency that handles that we are we are charged with domestic animals when when non-domestic animals are in the public right of way we we handle that as well when they're at if it's a skunk that's trapped under somebody's enclosure at their house um

0:31:11our officers aren't going to climb under how we're not a contractor like that um so you would call a vector control or a pest removal agency for that okay thank you rochelle i was just having a discussion with a co-worker today who said she wanted to work for shelters when she retires and

0:31:29she's pretty close to retiring so i'll have to refer her to your agency um but what she was also telling me about today was a lot of animal animal abuse and like um animals that get like shipped kind of like kidnapped and and shipped out of the country do you have any experience

0:31:49with that you know we're aware of it certainly the only experience that i you know personally have with it is i know of animals being shipped from other countries into america my neighbors recently bought a samoyen which is a big it's a nordic dog very big and fluffy and they

0:32:09got it from korea and the reason was because i i think as they told me was this was one of those places it's a rescue group in korea that is rescuing dogs that would otherwise be euthanized or used for other purposes so that's the only experience that personal experience

0:32:26that i have on it but um you know we've had when i first started almost a couple of years ago i remember getting a call about somebody you know asking about hey this this person is shipping a dog over at that point we looked into it and they you know with with us what we care about

0:32:42is the rabies vaccination you know the health stuff everything was in line so you know unless there's a law in a country or a state or a locality prohibiting it people are gonna do it and my second question is uh for a tour is it okay to bring children you could bring children you could bring

0:33:00um older children you can bring uh older children meaning like husbands and stuff like that you know yes you could bring whoever you'd like just you know we ask that you unless you're looking to adopt an animal don't bring your family pet okay okay uh so i have a question

0:33:21when you return a cats to their where they can't you know uh to the environment are they neutered yes they are we make sure thank you for asking that because i should have pointed that out they uh they are not only their neuter spayed or neutered they're vaccinated they're microchipped just in

0:33:43case that we get a a deceased impound we know that that was one of our cats and we we could track it and their ear tips so if you're in the community if you see a cat coming up that's in your neighborhood every day and you see that it's ear tipped you don't know who's feeding it or whatever

0:33:59know that that's a community cat and in that cap because of the ear tip it is spayed and neutered it is vaccinated um it may not be that friendly which is why these guys are being returned to the field but um but otherwise that it's a member of your community thank you

0:34:15okay um with so at this point i'd like to see if there are any public comments on this item we do have one speaker for item five it doesn't say whether it's a or b a which is the senior project at that point i know i guess i looked at that wrong it is this item

0:34:39the garden club the garden item right it's the garden club yeah oh okay okay thank you again for the opportunity thank you very much for coming in [Applause] so uh at this point we will go back to item 5a okay good evening oh you want to do your presentation sure good evening

0:35:04so right good evening uh mayor ableton uh council members cardinal hitler richard i just really love this concept i mean it's so it's just breathtaking whenever i see some flowers it's just breathtaking so i say the the class i've celebrated color it's like i came up

0:35:19with a putt i say celebrated color that oh that really would that brightened my life it did it brightened my life so so that was just a little putt so i just really just love this presentation so thank you so much for for all the waiters so thank you for your comment

0:35:36okay so uh at this point we're ready to go to item uh 7a and then we'll go back to the normal order of the agenda from the beginning and cover all items that have not yet been covered so how many speakers do we have on this item we have 15 15 okay so if you could call them up uh three at

0:35:59a time uh what i would like to say about public comment is that if you agree with somebody uh we have a way of agreeing in the ought from the audience and up from up here if we like which is to go like this silently and one of the things it does it gives you an opportunity

0:36:19to agree with the speaker and the speaker can be in favor of the item or against the item just as long as you're agreeing with whoever's speaking at that moment but it also tells us how many people agree with that speaker so it's actually quite useful when you do that if in fact

0:36:38you're interested in doing it so just feel you know you can go like this if you uh are interested because you agree with a speaker so with that we'll go ahead and start on public comment oh actually before we do that we should have a staff presentation like good evening honorable mayor and council

0:37:06members i am chris jones your recreation director as you are aware the west contra costa unified school district recently provided the city with an agreement that had contained a one-year extension of the lease for the el cerrito open house senior center as well as a one

0:37:22year notice of termination this item was placed on the agenda tonight on the direction of the city council so that all members of the community affected by this decision can have a chance to share their comments and concerns with you in open session following public comment staff is

0:37:40requesting that the city council provide direction pertaining to the proposed one-year lease extension one-year termination notice that was included in your packet as a little background the city began using the current site of the el cerrito senior center over 50 years ago

0:37:56the senior center's current lease was executed in 1982 this agreement allowed the city to continue utilizing the senior center for another 25 years with an option to extend for 10 years permission was also granted by the school district for the city to construct approximately 3 000 additional

0:38:14square feet of programming space onto the original building creating the facility that is in use today in 2004 the city exercised its option to extend the senior center's lease for 10 more years ending on june 30th 2017.

0:38:30in october of 2013 the city and district updated its joint use facilities agreement which allows for the two entities to enter into separate site-specific agreements it was understood at this time that the two organizations should update all such site-specific agreements such as that

0:38:47for the open house senior center there was no discussion at this time or until last month that either party desired to alter any of the existing arrangements in 2015 and 2016 through a series of emails and communications and meetings city staff reached out to begin the

0:39:05process of updating these site-specific agreements and the school district agreed to prioritize the work subsequently the school district had some personnel changes and they requested to postpone that process in march of 2017 school district staff informed the city

0:39:24that some opposition to the city's renewal of the senior center lease had materialized and that negotiations for a new agreement should begin it was later agreed that a simple extension of the current senior center lease would be desirable so that work on a longer-term lease was not rushed

0:39:41before the june 30th 2017 expiration date in may of 2017 school district staff informed the city that the members of the district's facility subcommittee had requested that an informational item be placed on their agenda in regards to the senior center lease the city

0:40:02in a preceding staff meeting the city told district staff that if the possibility existed that a long learn a long-term lease was no longer on the table that the city would need a short-term lease extension of at least three years in order to secure a comparable or better site for the

0:40:19senior center this position was again communicated in a letter from mayor abelson and the el cerrito committee on aging to the facility subcommittee members at their meeting the facility subcommittee referred this issue to the full board of education for a closed

0:40:35session discussion following the board of education's meeting on may 24 2017 the school district informed the city that the board had provided direction that the lease for the open house senior center would be extended for one year and also gave notice of one year termination

0:40:53meaning that the city will have to abandon the current site of the senior center by june 30th 2018.

0:41:01on june 14th all of el cerritos city council members joined a group of approximately 40 seniors at the school district's board meeting to urge members to reconsider their decision and allow the senior center to remain in its current location for at least three more

0:41:14years the city has also indicated that if it is possible to move the senior center sooner into a comparable or better facility it would do so the next opportunity for the west contra costa unified school district board of education to consider this matter is at

0:41:30their next regularly scheduled meeting on wednesday june 28th this evening the city council has invited members of the community and school district board as well as district staff members to speak in open session about this decision following public comment staff is recommending that the city

0:41:50council reaffirm the city manager's authority to sign the extension agreement but not to do so until june 30th in order to give the board of education the opportunity to discuss this topic again at their june 28 meeting if the school district does not increase the time frame of the senior center

0:42:09lease extension the city must sign the current proposal in order to legally remain in the senior center's location beyond june 30th 2017.

0:42:19should the school board reconsider their decision staff will reevaluate at that time and either inform the council or bring this topic back to the meeting to your next meeting as appropriate staff will return at future meetings with options for relocation should it be

0:42:35necessary and i'm happy to answer any questions that you have at this time thank you okay thank you we'll start out with uh council questions are there any this time okay i don't have any questions so um we have a number of speaker slips on this topic could you call the speakers up please

0:43:00one three at a time sure the first three speaker just just in case somebody's not been here before we have a speaker system that includes three lights which are in front of the dios and um green means you've got more time yellow means you have one more minute and red

0:43:24means your time is up so please wrap up in a sentence or two and um we will now proceed thank you cordell hindler followed by ruby mcdonald and jan schilling good evening good evening again uh mayor abelson uh council carter heller richmond i am very disappointed that our how that this uh

0:43:49process is uh is taking a toll on our seniors because we have a lot to offer for the center the center i pass through there every single day and the seniors are very happy that they enjoy some of the activities that they provided but but when i saw how how the uh how this

0:44:06was uh out outlined i was disappointed we need the senior center to stay over because it is a lot we have a this is a valuable resource for our center for the community we have i mean the seniors go there to have a good time and they they think they can like i mean it's it's going to be gone before

0:44:24you can know before you know it so i just i'm all i'm asking is this please please hopefully that this council will uh will take some some steps to figure out how we can protect our seniors from from the center to being closed so i will pass my top off to ruby thank you

0:44:45ruby mcdonald followed by jan schilling good evening mary wilson and city council my name is ruby mcdonald my husband bob and i have lived in el cerrito for 10 years now and enjoy it very much and it makes it sad to see what's shaping up to be a very fraught situation

0:45:24pitting the children of el cerrito against the interests of the children against the interests of the senior citizens and i wonder even at this late date whether it be possible to bring in arbitrators mediators to engage in arbitration to prevent this situation from

0:45:52becoming [Music] so divisive that our city the atmosphere of our city might be harmed for quite a while so that's a suggestion i have no idea whether it's the possibility that it could be adopted but you know i certainly we certainly and many people don't want to see

0:46:25controversy tear our city apart thank you jan schilling followed by roger schmidt and buddy aka sich hey uh good evening mayor abelson and city council i'm jan schilling i live i've lived at [address removed] for about 28 years and vote at every single election as do most

