Regular City Council Meeting July 18, 2017

0:00:00council of cardinal handler richmond i have three things that i'm going to say uh and there are a minute i'm going to take a minute each so if you recall last month when we had the group here to talk about the senior center i feel that it's very important that the senior center

0:00:12should stay open because that you can't find no other place that have like hot meals um socializing and other things so that should stay open and then number two if you recall a couple meetings back that um that i had submitted some um some papers uh to show you how how how

0:00:30much cost um and to have a business in el cerrito i find them extremely uh high alright and all in albany that this for a space is like close to ten thousand dollars nobody cannot afford that on a fixed income so that's number two and then number three i will bring some

0:00:48flyers um next time or or whenever the next city council meeting will be i'm going to show y'all a new it's going to be a musical called cabaret so i'll bring some next time so i'm gonna pass it on to the next speaker thank you um cheryl did you know that's not working

0:01:10oh i'm sorry good evening uh council members mayor abelson and city manager based on your april 18th resolution in which you lifted the ban for commercial marijuana dispensaries in our city i actually conducted a petition drive and collected 398 signatures from business owners

0:01:38homeowners patients of business establishments and workers within our city to urge you to reverse your decision and continue to ban outdoor growth of marijuana and to ban all commercial activities including youth cultivation sales testing and packaging of marijuana and marijuana

0:02:00related products in our city and also to regulate indoor growth of marijuana within our city so i'm here today to deliver that petition and some of the signers actually left their email addresses for you to kindly let them know for the upcoming meetings related to the subject matter

0:02:20and i know that uh some people have concerned about the community center i read it they say on the agenda so since i mean within the time period i just thought that after i used that service before i wonder whether it could be part of the senior housing building that's going to

0:02:35be built next door and in terms of the library i thought i have is that whether we want to hire someone who is a fundraiser to help us raise the money because i think we do need a new library that's it thank you thank you al miller followed by dave weinstein and

0:02:54kathy bleyer good evening mayor lyman i mean mayor abelson uh council members and staff i'm here to uh give hopefully draw some attention to the el cerrito relay for life actually it's the east bay relay for life which will be held at cerrito vista park from 10 a.m

0:03:16saturday morning through 10 a.m sunday morning various groups of individuals form teams they commit to have a walker on the track 24 hours the object is to raise money to support cancer research if any of you would like to take part but you're not able to attend

0:03:39if you visit kathy glenn at glen frame shop on stockton avenue right across the street from well-grounded coffee and tea the step-by-step team will be happy to take your contribution and deliver it to the relay for life i would also like to thank the west contra costa unified school district for

0:04:01filling the potholes on the driveway between fairmont elementary school the library and the senior center what used to be six eight inches deep or now maybe a half three quarters of an inch deep and it looks like they plan on doing some more repair on that road

0:04:18thank you mayor and uh city council um dave weinstein i'm speaking as the newly installed uh president of the el cerrito historical society i want to um really thank rich barkey the outgoing president who founded the society in approximately 1975 and served so very many years as

0:04:44president as the new president i'm trying to do more i want the historical society to do even more than we have been doing which i think is saying a lot because i don't think any other group in town for example has put on as many centennial events as we have i would like to say

0:05:00about the recycling event tomorrow that it represents two birthdays for the recycling center it represents 45 years since july 1972 when it was founded by volunteers and it represents 40 years since 1977 when the city of el cerrito took it over as an official city

0:05:19program and it's a great recycling center it'll be a great program i also want to say that i have distributed to the council and uh it will be available outside in various spots this el cerrito centennial timeline we had wanted originally to do a whole book about the

0:05:35history of el cerrito but we did a timeline i would also like to suggest that the city pay some attention to the timeline and to the various other documents that the historical society has published oftentimes i'll be in some city i'll walk into city hall and i'll

0:05:51say do you have any information about the about the history of your city sometimes they'll say yes sometimes they'll say no it would be nice if the people who work in this building say yes and direct people um to this document because it really is pretty good and we're hoping to have a uh

0:06:08more publications over the next year about the city of el cerrito so thank you very much and uh see you later thank you okay and our last speaker at this time is kathy bleyer mary ableton council members thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight some of you know me as a member

0:06:29of the el cerrito tree committee but i am here as a concerned citizen tonight i am however here to talk about trees anyway and i just really want to emphasize to this council the need to develop a more robust set of ordinances that protect our urban forests and the

0:06:45city trees i was unfortunate enough to res to recently see not too far from my house on the way home another example where a landowner property owner had basically chopped off three quarters of four adult trees on the parking strip basically dooming them they will die

0:07:05it was being done not by a professional or arborist of any any sort there was another one in the block and back of me where they did the same thing and the benefits of our trees and the inves investments they represent are really well documented i've given you some examples in the um

0:07:21in the handout in front of you water quality is a big one air quality climate carbon sequestration really well documented studies on how trees big trees not chews at the top the tops chopped off enhance property values enhanced business districts etc so there's lots of information about

0:07:43there but i fear that our ordinance is in place and if you look on page two there's a brief summary of what we have they're just not very clear they do explicitly say that people are not supposed to damage or kill those trees but they're a little fuzzy about who might require trimming and under

0:08:03what circumstances so we've had a tree inventory in this city we've have an excellent report which needs to get up on our website from davey tree assessing using the latest you know uh analytics to look at the the benefits from trees in el cerrito um really we have over ten thousand

0:08:25trees with annual benefits for all the things i mentioned of one point three million dollars for every the analysis was done on what we spend to maintain them for every dollar spent we get four point three dollars in benefits these are this is green infrastructure it's important

0:08:42to protect it and so i know that the city the public works has a new staff person who started to work on this i just want to really encourage if that doesn't move along expeditiously or if the if the city needs more help contract help or consultants to do that that we really do that and so we need a

0:09:01stronger ordinance we need to lay out the values of these things we need to think about fines penalties mitigation there's also a lot of research and examples of that you see some of those in front of you it's kind of a typical thing that you know a good tree nine inches like the

0:09:18ones i have a picture of you cutting would be worth 500. that's easy i mean i there's something here that says 53 dollars per inch and then a different example from oakland of 477 those just happen to actually equal exactly if you took 9 inches and multiplied it by 53 you're all

0:09:36that's the ballpark of what these trees are worth and how how much someone should be paying and then how many trees they should be replacing if they cut them down so along with that i'd like to see more education in a way to just communicate just a flyer or something and something

0:09:54everybody receives to say these are the benefits this is what you should not be doing to the trees on the parking strip and public trees and um you know this works to the benefit of the community to protect these things thank you you're welcome that completes uh public comment on items not on the

0:10:14agenda yes thank you and thank you to all who spoke okay with that we will move on to item number four on the agenda which is adoption adoption of the consent calendar items 4a through 4d i'll move uh items 4a through 4d which consists of the approval of our minutes

0:10:40amendments to the city classification system metropolitan transportation commission one bay area uh grant for cycle two program funding and the economic development committee appointment i'll second okay there is a motion by lyman seconded by quincho all in favor please say aye

0:11:00any opposition any abstentions motion cares unanimously thank you with that we'll move on to presentations and the first one is on homelessness homelessness i can't speak tonight in contra costa county and i'm sorry i can't are you just you're the speaker sorry i'm sorry

0:11:28sorry about that i'm jamie jeanette i'm with contra costa county health housing and homeless services otherwise known as the county homeless program thank you for coming i'm happy to be here um so tonight i'm gonna give sort of a brief snapshot of what we know about homelessness in our county

0:11:44and then i'll talk a little bit about some of the big systems change we've been doing i've included many more slides than we'll go through tonight just so that you have them as a resource there's a lot more detail in there than we'll have time for tonight but as i go if you have

0:11:57questions feel free to stop me but i i will be moving pretty quickly so every year in contra costa we do something called a point in time count which is um literally just a snapshot of one night in late january and every community in in the united states does this

0:12:19most communities only do it every other year and we've decided to do it every year so we have volunteers that go out to places like loaves and fishes and and our service sites we also do an inventory of everyone that's in the shelters and transitional housing that

0:12:31we know of we know that this number is a you know probably significant under count but it's a snapshot that we can kind of compare year to year so this last year in january on the 25th we counted a hundred and sorry about sixteen hundred folks that were literally homeless

0:12:49so those are people that are living in places not fit for human habitation this does not count people that are doubled up this doesn't count you know four or five families living in one apartment these are people that are not in any type of housing of that we see

0:13:05of there about 57 of of um people are unsheltered in that count and then the rest are in some sort of shelter or transitional housing and about 30 percent of the folks that we counted were homeless for the first time identified during this count we counted about 84 families again we

0:13:25think that's a pretty significant undercount but this is what we were able to capture and that included about 160 miners so children under the age of 18 that were living not in a place fit for human habitation and a couple other just snapshots about 86 percent of the veterans that we

0:13:41identified had been homeless for at least a year and then there's a little bit with in terms of population characteristics again this is all self-report data and it's often just like a stranger asking them questions so this is likely again an under count but a data point that we

0:13:55have this is a little bit hard to see but one thing that we were able to determine this year is if we look at all of the single adults that are homeless in contra costa and we look at the number of shelter beds we have we only have about 40 percent of the shelter capacity

0:14:09that we need throughout the county and that's just for single adults that's not counting families and then the bar graph on the bottom shows you imminent risk we asked folks if they um if they weren't literally homeless if they felt like they were in jeopardy of

0:14:23losing their housing within the next two weeks and so 23 of the people we surveyed consider themselves in that situation so one another point that i thought was very interesting is we asked we always ask where did you last where were you last housed and i think there's often a

0:14:40narrative that everybody's coming from somewhere else and what we saw that is about 80 of the people surveyed actually lost their housing in contra costa county these are our community members that are homeless they're not coming in there's about 20 coming from other places um but a lot of

0:14:55folks are homegrown and losing their housing in the communities for in many cases in the communities that they grew up in so just to look at el cerrito quickly um so we also looked at for each community how many people we identified that were homeless and then how many people said that they

0:15:14were last housed in that community so for el cerrito we counted 11 people that were homeless and again there's probably more but that's what we saw in that night and then all the people we surveyed five people who were homeless said they lost their housing in el

0:15:27cerrito so you can just kind of see and you know you have a copy of these slides so you can look look later but that just gives you sort of a picture about where people are losing housing and then one other piece to look at is we have city level trends so from 2015

0:15:432016 2017 looking at the numbers of people identified in each of those communities so for el cerrito 2015 there were 30 people identified or counted 2016-13 this year it was 11. so that's a downward trend which reflects what we're seeing sort of overall in the county

0:15:59that there's generally a downward trend that's a minor about a seven percent decrease overall um and again this is another way to show what's happening in west county so you can see the trends of um over the three years so for el cerrito the numbers have gone down you know for

0:16:17a lot of these communities the numbers are so small it's hard to tell but you can see richmond sort of has the lion's share of folks that are homeless in this community in west county so that was the warp speed data any questions about that okay so i'm going to spend a little bit

0:16:35of time talking about okay so what are we doing about this situation what's happening in the county um and i'm going to talk about something called coordinated entry which is a term you're going to hear more and more over the coming years and this basically means what it sounds like which is we

0:16:50are coordinating in our community people's entry into homeless services and this is actually coming from hud so housing and urban development the federal government which funds most of the homeless services in communities has recognized that many communities look like this right there's

0:17:08all these great organizations that are all doing great work but they're all kind of these little islands and people searching for care or you know concerned community members or other providers are trying to figure out how the heck do i connect somebody so for a long time

0:17:23people have just been sort of ping-ponging from provider to provider it's very frustrating it's not very efficient so what we're doing in our community and other communities are doing this as well is moving to something like from the left where you have this precious

0:17:36resource in the middle and everybody's trying to figure out how to get there not very effectively to something where there are some clearly identified entry points people are assessed and referred and connected appropriately so right now just looking at our shelter

0:17:52system we have about 500 shelter beds in the community and about 900 people in any given night that needs shelter we have not had a way to prioritize the most vulnerable people for housing right so if you're for shelter so if you're looking at the person who's green they

0:18:07could be 65 years old congestive heart failure sleeping on a park bench for 20 years and maybe there's a light gray person who's 18 they just got kicked out of their house they have a car they have a job they're just homeless recently and they're in good health

0:18:21the way the system has been set up is that the gray person could actually get a shelter bed before the green person and that's a problem because we have people dying on the streets every year in our community and we we can't have that um we recognize that there's not enough

0:18:35capacity to serve all the needs of everyone that's homeless so the system is really moving towards a way to identify and prioritize the most vulnerable for services first so this part technically hasn't rolled out yet but it's coming about how to prioritize people for

0:18:52shelter i won't go into great detail but this just sort of explains the different buckets of resource that exist in the homeless system of care so prevention is basically to keep people in their housing if they are at risk of becoming homeless but they're not homeless yet

0:19:08diversion is if somebody's fallen out of housing we're trying to help keep them out of the shelter system so helping them identify another safe place that they could live a friend a family member even if it's somewhere far away that's a better alternative than the

0:19:21shelter i'm going to spend a little bit of time so we have some new outreach teams in our community so core outreach i don't know if any of you have heard this term about core outreach coordinated outreach resource and engagement teams and there are actually five teams now in

0:19:39the community that are the idea is that they are really building relationships with the most marginalized and and folks most on the fringes so that they are able to start getting people connected into medical care into behavioral health care into shelter starting to get them connected in if

0:19:57they're not quite ready maybe to come into shelter but they need some support these teams are out there trying to connect with people and then we also have care centers there's three care centers in our community these are brick and mortar sites where people can physically walk in and get

0:20:14care so showers food start to get connected into some case management and connection to other services so shelters as i said we have shelters for single adults families and then we have medical respite shelter services are provided some by the county and some shelters are run by non-profit agencies

0:20:37and then we have a little bit of transitional housing in our community but not very much and that's really for specific populations it's not permanent housing it's usually services and housing for a fixed period of time but the idea is that they would be moving on from that hud has really

0:20:54moved away from funding these kind of programs recognizing that permanent housing is the solution to homelessness some populations might need some transitional programs but it's fairly small fairly small number and then when we think about housing resources there's two sort of buckets

0:21:11that we talk about rapid rehousing is for folks that have sort of hit a speed bump but with a short amount of service and rental assistance they can get back on their feet permanent supportive housing is for folks that have longer term challenges folks need to be permanently

0:21:31disabled to get into permanent supportive housing and this is services plus rental voucher for their lifetime so that's sort of the two different buckets of housing resource so i'm not going to spend a huge amount of time on this part but this is just a picture a snapshot of the way that we've

0:21:51what we've added or changed in our system so one big change is that we now have three points of entry for homeless services instead of that you know c of a million providers there's three ways to access homeless services you can call 2-1-1 24-7 and they won't necessarily be able to

0:22:11solve your housing problem but they will be able to do a pretty thorough assessment and figure out who to connect you with care centers are the brick and mortar sites where people can physically walk in and then we have the court outreach teams and ideally through one of those

0:22:27three portals people will get connected to the resources and the services that they are needing to get into permanent housing and i will say as i'm sure you are well aware and i know you talk about affording affordable housing quite a lot we are in a huge housing crisis

0:22:44in california and particularly in the bay area so this permanent housing ends point that we're all going for is increasingly hard to get people to but that is our ultimate goal so i won't spend a lot of detail on this you all can look at these at your leisure one thing i will say is that the

0:23:05two on one is the portal to get to the core outreach teams so i'll just spend a little bit on the core outreach team so these as i said they are basically trying to connect people that are in encampments living in cars connecting them in with with resources they're also right now for the county

