Regular City Council Meeting and Special City Council Meeting August 15, 2017

0:00:28everyone welcome to the el cerrito city council meeting um and uh we will begin with the roll call we've actually i guess at the roll call from before um well i can just note that all members are present okay thank you the next item on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance or moment of

0:00:48silence led by council member paul fidelli i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all the next item on the agenda is council and staff

0:01:19communications and i'll begin [Music] there was a closed session just before this meeting and we took no actions and referred the matters to staff and then i'll go ahead and move on to the items that i have that i'm just going to announce here and i thought i would i was hoping that

0:01:48there would be such a great audience as there is here today which will give us an opportunity to announce what's happening at our centennial in the next period of time in case any of you would like to attend and uh for the remainder of the month we have on uh august 17th a sundar shoddy history

0:02:14room tour at 4 30 and these are all again all related to the centennial celebration our official happy birthday in case you're wondering that of a hundred years for el cerrito based on when the paperwork was signed is august 23rd so that'll be coming up and on that day we're going to dedicate

0:02:39a time capsule at 6 00 p.m in this building we will follow that by a tour of city hall and we're going to have the event downstairs but the time capsule itself will live as i understand it upstairs in the hallway for the next 100 or so years depending on um you know if this

0:03:04building lasts that long i guess that um and uh it's the kind of time capsule that you can actually as i understand it i haven't actually seen it that you can actually look in and see what's there is that does anybody here know if that's correct i think it is um

0:03:22okay we'll have to all come and find out won't we and then on august 23rd we have a centennial african-american cultural event from one to four at the el cerrito community center which is hosted by the el cerrito naacp in saint peter's cme church on the 27th there will be an open

0:03:46service at saint peter's cme church at 11 followed by a talk about the church church's history and that's again at st peter's at 53 24 cypress street all are welcome and they do have a very interesting history in case you're wondering about that and then let's let me move over to september

0:04:11we have two opportunities in el cerrito on september 9th and september the 10th to hear a staged reading of the 19 and 17 hit hamilton right here in el cerrito and it will be uh done by mary p hamlin and george arles at 8 p.m on september the 8th and 2 p.m on september the 10th

0:04:39and again that's at the contra costa civic theater at 951 pomona and in honor of the era in which it was originally done the ticket price will be two dollars and 50 cents so do come and enjoy and you probably want to buy tickets though ahead of time which you can i think do through the

0:05:04theater um on september the 14th there will be the beginning of our our bash weekend the first event will be a talk by joanne taylor plus a classic film at 7 00 pm at the rialto cinema theater hosted by the friends of the cerrito theater and you can buy tickets online

0:05:35at the theater then the next let's see if i have this right here the next day there will be family night at cerrito vista park after dark and then on the 16th there will and that's free by the way on the 16th there will be a really large parade starting in i believe the parking lot of

0:06:09either safeway or del norte bart station i'm not quite sure which from 11 to approximately three the parade route will be listed on our website i don't think it's there yet the parade though will end at cerrito vista park and the first 1000 people who so desire can have a free sandwich

0:06:32and then we will have food trucks for anyone wanting to purchase anything then that evening there will be a youth dance aimed towards middle school students and then on the 17th there will be a gala dinner uh from four to nine at um what we're calling still mira vista country club and

0:06:58and it will be we will have ticket information online on our website then in case that wasn't enough we will also have that day a bazaar at the sycamore congregational church and on september 23rd we will have tri-city safety day and i think i'll stop at that point

0:07:24because i think i will warn you out otherwise so um those are the um upcoming events um and um let's why don't we who greg would you like to go next sure um i i'm gonna um read a couple things that came in from mce although i would leave some for my fellow who went to the meeting on my

0:07:48behalf the most important one that i want to bring to everyone's attention is that there is a solar eclipse next monday uh the solar eclipse although it won't be a complete eclipse here it will actually um vastly reduce solar production on that day and so uh the state and mce are

0:08:10asking you to do your part uh for the solar eclipse and do your best not to try and use energy between i think it's about 9 00 a.m and 1 p.m because that's when the the effects of the solar uh 902 to 1154 uh is what they're asking people to do their best to reduce

0:08:36uh their uh power consumption and then the other thing they announced which is worthy of repeating is that in our area contra costa has now added nine new communities and in the process of doing so the deep green deep green consumers have increased by 66 percent so

0:09:00this is all good news uh for the environment and in the last thing that they highlighted for me that mc highlighted is that there is electrical vehicle funding uh for commercial and multi-family properties in el cerrito uh through the air bay area air quality management district

0:09:21charge program which may cover up to 75 of the project cost so i just wanted to give out those things that that information paul do you have anything yes um as you mentioned madam mayor um our centennial celebration moves forward and i my wife is working on getting

0:09:42volunteers for all the efforts and so i just wanted to spell out to everybody here and who may be listening that if in fact you wanted to volunteer for some of the the efforts and one month from today is the big bass weekend that you should contact susan eralla here at city hall

0:09:59and it's at el cerrito 1.100.org and she will get the the names so we can have a well staffed list of events on that weekend also on this friday at 5 30 the trail trackers working with the city of el cerrito we'll have a ribbon cutting at the motorcycle hill where new steps will be

0:10:21put in at the bottom of the of the trail it's going to be a great event the mayor is going to be there and the mayor pro tem will also be there to attend and i plan to be there it's at the corner of naval air and blake and we're asking the public to attend as well

0:10:36and finally just as a personal note i all this talk about 100 years from now and hoping our time capsule is there i just wanted to say that our our our country is stronger than donald trump and we will make it through these difficult years so let's all hang in there thank you

0:10:55good evening i'd just like to make an announcement regarding electric drive week in west county and the sierra club along with plug-in america as well as the electric auto association will be having a car show and at the richmond auto mall and we will have and display

0:11:18all the electric cars that they sell there at the richmond auto row and i was able to get the fuels california fuel cell partnership to show two of their latest vehicles which is honda clarity and the toyota mirai so that will be the first time they will show fuel cell

0:11:40vehicles in west county so that will be on the 9th of september from 11 a.m to 3 p.m at the auto mall plaza in richmond thank you michelle yes i just wanted to elaborate a little more on the african-american celebration it is on saturday the 26th so that's not this coming saturday but

0:12:06the following saturday after that and it's from 1 to 4 pm free admission and we have a local author regina e mason who will be the keynote speaker and there will be live performances soul food tasting photo exhibit art vendors and more so i encourage everyone to come i have some

0:12:30flyers on it if anyone sticks around to the very end of the meeting that i can hand out and there's also some out in the entryway thank you thank you are there any staff announcements okay thank you with that we'll move on to oral communications from the public on items

0:12:48not on the agenda thank you mayor we have three speakers at this time cordell hindler followed by howdy gowdy and molly hazen and the speakers are allotted three minutes per person which is tracked on the timing light up here on the podium so uh good evening mayor uh council

0:13:10staff cordell handler richmond i have four things to say and i'm gonna keep mines real short so the first thing is um that we have we gotta get some we gotta get some youth involved with these committees because we have committees that meet on a regular basis and i feel

0:13:24that it's important that the young people should learn what goes on in these committees so like the crime prevention committee i go to their meetings every month and i provide them with good resources so that's one thing and then the second thing is um i will bring what i just passed around with

0:13:39some some cert little um whistles um that uh i feel that this is uh el cerrito's 100th birthday i figured go green so think about the mce model go green that's number two and then number three is um if you recall when i came last time um the regards of the senior center i feel

0:13:56that it's important that uh that our seniors need uh to stay in their in their facilities for the time being because we have a because we have a lot of seniors that are that are that need that place because of their activities like computer training and other things

0:14:11so that's number three and then number four is um we have um i've looked at online on craigslist for um for all the business spaces in the el cerrito and i find them very unreal and i say because i was looking up on the the website for uh for a plaza near a space near the plaza i was like