0:46:53of my senior friends around here and uh when i turned 65 i learned that there was an excellent photoshop class going on down at the senior center so i made my way down and one of the seniors who lives across the street in senior housing was over there and i learned a lot about photoshop and

0:47:13other things there's a lot of computers down there that many of us can use and enjoy using so i understand we have about four pages of activities that go on every month and i understand from janet and the staff that there are about 500 of us seniors that are down there now and we know trade way

0:47:34is going to become another senior housing unit i don't know how many units will be in there but probably even more than the senior center across the street from here so the number of seniors is increasing it's extremely convenient for people who live right along the ohlone

0:47:49greenway to come to the senior citizen center on that path underneath bart it works many of my friends come that way and so we and then we see that el cerrito has a whole lot of schools i think we have i wonder i i suspect we have more seniors than than children but i'm not sure

0:48:11about that but i think we are the oldest community in the county of contra costa and uh we have that beautiful new korematsu school that just went up and we have badera and summit and harding and steve and many many schools already exist and i know fairmont probably needs to expand

0:48:36but surely there's another place where they can expand stig is right on the richmond and el cerrito border and that would be i think they have a lot more room over there where they could expand because stiga is not a pretty building either and if the school district wants to do

0:48:53something that might be an excellent site for them to use but we think our senior citizen center now is serving so many people in an extremely comfortable location for most of our many of our seniors here in el cerrito and we we hope that you will be able to negotiate to retain that center for all

0:49:14of us all of my friends and i here and the many many more the five and i think the senior center serves over a thousand uh during the year so thank you and good luck in retaining our senior citizen where it is now thank you roger schmidt followed by buddy akasic

0:49:35and delma campbell i'm roger schmidt beautiful evening to be here thank you the board of directors was invited here to speak have any of them arrived yes yes yes could you identify yourselves please one two tell them sometime [Music] okay um good i didn't realize that i thought

0:50:12they were going to speak first my concern is as i left the senior center today after having lunch and playing on the computer and talking to friends there that they've already knocked down the fence next to the senior center and started putting in those temporary

0:50:35facilities my concern is that the school has already started contracts or something of that nature to do this project and we haven't been told about it could we find out from them whether they know anything about contracts that have been issued yet or in are in

0:50:57the works anything left let i mean we might be just sitting up here talking because they've already got the bulldozers ordered no comment this uh this is uh this part of the agenda is public comment so this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak its speak but it's

0:51:20not a conversation okay um everybody well that was my assumption that they were going to speak first i don't know i didn't even know that they were here okay one i did well but um i i don't know are they have they requested to speak no they they've not just whether they've issued contracts or

0:51:42not whether they know anything about them uh well we can well i'd like to request that they okay we hear you so we you want to finish with anything you have to do um yes i'll finish thank you thank you buddy akasic followed by delma campbell and d.d lund good evening and thank you for this

0:52:18opportunity i it was hard for me to hear i it's i i think i'm next but uh i i thought i i'm a little bit confused but why don't you just go ahead and state your name and go ahead okay um you know i i don't have anything really um objective or scientific or constructive

0:52:39i think to to contribute but i i i guess maybe what i might like to do is ask you to reflect on the emotional issues of the the heart and the soul and reflect a little bit on a song by john lennon that he imagine and what i was wanting to suggest is imagine how it would be if

0:53:07the senior center got kind of rudely and quickly kicked out that's not a good thing that's a bad thing and and i'm i'm thinking that the senior center really is is a good place that provides good services to good people i'm wondering if anybody disagrees with that

0:53:28i mean i don't think so so i'm i'm thinking that this is a very difficult issue you know fairmont school they have their needs and they have their processes that they need to go through but to at the expense of the senior center i mean that's negative that's not good

0:53:46so what i'd like to suggest is that let's use our imaginations and let's try to imagine let's try to conceive of a situation where fairmont school gets what they need and the senior center stays put i know the argument here a lot has been well give us enough give us another year give

0:54:07us two years give us three years i think the best possible scenario is the senior center can stay where it is indefinitely well the reality just it can't be that i don't know but what i'd like to plead with you is to attempt to find some solution that makes everybody happy

0:54:29thank you thank you so the next three speakers are delma campbell followed by dd lum and peter lobel hi my name is delma campbell i'm glad to be here at the city council and i only wanted to say that i hope everybody considers this a community problem not a way not war between the school district

0:55:04and the city because this is a community that has to love its young people its students and its old people otherwise it's not worth anything so that's all i have to say thank you hello my name is dd lum and i'm a long time resident of el cerrito since 1957 and i went through all those public

0:55:39schools poor la madera el cerrito high school and et cetera and so i know the city rather well and my parents have been here for all these years they when the community center the el cerrito community i mean senior center was informed it was such a small little

0:55:58place because they had a minor population of seniors now it's an aging population the city has so many so many elderly people you all you have to just go out in the street you see them walking around in their wheelchairs or their canes or they ought some kind of assistance or someone's helping them

0:56:17so we do have a problem in that yes we do have an aging population and we the senior center has taken up a lot of the thought of where to go how to get something make life a little more helpful but the problem is right now is not just the senior center it's the location and

0:56:35right now the bad part of it is west contra costa unified school district has behind closed doors voted against meaning that what are we going to do so my proposal here is that yes it can be done in a year but you're going to have to do a lot of work on the on the

0:57:06council where are you going to go what kind of places you want to seek that would help us to establish a place i don't know if you want to build something or occupy a new building there's so many places along san pablo avenue that would be ideal to use or vacate i mean them to vacate and use and

0:57:25what i'm looking for is some place in el cerrito along some close to public transportation a lot of public parking or access to public parking there is a hot lunch program going on and that there are more activities going on for seniors to enlighten them so i don't think you want to throw these

0:57:49people out on the street and try to make it miserable you'll just see more unhappy el cerrito people okay elderly people the children are fine the children el fairmont school is aging that's true but they haven't thought about what they're going to do on the school they have so much land there they

0:58:06have more land than they had at portola so all i know is that they moved them to that little tiny spot above the el cerrito community center for a whole two years over three years and they did fine if we could occupy it and use it for a better advantage maybe we could do

0:58:20better but i'm just saying that that's just a reasonable thing i'm just proposing that if it's a year extension that the richmond school board has voted against us as a year that's all we got let's make the best of it and find something better for the seniors and i am really

0:58:38an adamant advocate of it because my mom is still there she's been there for 25 years and elderly as she is she's 93 years old i'm going to continue to keep her going there so more power to all of you at the city council let's keep it going let's make el cerrito a nice

0:58:55friendly senior center place thank you next three speakers peter loball followed by sherry allen and melanie proctor i'm i'm peter lobal i live in el cerrito at your last meeting i suggested you consider using the kennedy high school swimming facility as a temporary el

0:59:17cerrito senior center meanwhile the richmond plunge suspended some operations due to equipment failures so scratch that idea for now but i have another idea the bottom half of this building with this earthquake proof section is an ideal place for a senior center

0:59:38until city and citizens provide for permanent location the departments housed on this floor would cope with the relocation with relocating to temporary facilities by the public safety building better than other city departments for instance building inspectors are on the road most

0:59:58of the time and public works functions are being increasingly automated and can be accessed anywhere a kitchen facility to feed seniors placed inside or in a trailer inside here or in a trailer would enhance the function of this part of the city hall which is our city's emergency

1:00:18operations center emergency providers and survivor surviving citizens need to eat finances and other departments housed upstairs would stay put at will as wood city managers to handle complaints and hopefully an increasing number of recommendations praising the city and its workers for

1:00:39sacrificing for the common good if you adopt this suggestion this is a better solution than say moving in on the community center with its well-rounded recreation activities uh thank you chris jones which so directly serve the public and i understand are close to being

1:00:56self-financing there's a precedent for all this as some may remember the current senior center hosted many city functions over the years including the many meetings of the com committee of the whole and of course the senior center operates only during the week during the daylight hours so council

1:01:17meetings like this would continue to be held here so let's not argue about this problem let's solve it within one year thank you sherry allen followed by melanie proctor and katherine sessa i'm i'm sure my name is sherry allen the senior center should stay open

1:01:47i talked my friend into having lunch at the senior center because it's only two dollars for lunch and he says to me today what am i going to do for lunch if i can't have for the senior center open he told me that today um i go to the senior center every day and check things out and and

1:02:14a lot of people are there for lunch and they like the senior center and uh i don't want it to close janet you were there on on the 12th when we were talking about it too yeah and it's it's a good center they they have computers and people work on the computers they

1:02:39play cards they there there's a hairdresser that comes and there's also people that do the nails and stuff for really cheap my mother used to go there all the time she took the exercise classes and she just loved where she's passed away now she was 93 years old

1:03:03when she died in 2013.