0:23:25shelters the core teams are the point of entry for that and then also for a warming center that i'm going to talk about in a minute um so we think i have a slide let me just see okay i don't think i put it in so we have um for the core teams there are actually a number of cities now that are

0:23:43sponsoring their own core teams so we have three teams that the county pays for to cover the entire county so to our daytime one is night time obviously that's not going to meet the need for the entire community martinez and pleasant hill have paired together and they're funding a core team

0:24:02that is just covered covers their jurisdiction and then martina sorry walnut creek and concord are their team is about to launch i think in about a month so those teams are all working with the same protocols they're managed by one manager but communities are now able to fund a team

0:24:21that's just in their jurisdiction and many communities are finding it makes sense to split between two cities you don't really need somebody 40 hours a week just in your city but it makes sense for them to split between two so that's something that i'm happy to talk about um

0:24:35more tonight or a little bit later on one of the other things these teams can do is housing assessments so we have now evidence-based tool that we use to assess somebody's vulnerability and then prioritize them for housing and so these teams have the capacity to do those

0:24:51assessments in the field if somebody doesn't want to come into a center this is a little bit about the care center so in west county the center right now is in san pablo at 1515 market street and then we have two in central county um top priorities getting one in

0:25:05east county so you'll notice there's a gap there so this is actually pretty exciting so this is a new resource that we've added into our community so something called a warming center and the best way to to describe the difference between a warming center and a shelter is that a

0:25:20warming center is chairs and shelters beds right so to get a new shelter there's a whole bunch of permitting and whatnot this is a way to have people have a warm safe dry place that's out of the elements overnight this is actually night by night people are accepted so for the county shelters

0:25:39once you get a bed you have it for 120 days if you want it for the warming center it's night by night and the core teams are actually assessing people as they encounter them to see if it's a good fit for who's in the shelter that night i mean sorry for who's a good fit

0:25:52in the warming center that night but the idea is in the morning then they're getting a warm hand off to a care center to start to get connected in with services so the one that we're piloting right now is in concord and the idea is eventually we would like to have all of the care

0:26:07centers be have warming centers at night um care capable is just sort of like a satellite um so these are like for net for right now monument crisis center they don't serve exclusively homeless population but they do see a lot of folks that are homeless or at risk so

0:26:22they help do warm handoffs to care centers one other piece we've added in our community is housing navigation services so we actually have four staff that are located throughout the county and their whole job is to help people fill out housing applications look for

0:26:39units coach them on how to talk to landlords and actually take them to meet with landlords another resource that we're adding in our community we're actually building this actively so when folks are trying to figure out well what can i do about homelessness in my community

0:26:55one option is to donate to the housing security fund so this is a fund that's designed to help with some of those low-level speed bumps that can help that can really keep people out of housing so you know you may have a housing voucher but you need to find a unit and you're

0:27:09applying for five units and each one of those has a credit check and an application fee and if you don't have a steady income that can actually really be hard to come by you may have your rent mostly paid for but those expenses can really be a barrier also there are landlords that may be

0:27:23interested in renting to somebody who's homeless but they may feel a little unsure about it and sometimes the idea is that this can offer a little extra security deposit that would come back into the system but just as an incentive for landlords so we're still in the phase of building

0:27:39this it doesn't exist yet it's the money's not being disbursed but we're actively building this fund so that will be a resource as well um i won't go through that piece so again i just wanted to mention a little bit about the city or department-funded core teams another

0:27:55thing about the core teams is they're really the access point for shelters so that can be a big selling point and also for the for the warming centers and the they are developing close working relationships with police departments so that the police are freed up to do

0:28:10public safety work this is just a quick snapshot of the implementation timeline of all these big changes so the first box is all done which has been a huge undertaking next phase is to really look at doing clear screening for prevention and diversion and connecting people well to

0:28:29those resources there's not very much of that available but it's somewhat available and then the big push hopefully in the fall is to centralize shelter placement and having the most vulnerable people going into shelter first so that's a big undertaking with a lot of work behind the scenes but we're

0:28:45working towards that that was a warp speed i know that was a huge amount of information so i'm happy to take any questions or back up and explain anything you have questions about in more detail how much is the county currently spending on all of these programs put together

0:29:05that's such a good question so the funding streams for homelessness gets a little complicated so hud funds a lot of this coordinated entry project actually most of that is hud funding the county contribution is really mostly to administrative staff so i think it's maybe two million that

0:29:27the general fund from the board of supervisors goes to county homelessness but there are i'm trying to remember exactly i think it's about 16 million dollars from hud that goes to housing programs then there's also esg funds and cdbg funds um so i don't have exact

0:29:45numbers but i can get that for you good thank you yeah thank you so much for coming absolutely so important and we have to act regionally on this or it doesn't happen and is your effort now to go to talk to all the cities in the county to say we need more of these

0:30:05centers or to coordinate better i mean what i mean what's the big picture what's the big picture it's a great question so we we have been going um to cities as they've been interested we haven't and we've talked so we've talked at um mayor's conference i believe and

0:30:21i've i've spoken to the police chiefs there's a meeting of the police chief so we've we've been sharing this information and then doing more in-depth presentations as people are interested um i think the core teams is one of the first opportunities where there's been

0:30:36an easy way for a city to help tangibly contribute around homelessness it can be really hard you know people always say well why doesn't everybody build housing as you know it takes a huge amount of money from a bunch of different streams and it's not really the county or the

0:30:51cities aren't exactly in the business of building housing but some of these and one thing i'll say too about the core teams is in the contracts with cities as they as they fund core teams a chunk of that contract actually goes to the housing security fund so that as people are

0:31:09identified in those communities there's an easier process for them to get into housing okay so you're notifying us educating us about potential future needs and policy making to see if we want to participate in some way so thank you for that and is this a a model of best practices that you've

0:31:30taken from somewhere else in the country this process it's very interesting so contra costa in homeless services tends to be on what i kind of call the bleeding edge so we are actually in the front of the pack on implementing um a lot of this coordinated entry work so

0:31:46what's been very interesting is we have the system almost totally built and we've been you know using consultants from a bunch of different places and looking at other communities that are a little bit ahead of us what we've seen is a lot of communities have sort of rolled stuff out and then

0:31:59gone back and tweaked it um and and we think that we're we're in a good place and now hud is coming out with some guidelines about sort of their models and we're seeing that what we've what we've set up is actually pretty close to what the federal government is wanting

0:32:11to see in communities okay um and you mentioned that we only now have 40 percent of the need to provide shelter is that better or worse than say over the last 10 years that's a really good question i don't know if we've really looked at that data in that particular way and i can check

0:32:32with our evaluator and see if she has data from from years past and one thing on the graph you sent on the various cities the richmond story tell me why what is the lesson that we see dramatic drop in homelessness in richmond that's a really good question so one thing that we have

0:32:50seen um so three years ago the point in time count um or sorry in 2016 what the point in time couch showed from 2015 to 2016 was a huge shift eastward and what we saw in this last year was that things spread out a little bit more and part of why we think that's happened is that in

0:33:10east contra costa we had a care center and ironically it was being there were too many people that needed services there and the site actually couldn't handle didn't have capacity to safely handle that many people so it needed to close and so a lot of folks we think shifted back to

0:33:24central county but overall what we're seeing is sort of an eastward shift so i think that's part of what's happening with richmond and as those as those rents are continuing to increase people are just moving eastward we're seeing this sort of around the bay area right from san francisco to oakland

0:33:40from oakland to contra costa within contra costa to east county and san joaquin's numbers actually look higher than the year past so movement and that gets to my last question um kind of one of the problems in dealing with homelessness is that if you provide services more calm

0:33:58is it can you talk about that for a couple of seconds sure regionally it's easier and better if we're all participating yes but if the city provides more do you find from experience that that will mean more homeless will come to our community that's a really good question

0:34:13that comes up a lot um how would i answer that i mean i think part of what we can have seen with the warming center and the and the care centers is that our core teams are bringing folks to these sites but people tend to have what i can tell you is that when people are

0:34:33homeless they tend to stay either in the community they grew up in or they have a community and they tend to not move where they're sleeping so they may come to another community for services but i tend to go sort of back to sleep in you know their encampment with the

0:34:49group of people that they're with so depending on sort of how the count goes it may look like more people on a certain night or another but i don't know that providing services necessarily increases your homeless population in a in a real way um it may be sort of depending on when services

0:35:06are open and whatnot but people tend to go back to the communities where they are from or where they have all of their belongings better to have the services than not absolutely because we see that there is a dramatic need for services thank you very much yeah i want to thank you very much uh

0:35:24miss jeanette for coming tonight and and uh build on council member fidelity's comments um are you aware that the grand jury put out a report in june of this year based on the pit data from 15 and 16. so they took a little longer to put their report together i mean and they strongly

0:35:41recommend they have very strong recommendations in here that you know for various cities and they are you have convinced them that the core teams are very good ideas as their number one recommendation and it does apply to el cerrito the city should consider establishing core teams either

0:36:01by partnering with one or more cities in the region or by funding its own team um so that that is something that we've already been the grand jury has already you know strongly recommend uh to uh to el cerrito um so i just wanted to you know make sure that that

0:36:18people knew that it dovetails nicely into some of the recommendations that the grand jury put together absolutely and one thing i just want to add about that is um i think we the core teams are fantastic at identifying people um but there is this bottleneck about housing right so it's

0:36:34great that the core team is out identifying lots of folks that need services but what a really very urgent need in our community is permanent housing um because you know you've sort of seen the bottleneck at the shelters and what we're seeing at the shelters actually is

0:36:49that um the folks that are coming in are actually much more vulnerable than what we've typically been seeing so we're really trying to figure out how do we keep this flow going and trying to think creatively about how to build different models of housing in different communities some communities

0:37:05it might be tiny housing for other communities that might be converting a you know hotel or motel but i think you know i don't want to lose sight of housing being the solution to homelessness which is the second recommendation the city should consider providing incentives for developers to

0:37:19construct housing for the extremely low very low and one that i haven't seen before is homeless populations um what what does housing for homeless population there's no economic i mean there's no economic uh category for that so how how is that being administered

0:37:38it's a great question so um and this gets a little out of my realm and i don't know if there's somebody that works specifically on housing in the county that can talk a little bit more about that but my understanding is that you can have set asides of of units for

0:37:52different populations um so for example one of the we have a number of people in our community that are homeless they've gotten what's called a shelter plus care voucher it's permanent supportive housing it's it's rent plus services and they have everything they need to lease up but they can't

0:38:08find a unit there are landlords that aren't they're not interested they want market rate they don't want to take a risk on somebody who maybe has extra challenges and what you could do is set aside units that would specifically be for that population thank you i have a

0:38:25a question that i think sort of goes back to where i come from which is arizona and in arizona at least the climate is a very strong factor in people's ability to survive outside and i'm wondering if that's true at all here um what i can tell you is we do have a

0:38:51few seasonal shelters that open up in the winter and like when we recently had our heat wave there are community centers that will open up as cooling centers we haven't had sort of summer seasonal shelters open up around the heat but it is a factor i don't think it's

0:39:09quite as dire as you know winters on the east coast or far north or summers in in arizona but we definitely recognize our the community they're not actually county run shelters recognizes that in the winter when it's cold and rainy um the elements can really kill people

0:39:27and the companion question that i have is has anyone actually looked at the impact of uh climate change on that issue that's a great question and i think i think the issue sometimes comes up around like the waterway so when we've had el nino and flooding i know that

0:39:49there were real concerns there's a bunch of encampments along the canals and we had outreach workers that were going out literally like practically pulling people out of the water because the rains happened and the water came so quickly um so apart from that i don't

0:40:04know it's a good question what can you was there any estimate of what the impact of what what that kind of i don't think there's been a formal assessment around that but it's a really good question because i do know that i noticed when the rains came so so heavily

0:40:25in um this last season and i happened to go up to sacramento on the train um you could see many people that look like they were uh in encampments and they certainly were not doing so because they wanted to do summer vacations they were doing so because they needed

0:40:49you know to survive absolutely and um it just made me wonder if there you know how much if you know if you can see it in that kind of a situation where else can you see it um realizing i think that probably the uh seeing it along the railroad tracks people may think that they've

0:41:08they're in a um hidden corner or something but yet they're you know they're not and came under the canals it looked very um um unsafe to me and like people's lives were really at stake because there was the rising water litter i'm talking about literally there was rising

0:41:32water not talking about is does water rise or anything i mean it what was rising in the extreme this last season and um i i just really uh wondered if that was a category that that sort of thing was a category that might be um evaluated and where some would for example just as

0:41:58off the cuff of somebody teams might go out searching for people that are in that situation and bring them into shelters yes that is actually what happened that is what happened yeah so they knew where some encampments were and recognized that they were actually in a danger zone and

0:42:15that people might not know that the water was rising as quickly as it was and they went out and specifically targeted areas where they thought people would be in danger and did they find people yep they did lots in large quantities small quantities i don't know i don't

0:42:27know um these core teams just got up and running formally in january which was right when the rains were really hitting so i think in a year we'll have even better data um but that is something that i think will be really interesting to track yeah and i know i was pretty shocked by

0:42:43what i was seeing just you know traveling to sacramento um are there any other questions from the council are there any questions from the audience we have one request to speak okay just says mike so again i'm cuddle handler richmond that was an excellent presentation that you

0:43:10just heard so when i was listening to what what there was what was discussed it was like it dawned on me i said i did not know that richard had the highest uh populat uh of homelessness in richmond i never have thought nets thought of that so i said oh and then not only we have a lot of

0:43:27veterans but we have a lot of you know youth in in our computer in our community and some of them have been you know like been either abused or who have not had a shelter like in so long so i figured this is an opportunity for uh for people to like you know be more compassionate because

0:43:44um of other things so that's all thank you okay well i would like to thank our speaker for coming tonight and i think we've learned a lot and is are there any next steps going on here i think we're continuing to work on our coordinated entry process and further refine it we have council on

0:44:09homelessness meetings every month and hopefully you all are getting notices if you're not i will make sure that you get on those lists and we also have quarterly community meetings um where we're actually having one coming up this next friday the 21st where it's more of

0:44:22a forum and community conversation the council meetings are pretty dry around administration of the system and whatnot but there's actually ensuring opportunity hosted a community housing forum on june 20th and there's a lot of conversation about developing a county-wide housing plan as i somebody

0:44:43said this is really a regional issue and county has a role and cities have a role but we also have to think as you can see you know there are things that are impacting entire regions and and it's shifting throughout the entire county so i think we're everybody's eager for a

0:44:59region-wide county-wide conversation about some of these issues well thank you very much absolutely okay with that we will move on to our next presentation which is on the draft 2017 county-wide transportation plan uh and that will be presented by matt kelly from the contra costa

0:45:21transportation authority thank you thank you mayor abelson and council members it's great to be here matt kelly once again with the contra costa transportation authority and proud resident of el cerrito so once we get the powerpoint going i'll thank you for mentioning that by the way

0:45:40sure always so i'm here to present the draft 2017 county wide transportation plan this is a plan that looks ahead 20 to 25 years out to the year 2040 and so i'll get into a little history of why we do the plan and what it's all about uh so why do we update the plan

0:46:02well this the plan is uh required under measure j measure j is the half cent sales tax for transportation here in contra costa county um it uh it was also required under the previous measure measure c uh it allowed us to the authority to refresh our transportation vision goals and