0:14:31when i looked at how much it was it was like close to ten thousand dollars i was like you can't nobody cannot afford that big unless you're on a certain income i figured close to ten thousand dollars is a little bit much for for a space and that's number four and then the last

0:14:46thing uh on my top five list is um i'll bring some flyers for our new show uh for construction civic theater it's our 58th year it's gonna be after that big badge weekend it's gonna be called cabaret and i'll bring some flyers for next month so that's all i have to say so i'll give my

0:15:03time to the good evening mayor abelson council members my name is howdy gowdy and i live at [address removed] um so i along with other community members submitted written comments to the council on the affordable housing agenda item by the deadline of noon a week ago and

0:15:28in order to be included in your packet for this meeting and while i'm sure you received those communications i was surprised that there was no indication of their existence in the publicly available packet and i raised this question with the city clerk i was curious what the policy was

0:15:46because i'd seen different actions in the past a lot of times letters are reprinted in the packet sometimes there's an index and it's you know linked to documents elsewhere and i so i appreciate that she responded very promptly and and added an index of submissions to the agenda

0:16:08and also modified the description of written comments that shows up on the council's website but i think there's still an opportunity that this policy could be more clear and let people know what to expect when they submit a written comment i understand that you know perhaps not

0:16:26all comments expect or want to be you know publicly printed but perhaps it should be made clear that you know communications to the council through the clerk would be um you know included in the the public document that um is part of your meeting packet and that you know perhaps

0:16:48letters and emails directed directly to council members would not automatically be so um you know it seems like a discouragement of the public discourse to to hide public communications from a really accessible manner so you know i think it's fine if the public

0:17:08comments are in a separate document from from the main agenda packet but it's really nice to have that that index clearly there and hopefully it can be you know linked in a online form that that's available so that they don't have to come into the library or city hall to request those

0:17:26documents so i hope council will direct staff you know as to your wishes for public disclosure of public comments and will further encourage a clearly communicated and consistent behavior on this topic so thank you thank you molly hazen good evening honorable mayor and city

0:17:58council members i'm mollie hazen a resident business owner of el cerrito tonight i would like to wear the hat of the chair of the crime prevention committee and acknowledge our very successful national out program this year we had a record 40 block parties each year the program continues

0:18:17to expand because the neighbors continue to want to meet one another and build community relationships with the police and the fire department i want to thank everybody involved this year i want to thank all of you i want to thank the city agencies the fire department the police department

0:18:35and under the excellent leadership of our chief paul keith i'd like to give a special shout out to corporal detective brian elder who did a great job in organizing the 40 block parties i really would like to say a special thank you to him and to our committee so i just wanted to remind you all what

0:18:59a wonderful event it was in this beautiful city and uh thank you very much thank you and i have no other requests to speak at this time there was a gentleman that that came up and and signed up for 7e um go ahead my name is rob ferraro i'd just like to say thank you to the council for your

0:19:30expected action tonight on item 7e i'd like to particularly say thanks to councilman paul fideli for spear harry spearheading the effort i think a safe exchange zone is something that the city needs and i look forward to hearing in the very near future that your actions have

0:19:48borne fruit and that the zone is actually up and running thank you thank you are there any other members of the public who wish to speak at this point on items that are not on the agenda okay not seeing any we will move on and the next item on the agenda is the

0:20:09adoption of the consent calendar are there any council members that want to pull an item or is there a motion um sure i'll move uh the consent calendar which uh includes item 4a approval of the july 18 minutes uh 4b 2017 patch paving project 4c quarterly investment report 4d committee

0:20:38on aging appointment 4e committee on crime prevention appointment for f economic development committee appointment and 4g appointments to the environmental equality committee i'll second that okay um all in favor please say aye aye aye any objections any abstentions motion

0:20:58carries unanimously so with that we will move on to item number five presentations and uh the presentations tonight have to do with the wall of fame which is a very special time for us in our city when we honor people who have given a lot of service to our city and

0:21:24i'm happy to see tonight that there are so many people here and i'm assuming at least a fair number of you are here to honor those people so we will let's see so i have so first i think we need to adopt do we want to do them both together or one at a time you can do

0:21:54them both together if you'd like so there is a resolution here about uh adopting two resolutions recognizing the leadership contributions and achievements of may ritz and also teresa perella and uh inducting uh both ladies into the el cerrito wall of fame which as you were

0:22:18coming in if you've never been here before it's just outside our city council chambers so is there a motion uh mayor i'm i'm going to assume that uh council member quinto would love to read some of the resolution of miss perella and to that end i would love to read some of

0:22:37the resolution to miss ritz um so if you would be willing to take this as separate items i would i would appreciate that okay so let's um which shall we i'd be delighted to start with a resolution of the city of council of the city of el cerrito indi inducting may ritz into the

0:22:54el cerrito wall of fame may ritz a resident of el cerrito since the 1960s has volunteered her time talent effort in serving el cerrito community exemplifies dedication in public service by having contributed innumerable hours of her time and energy to civic affairs and local government

0:23:11including her prior service on the park and rec commission our safety committee and el cerrito city council continuing to involve it be involved in the el cerrito garden club including serving as president from 2002 to 2004 and performing such feats service through dedication involvement and

0:23:32sundersha beautification contest hillside memorial grove project and the bay bridges district and other beautification efforts may you've also served on the acorn chair of the acorn branch children's hospital oakland and you currently sit on the board of directors

0:23:48of the children hospital branches which raises funds for children in need of hospital services and also volunteers your time may has received awards honoring her distinctive distinguished service from the jaycees garden club and american cancer society and she received the suroptimist

0:24:06international woman of distinction award in 1993 and it's with great honor that we recognize you to the wall of fame tonight okay [Applause] okay we actually need to pass the motion what uh what we'll do them one at a time so that was a motion that you just made

0:24:35we need a second second okay there's there's uh two seconds over here uh all in favor please say aye aye any objections any abstentions motion cares unanimously and we'll uh we'll uh do the rest of the present i'll do the rest of the part that i do um at the at the end of this part okay and

0:24:57okay uh teresa perella was born 100 years ago in the el cerita home where she lives today has devoted her life to serving the el cerrito and west contra costa communities ms perella educated and tutored generations of youth at fairmont school beginning in 1942 and earned a pta lifetime membership at

0:25:19fairmont elementary for her attention to her students in 1961.

0:25:24miss perella's retirement in 1977 she volunteered by tutoring into her late 90s at fairmont and creating teachers aids for schools and students with disabilities at cameron school she continues to fundraise for cameron's early intervention program the el cerrito chapter of seroptimus

0:25:46international honored ms perella with the women of distinction award in recognition of her outstanding accomplishments in the area of humanitarian service to her community in april of 2001 in addition she received the golden apple award with alpha delta kappa alpha phi chapter for her

0:26:06volunteer work in education in 2010 and awards to her volunteer work from west county unified school district in 1999 and from cameron school in 2004.