1:03:06but she talked me in that she says when you you quit macy's i worked for macy's for 37 years and she says when you quit macy's start going to the senior center so i did i started going to the senior center after my mother passed away and uh it it's it's nice it really is nice and a lot of people

1:03:30go for lunch because it's only two dollars i mean where can you go and get chicken and stuff for two dollars so i want the senior center to stay open so do whatever you can to keep it to stay open because there is a lot of seniors i graduated from el strudel high in 1966

1:03:50and we graduated the largest class ever of 610 and we all turned 69 this year and so i see a lot of my friends from high school come there to the senior center that live in the area and they wanted to stay open a lot of people wanted to stay open and my neighbor next door she goes to

1:04:17the exercise classes every tuesday and so they want it to stay open so do what you can to stay keep it open because i i mean if you have to move it someplace move it but keep it in el cerrito because we need a senior center in el cerrito and it's a good place to go

1:04:44i sit there and read the newspaper and everything and they always have food they think food there for you in the morning cookies or half a donuts or something to eat you could add a lot of wrap up because it's turned red so i thought i would just say that thank you yeah and janet i

1:05:09loved your speech that you gave at the [Music] on the 12th yeah so that's all i wanted to say i want the senior center to stay open thank you good evening madam mayor members of the city council my name is melanie proctor i'm a resident of el cerrito and i'm a proud fairmont parent and i

1:05:36just heard some things that are reflect a little lack of information about fairmont and the state of the schools in el cerrito well it seems like there are a lot of schools and a lot of options fairmont in fact is at 140 capacity that was our status for the last enrollment

1:05:54year it was one of two elementary schools in the district that did not convert to full day kindergarten because there was no room to do so so i can answer your question about what's happening they are moving to portables they're moving portables onto campus not taking up any land not tearing down

1:06:12the senior center so that my daughter can be in full day kindergarten when she starts in the fall fairmont is a wonderful school it's one of the reasons we stay in el cerrito it's because of fairmont that my son decided he wants to go to nepal next summer because that's where he has many

1:06:30friends who have family it's a valuable resource and our seniors are a valuable resource we need to work together as a community to address all of the issues that face this community and council you were elected to do that you were elected to represent the families

1:06:52and the seniors and the people without children to represent all of us so i'm i'm very concerned at the tenor of the news that's been surrounding this that postures this is an us versus them situation it's not in us versus them situation we need to all work together nobody

1:07:14wants to see the senior center close nobody at fairmont is saying that but the fact is fairmont's not going anywhere anytime soon it didn't move to the temporary campus ever and in fact we've been moved down the priority list for a rebuild housing is being built that's in the

1:07:33fairmont zone the school is a great place for our kids to get an education and people are continuing to decide to put their kids in public school over the charter schools and over the private schools in our community so i hope that the city will use whatever time it has to find a solution

1:07:51that benefits both the families and our seniors thank you catherine sessa followed by linda kane and harold schultz i'm catherine sessa i live within a block of the senior center and fairmont school i think those of us in the neighborhood had hope had hoped by now there would be

1:08:16a new fairmont school which is way down the list and i see the children and hear them play there every day and i hear all the parents talk about how how much they appreciate the teachers at the school i am also on the committee on aging and i hear about the needs of the seniors

1:08:35and i would echo the young woman who spoke before me that this is an issue that shouldn't be us versus them there should be a way to compromise and find a solution that is workable for both the the school has portables that are in the middle of what is their play area so

1:08:55part of fairmont park which is actually belongs to the school will become part of their play area if that's possible and it would be a darn shame for anything to happen to the senior center so i think we should look for places that are possible within the year and find compromises that work for this

1:09:20community because there are a lot of gray areas in life and this is one of those there's no right no wrong there's just let's see if we can work this out good evening mayor abelson and city council members thank you for devoting so much time to this issue my name is linda kane i'm a voter a

1:09:46taxpayer and i've lived in el cerrito for 24 years and just in the last year i've become active in the senior center and it's a fabulous center i'm lucky to be one of the more active seniors and many of the seniors who attend the center's programs are not as active and

1:10:02able as i am and i see that they really need the kind of services i could get out and i could find classes somewhere else but a lot of the people come in their wheelchair they come with their canes they're hardly able to see and a lot of them it's just really critical to

1:10:16them and i'm sure you understand that what excellent programs and the convenient access that we have at our senior center and i'm i think many people have stated this delma said this we love the children too this is our community this is our family seniors are part of the family children

1:10:34are part of the family it's not like you have a house and you don't have room because you have extra kids so you throw grandma out you know that would not make any sense so obviously we're going to try to make everybody fit we'd like to you know the man who said imagine to me

1:10:49imagine is imagine something better we don't have to have you know we do love our center but it's a little bit old and kind of run down we could have a great center maybe like great like this building who knows not not taking over your building just great like this building um thank you

1:11:07thank you very much for supporting the senior center and and i really appreciated the presentations that you all made at the unified school district meeting last week and i just wanted to say i agree with you we need three more years to come up with a really great solution for our

1:11:22senior center and thank you for your time harold schultz followed by emself and robin mackey right harold schultz here i moved to el cerrito in 1970 i've got one short question for the city council members if you're not able to answer but you know the answer wave your hand

1:11:48[Laughter] the question is how many square feet is there in the senior center right now only only one out of five no we don't normally respond we don't okay well whatever yeah sorry i'm not curious what the answer is i just wanted to know whether anybody on the city council knew what the

1:12:16square footage is that is an indication of what we have to do next that's all okay thank you hello my name is emcell and i want to express my operation we can't hear you if you turn around i'm sorry i i want to just mention that i was very much interested in the comments of the

1:12:48previous speakers i thought they all made very good points can you hear me now only when you're talking to the mic okay now i i did write a letter to the council which i'm going to present to you and since there's limited time i will just read the letter okay why don't you hand it out afterwards and

1:13:08then you don't use up your time doing that just go ahead and read it now why don't you the letter i would like to commend the excellent background information and analysis regarding this matter provided by recreation director christopher jones considering the importance of the senior

1:13:35center programs to many of el cerritos long-time residents it seems to me that considerations of the cost of possible temporary facilities should not be prioritized the impact of such expenses on the city's desired general reserve fund goal should not be the priority

1:14:01the strategic plan goals in in your packet page three explicitly state that goal c of the city that recreational and leisure activities shall be provided for people of all ages and under goal d that priorities include investment of the senior center here are some suggestions for possible

1:14:28temporary locations for the center the staff suggesting to use portables on existing city-owned property is a good one if it is not possible to house all the classes and meetings in this space at least some could be continued even if this reduces participation quote

1:14:54don't let the ideal get in the way of the good unquote and perhaps office space for the center employees could be found in the community center it seems that the city could be flexible in the sense that not all components of the center need to be in the same location

1:15:18the community center parking lot could probably also provide parking for the center vans which as you know provide transportation to people who very much need it and which also take participants to many interesting excursion locations as part of its programs an alternative to the use of portables

1:15:43on city property might be to rent space in a suitable building such as the veterans memorial building on stockton avenue if this could be arranged thank you for your consideration thank you robin mackey followed by david montez and debbie marshall good evening mary abelson and members of

1:16:11the council my name is robin mackey and i grew up in el cerrito my father moved here in 1963 and now he's getting a bit older i move back in with him and i take him to the center every day for the the meal and for the activities and i meet a lot of people myself

1:16:32wonderful people i've i met a world world war ii vet my father is a korean war veteran i mean so many people who have contributed so much to our community and i i can't imagine i don't want to imagine the center ever closing it's so valuable to my dad it gives him a reason

1:16:50to get up in the morning to get dressed to shave to meet lots of new friends so um thank you for asking the board last week for an extension a three-year extension i really think we need that to find a solution that will serve both the seniors and the children the elementary school also

1:17:10but i think it's time for a permanent solution to find a home a permanent senior center and perhaps buy the property from the school i don't know if they're willing to to sell it maybe buy a building and renovate it buy a parcel they're not that many parcels and in el cerrito i found one on

1:17:32zillow last night one one seven one five elm street is about a little less than a half an acre it was sold in 2003 for 000 they're asking 2 million 2.2 million right now it's been but it's been on the market for over 200 days now so uh we have there i don't know you

1:17:54already submitted your budget right i don't know what kind of money you're working with but there are many i think when there's a will there's a way there are plenty of ways to fundraise um i just learned that my classmate at kensington school is a co-founder of

1:18:09tesla you know john fogerty's from el cerrito um there are many people who would might be interested in contributing to a senior center is what i'm saying and i'd also be willing to be a part of any sort of committee um that would be uh finding a permanent home for the senior center i offer that

1:18:30and i'm sure other people would be willing to be a part of a committee or for that reason too so thank you for all your work and i hope you i hope you succeed here i truly do thank you for your work thank you david montez followed by david debbie marshall and becky

1:18:49reichau rybal thank you members of the council i'm a fairmont dad i live here in el cerrito and i had a chance to review the staff report seeking direction on this topic one of the troubling things about the situation that the city finds itself in here is this pattern of presumption leading

1:19:17up to this point uh presumption that the lease would continue continue indefinitely a presumption that taxpayers would be willing to fund a 30 million dollar library presuming that the district would want to give up the portola pad and some are continuing to presume that the

1:19:39district will change its mind about the portola pad and allow the city to build a new senior center on that location i think it's important for our elected leaders to have a clear-eyed vision of the best case scenario that we hope for and the practical scenario that we may

1:20:00get before it comes around many of the comments that we're hearing tonight reveal first of all how beloved the senior center programs are and also a fear of many people in this community that these programs are going to suddenly end and i think it's quite irresponsible to let those fears

1:20:24fester i would ask the members of the council to publicly reassure the community that every step will be taken to provide continuity of these services and that the expiration of this lease isn't going to mean that meals on wheels stops or that people don't get to to

1:20:43meet and gather and do the activities that they rely on every day i would also ask that you direct the city manager to put every energy possible into finding locations to to relocate these programs and funding if necessary to pay rent for the space that's needed thank you

1:21:19good evening everybody ten years ago i was auntie mame i had i have 15 god children who are all now in their 30s uh i have been a participant in their lives going to school it appalled me how i'd how they had to get to parents to bring in pencils toilet paper paper crayons and

1:21:44these kids are in their 30s 10 years ago i got i lost my privilege i guess of traveling the world and and just showing up and giving the kids back i inherited two of my my great niece and nephew luke is now a senior at el cerrito high and the reason i bring this up is that

1:22:05he started third grade over here from marin county he came to live with me i live right across the street from fairmont and i thought okay i have to send him to fairmont that poor so that poorer school that looks like it's empty and it never gets any tlc and i can't tell you how happy i was