0:46:21strategies for the county the authority has a vision for transportation the county-wide plan has goals and and to help implement that vision um it allows us to incorporate new plans and regional forecasts so uh the the new plan that uh we incorporated here is the west county

0:46:42action plan for roots of regional significance which was worked on by your local transportation [Music] advisory board wictac and it also incorporates the planned bay area forecast from the mtc's regional transportation plan it also allowed us to uh take a look at or take a listen to

0:47:06what the public was thinking we did some uh extensive public outreach over the last couple of years and allowed us to incorporate that feedback into the plan so a little history so the the as i mentioned previously the uh the county-wide plan was required under measure c um

0:47:29that was adopted or that was passed back in 1988 uh you've since passed measure j in 2004 and we last updated the plan in 2009 so what's happened since then well in 2013 we started updating that action plan for roots of regional significance the west county plan and in at the end

0:47:53of 2014 uh the wic tech board i pointed to you because they meet at this uh at this uh deus here um adopted that plan and it was forwarded to the authority for incorporation into the county-wide transportation plan so we had a transportation plan uh going way back in 2014

0:48:16and uh we then did some major public outreach uh to kind of uh take the temperature of of of the public and how they were feeling about transportation um but then at the same time the uh mtc updated their county-wide transportation plan guidelines so our board said hey

0:48:34let's take a step back and uh see if we can incorporate uh the what we heard from the public and these new guidelines so what did we hear from the public well we heard that people want more bart better bart just more bart in general this is county-wide so people out in

0:48:53east county were wanting bart further out towards them and people in west county wanted bart further up i-80 so that is what prompted the west county high-capacity transit study that was just uh completed by the wic tech group this a few months ago people also wanted in alternatives they

0:49:14wanted better transportation for seniors and disabled they wanted more uh bike and pedestrian facilities safer bike and pedestrian facilities and ferry service which west county is getting uh about a year from now in 2018 out of the richmond uh ferry landing uh people wanted their roads fixed they

0:49:38want they want to get rid of potholes basically uh smoother roads they want less congestion smoother traffic so where they people realize congestion might not be going away completely at least if the traffic can be smoothed out less stops and starts at all the red lights and we think

0:49:56technology can uh can have a big impact on that people want all these things i just mentioned and they also want to protect the environment so better transportation at the same time better air quality and people wanted overwhelmingly better bus service more bus service

0:50:16more frequent service better connections between uh bus providers and uh increased technology to be able to harness that that service so back to the timeline 2015 we got the plan going again we had a second draft that we issued and then the state of california went and changed some rules around sequa

0:50:40they removed intersection and roadway level of service uh from uh sequa and uh replaced it with vehicle miles traveled it's a big complicated uh change there but it affected our action plans um because a lot of our action plans were rooted in level of service as

0:51:00their main metric so our board once again said hey let's let's pull back and see how we can incorporate this change and into the action plans in the county wide plan so we've spent about the last six months uh addressing that um with with the action plans so um and then

0:51:17measure x went to the ballot our board uh developed the trans transportation expenditure plan which turned into measure x which went to the ballot in november unfortunately didn't pass um but did actually pass over here in west county but countywide did not pass

0:51:34so after that our board said let's let's uh finish this county-wide plan and we can use that as a as a building block for the next expenditure plan uh if that happens which you know could lead to another measure going on the ballot in the future so here we are with the plan one one thing

0:51:54the plan looks at are travel trends uh locally and around the bay area so just looking at this uh graph right here the orange line you'll see is caltrain so that's across the bay on the peninsula caltrain is growing uh faster kind of per capita than than any other uh travel trend in the bay area

0:52:15and that's mainly due to the number of jobs over there the amount of congestion and the introduction of the baby bullet service on on the caltrain corridor which has been very popular the blue line under that is uh the amount of congestion on our freeways so when you get on the freeway that's

0:52:33that's the amount of uh delay you're experiencing um per capita so you can see it's it's going up uh bart ridership the green line is is has gone up over the years but has studied the last few years and has even declined especially on the weekends average commute time is is is increasing

0:52:53but not as high rate as some of the other travel modes and transit ridership which is including buses has been pretty steady uh here in contra costa this graph looks at uh the amount of delay that you folks are spending in your cars on the freeway this is the freeway system

0:53:17so a delay is is defined by trans travel at lower than 35 miles per hour for an extended period of time so you can see that starting in about 2007 things started to decline and that lines up right with the the recession things bottomed out in about 2012 when the recession started turning

0:53:42around and as you can see since then uh congestion is uh growing at a at a very high rate and probably will continue maybe not at that same trajectory but we expect it to grow over the years and one main reason why it will continue to grow is because our county is growing

0:54:04as as well as the region here um in contra costa county uh the state and abag expect almost 89 000 new new households to be constructed in the county uh between now and 2040.

0:54:21at the same time the number of jobs in the county will increase by almost 123 000 and this is good because in the past those numbers have been roughly equal and that's really contributed to the large number of workers that we as a county export to alameda county to san

0:54:39francisco and a lot of our county residents especially in the eastern part of county are going all the way to santa clara county so hopefully this will allow us over the years to keep more of our our workers local but we can't control where they go but we can try

0:54:57by providing more jobs uh so one major component of the plan is the investment program so um we are required to have a 10-year list of priority projects and a 20-year list of priority projects uh the rtp um which is a financially committed uh plan um and regional in nature is the 10-year

0:55:21plan so there's almost 3.7 billion dollars worth of projects for contra costa in that plan and those are all committed and accounted for then there's the 20-year list these are projects that are still seeking funding um and uh these are projects that were nominated for the rtp but didn't make it

0:55:39or were uh submitted as part of the transportation expenditure plan and measure x but because that uh sales tax measure did not pass those projects are still seeking funding um it's about 6.5 billion dollars in projects that if we are infused with uh funding somehow whether it be through another

0:56:03sales tax measure the recently passed sb1 that's a statewide measure or regional measure three which may be on your ballot next year which would be a toll bridge toll increase those those are potential ways of of funding that next set of projects this map it's a little hard to read but

0:56:26it really gets at projects that are under construction or completed those are the projects in red and then projects that are still seeking funding in blue so you can see over here in west county there are a lot of projects that have been under construction or completed but there's still a lot

0:56:44that are seeking funding including um interchange projects at um the the second phase of the um central avenue and san pablo dam road projects uh on i-80 as well as the hercules intermodal rail station up in up in hercules so the the county-wide plan is linked with the

0:57:09regional transportation plan and so a lot of our projects are regional in nature uh we will be seeking to fund the expansion of the regional express lanes um around the county um and around the region um a big uh priority in central contra costa is a rebuilding of the ie680 state route 4

0:57:31interchange if you've ever driven it you know it it's like a relic from the past um and uh over here the san pablo avenue bus rapid transit project which would span alameda and contra costa counties so some local projects uh that are on these two lists as i mentioned uh the

0:57:53early phases of central avenue and san pablo dam road interchanges are under construction um or about to be underway um richmond ferry service is is funded and we'll start as i mentioned in 2018 the hercules intermodal rail station and their ferry service parts of that are being funded in the

0:58:1410-year plan el cerrito del norte modernization the bart station that is about to go to construction i believe later this year or next year and our regional programs which fund uh paratransit safe routes to schools uh transportation for livable communities bike and ped improvements and bart

0:58:35access will be funded will be continued to be funded through the life of of measure j longer term projects that are seeking funding the west county high capacity transit study that i mentioned it has some some recommendations for uh extending bart up through the

0:58:55corridor as well as some uh express bus options uh those are on that list the sr4 i80 interchange which is also needs much improvement is on that list complete streets implementations all over west county san pablo and mcdonald avenue transit corridor improvements

0:59:19and completion of our local trails the ohlone trail the richmond greenway and others the bay trail included and then um improvements around el srido del norte bart station so improving the area the access and the infrastructure around the station um here's what the plan looks like it is

0:59:39in two volumes um and i'll let you read what's in there basically the the goals strategies the investment program and the implementation program are in volume one which is about a third of the size that it was before so we've saved a few trees this time around volume two has a lot of information on

0:59:59the transportation system so uh what do what does the average citizens commute look like how much time is spent and delay what are what is the greenhouse gas output in the county things like that um it has summaries of your west county action plan it has the project lists

1:00:16it has a project assessment of our large projects doing a performance assessment and an equity analysis so we can see what say the average commute looks like for the average contra costa citizen as well as our minority and and low-income populations around the county

1:00:41so comparing you know the equity between those those different uh populations and then uh there's a bunch of reports and plans that you can find on our website uh these are links and including the environmental impact report um one big uh part of the plan is implementation how do we implement this

1:01:02plan and one way we can uh you know meet the greenhouse gas goals of the state and our own goals is to [Music] encourage the use of alternate fuel vehicles and we do that by funding installation of electric vehicle charging stations around the county so we've been doing a lot of that over

1:01:24the years and we'll continue to do so um this slide i'm not going to get into it really but it it shows uh our greenhouse gas goals uh if if the state's current policies weren't in place we'd be on the red trajectory with their policies in place and with what our plan is doing we're on the

1:01:44purple trajectory uh the green trajectory is if we accelerated turnover of the vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and the line across the bottom is the governor's further goals for year 2050 which is reducing greenhouse gases to 80 percent below 1990 levels another way we'd implement this is

1:02:09is through technology and making the the transportation system more efficient that includes the express lane system around the bay getting our uh our highway system to be connected so that it's talking to the vehicles the vehicles are talking to each other and it allows for more efficiency on the

1:02:31highway system and the little uh red bus you see up in the upper right hand corner that's the easy mile shuttle that we're currently testing out in concord and we'll soon be driving around the bishop ranch business park in san ramon it's fully electric fully automated no

1:02:49driver no steering wheel no brake pedal um so we think it's a good solution for the first last mile problem around bart stations college campuses business parks etc it can transport a lot of people at relatively slow speeds uh very efficiently and then city 5.0 is our vision for the

1:03:10cities where the streets are talking to the cars the cars are talking to the signals signals talking back to the cars the streets know when the pedestrians and bicyclists are there the streets know when the transit vehicles are there and allow the transit vehicles to get

1:03:26through the congested traffic so i encourage you to go visit our website uh for the plan which is 2017 ctpdate.net you can go there and download all the the documents and uh residents can leave their own comments um on the website um we encourage that our cities and and partner agencies to

1:03:53um uh submit their comments directly to ccta so the plan has been out since the 24th and the eir has been out since june 16th the comment period for both closes on august 1st and we expect adoption at the authority sometime this fall so that's my presentation thanks for sitting through

1:04:13it and i can take any questions or comments hey are there any uh questions from council go ahead just three thank you thank you for this um three quick questions i have you you have central avenue down as a near term and it's you know it's been a near-term potential funding for a long time is it

1:04:36really oh the first phase the operational improvements uh are which affect the access to the westbound i-80 ramps on the weekends and moves that access to 580 will be happening with this year or 2017-2018 um the the bigger fix uh which will be um realigning the access uh to the to

1:05:04the shopping center the the pacific east mall over there and all the signals uh approaching the freeway that's still seeking funding and will be a longer term project but we think within the next 10 years that that will happen as well i'd heard there was there were big

1:05:21plans that were scaled back is that what you're you're talking about now well there were there was initially a huge plan to rebuild the entire interchange and that has definitely been scaled back to more operational um and uh you know okay thank you creation um some good news

1:05:38this week or yesterday on cap and trade in sacramento on extending that program and i guess the new york times today or yesterday had an op editorial about electrical vehicles and plug-ins what is the general policy of how you promote how you implement how you pursue

1:05:57greater electrical cars in our county well we work with our partners 511 contra costa and they work we we basically fund them and they work with our local business communities um you know office office buildings shopping centers in terms of placing uh in apartment buildings placing the

1:06:20charging stations around so it's kind of encouraging rather than mandating there is no man mandate yet no yeah but it's it's definitely encouraging and funding okay and and finally um you mentioned sb1 how did how does additional funding coming into the county how does it how

1:06:40does it change the updating of of this report well we think it's going to accelerate the funding of some of these projects generally generally for more projects is that right the local cities will be able to fund projects faster and that there is money for transit

1:06:56in there and there's different programs for congested corridors so we're going to be applying for all of that so not just roads but public transport oh yes oh yes thank you yeah i'm going to build right on top of that one here in el cerrito we have adopted a active streets plan that

1:07:15has some preference for level of service for pedestrian bicycles and buses and we last fall took on and adopted an active transit plan that had a tremendous number of projects that were well passed conceptual planning with with good budget estimates you know were those were those

1:07:36ideas and plans brought forward to the ctp are they in there is they are they part of this funding uh package that you're seeking yeah when i met when i showed that project list that was just the highlights there's a detailed project listing in volume 2 which has dozens more projects here in

1:07:53el cerrito and west county uh smaller improvements that you may be thinking about that have been studied over the years so yes there's a there's a whole lot more and there's these uh funding programs that basically there's a funding pot for bike and pedestrian improvements and as

1:08:12cities have identified those projects they can apply for that money excellent well we definitely have identified uh at least nine projects of that we would we'll be seeking funding for so thank you great thanks for being here mr kelly i have a couple of questions number one

1:08:31um you know i know my colleagues and i when we have to drive to central and east county for evening meetings we are stuck on gridlock in the morning and in the afternoon and now in the evening and weekends do you feel that if the hercules intermodal transit center were open and

1:08:51included uh the amtrak train stop would that help alleviate uh the gridlock in the hercules panel area on the i-80 you won't ever hear me say gridlock will be eliminated because i'm not a miracle worker but we do think uh that that that will if the hercules intermodal center has

1:09:17that train service we do think that will increase people's options for getting between uh west and central county and east county um you know the the the missing piece there is better bus service from the martinez station into the rest of central county but we hope

1:09:33that we'll be funding some major bus improvements along that spine as well but yes it may not relieve congestion but it will provide options okay thank you i have another question regarding um quick charging stations i see a lot of quick charging stations all over concord walnut creek pleasant hill

1:09:53danville and san ramon but we don't have many here in el cerrito are there grants available are there will there be future funds to provide that um you know i have neighbors are asking me when are we going to put a quicksarge quickstart charging station at the el cerrito plaza

1:10:14so we have a lot of interested people that would like to uh purchase uh green cars but uh they're concerned uh not having uh the infrastructure available in el cerrito right um so on the bart station properties i i would definitely work with your local bart director they they basically have to ask

1:10:34us for the money and and be interested it does require some you know installation of conduit and utilities and so forth um but we we do fund through 511 and we'll continue to fund that um we we just need people to approach us um so i encourage uh interested parties to go to 511 contra costa dot

1:10:56org and 511cc.org however our director is uh is working he's actually reaching out to through the dmv and through various other uh transportation entities in terms of making it when someone buys an electric vehicle that you're not just buying the vehicle you're also

1:11:22by the time you get the car home there's a crew at your home that has the the local permit the uh pg e permit whatever other permits are required and that installation happens immediately so it's it's kind of a complete package it's not just you've got the car now where do you

1:11:40charge it so that's one thing we think will make the transition a lot easier and you know lately bart has been horrible i've gotten a lot of emails from constituents asking when is this going to be done and when are we going to fix the del norte station and how filthy the the station

1:12:00is i'm wondering when the del norte station will start this modernization project i thought it was going to happen last year and and we're still waiting i thought it was going to happen this summer and and no one's telling us i'd like to find out from you if you have a date for

1:12:19us i believe i know it's this year i believe it's late summer august or september that they're going to start if that knows but um i i believe they are starting this year they they are getting the plans in place um so the bart did award that construction contract um for the modernization