0:26:17in 2015 fairmont elementary school honored ms perella with a certificate of appreciation in recognition of her longtime commitment to the fairmont school community and named the fairmont school library after her and ms perella had a history of teaching of reaching out to those

0:26:36less fortunate in her community and raise funds for mary's house of mercy which houses single pregnant women in crisis as well as grip the greater richmond interfaith program which provides food and services for the homeless now therefore be it resolved by the city

0:26:55of the by the city council of the city of el cerrito that hereby inducts teresa perella into the el cerrito wall of fame in recognition of her lifelong commitment to educating and promoting youth of the el cerrito and west west contra costa communities [Applause]

0:27:25is there a second to the motion a second okay all in favor please say aye aye any objections any abstentions motion carries unanimously [Applause] be right back sure this is probably anyone else wants to take pictures [Music] when you're ready oh uh foreign [Laughter]

0:30:31there we go there we go okay all right everybody say cheese lovely okay y'all go ahead room okay [Applause] so is [Music] please [Music] [Applause] what do you need right there you've already signed up for this one stand up for all of them um may i'm wondering if you'd like to say a

0:33:54few words good just a few words okay i think i need to tell you a little bit about how i became so involved in helping people but first i'd like to say good evening madam mayor and council members and thank you so much for this honor i am indeed thankful it's been a privilege to work with so

0:34:26many talented and energetic people over the years that i've been in el cerrito i believe working together we have made el cerrito a place that we can all be proud of when i moved to el cerrito in 1960 it had a small town feeling about it to me i grew up in a small town where everyone

0:34:48knew everyone and they would help each other and in turn helped their community my parents taught me the most important thing was helping other people be it a small or a large endeavor do your best and do it without expecting anything in return that lesson has taught me and served me

0:35:12well over the years that i have been active in el cerrito whether it was with the garden club or some other organization where i'm a member my focus has always been on helping others i'd like to thank my family and all my garden club friends for all the help that they've given me

0:35:30over the years to become i think more involved than i would have other been they've also helped me and allowed me to pursue my passion i have lived this passion during the years that i was employed and also during the years of my service to my community as i accept this honor i would like to

0:35:52say my volunteering life is not over i will continue to be involved in projects where i can be of help life is too short to waste it when you can help yourself stay healthy active and involved in your community so i plan to keep on going as long as i can i'm here to stay

0:36:16thank you very much and thank again to all my all of my friends for coming i really appreciate it [Applause] theresa would you like to say a few words i would like to thank rose my neighbor who nominated me also i'd like to congratulate may in sharing this beautiful day with me

0:37:34it is apparent that i have seen many changes in our fair city and um as you know i was born here grew up here and things were very different there are many changes our city has gone through many changes and i've lived through most of them one i just to mention a few

0:38:17one thing is that i'm living on richmond street there were two or three houses on a block and the area between my house and malda and not waldo uh moshe lane and then over to the uh bart tracks that was all virgin land it was grassy fields lush grass for and the dairyman

0:38:58there were quite a number of gary's in el cerrito uh the dairymen used these fields for their pasture land and they would graze their cattle there i was raised on one of these dairies yes and i learned to milk a cow at that time um there were only two schools in el cerrito

0:39:37both of them elementary schools um fairmont was the first and uh when i was in third or fourth grade uh harding was built and for many many years until the late 30s those were the only two schools in el cerrito they had grades one to seven because we had no junior high

0:40:12and no high school of course i went to longfellow junior high in richmond and then to richmond union highway uh anyway i can't help but think well let's just look at us now how this city has grown and i think we need to give our city officials credit for the foresight

0:40:58to help us move along according to our needs um i appreciate and i feel very fortunate uh i appreciate the fact that the opportunities offered by this city have been provided and i thank the city officials for doing such a a wonderful job of keeping up to the times

0:41:40thank you very much [Applause] i like i like to acknowledge um the my family my 80k sisters who are here my teachers sorority and many friends thank you very much why don't we take a brief recess at this point uh so that people can who wish can go out into the foyer and either

0:42:29socialize or or or do as they so please you may want to look at the other pictures too and see what fine company these two magnificent ladies are in we have two speakers man we have two speakers on this oh sorry let's go ahead and do that first go ahead is one of them tom sorry excuse me

0:42:55everyone just one more minute we do have two speakers on this item so tom are you one of them would you like to go ahead and speak [Music] cheryl looks like we have three speakers cordell or tom panas followed by cordell hindler and molly hazen in a minute good evening mayor abelson members of

0:43:36the council and city staff my name is tom panis now live at [address removed] el cerrito thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for placing teresa on the wall of fame i've personally known teresa for more than 20 years and she's an enormous asset as we all know for our town

0:43:52much of the responsibility for my interest in the history and culture of elsewhere in west county is directly rooted in teresa's knowledge and love of the place where she grew up which of course is one of the many reasons that i and so many other people dearly love her

0:44:06when i came to el cerrito more than 40 years ago it was completely built out i had no other vision at el cerrito than as a city of homes you know a person i visited once in missouri who had lived in el cerrito but not since 1928 famously asked me is el cerrito still all farms and fields

0:44:28and the answer was unfortunately no but that's the place teresa remembers clearly hills and meadows covered with flowers farms her family's dairy other dairies riding the streetcar on san pablo avenue watching fairmont avenue fairmont school burn in 1924 going to the beautiful richmond high

0:44:49school she connected me to el cerrito in a really powerful way because her vision of her childhood so so closely matched my vision of my childhood without inspiration from teresa we probably wouldn't have the chiang mai home on the national register today normally we have a part of els we all

0:45:10know that there was a part of el cerrito called little italy where it helped to speak italian when you went into a store nor would we have world-class interpretation in our building next door all because of teresa's inspiration theresa got me emotionally connected to

0:45:25el cerrito in a way i never imagined was possible and there's no one who has more graciously shared her knowledge of el cerrito so many with so many people than teresa but that's just what she did for me she's given the historical society a wonderful collection of old el cerrito

0:45:40artifacts she's been honored by as an el cerrito pioneer her china painting has been featured in exhibits she's been a life member historical society longer than i've been keeping the records theresa's work at cameron and fairmont before she retired in 1977 was truly

0:45:56noteworthy and she may have the world's biggest fan club of former students but what she's contributed to the support and education of our children since she retired through both fundraising and volunteerism is truly extraordinary be very difficult to find someone who

0:46:10has positively influenced more young people than theresa because of her beyond her support for education the historical society teresa still remains active in many things the yli here in el cerrito alpha data kappa saint john the baptist we need more people who they need who

0:46:28donate their time their knowledge and their love to make el cerrito a better place the same way theresa does thank you for your time this evening [Applause] cordell hindler followed by molly hazen good evening uh honorable mayor council um that that is really a hard act to follow

0:46:51so everything that tom said was absolutely true so what got me inspired with volunteerism is because i'm i have i feel that i have a passion to give to people you know um if they if they need help you know if they have like you know literary skills i'd be i'd be i'd be happy to work with

0:47:08them so and i do i'd like to acknowledge uh someone from leap here um what got me started was um because i love to help people in every way that i can so that i mean theresa i mean you have you really outdone yourself this is just amazing so um as a um as an uncle to a

0:47:27to a nine and five-year-old i'm trying to i teach them that i'll say it is more it is blessed to give than to receive so hopefully that as as as more people you know like do good things for el cerrito it's just such a a good feeling to um to know that um that what you're doing

0:47:45is a is compassion and uh and hopefully that we give our our residents a fair opportunity so good evening again molly hayes and chairwoman of the l state of crime prevention committee i note on the agenda item e safe exchange zone i just want to thank on behalf of our

0:48:13committee i understand councilmember paul fideli was responsible for bringing this to the policy matters i want to thank you for that and also our police department everything what's important in our city is keeping everybody safe and the el srito crime prevention

0:48:32committee and the australia police department have that goal in common so everything we can do to have deterrence against crime in our city is uh is really important for all of us right now so just a brief thank you for creating an installation of a safe exchange zone

0:48:52and we are very much in support of that and we aren't supportive having designated locations we want to make sure that people who are exchanging on craigslist and all the places where they're buying uh feel comfortable and not feeling threatened or fear so thank you

0:49:13again for all of you who are involved in this initiative thank you i believe that ends the comments okay um so at this time we'll move on on the agenda okay and the um so that completes the wall of fame and the next item on the agenda is not public hearings because we have none

0:49:37then we can move on to the policy matters the first item under policy matters is the affordable housing strategy and i believe we have a staff report from melanie mintz thank you [Music] good evening city council members my name is melanie mintz and i'm the city's

0:50:25community development director and i am pleased to be here tonight to present the city's very first affordable housing strategy um as we all know the issue of housing and affordable housing in particular is a very hot topic right now locally regionally and at the state