1:22:26when they said it was crowded and they couldn't go i was like yes thank you and then i went to harding they were booked went up to madeira they were booked there was one spot left for third grade in kensington hilltop i traveled up there for the next years till the sixth grade

1:22:48i'm very pro-public school i listened to some of my neighbors who did send their kids to fairmont and his sister there's a seven year gap madison it came time i thought oh my god am i going to send her up to hilltop because that's where we've been become part of

1:23:04the village up there and then i saw that all her friends in our neighborhood were starting to go which brings me the foot traffic has changed there are a lot more kids from when i first moved into lexington going to the school i have become part of that village i am

1:23:22a senior i haven't got time to even take care of myself sometimes because uh i am so involved with volunteer and i guess that brings me to my and i call him my son he's a senior at el cerrito high how did we not know how did our school district how did our city officials and i know some of you

1:23:48been turning around being mayor over and over again how did you not know our schools were in this situation we have charter schools coming after our property the city is now wanting our property we the school district cannot afford to sell property lease it out for a

1:24:05dollar a year i am so exhausted doing silent auctions selling cookie dough raffle tickets just to get the programs our kids need for education you all gotta figure this out it is not okay and i'm gonna turn around and tell you seniors we do not want you not to have a program we do not want you

1:24:31to have a building you just can't have the school we are busting out at fairmont and i am definitely pro seniors and children because those are the two groups that get neglected your time is a better city planning thank you hi my name is becky raco i have three

1:25:01children my daughter's at koramatsu and i have two boys at fairmont i've been here for about 10 years now and the thing i see is that el cerrito is a big family like i know all my neighbors on my street we have seniors we have young people we have middle i mean it's very diverse it's a wonderful

1:25:18community and you guys have a big problem i mean you need to help both sides and el cerrito is growing i mean you're developing housing you've got all this stuff by the plaza that's growing and the thing is is that you're bringing in more families and financially long term

1:25:35what you really need to focus on is a site that you own you're not entangled or encumbered with the west contra costa unified school district you need to have power and control over that in the long term and if you keep leasing and having these negotiations with the school

1:25:51district you know you can build like the portal a pad it's not a good idea because if you have a 50 or 100 year lease from now they can come back and say well that's great we'll keep your facility in that site and you're not guaranteed to have that so i think the city needs to think about

1:26:07that when you come up with these plans for a new senior center a library and new facilities is that i know you have relationships with the school district but financially in the long term it really makes sense if you own the site i mean look at the land options find a

1:26:23space that the city can use for both as a as a mom as a parent i want senior services i've got 20 less than 20 years till i'm at that age and i will need those services i will want those services i one of the reasons why we chose to move to el cerrito from the richmond hills was because my

1:26:40father-in-law had parkinson's disease i saw him suffer for 20 years i want to live in a city that's accessible i want a city that takes care of all ages and all of its community and i think that's really important fairmont has its problems the school district financially

1:26:56has its problems in its burden i think you guys really if you're having lease negotiations don't wait till the last minute to ask for a renewal i mean this is you've had a lease with them for what 10 years it's like i think you waited too long and you missed that

1:27:12opportunity to renew it early enough and the district's gonna have to make contingency plans if they want to use that space i mean they can't just move in it's not seismically safe for their students and things like that there have been reports so i think that i you know

1:27:28you need to provide services for your seniors but you also need to consider your children the students that are served in the community as a long-term plan so thank you sharon blankner followed by mark chalelli sorry hi my name is jared blankner i'm a parent at fairmont

1:27:54i just wanted to offer some back story in case it seems like this decision was sudden by the district um the parents i've been there i have children going in sixth grade next year from the time we started in kindergarten they told us they were going to rebuild and it turned out that certain things

1:28:15had to align in order for the rebuild to happen which was they had to have the budget and they had to have approved plans that were less than a year old and they had to have a place for the children to go temporarily and over the last seven years those things never aligned there were

1:28:29sometimes two or two of them but never all three and so it may appear that the parents seem um hostile or like hostile to the seniors we're not hostile to seniors we just are tired we've been told for a long long time that this rebuild would happen and then finally the money evaporated and

1:28:46the portable pad evaporated and the plans are expired so here we are this is our last option is we we need the space back um and so i i support the person who spoke earlier the senior who was talking about um leasing if you have to leasing temporary kitchen and bathrooms in order

1:29:07if you can't find a place that has everything you need for the seniors you're going to have to come up with some kind of solution because the parents of the parents of fairmont support the seniors we just are also desperate for our kids to have a place to be and um

1:29:24uh anyway thank you thank you aaron council thank you i'm mark chili i had a bright idea when i walked in the door so i wrote it down into two uh that's how i do it bright ideas sometimes i can get him at the same time well okay here it goes uh what about eminent dotang who has eminent domain

1:29:49the school district or the city um i mean an offer of the commercial price per square foot to purchase the square foot the 6 000 square foot footprint of the senior center the senior center has been aligned with the you know it looks like the same footprint i mean it looks like the same

1:30:12square property that the library is you know i mean it's everybody has you know i thought that senior center was part of the library and the city you know for before i ever started going to the senior center and well anyway uh eminent domain i mean um i like this idea because it would be the

1:30:34smallest bond major ever to be put on a ballot i mean it'd probably be less than a million dollars to purchase the six thousand square foot you know footprint of the senior center thank you uh we have no other request to speak thank you okay uh with that we will um

1:30:59so and i assume noah's neither school board member here wants to speak or do you good evening everyone my name is mr phillips i have the honor of representing you all on the school board i really did not come here in all honesty to make a statement about the situation

1:31:27and you know that i can't speak about what took place in closed session but rather i really just came here to listen this is one community and this is a community issue and i think it is very important for us to be able to hear each other out and that's why i'm here today

1:31:46and i just want to thank you for the opportunity to listen thank you thank you good evening mayor abelson members of the council and city staff my name is tom panis and i'm also a member of the school board i'd like to echo what mr phillips just said it's very important to listen and

1:32:10understand the concerns of the community hear everyone out i'd like to thank ms proctor and mr montez for answering some of the questions that came up earlier i don't think there's anything to be to be added there in terms of facility planning but we just need to have a conversation

1:32:26understand where we're going and also once again this is a closed session item so we can't public discuss what happened there thank you thank you so at this time we will bring it back to the council um are there um any comments at this point okay go ahead sure the

1:32:49first thing i want to do is thank everyone for coming out tonight um you know there we um wanted to hear from you as the two board members said it it's important for us to give you guys an opportunity to speak so that we can hear so staff can hear and we can plan accordingly um i want to

1:33:06take a minute of uh to read from a letter that we got from michael fisher you know fairmont does need more room for its students are young el satans and neighbors and citizens in training el cerrito needs a senior center both are possible they will take money planning

1:33:25thoughtfulness and goodwill i trust you and the school board can work out the necessary details in harmony and i'm sure that some will disagree with any actions we take and unfortunately we'll attribute this as bad motives by the city council the toxic national political climate has

1:33:43resulted in a reduction in the number of people who can disagree without being disagreeable well i'm glad we actually had a good conversation tonight and there wasn't a lot of animosity that was potentially anticipated so i want to thank everyone for coming and actually being

1:34:00good good citizens good participants um one thing that the last speaker suggested that it would be only a million dollars to buy the um parcel we actually offered 1.4 million dollars to the school board to purchase that land back in uh 2000 um and unfortunately due to the economic

1:34:21downturn and the dissolution of the redevelopment agency we had to rescind that offer so it it's not just a million dollars for that parcel and that brings me to one of the things that we discussed during our priority sessions the number one priority at least for me

1:34:39is funding for the city so that we can do the things that you've asked us to do make way for the students at fairmont and provide great services for our seniors one of the speakers tonight said we need more and we do we need an active senior center not this one that's you

1:34:58know 50 years old there's a lot of new services we can be providing and it all takes money and i hope all of you and i'm hoping fingers will go up all of you will support a future funding measure for this infrastructure structure as well as the other ones we need including a public safety building

1:35:16and a library so i mean that's you guys come to us and you say you want this you want us to continue providing services somewhere else yet i don't see fingers going up saying you're going to support a funding measure so it's very difficult first there we go um another speaker i want to make sure

1:35:38that you you all know that senior services will not end in el cerrito that is not what this is about this is not about closing the senior center it's not about ending those services it's about where those services are provided how much space we have to provide those services

1:35:55and whether it's an interim facility or this grand end product that we're all looking for which is a more spacious more modern more capable facility to provide services so what the issue here is that we're going to get stuck with going into an interim facility if we can't get a three-year

1:36:14lease at this site and that interim facility won't be the same as a permanent facility it won't provide the same level of services and it will be a use of funds that will then be undone at some point whether it's three years from now or five years now or seven years from now so in essence that

1:36:32that interim facility is not necessarily the best way to say to spend the limited resources we have right now we are less than our target of ten percent and certainly well below our fifteen percent targeted for reserves so we we have two and a half three million dollars of reserves and that

1:36:51property that that's uh for sale the very infamous uh 15 17 15 uh very infamous parcel that two and a half million that would reserve that would take our entire reserve out if we had to go purchase that property and that's even before we did any construction on it so

1:37:09you know that those these solutions we want some of these solutions but there are going to take funding and that if i sound like a broken record it's because we have a fiscal responsibility to everybody whether you're students or seniors whether you're homeowners or renters we

1:37:26have a fiscal responsibility to provide for the city for all of you and yes we i take it very seriously that we represent all of you whether you are a newborn uh that can't vote yet or a senior that votes routinely you you we represent all of you and and that requires us to be

1:37:45fiscally responsible and not just make mistakes that waste money and that's where yes we push back and we ask for things and we ask for more time at the current location and that's to reserve preserve our limited resources and that's our job to protect all of you