1:12:43project early this earlier this year they're still kind of going through the submittal process so later this year or early 2018 is where they anticipate actually breaking ground so it's in contract it just takes a while to get things um actually moving thank you

1:13:01thanks yvette glad we have an expert here yeah and one more question um do you know when the ac transit double decker buses when that will be online and when el cerrito residents can take the g on richmond street to uh uh san francisco i do not know about the ac

1:13:18transit's schedule on that i wish i did i can get back to you though um i haven't received a presentation on that yet thank you i have a question about the um richmond ferry how often will it be running i believe the schedule right now calls for i believe it's four

1:13:37trips in the morning and four in the evening okay and then um the last some of the last slides you showed with the technology and and self-driving cars and cars that communicate with the streets what rings have read what or waves of red flag for me is uh cyber security around that um

1:13:59do you guys have a plan for that because that seems like a way you could mow down a lot of people if you got a hold of that information yeah you know we we aren't too involved in the technology but we are involved in the testing so we have we right now are administering a test ground

1:14:18in on the old concord naval weapons station out in concord it's full of roads railroad lines tunnels etc and right now we've got auto manufacturers out there testing there's big rigs out there testing there's that uh shuttle out there testing so right now they don't have a license to

1:14:37run on our city streets um so i i don't think that will happen for quite some time because they're not the technology isn't quite there to be out there you know mingling with pedestrians and bicyclists and and so forth but that technology is improving fast i mean i've

1:14:57i've seen the cars stop for pedestrians they it works it just has to be proven on a you know on a macro scale right i'm not as concerned about the technology i believe that the technology can evolve to the point where they can recognize pedestrians oh you're talking about that sorry i'm i'm more

1:15:13concerned about you know some foreign actor getting a hold of uh the controls basically and using it for their possible devious purposes yeah sorry i got a little sidetracked on that um like i said we aren't the ones developing the technology but i know that is a concern i can only say that

1:15:34it's a concern of everyone's and and certainly we wouldn't uh seek to promote something that we thought had that risk so i think we're going to be working closely with the companies the technology companies and the vehicle companies to make sure that you know that it's

1:15:52it's not half baked that it's ready to go by the time it's deployed thank you any other questions are there any questions from the audience um mr hindler so um i agree with some what um vice mayor quinto is saying i have written bart before and it is horrible i mean especially in the

1:16:19morning time it is like it is like traffic congested so and then also um i wish they put a 72r right out here in front of city hall because that's where the um mayor ableton all would be she'd be right there in front of the at the bus stop you know waiting for an r and i

1:16:35said we need to have more rapids right here in front of el cerrito because they just go pass through there and it's like they don't stop in front of city hall and i figured that's a shame because we have a lot of seniors here who are who need who can rely on the 72r because

1:16:49it's it's easier for them and then also it's right there in front of city hall so i'm thinking that this is an opportunity we need to have more buses that'll be like that can be in front of city hall you know like on a regular basis so i'm thinking that this is an opportunity this is a good idea

1:17:06and then also um i and i have written on the i have getting written on um in a car with traffic congested it is horrible especially like you know in the afternoon that's the worst time for that's the worst time to get out especially like during the afternoon time it's like horrendous so

1:17:24this is an opportunity so i make i mean i ride buses i ride trains and i have seen and and i have seen things you know out of sync so i'm thinking that with the technology coming in we will have more better buses and more trains and that's it thank you are there any other speakers

1:17:43on this no matter adam okay thank you very much for coming thank you i'm sorry okay you have okay i'm sorry uh when after you finished that that isn't actually okay okay what i wanted to say before i wasn't interrupted was that if after you speak if you could fill out a speaker

1:18:04slip if you don't mind but go ahead and speak that you now how much will they cost the city um as we are aging what happens if we have this bus running from one end of el cerrito to the other end and seniors can hop on it by grocery and go home so if we were to buy one how much would it

1:18:30cost to maintain and to buy it and then since you mentioned that they're still developing it can they make it crucial and senior sensitive i don't have cost information i would imagine it will go down over time if as we as we purchase more of them there's only two in the county right now

1:18:50and i'm sorry i don't know the price but they are definitely wheelchair accessible i was going to say i think i've seen you on once when i get to my report on the mayor's conference uh at the mayor's conference we actually went on a a tour of the uh concord naple weapons station

1:19:09and uh in fact we went on a ride on the shuttle and i went on the ride in the shuttle in my wheelchair so i can vouch for the fact it is accessible now and it just simply came that way so okay um the um let's see so i think that finishes that item thank you uh matt for your report i've

1:19:42lost track of where you went but uh somebody's still here i don't know there he is okay thank you for your report okay so with that we'll move on to the next item on the agenda and the uh next item on the agenda is a public hearing on the fire hazard abatement and it will be

1:20:08[Music] let's see presented to us by joe cagney and we're going to have we're going to follow this purple script here and we start out with a staff presentation and then we'll have questions from the council and i'll go on from there thank you good evening honorable mayor and city

1:20:35council members i'm captain joe ghani your fire prevention officer and i'm here tonight to provide an overview of the annual weed abatement program and introduce two resolutions the first resolution will be declaring el cerrito properties identified in the revised exhibit a as a fire hazard and

1:20:51public nuisances for the purposes of abatement the second resolution is ordering the abatement of the properties declared a fire hazard in public nuisances in the prior resolution these properties are also identified in the revised exhibit a this year i started inspecting

1:21:06properties of may 23rd and we came up with 120 123 initial properties were found to be in violation after working with property owners and conducting reinspections we are actually down to only 25 now and i'd say probably about 20 percent of those are in some transition and being

1:21:24within compliance we'll be continuing to work with the homeowners uh through the rest of this period uh to mitigate the violations and get them in compliance and obviously the objectives of the fire department are to reduce the fuels and the threat to the community and having zero abatements

1:21:41would be a win and i am here for any questions you guys may have any questions from the council so the the list that we have here you're saying we're down to 25 that's correct very good work i just want to say that in my own neighborhood i noticed about a month ago like people cleaning

1:22:04up and i didn't know why and i see that their names are on this list right so good work keep it up thank you i think a lot of the thing is an education thing there's been people who said that they get the letters and they feel like that's the reminder and so you

1:22:23know and we actually have a lot of new families moving into this community that aren't aware of the kind of stuff that we do to maintain the safety and it's just an education thing thank you and to that point i want to um i don't memorize the list from year to year but i as you know i do constantly

1:22:41ask what you know how many repeat offenders do we have and i have to say that um the king drive people look familiar but other than that it looks like it's a whole new list so the obviously the education is working right we actually have four each for there's four that

1:22:58were from the revised one of last year to this year and there was 25 on the revision list so i mean the same number at the same whittled down and there's a couple so yeah so so that obviously you know those four bad actors they probably if we went back two years and three

1:23:13years they'd be on those lists as well um but it it's clearly the education is working with the property owners and this is potentially just a representative of new property owners coming into our correct and we only abated two properties last year and we're hoping to bait zero this year

1:23:29right thank you rochelle um i just wanted to say that um there was certainly a lot of vegetation this year and i spent hours and hours pulling weeds in my front yard and finally i just hired someone because i just couldn't keep up with it and i'm really glad i'm not on the list

1:23:48[Laughter] i the question i would have is to to get on the list what's kind of the minimum that you could do wrong that would get you on the list well so we do a curbside inspection we we drive up and we're rolling through the neighborhood and we try to hit basically every parcel

1:24:11and we're basically looking for obvious things that would be a flammable or a threat to the the house or the the community itself right now there's a talk about amber cass and while the fight we could have a large fire potentially in the canyon we're worried about embers coming around

1:24:26to the houses and we're trying to remove the sources of fuels around your house that could potentially light your house off even though you could be you know quite a ways away from the main body of fire so it's it's uh we're basically looking for really dried out vegetation that's

1:24:42the main thing and looking for stuff on people's roofs you know just to clear them off how when you say i really dried out vegetation how tall well if you go with our standard it's over six inches okay okay so that's a pretty uh steep standard yeah well it's i mean if

1:25:05you think about it when we do the inspection six inches if it's not taken care of by the time we get around to actually dealing with it it could be double that or triple that it's much nicer not to have the fire absolutely thank you any questions okay um the um

1:25:29if i may make a motion uh i'd like to move a resolution of the city council the city of el cerrito where the oh let's see i see right here right there okay declaring that weeds rubbish litter and or other flammable material on certain real properties constitute a

1:25:46public nuisance acknowledging that we have a new exhibit a with only 25 names on it your second i second that okay um all in favor aye aye aye any um abstentions or objections hearing none emotion carries unanimously [Music] a motion by lyman seconded by um fidelity

1:26:16with that will [Music] open up the public hearing i'm sorry close conduct we will conduct the public hearing i guess uh so are there any questions i'm in a little trouble here are there any questions from counsel okay so now we're ready for public testimony uh there's we have one speaker it's carl

1:26:49mulligan evening council carl mulligan located in el cerrito um well 125 down to 25 i think is a good thing too um i want to just come here and express my concerns about the the language in this ordinance it's um i'm going to use a word that my wife told me not to use it's forceful

1:27:24it's using force against people on their private property to compel them to your will actually to the will of your employees so i have a question if one of your employees in a different department goes around town and says single pane windows are dangerous because someone could get their hand

1:27:40chopped off do you have the authority to go and put a list of say five thousand names five thousand properties that are against this are not in compliance and then force contractors or city employees to go on to that private property and abate that problem at the cost of the people and if

1:28:02they don't pay it and they say don't come on my property and i want you here to do this job what is the degree of force that you are permitting your employees to use on the private property of individuals who oppose this you talk about a resolution which you're

1:28:17just about to pass again or this next one which is adopt a resolution overriding objections by property owners now if you can override their objections in this case when when are you not able to do that you know like you can do it all the time it seems you could maybe say foundations aren't safe

1:28:38because they're cracked or they're sliding or something and your house might topple down on top of somebody who's walking by do you have the authority to compel private contractors onto the private property of other individuals and compel those people to pay the costs

1:28:54i don't know i'm just throwing this out there i i think that the language is extremely forceful um from a liability perspective who's responsible for the weed whacker who goes onto the guy's property and chops the neck off of someone else because he doesn't do his job right or he falls

1:29:09in a hole and there's just an accident who's liable for this is the property owner when you've entered the property or you've you've enabled another individual private contractor or your own city employees to enter that property against the will of the people so when does it end that's

1:29:25basically what i'm asking you what authority do you guys have in regards to trespassing and and where where are people's personal property rights in today's world thanks thank you are there any other speakers no i don't have any other requests to speak okay um are there any additional questions from

1:29:49the council sure uh i'll ask the question i mean obviously we have uh exercised this authority in in the years i've been on council and it's mostly for public safety and i'm just curious is there a state code or is it just local code that drives this so it looks like

1:30:11yeah there is a state there is a state law that authorizes um cities to undertake this type of corrective action and the procedure that is codified into the municipal code and that we follow here basically follows the state law that recognizes that the particular form

1:30:31of public nuisance that's at issue is of a sufficient um public safety concern that the city is allowed to with its own employees or with contractors to go on to the property and make the corrections and charge the property owners for that work for the overall public safety um now and i think

1:30:51it's also important to emphasize in this that there is as documented in the staff report and as the council is aware an extensive po an extensive noticing process to inform the property owners of the requirements of the code and their obligation to bring the property into compliance with the code

1:31:09and that the city will undertake the actions that are proposed to you tonight if ultimately a property the the vegetation on the property remains uncorrected after those multiple notices um so and this is all ultimately so that the public understands to ensure that properties remain sufficiently free

1:31:26of flammable materials um that an individual property does not become a fire hazard to the entirety of the city yes and and to that end um i know we have a high fire uh danger zone in the city and i know it's it doesn't some of the addresses that were on the original list

1:31:46were outside of that high fire danger zone and some of the most of the addresses that remain on the list are are appear to me to be in the high fire danger zone so i just wanted to find out do we treat the properties that are in the high fire danger zone with a different standard or

1:32:03a different amount of scrutiny and i know we have a hazard map and it's in the lobby uh but if you could just my understanding it's more or less from like norvell or richmond street uphill is that correct yeah that's correct good evening madam mayor members of the council i'm lance

1:32:23maples i'm your fire chief i appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight yes there there is a a certified very high fire hazard severity zone it's from naval air up is the best way to look at it across the city all of kensington all the way to wildcat canyon in our

1:32:38vegetation management standards that you'll see in your packet there is an attachment it talks about the homes that are in the very high fire hazard area zone as one area and then homes that are outside of it the standards are very similar but they do they do vary some

1:32:53great thank you if i could add too when when we talk about the abatement of these properties our goal has always been in the city um to use this as a upfront educational process um our fire prevention officers spend an enormous amount of time we we don't just mail letters and then and

1:33:10then call it good we knock on doors i would tell you before a property is abated the fire prevention officer has knocked on the door no less than 10 times if we have if we've had the ability to come up with any means of contact we've used it before we abate we put a sign on the property saying we're

1:33:29we put a stake on the property saying during this time period we'll be out with contractors to abate um one other thing to follow up on when we talk about liability of going on the property if we're using outside contractors they're bonded licensed insured contractors that do vegetation

1:33:44management thank you great thank you do anything else any other questions okay um is there a motion to close the public hearing make a motion removed second okay there's a motion by pardo okimoto seconded by quinto to close the public hearing all in favor please say aye

1:34:11in the opposition any abstentions motion carries unanimously and at this point we will do council deliberations any deliberations yeah right actually i'm gonna take this opportunity just to thank mr mulligan for coming and speaking tonight uh with regards to our

1:34:30private property owner's rights certainly for those of us that were here in 1991 and did see the oakland hills fire we know the importance of vegetation maintenance and it's not done lightly that we move this every year as just said by the fire chief we do spend an inordinate

1:34:51amount of effort trying to get the property owners to comply in some cases these are abandoned properties essentially with no one that's responsible for them and if the city did not step up they would there would be an undue hazard to the neighbors immediately adjacent we have

1:35:07had uh homeowners come and and basically say that we don't assess the penalties and we don't step in early enough and so so i just wanted to i think over the years i've asked for earlier and earlier intervention so that we don't have a vegetation in place as the high

1:35:32summer heat is in place and i i think we finally have struck a balance it seems that our our calendar of meetings in the summer it is where we make these motions so i i want to i thank you for coming tonight and and raising the issues of private property and private property concerns

1:35:52and hopefully our discussion and answers tonight um does begin to address your concerns okay yes yeah i i would like to just concur with councilman lyman um what he just said about our public witness but also in this town of where we have drought and eucalyptus trees

1:36:17it only takes one house one weed one match and i always wonder what is the extra service our fire department should be doing this is it and i want to thank our fire department for that i really it's wonderful knowing that they're going through this process and makes me

1:36:33feel very good and a little more secure in our community because we could have a disaster here thank you thank you any other comments okay point of point of clarification in this resolution the one that we're about to take there is blanks associated i think with the prior resolution do we

1:36:49need to know that resolution number at this time um i i can just fill it in but um i can just state that it would be 2017 56 is the one you just adopted right thank you okay so i think we're ready for a motion and a vote is there a motion a motion resolution of the city council

1:37:10of the city of el cerrito overriding objections by property owners and ordering the city manager or her designate to abate certain public nuisance nuisances pursuant to chapter 16.26 second okay uh there's emotion by quinto seconded by pardo okimoto all in favor please say