0:50:41level a number of bills are currently working through the state legislature to address the issue of housing shortage the strategy before you tonight aims to identify and provide a toolbox for the city to utilize to address the issue of increasing the availability and

0:50:56stability of affordable housing as stated in the report the strategy aims to provide practical tools appropriate to the city size composition and resources including one key policy area which discusses and proposes tools to increase locally available funding the strategy is consistent with the

0:51:16city's housing element which is required by the state to identify that the city's policies are not providing are not an impetus to us meeting our regional housing needs and those goals especially in terms of the strategy include conserving and improving el cerrito's existing housing

0:51:33supply facilitating and encouraging the development of new housing to meet regional housing needs allocations which we'll talk more about later and expanding housing opportunities for the elderly the disabled and households with very low to moderate incomes including

0:51:47persons with special housing needs the strategy is particularly important since in 2012 the city lost its primary funding for affordable housing which was the 20 percent set aside of tax increment generated in the redevelopment area this funding was our primary source to

0:52:05leverage other funding for affordable housing to be developed and was largely responsible for as you'll see as you in one of the charts on page and we'll get there on page nine in your report um you know the redevelopment agency did play a role in much of our affordable

0:52:25housing in particular for hannah gardens for example next door the agency did purchase the land as well as provide a loan um so with the dissolution of redevelopment agencies of course this is no longer available so how do we stay how do we continue to make the progress

0:52:44that we've made over the last decade and decades in meeting or partially meeting our affordable housing needs the strategy aims examines and aims to identify the tools necessary to continue to make the progress tonight i will introduce sujata srivastava from strategic economics and

0:53:03her staff to provide an overview of the process utilized to develop the proposed strategy and she'll also present the data developed during the process an overview of the city's existing affordable housing resources and programs and the proposed policies and strategies

0:53:16identified for implementation here in el cerrito importantly i'd like to mention as we're talking about all of these some of these redevelopment primarily really focused on in redevelopment areas there was a 15 set-aside required um and then there was also the funding available to support

0:53:36um housing and often there was ground leases extended like it was for el cerrito royale without that funding is one piece but we also really in this strategy wanted to identify a large range of tools that could help contribute to solving this issue on that the redevelopment agency also was who

0:53:56previously provided the staff person that focused on housing issues currently i'm looking to fill a vacant community development analyst position and that person would be focused on housing so a lot of these strategies that you're hearing tonight and especially the implementation

0:54:10timelines that we talk about we will be opening up that position soon and that person will really be focused on being able to drive um these uh strategies forward um so the conclusion of sujata's presentation i'll return to talk briefly about next steps and then both strategic

0:54:25economics planning staff and myself will be available for questions good evening city council members let me just lower this a little bit uh so i just want to give a quick overview of what the project was and then we'll talk about the strategies and specific implementation actions and i've i'm

0:54:52highlighting the ones that we've identified as higher priority items which are also outlined in red in the in the report and then turn it back to melanie to close so i think melanie already covered this but the affordable housing strategy is meant to address a lot of the goals that

0:55:10were already outlined in the housing element and we're looking at strategies to increase the housing supply but also to preserve the affordability of existing housing as well for a wide range of different types of households and particularly for special needs and low-income households

0:55:30in terms of the process that we went through we started in the spring with an analysis of existing resources and and practices for uh for affordable housing strategy and then we conducted an initial workshop just to sort of introduce some of these concepts and ideas

0:55:50to a broader audience and got good feedback from participants we also had additional analysis on what the market conditions were provided some preliminary ideas for strategies which were then presented at a second workshop with the community and then that led into the the draft

0:56:10strategy and a presentation to the planning commission and some additional additional revisions and then now the draft strategy that's before you today um throughout the process we also met with a technical advisory group that was composed of experts in the field of

0:56:26affordable housing and housing in the region so just to sort of recap on what we mean when we are talking about affordable housing we've defined it fairly broadly using this the definition that has been established that a household as a guideline should not be spending more than 30 percent of

0:56:50its income on rents or mortgage on their total housing costs so we wanted to think a little bit about you know what are the ways that typically we provide affordable housing for the households that are not able to afford housing that is available in the private market which is increasingly a

0:57:09concern in a rapidly accelerating housing market like this one the first is through subsidized housing where currently the model is primarily through tax credit housing where you receive subsidies from the federal government to some extent from the state government

0:57:25and from other sources to be able to cover the gap between what a household can pay and what it costs to build the housing a lot of those are only available for low very low and extremely low income households so there is a gap there for moderate income households

0:57:39and then we also see strategies where you're looking to the private sector to help contribute the affordable units and there are a variety of different mechanisms that can be employed to try to do that and typically at least in california local governments are involved in either

0:57:57providing funding to affordable towards affordable housing or creating those requirements so that when private development occurs some sort of an affordable housing requirement is put into place in terms of thinking about what we mean when we're talking about these different

0:58:15income limits we sort of used the the state housing community development definitions for different income limits and just to give you a sense when we talk about very low income households for a household of one that would be up to 50 percent of the area median

0:58:35income which is before the county um and that's um on that table you can see it's a 36 550 for one person household about 52 000 for a four person household when we're talking about low-income households that's for a one-person household 56 thousand and for four-person household it's about

0:58:5780 000 and so on so you can kind of start to see which categories we're talking about we're speaking about very low and low income households and up to moderate income households which can go up all the way to 120 percent of area median income and we're hearing

0:59:13as we're looking at the at the market data that new housing that is coming into the supply often is out of reach even for moderate income households and the table below gives you a sense of what an affordable monthly rent would be for these various income groups

0:59:30so a two bedroom for a moderate income household for example an affordable rent would be twenty four hundred dollars many of the new units that are coming online are way beyond those rent levels so just to give you a sense of the challenge i think el cerrito is a fortunate

0:59:51community in many ways because there has been an active promotion of affordable housing construction and approvals we we're showing here on this table that there are about 958 units if you include the mayfair project which has been approved and then the project next door which is

1:00:09still under construction and there's a variety of different kinds of populations that are assisted that range from the very low income to to special needs households but what we do know from the housing element is that about a third of households in el cerrito are cost burdened which means they're

1:00:30paying more than 30 of their income on on housing and there are also these regional housing targets that have been set by the association of bay area governments um that allocate you know to cities how much housing they should be uh producing in order to keep up with regional demand

1:00:47and there is still a a need to be able to provide that particularly for the lower income and for moderate income housing groups the housing element also has identified a need for special housing about 41 percent of seniors in el cerrito are defined in the extremely low

1:01:07and very low income categories and it's also defined it also identifies needs for persons with disabilities and homeless and extremely low income households the city does have some existing policies in place that we wanted to also call out here one of them is the state density bonus

1:01:30program which awards additional density projects that and incentives to projects that include lower income housing this is state law and in addition to that the city also has in the san pablo avenue specific plan area an incentive program that provides certain more flexibility in the standards so

1:01:53i'll provide certain types of economic incentives through zoning for projects that are providing community benefits which includes affordable housing units and then more recently the city has enacted new development standards that encourage the the construction of accessory

1:02:09dwelling units which can meet the need for lower income households as much as it can for market rate households and then finally the city partners with the county primarily for a lot of the other types of renter homeownership and homelessness assistance programs

1:02:30so through the course of our work and our research and and the the input we got from stakeholders and from community members we to find these four major policy pillars for the economic i'm sorry the affordable housing strategy and for each of these pillars we've

1:02:46developed some specific strategies and implementation actions that the city can take on and uh in the report as i mentioned before we've also highlighted the ones that we think are of high priority items and those are sort of the types of strategies that you could

1:03:04pursue that would really have a lot of impact and would really address a need in the city some of these are short term some of these are kind of over a longer period of time so pillar a is leveraging private development to contribute affordable housing units as i mentioned before el cerrito has