1:38:11so i want to make sure to the board members that are here we recognize the need for the school and we certainly stand with the fairmont parents asking you to rebuild that school in a timely manner it i've been in the school for several meetings and it it does need to be

1:38:33rebuilt or modernized and and i recognize that on the last meeting you actually had two separate uh items that funneled additional resources into this school to make capital improvements during this interim time so i know you guys are trying to do your best to with your

1:38:50limited resources but i certainly wanted to echo what all the fairmont parents said and what our seniors are saying we need a better school there and we hope that you will hear us when we say and hear what many of the testimony tonight the demographics and el cerrito are changing

1:39:06the demographics you used for your master plan are not accurate they're not they're not what you should be planning on and you should be looking at those demographics and redoing your master plan and elevating fairmont to a higher standard so that we get that school

1:39:20rebuilt at as soon as possible as soon as possible you know that is that ends my comments at this time mayor thank you thank you thank you um i've only been a city council person for a very short time since last november but we've dealt with some delicate issues since then

1:39:42sanctuary city marijuana legalization prison facilities in richmond our budget single-payer health insurance but no issue has touched me or concerned me more than this issue because it involves two important citizen groups obviously and because somehow the decisions we

1:39:59make tonight or in the future look like we may be choosing between our children our seniors which shouldn't be the case i'm also it's also um unsettling to me that we seem to have two government bodies our city in the west county school district that should be natural allies

1:40:17we should be working together and not at odds with each other [Music] as all of our city council members said last week at the school board meeting it's well known that the students from el cerrito and richmond that attend fairmont and their parents have endured bad conditions and have

1:40:35been disappointed for far too long and our local parents those that have spoken tonight have fought as good a fight as they can to make fairmont a better school for their kids and for our our community but as we also know the city of el cerrito has not been the key decider on

1:40:53the major issues involving fairmont and el cerrito was not at the table at the closed door session when the school board took action to close our important senior center before we can make sure that there's time to provide an adequate transition to those who deserve so much

1:41:10but now we are definitely in the center of the decision making and we must respond adequately to what i think is an eviction notice that will impact the standard of living to those who live in our community um i want to thank our city staff for proceeding with this council request to

1:41:26have a public hearing on this important uh issue tonight and i want to thank trustee pappas and phillips for attending i really appreciate their time for coming out and listening to our community i've listened to our city staff who have raised concerns that the one-year order

1:41:42will be very difficult and costly to our city so we've asked for more time to comply with the lease termination the the council has pushed our city toward renewed planning efforts for a library that barely lost the bond measure as we all know and a possible senior center in public safety

1:42:02facilities we will begin this public transparent discussion i understand next month right here in el cerrito and we will need the seniors the merchants the librarians and the parents of fairmont to give input and to be supportive of however we improve our city we need your

1:42:20support and tonight it was so good i looked out in all all of this all of you that have different views you were mainly saying this for everybody everybody was saying it for everybody so it was really nice we all make good good points here and finally as i said elsewhere has not

1:42:36been the center of the decisions we've impacted on the fairmont school but in the end whatever the outcome is as councilman lyman said we're going to keep the services for our seniors there's no doubt about that and we will do the best we can to comply with any

1:42:51decision that we have to deal with that may not be in our control but it is my hope whether or not our local school board members are able to help us with more flexibility and i hope you hear our play tonight that are that the turn of events that may bring fairmont a bit more space

1:43:08not come with a price tag that may harm our seniors thank you i do i appreciate everyone being here this evening i mentioned last council meeting that i grew up in that neighborhood i attended fairmont school i spent many many hours at the library as a former member of the

1:43:36senior committee in el cerrito before i was in the council i spent many hours at the senior center in fact before the senior center was there back in first and second grade we had our music classes in one of the rooms over there so i know from taking the tour of fairmont school

1:44:02i know it isn't the fairmont school that i attended back in the 60s and 70s so i see the overcrowding i saw it personally i know that school needs to be replaced if they don't plan on replacing it i would request that they take care of the things that need to be done to make it a school that

1:44:24everyone will enjoy on the other hand as a middle-aged man who's approaching my senior years i know and many of the folks that i grew up there with their parents are attending and attend the senior center often whether it's for lunch or the special classes and the services that they

1:44:51provide they also were members of the pta at fairmont and they were also voting all of them voted in support of the previous bonds done throughout the years especially the one that supported the rebuilding of our schools at fairmont so some know that we are all in support of making sure

1:45:15that uh the fairmont kids uh as an alumni i want to make sure that they have the best school uh that can be uh either rebuilt there or modernized but we need more time for uh because we don't have a space right now for our seniors so we need to make sure that we

1:45:35look at all the uh available uh uh temporary uh buildings before we uh create another space so i'm hoping that the neighborhood there my old neighborhood i walk by there all the time in the 800 block of lexington please know that that neighborhood and fairmont school

1:45:56means the world to me because i graduated from that school and know that we are all committed in making sure that we have a senior center to be that will hopefully be built and a school that the parents and the students at fairmont will be proud of so it it's going to

1:46:19take some time but we're determined to do this and to work with the trustees at the school district this has been a difficult one i'd like to echo what ruby mcdonald said and that one of my greatest concerns about this entire experience has been where are we going

1:46:48to be left as a community um regardless of of of whatever happens to the senior center and and to the campus at fairmont and i wanted to take you a little bit through my thought process um when i first heard about this i was pretty shocked and i thought wow that's

1:47:11really mean who would want to kick the seniors out of the senior center and and i realized that you know as you go through those steps you end up putting people in their camps right us against them and that's where so much of our country is right now um so i had to take a step back

1:47:36and ask myself you know are the parents at fairmont just mean people like is that is that why they want to take the seniors out of the senior center and i think we can all say the answer to that is no right like they're not just mean people they're concerned about their children

1:47:55and if i were there and the school was overcrowded and every day you saw that and you were worried about your child's future you would probably also want to do whatever you could to ensure that your child had the proper space to grow that being said i i feel like the way um

1:48:21it came to me i i didn't like the way that they handled this in closed session at the school board i didn't like how there was no comment a public comment on it i didn't like how it was handled so quickly i know some people have said no this has been coming but in my opinion if

1:48:39something's been there since the 60s and it hasn't changed you know there is some expectation that it's going to stay the same so that's why we asked for more time and the main reason why we asked for more time is because we want to ensure that the seniors have

1:48:58a continuation and all of their services that they have a soft landing and also that we have respect for our seniors and a feeling that we care about them and that we're not just kicking them out of their home because i think a lot of them feel like this is their home

1:49:19so if somehow you had to make sure that your neighbor moved out i mean is there just a nicer way of doing it a little more communication if i could you know wave a magic wand and have it done the way that we would have liked to have had it done you know we'd we'd build a new senior

1:49:41center before we had to move them out and i know that from our timelines it's probably going to take you know five years to do that if not longer and i understand i see you guys back there i understand that that's too long for you okay i get that i get that so so with that being said you know

1:50:07the other part of it that was difficult for me was that you know this is what we want this is what you want well there wasn't really in my opinion a lot of asking what we wanted it was just like okay come over here you know i didn't feel like there was a lot of

1:50:21trying to meet in the middle or trying to make sure that the seniors voices were heard so i'm glad that everyone had an opportunity to be heard tonight and i know that no matter what we do we're going to disappoint somebody but i just want to let you know that i

1:50:40hear both sides and i want i want the best for both sides i really do and i will do whatever i can in my power to ensure that the all of the programs continue for the seniors and i hope that the parents at fairmont since you guys seem to be extremely organized will

1:51:04help us in our long-term goals of rebuilding a senior center and then i also want to i a lot of things have come up during this process and one of the things i heard is that the parents at fairmont were not feeling supported by the council in their efforts for the rebuild

1:51:23and i would like to apologize for that and let you know that from this point forward and i don't know if it's too late that at least and i i want to be there and i i assume my colleagues want to be there as well and like i said maybe it's a day late and a dollar short but

1:51:41um i hope we can open those lines of communication and ensure that the the school gets rebuilt as soon as possible and that we can throw our support behind that and with that um we will continue on thank you thank you um all for um letting us know what you think but i'm

1:52:08referring now to the people on the council but i'm also referring to the audience because i think everyone who at least who wanted to has had an opportunity tonight to speak and this is actually i guess the first dialogue that's occurred on this topic because what's occurred before has not

1:52:30been a dialogue um and um where we're where we are right now in process is that we have to we can either sign the lease i guess you would call it for one year that's what's being presented to us we don't have options really listed there from the school district

1:53:05or we don't have another there is no other option being presented and it's not a matter of we're working together with the school district because the only way we've been able to talk to the school district is in public comment on the at the school district meeting in public

1:53:30comment on items that are not on the agenda and therefore can't be talked about so it's been a really difficult situation for us in terms of being able to handle any back and forth you know it's been a long time longer than i don't know if anyone was around the 50

1:53:55years ago uh maybe maybe i don't know i was alive 50. you were like yeah i was too but i i wasn't yet here i want to ask you gabe unless you want to say but um anyway i i do remember though that when my youngest daughter who's now in her 20s um was uh between kindergarten and first

1:54:24grade she went to summer school at fairmont and i went with her for lunch because it was part of what it was doing was helping her learn how to eat school lunch but what i noticed is that when i wanted to go to the bathroom at fairmont school there was no door there was only a

1:54:44curtain and so that was she's now in her 20s that was probably um i mean that was maybe 20 20 years ago uh so things at fairmont were you know in such condition that they needed that school needed a lot of work 20 years ago and um so i i don't have to go again to to think that

1:55:16fairmont needs uh relief i don't understand why it isn't on the list in terms of the condition of the school because and also i don't understand how it's at and 140 or hundred and whatever percent of enrollment of uh i don't understand that either but these are are things that happened