1:37:33aye aye any objections any abstentions motion cares unanimously so with that we'll go on to the next item passing that last one um so we're going to have an update and discussion on the next steps on the development of a new el cerrito library set up the presentation

1:38:16are you ready okay great so thank you mayor and city council i'm karen pinkus i'm the assistant city manager and i'm here with ben ironaga of group four architects who we've been working with as you probably remember since last year on a lot of the siting and costing

1:38:36issues with what we came up with for the previous ballot measure for the el stredo library what we're here tonight to do is essentially kind of go over a little bit of the background of how we got here and get some of your thoughts and direction on where we would like to do to move

1:38:54forward so you can see the agenda again we're going to talk a little bit about the project background what we've heard from the community since the ballot measure what we're going to do to move forward and our proposed next steps then we would have time for any public comment

1:39:09and then we'd bring it back to the city council for discussion and direction right so this is a little bit hard to see on the screen and i apologize but i do want to spend a little bit of time on some of the project background as to how we got here there's actually a lot of history that i

1:39:27think is not maybe very well known dating back to 2002 essentially when our research began not coincidentally this timeline also corresponds with my career here in el cerrito i began in 2001 and i have been working and actually the city manager's career here in el cerrito

1:39:46because this was one of the first things that we wanted to try to accomplish looking into this when we first got here again in 2001. so proposition 14 passed in 2000 that was a state library construction bond grant act and hundreds of libraries across the state were built using this grant money

1:40:08and hundreds actual maybe dozens i'm not exactly sure of the number that were actually left out of the process that qualified but did not make the criteria for funding in 2002 i actually began the research into this and attended a grant workshop and recognized right away that the city

1:40:26was not prepared to apply for a prop 14 grant those grants were very specific in their criteria they had a lot of various requirements such as a needs assessment a building program and essentially a very shovel ready project ready to go because the state was giving out

1:40:44multi-million dollar grants and they wanted to make sure that these were very viable projects and so we because several library projects including walnut creek for one um did not make the tooth out the prop 14 grant funding cycle already there was discussion at the

1:41:02state level of putting another ballot measure on the ballot which ended up being in 2006 so the best thing that the city could do at that point was prepare for that grant funding cycle and so um beginning in 2002 we started um the research and actually believe it or not

1:41:18we had the city paid for less hours than it does now and we worked with the library to bring it up to the current level status which as you know is going to be increasing very soon but that is back when we started working with county library staff very closely as far as programming and working on

1:41:36trying to do a new facility another kind of somewhat forgotten uh project that happened in 2004 i don't know if any of you might even remember this but the uh what is now the ichian violins uh building over on fairmont avenue was being looked at by a developer little known fact right and um that

1:41:57actually was in discussions the developer had a proposal for a library in that development it would be apartments in a library it didn't fit all that perfectly as far as some of the criteria that we had been looking for particularly as we've as we go forward and you'll see in this time frame but it

1:42:15was passed by the planning commission it's just the development never ended up going forward but again this just goes to show even 15 plus years ago we've been working on this and started and even looked at a potential mixed-use project over on fairmont way back then

1:42:31um also of note which is also kind of woven within this this time frame is back in 2005 and 2006 staff with was actively engaged with the school district to purchase the senior center property to expand the library and senior center in their current location this was again

1:42:50part of the process that we were trying to gear up to get ready to have a project available to apply for grant funding when that grant funding became available if the ballot measure passed the district not only agreed but they voted to surplus that property we agreed

1:43:06on a 1.7 million dollar price and um that actually was was going into we have draft we still have in my files draft sale agreements that never ended up being transacted part of because at that same time that you will recall that they were attending to uh intending to rebuild portal and

1:43:29middle school in its current location but then the district received word that that would not be possible and the district at that point ruled out building any type of building whether a staff building or a school building or anything on that property so that is when we actually began

1:43:44discussions with them to look at the lower play field property if portola was not going to be used for any sort of a school facility then we could move the senior center and the library to that lower play field property and give them that part for fairmont you may

1:44:01recall at that time that was a long and somewhat painful process to determine whether they were going to close fairmont school whether they were going to close castro school they had actually decided to close fairmont school at that point and there was a long process that

1:44:16happened that resulted in the closure of castro and now where koromatsu is in that location but going back as far as like i said 2005 2006 is when all of this was happening the district staff and city staff were actively engaging in discussions on how we could what would

1:44:34be the future of the portal of property so the idea that portala what we came up with for the idea is is not a new one at all it's been talked about for for years so it didn't just come up out of the blue just wanted to kind of put that out there um unfortunately in 2006 prop 81 which was

1:44:54the state construction bond uh failed and so no grant money was available at all but we had a needs assessment we had a building program and we were continuing to try to work out what we could possibly do the the deal with the school district was still on the table

1:45:10it hadn't been taken off the table yet in 2009 this was when the state assault on redevelopment agencies was in full swing and we were informed that we needed to make a 1.7 million dollar payment how convenient um to the state and so we were forced then to withdraw from the

1:45:29property transaction for the senior center property in 2010 as you know redevelopment agencies were dissolved in california and with that whatever true funding mechanism we may have had outside of a ballot measure for our library and frankly any other building in the city that would have been able to

1:45:48be built with redevelopment money disappeared so in 2013 as we started our strategic planning process the library you know came up again from members of the public and from staff and was concurred by the city council that the facility building library facility was indeed a priority in development of

1:46:08the strategic plan and we did some polling that indicated that that was also true and so at that point the city council directed us to update the needs assessment that had been completed in 2006.

1:46:22and this is a bit more familiar these past few years we contracted with kathy page to update the needs assessment and the needs assessment which i'll go over in on the next slide a little bit talks you know we went through an extensive community outreach process to come up

1:46:38with what those needs assessment requirements would be and then we started working with group 4 and winner to consulting using the results of the needs assessment to start to develop the concept for what a cost of the building would be options models things like that

1:46:56in 2015 the city council directed staff to move forward with with looking into a ballot measure for placement in november 2016. the city council selected uh the former portal and middle site lower playfield area as its preferred site again this was part this is the result of long going

1:47:15discussions with the school district that at that time we had not been told any other um and we had not been given any indication that this could not be some sort of a going concern um in 2016 the measure was placed on the ballot for 30 million dollars of general

1:47:32obligation bonds and in 2017 or i'm sorry we're in 2017 i'm looking at the timeline sorry in 2016 november 2016 um unfortunately measure b failed but it received 63 approval we essentially lost um by 500 votes so for the needs assessment again this process was was completed in 20 2006 and

1:48:02updated in 2016.

1:48:04kathy page was our consultant she's well regarded in the library field particularly in the bay area she we conducted surveys community surveys focus groups we spoke to library patrons we spoke to staff we work closely with the county library staff who have been wonderful as far as

1:48:22helping us come up with the various needs that the library staff need in uh with in conjunction with what the lib library patrons and what residents and community members would be interested in and she coupled all of that with industry standards so what we how many

1:48:40computers we should have per capita how many books we should have per capita how many square feet and so the chart before you shows that we would be essentially in line with what was proposed with 21 000 square feet for a facility size with several other recent projects a

1:48:58couple of which actually were able to benefit from prop 14 many that were built let's see hercules in 2006 in particular so and to note that ben can attest that group 4 also peer-reviewed the update and was happy with it so in march 2016 you'll recall for those

1:49:22of you who are here we did a council study session reviewing all of these various options um option 1b again the preferred site and um noting that the difference between 1a and 1b again included additional community center space which could which seems timely now could have

1:49:44accommodated the senior center programming so that we could have vacated the entire property once the property was built without any issues and that is why the option 1b was chosen with that additional space available for programming essentially the the one that seemed to

1:50:03be completely off the table because of various concerns including siting and and cost was the option two theater site option three and option four um we can we will talk about a little bit as far as different options that we can still work to consider and then again in november 2016 measure

1:50:26b uh they were the ballot measure was for general obligation bonds for 30 million dollars with debt service over 33 years um we found out late in the game that the district declined to share the site with us again we had had ongoing discussions with them and we were they had decided

1:50:48as you all noted in a previous meeting they had decided in a closed session meeting that they decided to decline to allow us to use the property which get sent a bit of a twist within this ballot measure because we now did not have a site that was able to be articulated to the voters as to what we

1:51:10would be able to build and where again this 30 million dollars included the community center component as i referenced earlier and nearly two-thirds but we were close so i'm going to turn this part next part over to ben as far as what we've heard and what we would

1:51:29propose going forward and group four has worked with agencies all over the bay area and so we have a really high regard for how they've been able to work with communities and moving forward so ben thank you karen good evening mayor abelson member to council my time on this project is not as

1:51:47extensive as karen's but we have been on for two years so have seen the measure b and uh have worked with city staff uh scott and karen and others to develop uh some steps forward based on some feedback on measure beep after it was defeated and using that feedback and some of our

1:52:05experience on other projects and getting funding to start to chart a path forward to another run at this so we'll start with kind of what we've heard so city staff first and foremost has confirmed and heard through multiple sources that there is still a strong support through the community

1:52:24definitely through council and the need for it for a new library something that's safe and modern and that this measure would have supported so that need is still there and still very much alive in the community some of the the more constructive feedback from measure b begins with some

1:52:42unclarity and undefinition or lack of definition in some of the parameters as karen mentioned the lack of a defined site late in the game was a big factor as well as some questions on cost we'll get into this more in detail in a few slides but i think one of the biggest pieces was

1:53:01not the comparison of a project that included a community center component with a library versus other libraries in the bay area that came even community members excuse me or others were comparing kind of apples to oranges added some confusion additionally there were some conflicts

1:53:19that we were unaware of with the port or portland middle school site including the temporary planning of fairmont middle school in the future so not wanting to have that conflict within the community and then there's definitely strong community support as can be shown by the

1:53:3563 percent in favor turnout however there's some sentiment that that is a very siloed support and that it's not broad enough within the community so measures need to be taken to kind of expand the knowledge and understanding of the needs for the project to the broader community of

1:53:52elsewhere um so moving forward what we've worked with city staff with swinnerton and based on our experience on is three kind of key steps to bring this to funding so the first one again building on that last point i made and the feedback is diversifying that community

1:54:11engagement and we'll go in more depth on what that means and some some broad measures to get there second is addressing that project definition and third is a parallel effort that is in front of the city with bart to pursue a private development option and a public-private

1:54:29partnership and we will again get into more detail with that shortly so starting with the community engagement uh first and foremost there is great precedent for an advisory committee and that is an advisory committee of community members that is a technical uh group that works with city staff so

1:54:48not a new publicly appointed commission like a library commission or park and rec commission but a group of both supporters and naysayers of the community of the library excuse me that could work with city staff and consultants over the next however many years to develop the vision for the new

1:55:06library and really bring this to fruition that's kind of a core group that would be day in and day out working with with the key stakeholders more broadly there's also opportunities to do a variety of methods of community outreach things like online and in-person surveys

1:55:25and intercept kiosks where people like myself or other architects city staff are out at community events at fundraisers at your fourth of july celebrations spreading the awareness of the project explaining some of the factors that might have been unclear to the community previously looking at

1:55:43sites and really engaging on a personal basis members of the community at large again leveraging the technology the city's connectivity with message boards and email list serves to do online surveys and get outreach digitally and then finally the more traditional approach to community

1:56:02meetings and again rebuilding on the needs assessment and building that grassroots support for the library and there's many other methods as well and should this move forward we would definitely be working more in depth with the city to establish a more detailed work plan

1:56:19of how this can be implemented moving to project definition so first and foremost it's identifying a site and really understanding the implications of the site pre similar to what we did previously in the in march of 2016 last year that we presented to council at the time

1:56:36there are many different options of site sites we can look at one is and easiest definitely a city-owned property there are a few of those that are definitely on the table to be looked at we at this time are recommending that we remove actively pursuing sites owned by the

1:56:55western contra costa unified school district just not saying that we are the city is unwilling to work with them but we won't be actively looking at any property owned by them due to some of the other reasons previously mentioned there's definitely the public-private

1:57:08partnership opportunities we looked at some of those previously on san pablo avenue again there is this elsewhere to plaza bart development option that we'll get into in another slide but great precedent for that there in terms of library development as an emerging trend across the country

1:57:26and then finally there's always the option of purchasing a privately owned site which has its alternative drawbacks of land acquisition costs extensively but as you may or may not know san pablo the city of san pablo is currently in construction with a library that is a previously a walgreens so

1:57:45there are definitely precedents for that as well this is just a map showing that we've already begun looking at certain sites uh just potential opportunities both at public-private partnerships the owned land like cerrito vista park and then the the bart parking lot there

1:58:03are many more out there that the city can continue to look at but just showing that there's there's opportunity out there and then finally just a note on cost this is always a big topic when we come to any kind of public construction project but there were many questions on why

1:58:23this is a 30 million project again looking at the san pablo library which is under 10 million that building renovation a lot of community members and just critics at large were asking why is this project for l cerritos so much more expensive than that well there's three factors first that

1:58:39are just contributing to that astronomically high number that is a little breathtaking at first their high labor costs in the bay area due to the just huge market for construction right now uh contractors and skilled workers can pretty much pick and choose their work

1:58:57and they tend to pick low risk high reward projects which generally are not currently in the public sector so that drives the public sector dollar costs up and impacts the the generally positive effects of a public competitive bid also material costs are very high and so

1:59:17all these factors are really leading to just this crazy construction market that uh last year alone was about a nine percent escalation which is about four percent higher than was projected in 2015. so it's continuing to be crazy here on the flip side there's just a

1:59:35different construction technique and requirements for civic buildings so group 4 specifically does for the most part civic architecture and we design our facilities to last 40 to 50 years the you know these public investments asking for a 30 million library you can't do that every 10 15 20

1:59:55years like a developer can come do something on the cheap and then refurbish it improve it tear it down and rebuild it after that time this facility needs to last so that impact trickles down throughout your finishes your design your structure all the way through so they just tend to be much

2:00:10more expensive than you might see for a comparable size private development so just a few little tidbits there and then finally going back to this public-private partnership exploration there is an opportunity with the city right now with bart to to work on issuing an rfp for a

2:00:30transit-oriented development project around the ulcerative plaza bart station really the there's no binding commitment by the city uh with this development but there's an opportunity potentially to study the impacts that uh of a library in this development as a tenant or as a

2:00:53key component and and many times it's a it's a draw to the community and to tenants to live there if there is a library inside this development so it's a way for bart and the city to study that that possibility and it's a it's a little bit of a side track but we

2:01:13kind of can't know until we go forward with this route and partnering with bart so more to be explored there um so with that are there any questions any questions from council everyone okay go ahead thanks for being here um my question to you is regarding uh the the bart study

2:01:40yes uh at the plaza um how long would that take to to do the study and and to have that out uh so the public can see this i think melanie ask melanie to answer that question hi my name is melanie mensah i'm the city's community development director i have a meeting actually with

2:02:02bart real estate scheduled for tomorrow we've been in ongoing discussions as they've been developing their tod policy bart really sees their goals and our goals is very aligned um the feasibility study could take less than eight weeks at this point it's going to be pretty minimal i think that

2:02:19the rfp bart and i have discussed um that the rfbp process where we would do two parallel alternatives in an rfp where they would develop a tod without a library and with one so we'd really look at what the private sector was able to to do in that site and so the rfp process i'll be finding out

2:02:37tomorrow more about that um but usually a process like that like you saw with um others that we've done could be a six-month process until we chose somebody and then the board that bart board would be the one who really does enter into contract with someone to do