1:03:26around 660 units in the pipeline right now these are projects that are not subject to any kind of inclusionary zoning or residential impact fee for affordable housing and the map on the right which i apologize a little hard to read from the projector shows a lot of the communities in the

1:03:50east bay that either have inclusionary zoning or a residential impact fee these are mechanisms to require affordable housing either through providing units on site or paying a fee to be able to create the revenues needed to produce the units elsewhere in the city

1:04:10and so el cerrito many of its neighbors have these types of requirements and now without redevelopment the city may want to uh we would recommend the city to establish a new inclusionary zoning policy or maybe in conjunction with a housing impact fee for affordable housing

1:04:31to be able to do a housing impact fee that would require doing a nexus and feasibility study so that would be the first step and then perhaps imposing an inclusionary housing policy on ownership housing and kind of a related item to this is identifying non-profit partners that could help

1:04:54monitor the ongoing affordability of inclusionary units as they are built another piece of this is to continue looking at the san pablo specific plans incentive program and seeing if it's really generating affordable housing units trying to make sure that that policy is actually being effective

1:05:22under pillar b this is one where we're really looking at the opportunities to reduce the risk of displacement and to address at-risk households and the homeless population we know that rent rates in contra costa county and in el cerrito have been rising rapidly

1:05:44and as that has happened there's been increasing concern that tenants are getting priced out and at risk of getting pushed out so there are a wide range of policies that we are looking at here the first that i want to highlight is partnering with affordable housing

1:06:01developers to preserve the units that had been built as affordable but the deeds may be expiring and and really identifying what those projects are and developing some strategies to be able to preserve their affordability another one here is to preserve low-cost housing stock um a lot of the

1:06:23units in the city are older multi-family buildings that are may not be officially deed restricted affordable housing but they are lower costs to rent than some of the newer housing stock so finding mechanisms to be able to regulate the demolition and maybe requiring

1:06:41some sort of relocation assistance if those types of buildings are demolished or rehabbed in the future another is particularly with the new adu ordinance looking at implementing new restrictions on short-term rentals and we by this we mean things like airbnb and vrbo and

1:07:08some of these other platforms so that those units can be an addition to the housing stock rather than be looked in entirely as investment properties and also exploring tenant protection policies now we looked at a wide range of different ways that cities can protect tenants that

1:07:31ranges everything from rent stabilization and just cause which are typically coupled together to tenant landlord mediation types of programs harassment protection ordinances and relocation assistance for no fault evictions and we recommend that the city continue

1:07:49to study some of these options and evaluate the success of those programs particularly in cities of similar size to el cerrito that have a smaller amount of units that would be subject to some of these different types of strategies and then understanding that the city is

1:08:06because of its size and because of the funds that it has is not is typically working with the county on homelessness issues we we would we recommend partnering with contra costa county to figure out how to expand outreach and additional services to homeless person persons in the city

1:08:30pillar c is is really looking at missing middle housing types this is a diagram that was developed by opticos that sort of defines what we mean by missing middle so often a lot of new development is in this kind of mid-rise construction which is sort of on the right side of the spectrum and then a

1:08:48lot of the existing housing stock particularly in el cerrito is detached single-family homes but there's this whole wide range of other housing types that might be lower cost to build and that can serve a different type of household and those are what we mean by missing

1:09:03middle so everything from an accessory dwelling unit to live work or townhouse type of densities so in order to really address this missing middle um issue we we have strategies to continue to work on the accessory dwelling units and what we think what we hear is really a

1:09:29gap is in really helping homeowners understand how to use the regulations how to design the units and how to really understand what they need to do to get through the process so it's really just about providing a little bit more support and then looking also whether there are

1:09:49opportunities to review the general plan and make changes to zoning district boundaries so that more missing middle housing could be accommodated particularly in areas that are close to transit or to commercial areas and then also looking at ways to partner with private groups that are interested

1:10:10in alternative housing types like co-housing and shared housing communities there are a lot of models of that and typically what happens is a private group takes the lead and it's really just about making sure that they have what they need to be able to do that and that there are no barriers

1:10:29number uh pillar d is really uh about looking at funding sources to be able to enact a lot of the policies that we've talked about the amount of funding available to a city uh like el cerrito of a limited size is very limited and especially so with the demise of redevelopment so a

1:10:49lot of what we've talked about in our implementation matrix would require raising additional revenues and some of these are about raising revenues at a county level or through new fees our implementation actions here are working with bart bart actually a big portion of the cost of developing

1:11:17housing is the land it can be up to 15 of a unit's cost so working with bart to be able to develop new housing on land and knowing that bart has a policy for 20 of units on bartlands to be affordable is an opportunity to to really be able to create housing mixed income housing

1:11:38we also have looked at the state program the primary state program for affordable housing is asic affordable housing for sustainable communities and aligning transportation investments with the housing projects is one way to to make el cerrito projects more competitive for

1:11:56that type of funding so to the extent that you're really creating that nexus and priving providing incentives to developers that are including accessible units in their developments as part of the tier four process is another implementation item that we've identified as a high priority

1:12:16we also are have been hearing from folks that they'd like to really understand what the opportunities are for new local taxes or fees to fund affordable housing beyond the housing impact fees some cities have enacted property transfer taxes or business license taxes on multi-family

1:12:37rental properties some of these strategies would require el cerrito to become a charter city or to obtain voter approvals so some further exploration would be needed and then uh working with other cities to place a county-wide bond measure which would be an important

1:12:57way to raise even at a larger scale funding for affordable housing a lot of nearby places like san francisco oakland and santa clara county and alameda county have passed these bonds and while there hasn't been one that's been proposed in contra costa county we

1:13:14think there's an opportunity for the city to work with partners to be participating and discussing a similar strategy here melanie spoke about some of the state legislation that's been up for discussion and just monitoring what the progress is at and then finally deferring or waiving city

1:13:34fees on affordable housing development that can also be a big incentive for developers and a big cost reduction so that's our list of strategies and i think i'll turn it back to melanie thank you um as sujata mentioned some of those she was just highlighting a collection of

1:14:00the strategies and you have more implementation actions in the document i also neglected to note earlier that we obviously we as i mentioned in your report we did go to the planning commission and the planning commission unanimously recommended that we forward this to you

1:14:12with the added statements that they'd like to see some of the strategies such as the inclusionary zoning and impact fees move forward quickly they also as you'll see in your revised document asked us to prioritize and i think sujata mentioned this but we really

1:14:28tried to look at what what are the um programs that are kind of tried and true and have the potential to create the most impact finally the el srito progressives also submitted to you and to staff a list of their recommendations and i think if you look at that we think that there's some

1:14:44significant overlap at this time so with that i will open it up for questions any questions from the council greg sure if if i'm if you i definitely have questions so thank you for that opportunity mayor um i want to start out with uh one of the basic information slides you have the

1:15:10very beginning and i know i can't pronounce your name but it starts with sue say it again sujaka um it was one of the early slides and it had house prices and rental prices by uh income type and i'm just curious if that that's in the housing plan element it was very informative this one here

1:15:32this one yeah is this is this in the housing i see a head shaking i looked for it it changes regularly right so with uh new hud guidelines so i don't believe it is not in there and it's something actually we did uh developed today because at the book planning commission

1:15:47at the community workshops people wanted a better sense of what are those income levels and what are those rents um i could obviously provide this and then we also do put this we provide this to the affordable housing providers regularly on an annual basis so that they know

1:16:00what the new limits are um and then we also would be happy to put this on our web page so others could see it and find it readily but it does change periodically great and and uh just to note that it will be available in our minutes will this presentation be available in the minutes uh

1:16:18yeah okay if you could because certainly i i don't know about anybody else but i try to reference our materials um when i try to be informed on topics here there that's what i'm looking for um so on um with regards to the workshops can you explain or tell us about how the workshops were