1:55:42and we are where we are now i also know that when it once a student is in any school that it's very hard to make them move to an to another classroom mid-year let alone another school so i i totally get that i've got five kids i've you know been in that situation

1:56:06and um so where we are now is in a very difficult situation we we don't run the school the city council of el cerrito does not run the school district um at times maybe we would uh like to but but we but we don't you know and so we've had a very good relationship i

1:56:34think over the years from what i understand and what happened many years ago 50 years ago i guess they set up an arrangement for the use of what's now the senior center and there are many other arrangements like that throughout the city where and they go both ways for example the

1:56:58uh el cerrito high baseball field uh it actually belongs to the city of el cerrito it's cerrito vista park and and the pool that the high school swim team uses that belongs to the city also so there are a variety of uh those arrangements that go back and forth and

1:57:22i i actually think that's a good thing that we can share resources because that means we're more fully utilizing the facilities that are located in our city rather than well it's schools out therefore everything's going to be dark until the next day you know that's a good example of that

1:57:44or um we can't you know the school can't use the uh field during the day we have arrangements like that too but the um so where we are now is that we have not been able to have a conversation with the school district to find out to discuss things and we're being presented

1:58:16with a deadline of of time really and um and i believe that that that deadline is uh july 1st am i correct there yes okay so um that's the only decision that we have been offered that we could make i mean we had my understanding is that the decision presented to us by the school district

1:58:48is whether or not we want this one year lease and there is no option or anything else and it's take it or leave it what the reality of our world is is we live in a world right now where land value is extremely extremely high and we couldn't i mean if we used all of the money we

1:59:16have i i'm not even sure we could buy much of anything on san pablo avenue for example because we don't have that much money um let alone have money for emergencies that might come up or anything else so we're in an extremely difficult situation if we put up some temporary buildings

1:59:48portables somewhere in our city then that's going to cost a bunch of money and to provide the meal program we have to put in a full kitchen as i understand it so that's going to cost a bunch of money and that's money that will all be to the wayside should we come up

2:00:11with a permanent solution that's not just staying in portables until the floors fall out which is what happened to our old city hall where the floors were literally falling out we had holes in the floors that's how bad it was so portables don't last forever that's why they're called

2:00:34portables i guess so the um so we have much a much bigger problem than um people might realize and um yet we don't want to do wrong by either the seniors or the students uh or their families and um so the actual solution not solution but the the thing we're being offered is the

2:01:08opportunity to let me just find it here here it is whoops um i as i understand it what we would like to do is what our staff recommendation is about that would be to let these our staff the city's council the city staff go ahead with what they can do without our permission

2:01:47just like the school district staff could do what the same thing without their school board agreement is to execute the agreement in the so in other words the city manager can execute the agreement regarding a one-year extension but what we would i believe like to have

2:02:14happen at least that's the recommendation from staff is that we proceed in that direction so that will give the school board time to meet before that the the deadline is you know really june 30th on the school board meets on the 28th as i understand it so if the school board

2:02:44were willing to discuss it at their meeting on the 28th then there could be a conversation about this and so that actually is what our staff is asking us to do tonight is is to proceed in that way um and um i hope that um we are able to come up with a solution that is beneficial

2:03:25beneficial to both the students and the seniors and i don't think anyone sitting up here where i am thinks that we are trying really to do anything that's anything but that and i i think that we also the people sitting behind the diocese think that the parents and the seniors

2:04:03i don't really think either side has any animosity towards the other's well-being or especially towards the students so i would suggest that we consider what the staff recommendation for this item is madame if i can make it into a motion or is i'm looking at council do we need to

2:04:31is it wise to make a motion on this yeah i think it would be better to follow the staff recommendation if that's excellent so if i could make a clarifying motion i moved that we authorized the city manager to sign the one-year agreement after giving the school board an opportunity to have a

2:04:52dialogue with us at their june 28th meeting i'll second that is that worded the way you were don't you already have the authorization to you don't need to authorize the firm affirm the the city manager's existing uh authorization uh however having him wait until after the 28th so

2:05:15that we give the school district an opportunity to participate in this conversation okay so that's a motion and then is that a second for me i had the second okay uh okay uh sec uh motion by lyman seconded by quinto any further conversation okay all in favor please say aye aye in

2:05:42the opposition in the abstentions motion cares unanimously and i'd like to thank everyone here for the time that you have spent here tonight and previously on this very um problematic issue for everyone and um hopefully we will be able to come to a conclusion that

2:06:06best takes care of the needs of all the parties thank you okay so at this time we're going to go back to the regular order of our agenda and cover all of the items that we haven't covered but let's give the people who would like to leave right now just a minute to do so but if we could

2:06:32do that with the council staying up here so we actually move on okay so we'll go ahead and get started again and we did item one already which is the pledge of allegiance the next item is item number two which is council on staff communications i'd like to start

2:07:13out by mentioning an award that our assistant city manager uh our re are i don't know if awards the right word honor this may be a better word an assignment yes and she has been elected to be the um next [Music] uh president of the um international managers association

2:07:47and um city managers associate international city managers association uh for the is upcoming year or two years how long um it's a well thank you um it's a three year term and i would begin my term as president-elect in october at our conference in san antonio and then i would serve as

2:08:06president my term would begin in 2018 and september so thank you for acknowledging that i'm very excited and very honored it's i would not be able to pursue any of these opportunities i have to give a shout out to my awesome boss scott hannon who has supported me from day one

2:08:27with my professional development and we're both icma members and a lot of our staff are icma members and being a member of icma is not just about for our professional development though we've brought a lot to the city our city has won awards and people know who el cerrito is on a

2:08:44national level and so i'm just really grateful to scott but i'm also grateful to this council for being so wonderful in providing me this opportunity and i promise that i'll make you all very proud thank you and congratulations okay um with that are there any other

2:09:06council uh communications or announcements yes yes there is um i have three quick ones um just a reminder that the environmental quality committee is having its green team cleanup on june 25th and to go to our website to get more information about that i think we're

2:09:27going to concentrate on cutting boulevard area down there and lots to do um also the the famous july 4th celebration that we're going to be uh coming upon soon the new tradition is to be there on july 3rd and listen to music presented the night before it's a nice

2:09:46time for families to put their blanket down and again this year it's a hawaiian music and the arts commission has been very helpful in making sure that that happens and that we support corey in world one today along with you mayor i attended the chamber lunch where we had an mce

2:10:04presentation to our businesses and making sure that uh they have an update and see the usefulness of our participation with marin county thank you if i may yeah i'm going to pick up the celebration theme for those that are here and listening at home our independence day uh on july 3rd it's

2:10:255 p.m to 7 pm so the music on july 3rd is 5 p.m to 7 p.m and things that you should think about before you go out on july 4th is that there's limited street parking but there is bike valet so you can bike to the uh festival and there will be a place for you to park your bike

2:10:48and you should be sure to visit the food courts there is food available in the contra costa civic theater parking lot and there will be lots of places for you to compost please do not bring your family pets service dogs are certainly allowed and i just uh all the games and

2:11:04rides will end it's it starts at 10 p.m at 7 8 10 a.m and goes till 6 p.m the music will end at 6 30 p.m um sticking with our centennial theme this thursday june 22nd right here at city hall there will be a talk uh the title of the talk is victor ramon castro and his family as the castro at the

2:11:26castro adobe 1839-1928 uh joanne rubio will be presenting that seven o'clock right here at city hall um i did want to uh make sure that everyone knows that we do have this applications this cheryl this is this is current correct the applications that we're seeking we

2:11:47have opened up and we are asking for applications to such of our support bodies as the centennial task force the citizen street oversight committee the committee on aging the crime prevention committee the economic development committee the environmental quality committee the tree committee the

2:12:06contra costa library commission we're looking for an alternate and uh finally i got an email we all got an email this week pleading to ask us to fill a contra costa transportation authority citizen advisory committee so those are opportunities for you to participate

2:12:24in el cerrito and those are that's it for me i think my things have already been covered so i won't do it again so with that we will go on to oral communications from the public for items that are not on the agenda do you have some speakers yes mayor we do we have five

2:12:53requests to speak and the five are cordell hindler followed by al miller judith tannenbaum howdy gowdy and sherry drumner good evening again mayor uh council what i just presented to you all is a new show from kashikawa civic theater it's called in the heights it is a fabulous

2:13:12show please do come see it that's what number two is up if you remember at the previous city councilman you was talking about uh prioritizing your work uh plan that was what uh if you're if you also remember whether the representatives from each from the library uh they talk about you know

2:13:30increasing the hours that's very important for our community because we have a lot because i mean certain libraries they stay over till later but they need to extend it because it's also a good a good factor for our community that's two number three is uh i was passing through earlier today uh

2:13:47along the alone greenway there was a lot of graffiti on all that port on that side where it got got tagged and it's like my goodness this is like i feel like i've been like this is richard or el cerrito and i say because there's a lot of graffiti all that on that on that side

2:14:06so hopefully there's somebody will do something about this put the graffiti off so that's three at that number four i also invited y'all to the to the richard bay street uh healthy uh village festival this coming saturday on the 24th it's from 10 am until two and they have bike smoothies and all

2:14:26that i'll tell you it is a wonderful uh event please do cover that also uh just uh congratulations to the assistant city manager or the on her her awards is like this is incredible this is what el cerrito is all about so we're moving in the right direction so and lastly if you

2:14:44recall at the previous meeting that i submitted some photos of of all the commercial properties around here i did my online research and i found out that that the most expensive property is on the el cerrito plaza they want close to ten thousand dollars there is no way

2:14:59nobody can afford that especially on an income people i mean what i said before when i say people i talk about senior citizens i mean they can't afford that tenth out close to ten thousand dollars that's that's like that's like a house these days so hopefully y'all take these