2:02:51that um so there's kind of a two-step process which is one a small feasibility study and the bart board then approving going forward and that it would be a two-track rfp system um and then we'd have to look at a calendar that at some point the city of elsi you know around a time that there

2:03:09could be an election would have to then with a cost and a design determine whether it wanted to do a library or not or whether it was able to uh to to fund one um otherwise it's likely that a tod would go forward without a library so that we could still get the

2:03:24benefits of a tod at the bart plaza does that it does thank you rachelle did you have something i had one more question about the bart plaza do you know what portion um is being looked at specifically for this development and that's something that we could um determine in the feasibility whether it

2:03:45included also east of the tracks or just west of the tracks um west of the tracks the specific plan boundaries are just west of of the tracks but we could probably put the olive bart's property in it bart has a real interest in seeing they've had a real policy shift in seeing that the parking lot

2:04:02should be utilized more for a lot of community purposes including generating ridership so i think when we put out an rfp we'd basically be saying what the city zoning um requirements were and what bart's aspirations were in terms of ridership and use and see what the

2:04:18private sector came back with okay thank you yeah in if in the community engagement slide uh you talked about uh a committee a community workshop group or community group that would help um do these things the you know get diverse community outreach but what wasn't on

2:04:38here but i heard you clearly say was that you wanted to update the needs assessment is that a formal like finished product update or would you be using that in the next step which is the project definition i mean are you strongly recommending and we just did it

2:04:53granted was an update but we just did an update in in uh 2016 so i'm just curious what the deliverable is from your recommendation so i don't think that would be an actual update but just more spreading the word and building on that update and getting it out to the broader

2:05:07community but it but i did hear you say something about needs assessment so we would still be like do we need you know two cafes and and uh you know three teen centers and uh and you know no children's reading area we generally like to kind of get that input and just keep

2:05:25confirming and confirming and it's a good way to kind of build that support build a sense of ownership over the project but i think this has been done twice and i think we've been kind of reconfirming that the needs for a full service 21 000 square foot library are there so i don't think

2:05:38that would change too much but it's always good to kind of engage the community in that way so so there there would be it would be the concept would we would be reconfirming our needs assessment but there would potentially be opportunity for say a second meeting room or some type

2:05:54of uh you know one of the things i've suggested is that the meeting rooms are accessible through technology 24 hours a day so that potentially somebody who wants to work on a all-nighter for college could you know make arrangements to pay and rent a room in the middle of the night

2:06:12um you know that type of concept uh so that it wouldn't necessarily have to be so these external so there are some opportunities for tweaking the needs assessment and and that's go ahead i'm gonna say the needs assessment both times that they were conducted were a

2:06:26snapshot in time right so to the 2006 might not have contemplated exactly what you had said so continuing to work on that community outreach which we could then work into the design process which we have not gotten anywhere close to yet that is what we're still wanting to

2:06:43confirm and continue to build those ideas for what we what we will want for the future and that feeds into my next set of questions um so that's sort of in a timeline that's necessary prior to the project definition because obviously the project definition in in addition to

2:07:00sighting we need to know you know is it one big room or is it ten rooms is it got an elevator does it not have an elevator you know is it if it's only 14 000 square feet our parking requirements would be significantly different so so i'm i'm i'm just trying to understand at what

2:07:20point does the community engagement allow you to go on to um that the physical components of the project definition not the site selection but the physical components so for the physical components i think that's going to come later i think the priority now is to build off of

2:07:38what's the known 21 000 square feet off the 2014 needs assessment and what we reconfirmed in 2016 and really start to look broad brush strokes at other sites to plan for so if you go to the next slide your definition your project definition isn't necessarily tied to the information

2:07:55you're getting from the engagement the community engagements it's not tied to your needs assessment and the reconfirmation of the needs assessment it's strictly a tied to the site at this first early phase that's correct yes but as we get more definition and i think that outreach doesn't necessarily

2:08:11have to always focus on updating the needs assessment but also uh explaining different sites or understanding impacts to the community we we just went through this process in their community where there's a lot of traffic or community uh public safety response or other implications that we

2:08:27may not be aware of as consultants or not might see looking at a bunch of different sites that the community can weigh in on so there's many different avenues how that outreach can impact the final selection of a site so it's not just basically the programmatic need and

2:08:41el cerrito is is going through a economic dynamic as a result of the continued uh recovery from our recession which probably we need to come up with a new word for it now that's no longer recovery from a recession um private property is certainly something that you know we

2:09:01have shied away from putting on a map because of the threat of inverse condemnation that that comes with identifying private property you have this on here purchase private property i'm not adverse to that my question is the mechanics of that how would we secure a part a private parcel

2:09:23to the point where we can study it in a more open process have has that been discussed by staff what that process would look like not as if yet so we would need to evaluate that um go ahead i guess what i would add is the land values in el cerrito right now particularly on the avenue are

2:09:50incredibly high um and they're sort of floating in the 5 million acre range right now and the i think the greater likelihood is the public-private partnership angle that it's not just um us going out and trying to find a parcel that somehow we haven't found yet and the private sector hasn't found

2:10:13but rather finding projects which may be coming down the road as the economy has changed there's more and more interest in virtually every site now that where even a year ago when we were talking to owners they were like we're happy we're not doing anything we're not doing

2:10:30anything and now they see five million dollars an acre and all of a sudden there's renewed interest in maybe doing things so i think in terms of getting the sites you're really trying to form a relationship with a developer who is acquiring the site anyway and then trying to figure out

2:10:47can you make 21 000 square feet plus or minus work in the project that they're building and then you're you're sort of acquiring an option on the first or first and or second floor of their project and to to that end whether whether it's an option on private property

2:11:06outright that the city is purchasing or an option for being a part project partner i'm i'm certain that both of those in order for that option to be in place long enough for us to have swinnerton and g4 do any type of analysis and for us to potentially you know agree to that

2:11:27that that's where we want it and move it to some sort of uh conclusion action that's gonna that's not free i mean you have to secure that property or to secure that space and the development to have a developer you know even have their architect draw up a a space that represents the the 21 000

2:11:50square feet it is not free and so at what point do we um authorize the use of city funds to potentially secure these options whether it's part of a partnership in a private development uh or you know purchase of a private property yeah and melanie may have some

2:12:10opinions on this too i think again it will depend on are we trying to get an option on essentially dirt that we want to build a standalone library on so we're going to have to go and essentially lease the site for some amount for some period of time until we can get the financing in place

2:12:27but conversely and ben might be able to speak to this point because we did talk to group 4 about it is if we were to partner with a private developer and they were to agree to sort of build flex space that could become a library because ultimately they can build start

2:12:44building the project the between the entitlement process and then the design process then the construction process in any of these projects we're talking about years which may tie up which may align with whenever we ultimately decide to go for funding the developer may not need to make a

2:13:01final decision on what the ground floor ultimately looks like until almost when they're ready to occupy so we we may not have to secure a mixed use site the way i think you're thinking but again if if the right parcel came up we would have to come back to the council and say look we're going to need

2:13:20some significant amount of money here this is like a once in a lifetime we need to go for it i understood by i would i would and i'll defer to miss mintz i would have to believe that a a flex space um our current parking requirements have changed in within the san pablo ave

2:13:40in a specific area that such that the flex space and parking would not be as flexible around a library as it would be potentially around other flex space so i so i my concern is that my concern is that if we want a library with all the parking that goes with it we're going to

2:14:00have to pay for it right from the start of when that project walks in the door and i don't want to i don't want a project to walk in tomorrow that says hey we're going to do it and we haven't given you the opportunity to say sure let's do that you know we've got we've got a little bit of time

2:14:17and here's a little bit of pocket money i've got to to throw towards this um i think something to add to that and i was thinking i didn't maybe answer fully the question about the timing with the rfp with bart i mean bart's an interesting example because they own the

2:14:30land and they're interested so they're kind of an example of what if somebody else who owned land was interested i think in the rfp one of the you know parking is a big issue for the bart board as well and of course bart riders um and so i think in the rfp one of the

2:14:44things we would we would be putting in the rfp our specific plan parking requirements and we would include bart's goals and then we would really ask the design team to look at that situation so we think that that process um so you could kind of it's sort of equivalent but not

2:14:59entirely to mayfair but let's look at that right which went through a design process once we chose a team so we chose a team who proposes something that feels like it's very smart and responsive to this complex environment and this complex situation which is we might or

2:15:12might not want this um and so i think going to what scott just said i do think that we're going to be looking to those developers who can come up with the most kind of adaptable situation um so that it really does recognize what the retail opportunities are bart kind of wants them to look at

2:15:30some minor office for reverse ridership types of situations what kind of community outreach there would be during once we chose um in that team we would say what would your community engagement be to really engage the whole city and obviously the immediate neighborhoods in um a dialogue about

2:15:46what parking is going to look like and how's that going to be managed and how is it shared between the library and then i do think in that situation some things like a cafe so when you were talking about program space i do think in that rfp we're going to have to start with this basic program

2:15:59because we need to start with something but we'd ask the developers to look so they're for example an outside plaza would not need to belong just to the library that would be an outside plaza for the mixed-use development the library would not need a cafe if there

2:16:10was a cafe being provided as a part of the retail space so i think it's it's a bit modular that way and i do agree with scott that i think we'd like to encourage them to think of that 20 000 square feet what would it be if it wasn't a library so that because there's

2:16:24going to be this kind of start and stop as we determine so that's at that site and other sites but your but your example of bart raises the exact same issue that i'm raising for bart and we didn't do it necessarily in a meeting like tonight but we ultimately did make

2:16:41a financial commitment to bart that we would do some level of planning so there was a financial commitment to that partner that project partner and that's all i'm saying is that when do we make sure that you guys have the tools that you need to to potentially move forward

2:16:59with some of these options that you have and it it may not be tonight but i certainly would would encourage you to say in in it maybe i've jumped ahead of slide um but i certainly it's my question with regards to this critical component site selection we need to we can't just do it without

2:17:19resources and and you guys can't do it without the commitment you need it you know we tried to get the resources in the election last year to move forward with the ability to make the types of property acquisitions we might need to do for this project we can't we don't have the funding for

2:17:36property acquisition but we potentially do have the funding to tie up some of this option space so we can do a proper analysis get proper input on from the public on the on the site on the selection of sites and then move forward so so i to come and tonight and and say

2:17:54that you put these things on here that site selection is critical and i agree we need to give you the tools that you can actually tie up private partnerships or tie up privately owned property so that you can do a proper site assessment and and to to to say that we're not willing to do

2:18:12that is not genuine with regards to the community and that's that's why i'm just bringing this discussion forward and asking the question as i am about this and i respectfully will bring it back up when you under questions that you want the council to to bring but it it to me

2:18:32what i'm i don't know what you're asking when you bring a slide like this and so i i'm trying to ask questions that potentially you can't answer um and i recognize that i am so thank you if i if i may can i add something just there's about as you all know you've heard a lot there's 10

2:18:4812 projects proposed so land has recently been bought and there's development applications many of them are are moving quickly um again because of the larger economic climate never knowing how those cycles um go so i would agree with you i think that with like scott said there's not we've he's

2:19:04done um staff have done pretty exhaustive analysis trying to look at what property fits the criteria that have been posed by group four um in consideration of what the community has said so i do agree with you that needing to be nimble um is important being able to apply resources

2:19:20to be able to reserve it because people um often move quickly as they're pulling together financing and looking at development partners and so if we want to put our name in to be one of those um that it does require us being nimble and potentially having resources to bring to

2:19:33the table thank you and to answer your original question customer lyman the in our experience working with private property and how we work with the community on expressing that we would never show anything until there's actually formal negotiations or things like that so great that that

2:19:48that discretion yes thank you paul do you have anything yes thank you um and i want to focus on this project definition slide as well but also because as you've heard it's kind of mushy process going forward there's a lot of chicken or egg what's going to happen next

2:20:06and my focus i want wanted to talk about is the public input because getting back to the community support that we didn't get as diverse the last time and we need to find a site we need to [Music] define what it is we want to do we need a cost estimate can you tell me when and where and how

2:20:29many public exercises you foresee in your efforts because the definition are we talking about senior center additions are we talking about coffee where do we finally define what this is and where we're going absolutely so i think the the first piece just an example for

2:20:48measure b was there was an opportunity with the portal of site to act and it was a very quick process to get the analysis done get it on the ballot and then go to the actual voting for the measure and i think some of these questions that come up in terms of cost in terms of the site if

2:21:06there was enough time to adequately go to the community and really build that support and explain these different scenarios and why things cost so much or why it's located here there might be a very different outcome so i think that is kind of the the process that we're looking to bring

2:21:22forward so it's really and we need to do a little bit more work with city staff on really refining that work plan and what that really looks like um but i usually we see multiple rounds over the course of a year or you know really depends on when we want to go out again for a ballot measure

2:21:39and that's how we might tailor it but it is all these pieces of i'm explaining this to the community and working with them in partnership over a long period of time through multiple rounds so i could easily see three four five community meetings 20 25 different locations or events that

2:21:58happen in el cerrito or with the school district or other types of community gatherings that a team could go to and provide and give outreach to the project and really explain different factors or get more info on the needs assessment things like that when you determine it's

2:22:13an appropriate juncture to make a decision and the public input would be important right there's different things we like to focus on so it might be sites and at one stage at first it might be needs assessment then sites and then it's more just awareness and implementation and

2:22:28and leading up that kind of grassroots support for a measure and that could be over the course of a year it could be over the course of two three years it really we just need to do a little bit more work and i just want to emphasize how important that is absolutely

2:22:42and i would just add in exactly what ben just alluded to that i mean in our mind i mean we're talking about a two to three year process and this is just the sort of okay we're ready to go again and here's sort of our initial thoughts but we clearly will need to come back

2:22:59with sort of working back from the likely time we would take another run at this how you know community meetings consultants polling mailings all all of the things that we think we would need to do but i think the front end of this is probably two to two and a half years

2:23:17at least um so there's a lot of opportunity for community building and and all of those things i mean so this is not like work we need to get this done in six months or nine months where the the election cycle calendar that drives this is really puts us three years from now

2:23:40um when the council would be deciding are we going for it or not um so there's there's a so we are all out of time together and and enough time to be open to changing the definition of what we're talking about along the way is that right yes okay um thank you my last question is

2:23:59there's nothing sacred about the 30 million amount of money is there sacred in terms of that we're starting with that we're starting over oh that the dollar figure was driven we did a full-blown cost estimate that's going to be we're doing a new all updated okay

2:24:15but i think it's important to reiterate and the slide has it that the number was actually 15 to 30 million depending on the site and we didn't have a site and so we were forced to ask for the top go back to what councilmember lyman said that we we had to budget for well if we

2:24:31need to spend five million dollars to require land if we need i agree and so we need to rethink like that is that we want to avoid as many of those variables we got stuck with the last time around that sort of picked away at the project that's right and i think the number i only hear is 30

2:24:48million and out in the world it can be less we can change that it doesn't have to be up to it is fine but we keep talking 30 million no it was always up to right i kept saying up too but other people didn't and that was also important for us to budget conservatively because as

2:25:04ben indicated costs are not going down costs are only going up and so what 30 million dollars might have bought next year would might not buy as much in 2020 so we just also need to keep that in mind as well thank you okay gabe yeah i appreciate this open discussion

2:25:22and this is something very very important that uh our young families here are are depending on us to get this right this time and uh so just want to make sure that people know that that there has been a project already been done uh with bart and and the city of oakland so

2:25:43i've taken a look at the fruitvale library and it's a that's a beautiful development that was done i believe that was by a public and private partnership so it's possible to do and so i'm just hoping that we all do our homework on this and to look at the different options and keeping an open