1:16:39advertised and and how were different types of groups uh informed of the workshop so they could come and speak either before or you know on behalf of or against some of the issues that were being raised through this study um i can and i think that um you should

1:16:57note that in the strategy it does summarize the public outreach process but it probably doesn't get into how we advertised so we have received a lot of calls from people interested in affordable housing as hana gardens and creekside were both doing those so we had a list

1:17:12of actually hundreds of people on that and made sure that they received it we also have community development e-news and we put it in the i believe we put it in i would have to go back and look but in the city-wide newsletter that we often try to time our dates so that we know that every

1:17:27household receives it and we did a press release great thank you um and and they were well well attended they were well attended but uh both workshops had between uh about 30 people yep and and i actually went through the um the in in the planning and i thank you

1:17:44very much for sending over to us early the the planning department and one of those workshops there was a presentation on anti-displacement tools for preserving housing and affordable near transit and and i'm just curious if i know you don't have those slides here and and

1:18:01most people probably don't have the planning commission attachment to from july 19th but there certainly was a great emphasis on uh trying to find tools not to to promote displacement and uh i was just curious if you wanted to discuss displacement in some fashion i

1:18:21it's not necessarily covered in the report quite to you know particularly clear but i just wanted to find out i mean there's a great definition of displacement in here if you would like i can read it oh yeah the one that talks about the difference yes please do um displacement is when

1:18:38households are forced to move or are prevented from moving into a neighborhood that was previously accessible to them due to conditions which are beyond their ability to control or prevent uh for the example is rent increases and the source of this is urban displacement project university

1:18:56of california at berkeley um in a lot of the policies that you're asking us to consider would reduce displacement or what are your thoughts on how this housing element addresses displacement um let me tell you a housing strategy um quickly let me say that in our technical

1:19:15advisory group we had two um people in particular who focus on displacement issues and one was someone from the great communities collaborative um who actually i believe did that slide presentation and then the urban displacement project uh was there also from uc berkeley um so when we go into that

1:19:34strategy let me move over there you can see we talk about preserving existing units which is a i'm learning as a challenge actually so that we talk about partnering with local affordable housing developers and property owners to preserve existing deed restricted units and you have a

1:19:50chart that tells you when some are leaving we also within that talk about and there are non-profit housing developers and i believe some are here in the audience and they might be able to speak to this but there are affordable housing providers who are looking at acquiring

1:20:06some of the um naturally occurring affordable housing so some of them that sujata talked about some of the older potentially soft story type of projects and if they could acquire those and rehabilitate them and maintain those uh and turn them into below market rate restricted units um is

1:20:23one again preserving the low cost housing stock i think suggest to talk about some of those and we also talked about one of the challenges with things like a seismic retrofit so some of our low-cost housing stock might also be some of our soft stories we've mentioned and some of those

1:20:39um there's a lot of discussion about needing to do some potentially a seismic retrofit ordinance for example but there's some concern that those costs would be passed along to renters so abag and others working with fema and others are sometimes making funding available and

1:20:56we could look at for example it's talked about that could could that low interest loans for example or grants for seismic retrofit um be given in exchange for restricting rents um so that's one the other um that sujata talked about is short-term rental restrictions and when we talk about that

1:21:14we're talking about having a good community outreach process because we think that there's a lot of different opinions on this topic about how does it help people afford their home and or how does it potentially contribute to displacement so for example if we want to build a lot more

1:21:30accessory dwelling units those often can go to three-month one-year type rentals of maybe small families um you know singles but if they turn into weekend rentals then they're not available as a residential use so looking at something like that or we have also heard that there are full

1:21:48houses that are sometimes taking off out of the residential market and turned into vacation rentals and one more or do you want to i just wanted to interject yes before you move on um maybe this is a good time so at one point in the presentation the original presentation that was made tonight you

1:22:06referred to the disability community as being one of particular interests for this discussion and yet when you go to soft source story construction uh that's probably those units are not accessible so um good point and yeah so how would you um deal with that in this conversation so i

1:22:30think two pieces um one is it's true that not every unit might be retrofitted to be accessible but that could for example potentially we could try to find sources or in those if we could identify sources that um encouraged the retrofit to make those accessible i think we've discussed some

1:22:48of those don't even have elevators um they're old buildings so when we talk about new construction i think is where we're really going to be able to leverage um increasing accessibility except that when the in the new units they're especially in the ones that are

1:23:02of lower um uh the number of units that those tend also not to be accessible because they have stoops which is allowed by state law right so one of the seems to me that you never get to a point at which there are the accessible units so far in this little discussion so i'm going to go to the

1:23:25fourth strategy on what greg was asking about council member lyman and then i can return to that and the fourth one is exploring a potential tenant protection policies and there's a whole table in here that describes um let me find the page number um there's a whole table that explores what

1:23:43those tenant protection policies are so it's on page 30.

1:23:48it includes rent stabilization tenant landlord mediation just cause eviction protections harassment protections and relocation assistance in that table as well as even in more detail in the document it describes what those tools are what they can do it also describes what their

1:24:04limitations are and it talks about some other considerations such as cost of implementation so for example i think this is an important one because it comes up regularly with rent stabilization it talks about what that does how state law might intervene to make

1:24:22that for example it cannot apply to any single family home or any units built before so i think we have a type built after 1995 so it wouldn't be any of our new projects we're going in right they'd be established and then there's also something called vacancy decontrol which

1:24:42is when somebody moves out and it goes back it can go back to a market price so we talk about that another important one that comes up often is just cause eviction which has been something that was talked about in our housing element again with this technical advisory group and in doing

1:24:57research we looked at is it time for us to to propose that for adoption one of our concerns was that if you don't do rent stabilization at the same time that sometimes just increasing rents can become the just cause and so we looked in only one city uh union city i believe

1:25:15um has a just cause without uh rent stabilization so in here we talk about how many units could effectively could potentially be affected by something like rent stabilization again it's not single family homes and it all uh cannot apply to to new new more newly built

1:25:33projects um so there is a whole table on that and then in the implementation table we do talk about the the one that we recommend implementing immediately would be some sort of tenant relocation assistance if any um housing if any residential project were to be displaced by new construction

1:25:53so this is an issue of of course with the up zoning near transit stations there could be an incentive that somebody looks at for example one of those four plexes without accessibility and looks at building something bigger we do identify moving quickly forward with a

1:26:08an ordinance that would look at residential demolition so that we could make sure that those tenants were to receive some relocation assistance um otherwise i believe in these we felt that we still there's not good indication as you know rent stabilization is a bit controversial um

1:26:26and we did not find solid evidence that a city of our size would uh would that that would be something that we could do immediately another thing to add is that most cities do it through a ballot measure and the city attorney can probably talk more about that but that's generally the

1:26:42tool that would be utilized for something like rent stabilization like the city of richmond did so i do have a fundamental question on page seven there's the a nice box that says defining affordable housing and it uh there's a discussion about using 30 percent or less of a household's

1:27:02income it wasn't clear if that was net or gross i mean sometimes you hear it's 30 percent of one and fifty percent of the other and i just wanted to find out if this is thirty percent of net is probably what it is if you wanna google it so it's gross and i actually uh did

1:27:17look into that and it also looks like it's challenged it's a it's a it's a a threshold that's being challenged some somewhat because really what it's trying to aim for is how much income do you have left over to meet your family's needs which is going to differ depending on what the

1:27:34transportation resources are so it's but it's as a benchmark it's gross it's it's so it's gross 30 percent of gross okay right so that again is 50 of net but that's okay um did you want to throw that word in or that just you want to leave it open-ended it's really not one

1:27:50that i think that we're i mean it's it's it's established i think it's talked about at the federal level it's a pretty common metric and we're not defining it ourselves we're using definitions that are just kind of to give a target so i could we could add that if you'd like

1:28:03i think it would be useful for people to understand 30 of gross is actually pretty low um and the important thing with that is when somebody's qualifying for any when we looked at what the income limits are that's where they should put themselves in with their gross income