2:15:15suggestions into consideration so your turn to help good evening mayor railton council members and staff i'm here tonight to give two shout outs to the el cario police department the first one is a thank you to the el cerrito police department and the 23 other law

2:15:36enforcement agencies from the east bay east county on up into solano county around that put on the bike the bridges event for i think the eighth or ninth year i'm not sure which that's their primary fundraiser for the special olympics of california and uh article in the paper the email i got the

2:16:00paper said they raised 85 000 in doing that the other one is a rather unusual event this morning today was the torch run and i didn't know what time it started i didn't have anything to do this morning except the torch run so i took a cup of coffee the morning paper and bike down

2:16:19to the plaza hoping that it would come by before i had to go to the chamber lunch but anyway i was sitting there reading the paper sitting on the steps where the el cerrito plaza entrance entrances on san pablo avenue looking diagonally across the street at the pete's county

2:16:36pete's coffee shop head down in the paper hear a scream hear a thud i look up and see a gray car driving into a pole that holds the street lights up right next to star the woman who screamed and dropped her coffee and she was on her knees and there was a man lying on the sidewalk

2:16:58i didn't know what had happened but i stood up and called 9-1-1 by the time 9-1-1 got me in touch with the richmond dispatch two l-cereal police units had driven up and taken command of the scene shortly after that the fire department 10 minutes or so later came the ambulance

2:17:17and it all got managed i have no idea about the details but it was an interesting morning but the point was that impressed me most is that i don't know what their source was but it wasn't 9-1-1 because they were there before the people at 9-1-1 ask me what i wanted or

2:17:38what i was reporting so thank you el cerrido police department mayor abelson and council and staff i just have three sort of fyis one is i'm sure you know that the board of supervisors today did vote to [Music] continue to approve and support the sheriff's proposal for the jail

2:18:03expansion over well over 100 people spoke at that meeting and the tone was not like the tone here the nurses were great rochelle is always and a few of the people who spoke mentioned el cerrito and what the sheriff had done to el cerrito and um the second item uh is

2:18:30i sent something to you through cheryl with this sort of random idea wondering if el cerrito royale might be interested in doing something with us for the senior center and i talked to sonia the executive director the director there and she said that that couldn't work but

2:18:48she strongly suggested that you contact st john's that their kind of community place that's right there she said it's hardly ever used it has a kitchen there's parking there it's as close to transportation as as the existing senior center so that was her suggestion

2:19:08and then the third one is that ma a poet laureate has set her second event in this in her series and that's going to be on july 30th at the arlington clubhouse at two o'clock and um at her her model is having one el cerrito poet and one poet from elsewhere in the

2:19:31you know immediate surround and so the el cerrito poet her name is michelle lin and the other poet is bob haas who was a poet laureate for the country for a number of years an amazing poet and professor cal so that's july 30th thank you good evening mayor wilson council

2:20:02members my name is howdy gowdy i'm actually speaking formally on behalf of the environmental quality committee tonight um our current chair mark minor and vice chair rebecca milliken were both here at the beginning of the meeting they couldn't stay but they were going

2:20:17to address you with me so the environmental quality committee is very pleased that your financial year 1718 budget adopted on june 6th includes funding for municipal electrical accounts to purchase 100 renewable power through mce's deep green option this is an important contribution to the

2:20:38reduction of greenhouse gases emitted by city operations and it supports the el cerrito um climate action plan this is also a meaningful act of climate leadership that will likely leverage further greenhouse gas emission reductions in the community at large by setting a good example for others the

2:20:58eqc reiterates our encouragement for members of the community to choose 100 renewable deep green electrical power for the homes and businesses as council has done for city operations it is a great way to celebrate el cerrito's centennial and contribute to the prosperity of the next

2:21:14100 years at our meeting last week on june 13th the eqc unanimously voted to thank city council and staff for including 100 renewable power purchases in its budget and for upholding a strong commitment to climate action and the environment as you're doing again

2:21:32tonight with your support of the paris climate action agreement on behalf of the full membership of the environmental quality committee we thank you for your environmental leadership thank you thank you good evening council members and honorable mayor abelson i'm here tonight

2:21:54i'm going to read a letter um it's from one of the members and endorsed by el cerrito progressives and it actually has a lot to do with what we were talking about earlier this evening which is issues of eviction in our place location and um we were hardened by the city this

2:22:12the way the letter begins dear mayor abelson city council members and city manager hannan we were hardened by the city council's statement in april that no person should be made homeless by new development in el cerrito and we were further encouraged by statements by paul fideli gate pinto and

2:22:32greg lyman that the city would explore the interim use of existing city-owned housing for mr sid manchester jones who has been living in his car for the past year following the closure of otis rv park since we have heard no news about progress on housing for mr manchester

2:22:54jones we are writing to request the following a target date for interim housing either at the vacant city owned house at 945 king or elsewhere he is on affordable housing wait lists that might take one to two years to place him in permanent housing number two a representative from city

2:23:17council who will be the point person for updates and number three clarity on which staff members have been tasked with making things happen and number four a process for meeting and conferring on progress toward the goal easy bi-weekly updates we look forward to hearing from you and

2:23:37we thank you very much i have no other request to speak okay so that's the end of oral communications from the public on items not on the agenda and so now we move on to item four adoption of the consent calendar and um it's items 4a through 4h 4a is approval of the minutes of

2:24:11june 2nd closed session in june or june 2nd both several sessions and then item b is the storm drain master plan and integrated asset management strategy consultant services agreement c is the iolani greenway bart station area access safety and placemaking improvements project

2:24:40d is amendments to the city's job classification plan and e is an agreement with tyler technologies for software is a service enterprise resource planning system f is police dispatch services g is an agreement with mark 4-3 incorporated to provide computer-aided

2:25:08dispatch and records management software h is uh support for the paris climate ac excuse me agreement and joining the mayor's national climate action agenda i'd like to move adoption to the consent calendar items 4a through 4h okay i wanted to speak on 4h before

2:25:35okay why don't you go ahead and do that now okay um i just wanted to to um to say that i'm really glad that we put this on the agenda because i think that it's really important at this time to move forward with climate protections and if we can't have the proper

2:25:57leadership at the national level i'm very happy that cities such as ours can go forward and join with other cities to make sure that we ensure the planet is inhabitable for future generations thank you thank you would you like to second the motion i would like to second okay may or if i

2:26:17may just before we take action i i want to mr miller chastise us for not highlighting things i just want to thank chief keith for making sure that we have a continuation of dispatch services and uh to echo council member perdue okamoto thank uh will provost and maria sanders

2:26:40for their diligent work getting 5h on at the last minute so thank you very much to staff for your work on our consent calendar i've h is not what we're talking about but four four h sorry 4-h yep okay which is the paris climate agreement and i just had uh a question or two about um 4c i don't

2:27:10have any problems with it but if i could just maybe why don't you go ahead and ask your question okay thank you uh and and of course this has been before us two or three times now and i want to commend the concern about uh frugality i think it's great that we don't overspend

2:27:28um and i agree with the direction of the memo i just wanted to maybe ask yvette about the the environment for grants now is is there a lack of why is it so difficult to move on this i'm concerned about the modernization that we're moving toward at bart here with del norte and making sure we're on

2:27:47time and whether it's a matter of finding a cheaper contractor or us seeking more money or both good evening council my name is yvette ortiz i'm the city's public works director and city engineer we have um the project which is close to 4.7 million dollars in funding is mostly

2:28:07grant funding so we've been successful in terms of applying for grants three put actually we have 3.9 million dollars in federal funds for this project which is a significant amount i think it's the bidding climate and we've worked really closely with bart ii to coordinate some of the construction

2:28:26phasing so we're going to continue to bid i think a sec a third time we since we last re-bid we also got another half million dollars in regional funding so i think we've been successful on that from that perspective it's just a trend right now with public projects

2:28:47getting very high bids partly because contractors are very busy and so they're not available to bid on projects but there's a possibility that if we bid later this year there'll be more contractors available to provide bids that are closer to the engineer's estimate and you're going to try with

2:29:05sb1 funding coming out the possibility correct the city is um is going to receive additional state transportation funding starting in january of 2018.

2:29:17so our goal would be not only to re-bid the project in a more favorable time of the year when contractors may be less busy and there's other projects multi-year projects that are closing out but also to try to get a couple of additional funding from the state transportation funding but there's also

2:29:39some maloney greenway funding that was contributed by the safeway the northeast store that was under still some money available there and also potentially some measure a street improvement funds we would come back to council and request that those additional funds

2:29:56be allocated to this project and the money we have stays with us we don't lose that by not acting right we're working with all our funders to maintain um the funding um to secure the funding make sure that it's not at risk so we're continuing to work with a bunch of different agencies

2:30:13to to to be okay with that thank you very much thank you okay anything further okay i think we're ready then to go back and vote on as was stated before items four a through four um h uh all in favor please say aye aye any opposition in the abstention motion carries unanimously

2:30:40and with that we will move on to item um let's see we've already done 5a we've already done 5b so now we move on and we've already done 7a and so now we're ready for seven b which is uh the topic being tax and revenue anticipation notes uh fiscal year 1718 short-term

2:31:12cash flow financing a good evening honorable mayor and city council members i'm mark rosaia the finance director speaking of funding measures and fiscal responsibility the item before you tonight is to adopt a resolution approving the borrowing of six million dollars and the issuance and sale of tax

2:31:33and revenue anticipation notes aka trend the trend is a short-term cash loan paid back within the year to assist the city bridge the cash flow shortage experience until until we see the first installment of property taxes in the middle of december also included in the resolution is an