2:26:04mind on this um regarding the the availability of uh um the properties that that will probably look at for the first time so um thank you for um uh this uh discussion and uh um i just wanted to find out was it your organization that worked on that uh fruitvale it was not that was not us thank you

2:26:32rochelle i'd like to also thank you for the presentation um i'm a big advocate of building a new library in el cerrito i am one of those young families that would really love to bring my kids there and i'm i'm saddened that it didn't pass the last time but i'm really hoping that we

2:26:53can get more community input this time and really more community education and that hopefully we can find something that will satisfy everybody's needs so i'm i'm really happy about continuing to work on this project and i appreciate that the work that you've put into it

2:27:11thank you okay i would like to hear from the public if that's okay with everybody at this point so if do we have public speakers on this right now yes maybe i have three speaker slips and if there's anyone else who didn't fill out a speaker slip that wants to speak on this item they

2:27:29should just go ahead and fill it out right now and give it to our city clerk while the first three speakers talk the three speakers are cordell hindler followed by al miller and howdy gowdy okay good evening again mayor abelson council um thank you to uh karen and ben for the

2:27:54presentation it was wonderful so and i kind of agree with what councilmember um the council members were saying um you need a library you know like to um to accommodate you know like the needs for our community one if you're looking for like a a space you know like to um to host like a community

2:28:12meeting or whatnot you need a library that can uh that will be that is accessible to um for everyone so i'm thinking this is an opportunity the end i'm also like rochelle um i'm a huge community uh uh advocate for libraries because i am on i'm on a different um commission for for

2:28:32the library so i'm thinking that this is an opportunity for for people to uh to explore what other options we have for our library so i'm just um i just really enjoy the presentation so al you can have my turn mayor abelson council members and staff it's a difficult uh nut to crack

2:29:02so i'm just going to talk about little pieces because i know that you'll have a lot of discussions and staff will have a lot of ideas that will carry on the advisory committee that was suggested on page 10 i can see that functioning as kind of like an ad hoc committee going through

2:29:22the process that you're doing here but i hope that you will expand the vision a little bit and see it evolve into a permanent library committee board commission along with the other ones we have we have park and rex for park for recreation etc uh if we come out of this with a new

2:29:45library i think it deserves its own library committee board commission following the same principles that you do of interviewing and appointing and they will advise you on the library matters in the long term you're asked routinely to give staff direction in the various projects that you address

2:30:12i think at the stage that we're in on this project it's especially critical that you give a strong positive clear direction to the staff on this so that they know exactly what you want what you'll support the direction that you want it to go we all have our own

2:30:36remembrances of lessons learned from the election uh hopefully this committee advisory committee will help bring some of those lessons learned into the ongoing discussions as we move on defining the new program and however this works out the el cerrito library foundation is eager to

2:30:57support you and your staff in this diverse community outreach program that you're identified thank you thank you howdy gowdy followed by ted landau and uh catherine levinson thank you good evening mayor abelson council members my name is howdy gowdy i live at [address removed] um so i support a

2:31:24new library and in the light of everything that's going on with the senior center and other facilities i think it's also important to be you know broaden our vision of including all the many resources that we need to be looking at to to better support this community

2:31:45so including community center or senior center type activities i also think you know the bart potential cooperation or another public-private development on san pablo is an intriguing potential and should be explored but in the context of the 15-year timeline that

2:32:10was presented tonight it does concern me that you know those are complex projects with complex negotiations and many things that can fall through and i think there is an urgency to get something to happen you know at a rapid rate and i realized there is only so rapid you can you can go

2:32:33especially with some of the other timing constraints but i could see that you know just any additional complication is is going to add some some issues and that kind of leaves two things which is the use of existing city parcels and purchasing land and i just want to throw out

2:32:54three kind of off-the-wall ideas probably they're all worthless but maybe they'll spawn something more useful one on purchasing private property it occurs to me that perhaps um with values the way they are that that can be seen as near to as good as cash as your reserves

2:33:15and so if you want to buy something and hold it and then get you know a a bond on the ballot you could sell it later if it doesn't work and yes that's risky but it's an option the other things i was going to mention is i i was a little surprised to see cerrito vista park mentioned as a

2:33:36site because it seems a little challenging to use that without severely diminishing the you know very valuable park uses there and i was also a little surprised that the civic theater was you know taken off the list although it was proposed to be very expensive and you

2:33:56know it's kind of a small constrained site doing a complicated thing one idea that might bridge those two ideas of the park and the theater is if you basically take over that small section of street between the theater and cerrito vista park build over it on a podium you would have lots

2:34:16of parking you'd have you know level entrance to the park from the building you could have a really beautiful transition and an interesting facility that serves a lot of users and that might be key to your diversity is that you know if you get sports clubs interested if you get the theater group

2:34:34interested as well as you know the library seniors all of that coming together could really build a substantial momentum so that's good for that thank you thank you thank you council members for allowing me to talk i just wanted to relay the personal anecdote related to the

2:35:03library situation i moved here in 2004 i was a strong i still am actually a strong advocate of having a new library was the number one thing that i hoped to to see happen uh from the city level when when when we when we moved here uh when the i was very pleased obviously

2:35:20then when the ballot initiative appeared at some point during during the fall season of the election i was following the events on our local next door uh and comments against the library uh um initiative appeared i don't remember all the arguments two of them i they were largely mentioned

2:35:41here in the slides presentation tonight the two that stand out the most uh was comments such as uh they say the library can cost as much as 30 million dollars why should it be so expensive there was a library i think they said in san pablo that was built for like five or six million dollars why

2:35:56does this library have to cost six times that amount of money uh then another negative comment was uh that we don't even know what we're what we're agreeing to there's no site proposed no architecture plan we don't you know we're voting for something that we don't

2:36:10know what it is and then there would be lots of comments uh agreeing with that and then i started seeing lawn signs appearing uh supporting not supporting the no vote on the library many more that i saw supporting it and i started getting the feeling where there was all this negative

2:36:26comment and lawn signs i i talked to neighbors when they saw that i was in support of the library and they they said you know what what's your response to this why are you supporting it in the face of all this negative information uh and at some point i said i don't

2:36:39honestly no i support the library and i trust what they're doing but i don't have the answers and so i went to the website where uh where i was directed to go i think i actually came here once and asked where do i go to to to find out more information about this

2:36:52i went to the website that was supporting the library and i got contact numbers i emailed the people and said and i actually sent them quotes from our next door comments and said how do you how do i respond to these i want i want i want to change minds um how do i respond to

2:37:09these comments and the answer that i got was um we don't have something yet we're working on it we'll get back to you and i actually didn't hear anything back until about five days before the election which was clearly at that point too late uh and i i i mean i don't want to be overly

2:37:26critical but the impression that it left me was that there was a sort of a passive feeling that somehow getting the initiative on the ballot was the end of their job uh and they expected that there would just be enough public support that somehow it would pass and it actually almost did pass

2:37:43much to my surprise on election day from all the negative uh information i was here and i thought it was going to do far worse than it actually did uh and i i think what was necessary and what could have made the difference in this election was if is was a greater

2:37:57recognition that this was a political process and that there had to be more aggressive defense of the proposal that you couldn't have all this information coming out on next door and having nobody respond to it there was there was no rebuttal information there was no way for people like me to

2:38:13find out information that i could have posted on next door uh and offered as a rebuttal and so i'm just suggesting whatever you do the next time it happens the people who are supporting it need to recognize that when when the initiative is on the ballot that isn't the end of

2:38:28the story there's a political battle that you'll have to use in order to win thank you for your time catherine levinson followed by carl mulligan and georgina edwards i thank you council and mayor um for allowing me to make a couple comments um i've been a long time volunteer at

2:38:50the el cerrito library i have a master's in library science and i'm now a reference librarian for san francisco public libraries where i tour around to the 26 different branches and work in all of them they're all marvelous very very different branches and i would recommend looking at i have

2:39:08here on the internet the branch library improvement program from that library called blip and it gives you all the information on what they did with their 105.9 billion dollar bond measure to renovate a number of their libraries that was renovating 16 libraries

2:39:28and they did a lot of the things that you're talking about they both renovated buildings that already occurred they bought new properties they took properties that had been leased converted them and each one of those libraries is uniquely beautiful and they also have

2:39:41one that's kind of similar to the bart proposal where it's right on a muni line and across from the stonestown galleria so there's lots of other examples to look at perhaps so thank you and i hope it passes again this next time thank you carl mulligan good evening again carl mulligan located

2:40:12in el cerrito um well first i'd like to say as a licensed general contractor for the state of california i take exception to swinnerton builders being on there when there's no design no building there's over a million contractors in the state and they're the only ones with their

2:40:27name up here in front of you all um this idea of a 40 to 50-year design on a building that takes maybe 33 years to pay for i think is i think is a poor use of creative design and materials and building choice and i recently spent a few weeks in europe and plenty of three to five

2:40:48hundred year old buildings being used every day and uh i i'm just like baffled as a builder 33 year i mean uh 40 to 50 years my house is uh is what 90 years old okay and i mean and the other thing is at fourteen hundred dollars a square foot you guys can calculate the price of your

2:41:07own houses and the value that you think that they're worth right now but uh even in albany they're not even getting fourteen hundred dollars a square foot you know if you really think about it you take an isolated spot right here in this room say it's the library take a 10 by 10

2:41:22space and calculate the cost of that at 1400 a square foot it's insane it's truly insane i think to reduce costs you know back in the day 100 years ago people used to organizations like yourselves here cities used to form corporations to build a specific thing and then dissolve

2:41:41the corporation and you have plenty of talented people in this city that you've not asked any information from or about with respect to costs and what they think any of the contractors electrical plumbing concrete general contractors there's you've got no ideas other than

2:41:57from very large builders that have very high rates and to knock it off as high labor and high material costs they just don't compute the other thing i was thinking is that maybe you could have a contest people throw it out there and say you know we're building a library bring us your

2:42:16designs and you can probably only do that when you have a site but anyway those are my points i have one more thing to say there's three thousand people in the city at a thousand bucks a piece it's twenty three million dollars you have my thousand dollars anytime you

2:42:30want it thank you good evening council i just wanted to say hello and uh and say how grateful i am that you're keeping this project moving forward sometimes i say community might have been my middle name i i feel a project of this scale will will create another opportunity for

2:42:59else readings to connect whether they're small businesses families civic groups um and i am humbled by the opportunity i had last year to get involved and understand um the complex and nuanced dynamics that it that a project of this size um contains and i'm i'm hardened by the new sort of

2:43:27sophistication additional sophistication that is being presented tonight and that so many other community members showed up today to learn more about it and hopefully when this comes about in the next four years or eight years or however long that is you'll count on me to be part of that

2:43:45community outreach group and we can certainly use many people in this room to join that effort and support um for this wonderful new dream that will will come true thank you here we have one additional speaker joy gray thank you hi city council um i'm a horrible public speaker so i

2:44:10apologize for that in advance but my name is joy gray i'm an el streeter resident um i am the bad guy i'm one of the bad guys i was the one who inadvertently started the next door discussion about the library and the thing that strikes me about it the most and i just

2:44:29want to share with you is that that discussion started with a question and it was it was a question of why so much and why is there no mention of the fact that it's a property tax increase on any of your materials and i felt like that was a pretty reasonable question

2:44:48because when i started to look at you know some of the comparable things around it just didn't make sense and somebody else mentioned it here tonight like there really was no explanation for that it was just the feedback that i got from folks in my neighborhood and in

2:45:03my school and things like that is like well you just don't want to support a library and you know that couldn't be further from the truth like we're a reasonable family we support our city and our school with our time and our money and we just really would like to get

2:45:20behind a plan that's transparent that doesn't feel fishy that has a plan you know like a little bit more of a plan in place and maybe feel sensitive to the fact that a lot of us homeowners in el cerrito are pretty heavily taxed with property taxes right now and we might

2:45:41love to see or feel like you guys are considering maybe some non-traditional or other approaches and it's not just a 30 million dollar blank check for the city so i've i know you know i came tonight because i wanted to find out more and i see you're addressing some of those things and

2:46:00that's awesome but just you know to give you guys a little feedback like we we would love to support a library in el cerrito and we hope we can next time thank you thank you i know there's anyone else who wants to speak at this time okay i got inspired by what joy said

2:46:23because i saw next door too and i work for a library i've worked for libraries since 1988.

2:46:30so i am a library supporter they employ me and i've used them constantly so i wanted a new library but i also felt um really uncomfortable when i saw the ordinance and then i saw the um other publicity and then tonight i'm still confused i actually am still confused

2:46:53because a community center is also an important part of a project it's not like a side thing but i feel like so i'm confused as to the vision still and i think that was part of it because i think in the ordinance it had read um the flexibility to build beyond the library

2:47:15you know to build a center which was you know i had no problem with that but the actual publicity kept saying library and just library and then the 30 million dollar mark so that didn't read well i thought and i guess even tonight though we're all saying library library library and um

2:47:37councilman fideli i'm glad you were talking about you know beyond thinking about that and some other speakers also because we really do need to have a clear intention when you i think you're doing a project like that what are we talking about and you know you know my advice almost is to not even

2:47:56use the word library at some point and just think about what you know what are these overall needs that um we're going to be seeing in our city from all populations and i think that will also bring in that diversity that we're also speaking about and just about community input it's

2:48:15really not about it's just not about just educating people about like your plan it's really about getting people's ideas and their inspirations and vision to bring it together and i think when you can do that then you really get the buy-in and you'll get the votes and you'll get your work done

2:48:36thanks thank you and that's it no are there no more speakers out there yes actually i just want to reiterate what i had mentioned before in terms of the location you could really approach the owners to see whether they want to donate the parcel part of it you know that will

2:48:59reduce the cost and also the second thing is in terms of the fundraising actually at one point i was at lodi they rebuilt a theater and the guy showed me what they did is that when you donate like 500 a thousand you get a little tile on the ground that has your name on

2:49:18it but we are part of the community i agree with the other gentleman one thousand dollars per person i actually calculated four thousand person and each person donate about five thousand dollars you got 20 million already so i think we should try to think about the

2:49:34community come together and try to get come up with the money and then the location if we pinpoint the location then we can calculate the design and how much it will cost otherwise we'll just be revolving the location for a long time you know that's it thank you

2:49:52thank you okay last chance if anyone wants to speak okay um at this time why don't we go on to these questions for the council and is a staff remember going to direct us to that sure um and but as you see before you these are essentially the um the questions that we are seeking your

2:50:14direction on this evening first and foremost i won't presume to know the answer but does the city council support continuing to move ahead with planning for a new library okay should we all say that why don't we just get to the glitch oh yes super consensus thank you

2:50:35um any abstentions okay we got a yes thank you does the city council agree that additional community outreach should be performed to collect input and build support for a safe and modern new library yes yes yes sir okay unanimous yes okay does the city council agree

2:50:52that additional public and privately owned sites should be evaluated for potential library sites yes yes yes yes and finally uh does the city you council yes okay okay unanimous and finally does the city council approve staff working with bart to issue the rfp to investigate a tod development

2:51:12at the el cerrito plaza bar parking lot potentially including space for a new library yes yes great everybody's just okay and um at this point i don't think we're seeking any other specific direction um you know we've obviously heard you know feedback from tonight and feedback from

2:51:30the public which we will continue to work on as we've been directed to do just now and so if there are any other um any other thoughts uh otherwise this concludes our presentation have one other thought and and that has to do with what was just mentioned at the end by the public