1:28:18okay um there was a table in here and i'm drawing a blank on which page it's on right now i'll look for it while we're talking and it does identify the housing stock that is about to roll out of long-term protection and it it addresses things like the el cerrito row

1:28:37which may roll out of protection i think next year um how do how do long-term protections for condominiums uh get implemented there seem to be deed restrictions but they have sunset clauses on them is there is there a way to make these more long-term than 10 years or 15 or 30

1:29:04years usually 55 so for example when we just wrote those for um what you said for condominiums i it yeah the question i wrote to myself was condominiums but certainly feel free to talk about uh even um owner owned uh properties as well or rental i believe in others i might be

1:29:24able to chime in so i know that we did 55 years for um creekside and that's what we're probably entertaining for bridge uh at mayfair um i would have to go back el cerrito royale um is an interesting one because i believe it was a ground lease with the city and

1:29:42so i'm actually looking into that those are set to expire and i have heard from elsewhere to real that they would allow those that qualified to live there to live there and age and continue to live there but they aren't currently looking at extending that those deed restrictions so

1:30:01i'm entering into conversations to figure out with others what kind of funding sources what kind of incentives but it is a a risk and it is one thing that we could look into the planning commission chair who does work in affordable housing also asked that we try to get those even

1:30:19longer 55 years sounds long until you're at the end of it and i don't obviously these couldn't have been 55 years el cerrito royale for example so i don't know what the limitations were when the redevelopment agency negotiated those but in our current projects we are

1:30:31looking at 55 and again um if anybody there was figure two in the previous report i'm not did i am i missing oh yeah here it is it's still figure two okay just to just to add to that many cities for example san francisco have even longer-term inclusion for their inclusionary units

1:30:51it's in perpetuity so you can design the program to have a longer affordability period if you would if that's something that the city wants to do inclusionary for inclusionary very inclusionary okay and some of these others that are assisted by other funding sources have their own

1:31:08requirements okay and and then um let's see so on you discussed the missing middle and and um sudaka had a very nice graphic on slide 20 that that defined the different types of of uh housing stock as as you go from single-family home to denser uh living and i apologize my notes are on the

1:31:46previous version so i need to find the corresponding discussion in the current version it's the page numbers are pretty much the same age 35 as sujata is suggesting it's uh bridge development middle pillar c is on page exactly or it was on page 16 when i read it in

1:32:12the you know in the four policy pillars uh the encouraging of the development of missing middle um it seems through both the discussion tonight and the report that this is actually one of the more difficult uh areas to accomplish is encouraging the missing middle

1:32:28there's not the same funding mechanisms for the missing middle it's it's not necessarily the target of some of our transit oriented development to develop the missing middle so what are some of the thoughts on on the missing middle i mean where what are some of the tools we can do to

1:32:48encourage that because that strikes me as being something that potentially preserves our um our neighborhoods in a way that that we're trying to do and is is the accessory dwelling unit the only only tool we have for that that's i guess what i'm asking um so two things one in the specific

1:33:05plan area where we kind of repeatedly state in the report is our greatest potential for adding to our housing stock including affordable you're only allowed the minimum height is three stories so you're not actually in the specific plan area we will largely see the mid-rise which is

1:33:23outside of the missing middle so where we're looking at the missing middle it actually is mostly in addition to accessory dwelling unit which you guys have done a lot in adopting the most recent ordinance and we're going to look at doing more which is both um it says in

1:33:36here that we would people have really wanted us to do like uh technical assistance and potentially even to do pre um pre-designed plans pre-approved plans that people could use for example um and also maybe to look at even reducing setbacks further and other items to make

1:33:51adus more viable or more attractive but the other thing is our general plan currently has for example residential single rs zoning in some places that are near transit what we encourage in here is that we actually look at evaluating our district boundaries and our types of district and allowing more

1:34:12places to be duplex and or medium density and like you said opticos really created this not for these uh place like the specific plan area where you want even higher density um but actually in single family neighborhoods the idea is that it's pretty compatible in scale if you looked

1:34:33at it from a form based code standpoint to a single to the single family neighborhood but you could increase the number of bedrooms one of the important factors in this is that we would have to make sure that our parking requirements were similarly reduced right so if on a single lot you

1:34:47put two a duplex or a triplex or a four plex or bungalow court and you needed and you required a single off street parking space for each you wouldn't have it and that's their point in this term missing middle is that around uh around this was mostly built in the 1950s and

1:35:06when we started to require more off-street parking these these started to not appear in our neighborhoods and we zoned them out so what we're looking at is can we zone them back in um specifically on strategy 9 which is on page 36 the city should undertake a review of the general plan to determine

1:35:22if district boundaries um when tsudaka was speaking she mentioned that uh that was the zoning district boundaries so i'm hoping that that's something you can add to a final version is to put the on the slide zoning you want zoning to be added here it would help those of us

1:35:39that are not planning experts to actually understand what type of district boundary you're talking about and then under strategy 10 we've had a recent how shared housing gentlemen start us here at housing here in the kensington area and i was uh i don't know if he'll still be in

1:36:00business you know five years from now but certainly we can potentially highlight his uh his efforts for shared housing maybe with a call out to his current website if the city attorney says that's a fine idea so i just wanted to you know make sure that if people don't know and i can't

1:36:21remember it melanie safe home share or something i know i sent it to you but it but if there is a there is a house sharing entity that's going that is occurring here in west contra costa county um moving on to uh pillar founding funding is pillar d pillar d um i certainly would love to you know find

1:36:51ways to fund some of these strategies that are here and so certainly this is one that um i would like to know more about and i know um in strategy 14 and and i want to thank those that did provide comments uh we did get written comments uh by sherry dragner uh and uh howdy gowdy uh nick galero and

1:37:14and uh councilmember uh benicini um that i was aware of i want to explore this strategy for new local taxes and the charter city uh transfer tax we had a transfer tax in el cerrito when i first moved here um it obviously was uh removed through i believe court settlement or some court

1:37:38decision uh that we general city is not able to to charge a transfer tax our neighbors are generally charter cities and they are charging transfer tax and their transfer tax can be used for a number of things and a transfer tax could be potentially used a part of a transfer

1:37:55tax could be used for this is is that what you say that and i just want to make sure that's what you mean and if that's the case i was wondering if you'd be willing to make it red text in the implementation table to elevate this to to something that needs to be

1:38:10considered in the short term because funding is something as we discussed during goal setting in in march and april funding is something that we definitely need to start looking at for uh providing the services that we need to provide as we add these this many number of

1:38:28homes we have other services that are not discussed in this housing plan we like increasing police and fire as we add additional people so we we need to find funding mechanisms that will continue to meet our level of service for our existing residents as well as our

1:38:45new residents we don't want to just focus our our services on the new residences i think that's a book i'm reading right now that is actually the definition of the definition they're using for gentrification where all of the new rece all resources in a in a government body

1:39:01are going to uh the new development and i certainly don't want to lose sight of the existing development existing housing stock we have and the existing services we provide so finding new revenue is something that's important for us to provide the services we're

1:39:19providing as well as increase the services uh to affordable housing so as well as leveraging so i think we did write in here that actually local funding is critical in order to be i think it's a one to three um range right so for what we provided next door there was much more leverage so in

1:39:36the strategy table you can see i can we can obviously definitely change that to red or figure out how to highlight that as a priority um simply moving it to uh to red and changing it to a short term duration is uh would be a great solution for me um to achieve that

1:39:55um and we do talk about i think in the considerations is that we would uh have to become a charter city in order for that to occur um we could add that to the implementation table if that's an easier place to see that because it's obviously a staged but it is in the

1:40:11discussion it's in the discussion and i think um it it's certainly there and then just one last comment and this is really minor the appendix a is the pda market study update okay and i looked through here and i don't believe the definition of pda is in the appendix and sometimes