2:31:53authorization is the authority for the city manager to enter into agreements with nha advisors and jones hall as bond council to prepare and execute appropriate legal documents related to set financing each year the city experiences a period when expenses exceed available revenue

2:32:14as we await property taxes both in the middle of december and in april once again an el cerrito like many cities uses the trend to manage cash flow during this time frame the city has issued its tran and sold it to west america corporation for the last few years

2:32:33the city's financial advisors nha advisors has negotiated to have the same bank purchase the 2017-2018 trend at very competitive rates and terms that will meet the cash flow needs of the city based on financial analysis performed by nha the all-in cost of the trend will be

2:32:51the lowest through the sale directly to west america banking corporation through a private placement the cost of financing is less than last year's and is estimated to be 32.5 000 interest on the loan is about 105 000 the interest rate is higher by a quarter point since the last

2:33:10round on this trend i'm happy to answer any questions you may have at this time and uh where did where does the number 6 million come from so going back to 2012 when we first started this trend i think we came up with 4 million dollars and as time progresses as the budget increases cash

2:33:33flow needs increase expand it moved up to 5 million in the last couple of years and last november we came that close to being at the end of that limit there so we pushed back and said okay let's redo the cash flow once again take a look at it and we've projected a cash flow of

2:33:48six million dollars need thank you anything okay go ahead um to that end is there any penalty for paying back early so if if the december and april uh revenues are enough to allow us to pay back in the april time frame is there any penalty or is there any benefit to paying back but prior to july

2:34:11of next year the contract is for one full year so we're required to pay that at the end of that period there is no benefit in paying back paying that back any sooner than that okay there's no penalty either all right and and um you know it it is about 2.3 percent of

2:34:26the six million dollars when you add in the 105 and the and a half million 32 and a half thousand dollars um that's pretty good i mean that's that's not a bad rate overall and so i i'm very supportive of this so that these are working for us it's good to know that we've got the money in the

2:34:45bank sure and given the fact that the fed has raised the funds federal funds rate a couple of times the last three months and i expect that to be raised a couple more times before the end of this thing happens uh that is indeed an excellent rate at 1.75 percent uh the other side to this

2:35:00whole story is i mean when the money is with us we invest it with life so a certain amount of interest that we gain from it as well so that offsets the 2.3 apr very little and currently the leaf rate is about one percent um it okay so you've opened the door i'll ask the question

2:35:16um two years from now what are we gonna do when this when the money is not quite so uh cost effective i'm hoping that at some point our revenue sources will continue to maintain a strong growth rate that we predict over the five-year time frame that i put together some time back for

2:35:35you uh one of the one of the things that fell out of that regression analysis that i did was that annually we produce approximately four and a half to five hundred thousand in net savings and if we build this thing up we should be at a point where we can actually scale this thing back

2:35:52so if another way to say what you just said is that we would grow the reserves so that the reserves would act as our cash flow coffer buffer typically a reserve increase of a million bucks is equivalent to about three percent on your fund raise funding ratio so if you

2:36:08move back from say nine percent to about 12 percent that's a one one million dollar increase again once again this is not something that we use all the time for the last for example couple of months we've been sitting on the five million to pay off the other one

2:36:21but during november and december we have this uh credit the cash crunch as i call that and everyone knows about that how that works out the last year in november we had a 200 000 cash balance in the account checking account with a 5 million tran so again the hope is to build back reserves

2:36:39get back the fund balance to a reasonable level and then try and move away from a trend great thank you very much okay so um are we ready to vote now okay all in favor please say aye we didn't make a motion yet i don't believe we've yet had a motion i'm sorry would someone like to make a motion sure

2:37:07i'll move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito approving the borrowing of funds for fiscal year 2017-18 and the issuance and sale of 2017 tax and revenue anticipation notes second okay a motion by lyman seconded by uh uh pardue okimoto all in favor please

2:37:30say aye any opposition any abstentions motion carries unanimously with that we move on to item 7c which is an update of management in confidential employee it's a resolution and [Music] we're supposed to adopt a resolution modifying salaries benefits and conditions of employment for management

2:37:56and confidential employees i've been notified that i need to make a statement at this point based on new state law which re makes this requirement of cities but not of themselves but so i'll read that statement right now before the city council considers taking

2:38:18action on the management and confidential employee resolution we are required by new legislation to announce that the city council is considering approval of a modification of the resolution for city management which impacts the city manager assistant city manager

2:38:37department directors division managers and other management and confidential employees the resolution provides for a three percent cost of living increase okay so with that we'll open the item is there a staff report yes your honor thank you i'm karen pinkes assistant

2:39:00city manager um as you already noted um this resolution modifies the salaries benefits and conditions of employment for management and confidential employees who are currently unrepresented and they are governed by resolution of the city council so unlike a memorandum of understanding for

2:39:21other bargaining units this resolution serves as that same type of document for unrepresented management and confidential employees um the last time this was adopted wasn't or modify i'm sorry modified was in 2015 and so this small summary of changes that are in the

2:39:40resolution um includes the changing of the control points for all of the represented classifications to reflect the three percent cost of living increase that mayor abelson just referenced it also adds an additional cost of living adjustment for the next fiscal year 2018-19

2:40:00of three percent so unlike some of the past resolutions we are requesting that the city council provide essentially a two-year resolution for cost of living adjustments for these employees and then there were some modifications to language including clarifying benefits

2:40:16for employees in a non-pay status a modification to language providing for vacation cash outs so that we don't run into a constructive receipts issue with the irs and including recently updated classification amendments that the city council has previously approved so i am

2:40:35available for any questions that you may have on this matter thank you any questions this side no okay so emotion make a motion are there i'm are there they're uh public speakers yeah sorry i forgot to let you know it's just one thank you so uh okay justice so good evening again

2:40:58council uh cordell headley richard i was doing my research online uh about the positions uh throughout not only el cerrito above richmond but and the reason i say this because is because i had a conversation with a with some students and they and i asked them they say what would you like to see

2:41:16like you know in a different part of elsewhere and this and the majority of it says like you know jobs and it says specifically uh they talk about like you know government officials uh uh who are who are who are i whoever the uh the knowledge and the know-how about

2:41:31what goes on in politics so i think that you should adopt this resolution is because we we like we have i saw what i read the the packet uh earlier uh i figured okay more uh these positions are there that might they might change they might increase so who knows so all i can say

2:41:51is that uh i hope that you can adopt this resolution and uh that's all thank you that's yes that's it okay um then um so a move to approve the resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito establishing salaries benefits and conditions of employment for management and

2:42:12confidential employees effective july 1st 2017 and we're sending resolutions 2014 22 and 20 15 71. i second that okay um so we're now ready to vote all in favor oh first of all the motion was made by pardo okimoto seconded by f fidelity and uh all in favor please say aye aye

2:42:40aye any opposition uh any abstentions motion carries unanimously that takes us to item eight on the agenda uh city council local and regional liaison assignments so we're just looking now for ones that haven't already been handled one way or another yeah i have an update

2:43:02the arts and culture commission they will be reviewing the artist and registry applications that they had received there was a selection panel that interviewed artists and we will likely see a final decision for the artist in june or july and just as a reminder that's for the

2:43:25artists that would take materials from the recycling center and make art from it i joined mayor abelson last night at the centennial committee meeting and we will be adding more meetings and we will be ready for our big bash which will begin on the 14th of september lasting until the 17th which

2:43:54will be our special dinner at the berkeley country club um thanks for saying that again should i go now if you have something after my boo um yet the tree committee is uh going to be planting a for the centennial a tree at the north entrance in the south entrance of the city of el

2:44:23cerrito and details of that will come soon so we can join that activity and they may decide on a city tree that will come to the city council probably an oak of some kind thank you i mean i have two to report on last week i went to the crime prevention committee to report out on our

2:44:43activities and was participated in some of the public feedback that was from the el cerrito people power with regards to increasing or strengthening our sanctuary city policies uh i did suggest that the crime prevention committee is not a policy committee so they may be going to the human relations

2:45:11commission uh to to work on that um and they worked on uh national night out which is coming up on august 1st uh so they worked on that um i also went on a report out that on the 8th of june i went and represented us on the recycle more agenda there was certainly

2:45:34a large presentation about some of the enforcement actions that are going on at the composting facility however it looks like the compost facility has changed their process and is potentially more successfully composting at the right temperatures without air emissions

2:45:51without odors so it looks like the the facility has adequately addressed the complaints that they were getting in last fall we did pass the budget the budget does rely on a rate increase we will be considering the rate increase in november for next calendar year

2:46:13the proposed the staff recommended rate increase was relatively small about i think it's six cents per household per month roughly um so it's it's a very small rate increase uh but that's that was just their recommendation during our budget process we'll we'll take up rates in november

2:46:36and lastly at the recycle more we are meeting on saturday july 8th a special meeting from nine to one to talk through the joint exercise of powers agreement which is the bulk of talking about how the cities get along going into the future with regards to the services that

2:47:03recycle more provides the various cities and who belongs and who doesn't belong and how many voting members there are so there is an extended special meeting on saturday july 8th okay and i think all of my things were covered by somebody else yeah sorry one other

2:47:25mr mr fideli reminded um me but i'm going to toss it over to ms pardue okamoto loving day did you want to give a shout out about loving day so we had our second annual loving day celebration here at city hall and in front of city hall and it was a really great day we had great weather

2:47:49we had hot dogs this time the people that ran the hot dog truck were very friendly we had some buttons that we made for the kids and it really turned out to be a very great day and we're looking forward to planning our third annual celebration thank you okay with that we are adjourned until our

2:48:14next meeting which is not on the 4th of july it will be on july the 18th at 7 00 o'clock in this room thank you all for coming and for um being here for everything for the whole evening and i think it was a good meeting thank you you