2:51:48and that has to do with the what i call the community center uh concept that the library would be part of and um i'm wondering if we couldn't if there's a way to investigate the viability of that option i think that that would be absolutely possible and if that were direction for

2:52:14us to be able to go into that's also it's also we would be happy to move toward that you're answering that question i want to build on your comment okay um it it does sound like a simple thing and a name change um sounds like it's just you know changing the the words

2:52:33but it really might change the way we look at that space and a continuing education center could include a senior center and a lot of the programmings that we do at a senior center the um the the meeting space the gaming space the all the potentially even dance space could all

2:52:52be part of a continuing education center okay we may not provide lunches there or we may not provide all of the senior programming there um but but to think of this as as you just said mayor a a critical aspect of our community's services uh and and look at it in that sense uh as an

2:53:13education center or education technology center or um i'm sure there's a great acronym out there that does that and i i will go beyond that and and this was brought up by one of the speakers tonight um and i i think it was uh miss gray the library is not operating in a vacuum

2:53:38we do need to look at all of the city services that we're providing we do have a urgent need for senior services to be relocated and and i want to make very clear we will not discontinue senior services we just won't necessarily do those senior services at its current location at some point

2:54:00but i i just it we're not we we can't the library is not in a vacuum and yes we're looking at the library tonight because it has had as was demonstrated a 15-year planning cycle so we can't we can't look at it without looking at the library but we certainly can't we also have to look at all the

2:54:21services that we provide um and so i you know i just i just want to make sure that yeah we're talking about the library tonight but in our nines we have to think about all the services that we provide at all times so i would like to add if i could the the last point there was excellent uh by

2:54:38the community member that it is really a visioning exercise and that's something i failed to mention when talking about the outreach it's it starts with that and what is that community vision and building that support through the visioning whether it is just a library

2:54:48whether that community center or whatever else it might be is folded into this that's where it needs to start and it can unfold from there okay what um what would have people gray and i think about that idea i echo uh what council member lyman said and and uh mayor abelson and so i do agree

2:55:11that we should look at the whole picture of uh looking at uh what this building would uh entail so uh that's my recommendation um and i'd be curious to know in in terms of the wording if you use senior center versus community center versus you know adding it in with the library

2:55:37i'm not sure what would play out best politically when we do go to the ballot to ask for a recommendation and i would i would kind of going along with what ben just said i would i would think that that could come partially through if not totally through the community

2:55:57process like what are people what resonates with people what are people thinking of what are people looking at but also when it comes to the ballot measure we also do test those words um so that we know what resonates with the community i mean you could call you know we have you know the recycling

2:56:13center has a has an appropriate name but everybody refers to it as the recycling center so is there a colloquial word so those types of things i think would come down the line but i but with using ben's word visioning i think that that is what we would want to try to

2:56:26create that sort of organically and have people tell us what they believe would resonate with them and that that got to my line of questioning previously is public input along the way redefining so i totally agree and having an open mind right i would i guess since it came up um it

2:56:46would remind the council members who have been um at this for a while that we have done statistically valid polls that we have relied heavily on and have been largely successful because of it the only thing that pulled worse than the senior center was the public safety

2:57:04building and that it was low enough that when we went out for the library polling we we stopped even asking um and i'm not suggesting we are as the council knows you just approved a very large project looking at recreation facilities and we're looking at rolling

2:57:23the senior center fully into that um and we are looking at all facilities but i want to caution that you don't want to you don't want to lose all of them trying to get all of them and we're going to have to be very thoughtful about that some of that is going to be dictated by building size i

2:57:44mean so if we find the right partner on a good site and they say the most we can do is 18 000 square feet we're going to need to look at the needs assessment and say we need to lose 3 000 square feet how's the best way to do that based on the community input the needs assessment

2:57:59the use the location the portal of site that we frankly spent over a decade on we had an opportunity because it was a large site to include what ultimately was the senior center and the reason we didn't call it the senior center rather we call it community space is because this senior

2:58:20and we've discussed this a lot is that the seniors the the the use of the term senior center is going sort of out of style because you ask someone if they want to use the senior center they say no i'm not a senior i don't use a senior center i'm not 85.

2:58:36i mean the goal is you know aarp hit me up on my 50th birthday i mean we want people to use the sites and so it is as much a science as an art and we need to be really sensitive and thoughtful and flexible and take the opportunity potentially when they arrive and not

2:58:55get wed to we got to fix everything in in one shot and that's why i you know my my direction to staff and group four tonight was to focus on the library i can tell you at the same time we have numerous people running around working on the senior center um and and

2:59:13as we look every i can guarantee you that every site we look at we will be looking at opportunities to add community space senior space whatever the community thinks we need and i can give you our i think all of our word on that but this whole thing is going to

2:59:27require flexibility and thoughtfulness and i do agree that we're going to step back with with the recreation needs assessment as well as this process the senior center process and say this you know this will all will likely require three significant buildings um in addition to all the old clubhouses

2:59:47and bathrooms and the community center and keeping the swim center newish so anyway i just hope that helps the other other thing that um i think should be said about this process is that the senior center is something we have to find a solution for and implement within a

3:00:10year okay so this project is a much longer project so it could be that when this project is done there is an inclusion of seniors and or functions um but um we have to there has to be a senior center already up and running um within within a year so we can't really think of it as as

3:00:40that um but in addition to that we have a very large um youth population children um i'm uh an example of a different kind of a family uh but we have a uh almost three-year-old in our household because it's a multi-generational family and those are increasing also

3:01:04that's where um more than two generations of a family live in the same household and there are reasons that that's occurring um and um so we need to you know people want different approaches not just say it's just for these folks it's just for those folks it needs to be

3:01:27flexible and usable by all folks i personally envision a space where let's say in the morning there's a a top program in the afternoon there's poetry for teenagers and at lunch time maybe it's the lunch program for seniors you know i mean that to me is good use of a space

3:01:51because that means a number of different groups of people are getting served by it and i think that's what we want to give our residents so um i thank everybody for their comments i think we finished with that mayor there i've got two other topics that i want to

3:02:12potentially uh to have us consider giving guidance on one is the uh number alignment before you start and i'm sorry to interrupt but can you please make a motion to extend the meeting past 10 30. i can um this is the last then we have the regional assignments which

3:02:30can you please just yeah i'm trying to i'm going to make a motion to extend 20 minutes to 10 50.

3:02:41okay is there a second i'll second i second okay there's a second from paul all in favor please say aye aye all right opposition in the abstentions motion carries unanimously uh the two other options the two other topics that on this matter that i'd i'd like to

3:02:59at least have us give some direction tonight one is with regards to the discussion i had earlier about making sure that the city manager and staff have the resources to participate in public public public private private ownership options i know we can't it wasn't on the

3:03:18agenda tonight but certainly would like to find out if we have we would like staff to do any work on that topic the other one that i would like to have us discuss is mr miller in his testimony and mr fischer in his letter to us talked about the the way the workshops are structured

3:03:41um as uh either an ad-hoc committee or a per moving towards a permanent committee um a work so i i wanted to find out if we wanted to give any guidance on the format of the community work group tonight in order for staff to to move that forward if i may council member lineman um we

3:04:09would actually like to bring that back to you once this process begins because we have different thoughts on that and whether or not it would be something permanent i think would would be something we could talk about evolving into but i don't believe that we would

3:04:24necessarily ask you to have us make that decision tonight that is something that we would like to bring to you in the future because it would require a much longer process in order to to make a commission like that per minute yeah my point is do you want feedback tonight do you want any

3:04:40guidance from us do you want do you want us to give have an opportunity to give you comments on that matter i i think that i would like to begin with this process first and see where it goes um because it could evolve into something completely different by the time

3:04:56we're ready to propose anything permanent to you it could be something totally different so if you if you would allow us to move forward with this then we could promise to bring this back to you at a future time to discuss further i feel like what it's doing if we would do this would be

3:05:11to tie staff's hands and being able to figure out a process that's workable i think we need to give them a chance to do that i think they've seen the suggestions already and i think at this point we should let them do what they you know they need to put together a package for this project that

3:05:35that seems overall reasonable i'm not i'm not certain i expressed a specific opinion i i just said do we want to discuss it and give guidance and we are discussing it so we don't necessarily have to give guidance though not hearing anyone else want to speak so i think you don't have a second at the

3:05:54moment that's fine and with regards with regards to providing financing no there were two issues i brought up one was being able to give staff the tools needed to work with private private partner type work that obviously we can't vote on that tonight but we could say to staff come

3:06:10back with a proposal uh you know to make sure that they come back at some point with a recommendation of what that would look like so they can have the tools to be nimble to to work with the development community that's in our city and that's all i'm suggesting is that

3:06:29staff we we authorize staff to explore that so they can come back and present to us their ideas on how they could be nimble in this development community i support that as well i think that would be a great idea if we give guidance on giving the tools available to

3:06:53look at this i would like to know if staff feels that is an appropriate way to go at this time um councilmember lyman i have discussed this concept on and off for a while i think it's something that we certainly want to consider and think about and may be worthwhile i don't think we've we

3:07:19have flushed it out enough and then i think from a negotiating point of view there's some nuances to if there's a reason you're allowed to go into closed session for real estate you don't want to necessarily advertise oh look how much money the council just gave us to spend um because now you know

3:07:37how much um we have available to spend um and i think we can also be pretty nimble because you know a special meeting in council requires 24 hour notice so we can move pretty quickly but i but i would agree that we i mean i think it's worthwhile for us to go back

3:07:54and um talk to melanie's and her shop talk to some of our economic folks and real estate people and realtors and say you know would it be of benefit that if you knew we had the ability to spend write a check um to take a property off the market or to show how serious we were and if the

3:08:15response is yeah that i didn't know you could do that then i think we would certainly come back to council i think it would make a lot of sense i just don't think we've flushed it out enough yeah and then mayor my point tonight was to is to encourage staff to to

3:08:29do the research necessary to develop that tool and i concur that the face value of that of spending authority potentially would be entirely discussed in closed session is that a comment or is that my motion at i mean it's a we aren't doing motions but my my strong recommendation to staff

3:08:54is that they research uh and come back to us with a proposal on how to use financial tools to secure partnerships with private property owners and private developers okay thank you any other comments no okay so we are ready then to move on uh first of all i want to thank staff

3:09:15for this uh presentation thank you can is is this the last point to make a comment on this or so yes one other juncture can i make it's the last point tonight can i just make one last comment because i know a lot of people said we need to send a message and i just wanted to

3:09:32praise the city i thought it was a great report you know i'm new here and you've been doing this a long time and it's going to take uh and it's it's great to see the city moving in this direction it's going to take up the whole community to get us there and i think

3:09:48we've heard that tonight so this goal is going to be significant and it'll the city is going to have to as we talk explore the options like the bart possibility and i want to praise the city manager for his creativity and that idea scoping money dealing with developers

3:10:06communicating and again the the community will have to be involved every step of the way but i think we've made a commitment tonight to ourselves to give ourselves in this hundredth year a birthday present of a library and we've talked all of us are heard supporting this

3:10:23we need to move forward it's going to be a great gift and i think by building a library we'll not only build a great edifice but a better community so thank you ready to move on to the next item which is city council local and regional liaison assignments do you have any paul

3:10:48um [Music] just just no i don't okay greg i do um and and paul actually could have done it for me um on saturday july 8th uh council member fidelity and i participated in a special meeting with the waste integra the west contra costa integrated waste management authority uh

3:11:14specifically around our joint uh powers authority joint powers agreement and it was a a very lively discussion with several ideas regarding disillusion withdrawal you know there was certainly the city manager from richmond and the richmond members were certainly

3:11:39pushing for some changes that would not necessarily ones that we would benefit from or support um similarly the the mayor the council member from hercules uh had a a proposal at one point that that uh i don't think we would support so this is a long way of saying that we

3:12:04didn't make any specific decisions but we did discuss uh some specific terms that el cerrito in this this new agreement that el cerrito does not support those terms were not necessarily received those ideas were not necessarily received with open arms so i just wanted to make sure that you guys

3:12:26know that i we are discussing the future of the jpa the jpa agreement is in flux there are some terms in the jpa agreement that in discussion with staff that we don't necessarily feel do the best for our residents um so i just want to make sure that you're aware that

3:12:50we are one possible outcome of this long process is that el cerrito would go a different direction than some or all of the other communities that are in the uh the jpa so i just wanted to keep you alert of that the one the one that caused me to [Music] say the actual words that uh if they

3:13:13adopt that proposal el cerrito would leave would be that if the budget was divided by voting seat um in which case el cerrito would be carrying one-seventh or one-eighth of the read the jpa's budget which would be approximately 140 150 000 we currently pay 60 000 which i feel is

3:13:39an appropriate amount staff and i have feel that's an appropriate amount so if our dues our cost was to double or triple uh without any change in services which is what would happen i certainly would be coming back here making a recommendation that we not signed the new agreement so i just

3:14:01wanted to make sure you guys were aware of some of the difficult work that's going on and some of the information that's being exchanged and and so that you are not caught off guard if you get into a conversation with other cities on this matter nothing has been decided so there's

3:14:19nothing for me to bring to you for decision but i just want to make sure you know there's an ongoing discussion okay i have something i went to the contra costa mayor's conference and we had a very um interesting tour of the concord naval weapons station in particular the autonomous vehicle

3:14:46section and for the first time ever as i think i mentioned earlier in this meeting i actually got on the vehicle and we actually went somewhere so that was that's the reason i know it's an accessible vehicle is that i did it but um it it really was um pretty exciting i think yeah that's cool

3:15:10actually uh go on the vehicle and it's a little red job it holds um six seated passengers and six standees but if you have wheelchairs there's fewer people but i don't know how many and i think the work being done in that regard it i think it's just really interesting and speaks to our future and

3:15:38all the possibilities of things we might be able to do they're actually testing not just the little shuttles but also cars like for for example i think honda has a contract um and but they're also doing trucks so imagine a truck a driverless truck and what that would mean so it's it's

3:15:59just really exciting work and the um it was really um exciting to see it and they also are going to be developing the station the weapon station uh is reused and i don't know if it's interesting to anybody but i i do have a thing that shows all of the statistics about the process

3:16:25and in some ways i think it's interesting because it just shows how complicated it is and if you want i can give it to cheryl does anyone want it read all those now for us no okay [Laughter] i was gonna just have copies made oh that'd be fun okay and uh see i can just hand it down

3:16:49sure and then we can have copies made and put it maybe put it in the packet and then it oh does that work yes absolutely it's a little bit bigger but um anyway that was really an exciting uh day they also had a a dinner where they had they called it a glimpse of global cuisine

3:17:09and instead of being your typical dinner made up of you know all these various dishes what theirs was was it was various dishes but each one was from a different restaurant uh that was in um concord and they were all really good so anyway that was very nice on a beautiful po we had we ate on a

3:17:32beautif beautiful plaza and um as i mentioned before the centennial committee is hard at work and tomorrow at six o'clock if you are available you can go to the recycling center for the recycling version of the centennial so there'll be a talk given at six o'clock tomorrow the recycling

3:18:03center um the um i think that's oh and the time capsule is going to be um i don't know what you call it baptized i don't know what the word would be it's going to be put together and there will be a centennial event to honor that occasion and so that'll be in august as i remember

3:18:36so i think that's where i'll leave it and um so no i think that's it we are ready for adjournment until our next meeting which is on tuesday august the 15th thank you all for coming um it's been a really interesting evening with the materials that we've had i think

3:19:22you