1:40:34appendices need to be standalone documents so i was wondering if you could at least put the definition of pda somewhere in the uh the appendix a indeed we will do that i think you can figure it out by going to the figure we can put we could call it a priority development area

1:40:51market study update and then we could even define that great thank you finished okay uh paul do you have anything i do have a few questions um and again thank the staff for this i think it's a good good and timely report as melanie said with the state legislature coming

1:41:09back and dealing with over 130 bills to assist affordable housing it's very timely for us to consider this a lot of options for us uh and for the city here um i wanted to ask re-ask the question i think you responded and i'm dealing with the first version and the second version and

1:41:26getting some clarity uh on on what changes have been made here but on staffing can you articulate again because there's a lot of priorities a lot and we could be doing all of these things and we don't want to overburden the staff are you talking one full new staffer a staffer and a half and what

1:41:44are their expertise that we're hoping to get here so i should share that this was a concern of the planning commission and they did want me to forward to you that we need more staff i didn't include it in the staff report um i thought that we could start with the one and we would

1:41:56really have to learn and see so at this point we do have a vacant position that we are recruiting for um we have two in fact one is for economic development and one is for housing and these are vacant positions um with that i think that person could also evaluate

1:42:12this strategy is an excellent way for me to communicate what we are looking for from someone and that would be it's a little different than what what people often did when they were in redevelopment which was often kind of did deals you had the money you were the

1:42:23bank and so you often did deals this looks at a lot more things how do you know it's driving everything from trying to look for the grants for the from fema to be able to do soft story rehab it's developing a lot of partnerships to maybe try to help the acquisition so at

1:42:37this point um i'm not asking for anything new we have a position and we will be looking for someone with a lot of experience in a variety of these tools some people have been in kind of kind of in silos in the affordable housing world and we're looking for somebody who's versatile and

1:42:50entrepreneurial like we often do um and i think with that you can also see in the implementation strategy we do highlight where we think that something certain strategies would be very staff intensive the city also because some of these things are are um you know have a cycle and there's a

1:43:08heavy lift in the beginning so we also as we did with strategic economics as we would with the inclusionary zoning and feasibility studies we do use consultants to help us with actually the policy development but the implementation is us in here we also talk about

1:43:22partnering with non-profits um to maybe do some of the things that we so there's a variety but at this point we're looking at one but i think it would be somebody focused on this and would be dry i think we'd see a lot of benefit um and we'll see we could do progress

1:43:36reports and kind of look at how that works and they'd be able to be focused on housing you will be sensitive if we give you all these things to do whether you can do that if you move them all to short term i might have a different answer okay um between the first version and the second

1:43:51uh version am i noticing a bigger emphasis on the homeless and our work with that because i'm very happy to see that it's one thing we added and mentioned that was missing in the first version and that we should after our core discussion we're talking about affordable housing let's go to that

1:44:08lower category even below that and deal with that that's right so we added in pillar b um and help stabilize at risk so instead of just reducing the risk of displacement we added and help stabilize at risk populations we specifically just wanted to call out because we didn't know if it was called

1:44:22out in any policy document at this point as sujata mentioned a city of our size does not often have that the resources to do it alone and as you heard in a previous council meeting we did have somebody from the county talk about their core outreach program they talked

1:44:35about police department obviously being somebody that they often helped coordinate with but they also talked about ways that cities could increase their partnership uh maybe increase funding portion of uh to help fund more out the county to do more outreach and as you heard their

1:44:51goal is really to divert people from home to identify who's most at risk in becoming homeless and to try to make sure that they get in long-term stable housing thank you until we added strategy seven um to highlight that that's very very good i'm going to follow up in budget

1:45:06time on homeless issues i think a little bit um in pillar c uh and i think uh councilman lyman mentioned um the it's been brought up in our workshops and other places about all the capacity that we have in our homes in the hills and low lands to fill in and to have homes for people

1:45:29and you recommend kind of a networking process that could happen to identify where people might want to be placed is it your view that that is a role for government or that the city should do that either with non-profits or i think and i think this is what council

1:45:49member lyman was getting at there is some kind of social entrepreneurial sites that are beginning to do this and i think in the same i i uh if anybody wants to chime in knowing where a city would actually play the role in that it seems to me more that um our residents could could

1:46:08participate in that we would have the information is to direct them as as the councilman yeah i mean we we generally don't um we would have to vet and see if any of these are government approved and i'd have to talk to the city attorney but just like craigslist as where you had an

1:46:22item tonight um i don't know how all these um how these different sites vet and make those connections and so i'm not sure that the city would play a role um i think it might be something that um the public could could promote um i can identify in here i think as

1:46:40council member lyman said we could add some of those uh and he looked at uh the city attorney to make sure it'd be appropriate to add a specific site um otherwise i think the el cerrito progressives and others are interested in helping to promote these ideas being

1:46:52able to direct on our website or something of that sort right okay um i'm also pleased to see a positive verbiage about displacement policies i mean that's something i'm really happy is in here and the staff did a good job about alternatives and it's your view that an an ordinance

1:47:13dealing with a tenant relocation assistant that's a high priority that will be coming back to us yeah at this point just to be clear what we were thinking and so if you have any other guidance beyond this we were looking just at this point at addressing residents

1:47:29directly displaced by new construction we weren't looking so we'd have to you know define that but for example if somebody if a if associated with demolition and reconstruction so that's all we were looking at at this point in terms of displacement would be direct

1:47:46um you know on that same parcel where there was residents and there was new development occurring that would be studied in terms of the total package of tenant protections uh that is something that we're actually asking tonight for guidance to actually come back with that specific ordinance

1:48:02so that you had policy that looked at um tenant relocation assistance that the developer would have to provide thank you and and lastly i did i know the county bond is an issue that is being recommended to us and i did talk to supervisor joya about this and he had

1:48:21mentioned that he has some um non-profits that are polling in the county now so i'm not sure if staff can contact and make sure to see how how that might go you know there's been a lot of bond issues may not be the best timing but is it ever the best timing um so

1:48:40i just wanted to say that let's follow through on that i would love to work with other cities if that's an issue in the county that we can do thank you very much finished yes thank you okay thank you mayor i i do have some concerns as well dealing with tenant protection tools and and looking

1:49:02at what you have here [Music] we're looking at rent stabilization and tenant landlord mediation and just cause eviction protections and looking at that and looking at the high values of property here in el cerrito i'm just so concerned about our longtime residents being displaced

1:49:32looking at rent stabilization what is i know in sacramento they are trying to get over 100 bills uh looked at and to to provide more tools such as ab-1506 which is to repeal costa hawkins so uh what is your opinion on that do you are you know we do have a lot of old stock

1:50:02buildings built before 1995 uh but yet these buildings are are rented at such a high high price but they do need a lot of work um yeah we need to i'm concerned about the high rental rates of these older buildings so have you looked at ab1506 repealing the casa hawkins

1:50:30bill so i'm not going to speak about my opinion specifically on that i think what we tried to provide in here we looked at for example the other cities that have um have have done it how they achieved it what the costs are obviously we operate under state law and

1:50:49if that were to go back further so we try to provide in here for you to be able to make the decision about and then we did as an implementation action we do say that our the department and the city would continue to to monitor that and look at that and see how other cities of our size are

1:51:06creating programs to be able to manage those programs so we do say in here that we think that it's it's important and it's an important tool in the toolbox and that we should i think we have it in the short and medium turn to keep looking at it i think in conversations

1:51:22with the city manager i think you know with your direction in that time frame we think there'd have to be a robust community outreach process it's also again often by ballot measure when you implement that so if the state were to repeal costa hawkins and be successful

1:51:35in that whether or not we have a rent stabilization policy with or without that repeal you could still have a rent stabilization policy would only apply to a fraction of the units thank you and also um can you explain to me the transfer tax we did have a transfer

1:51:53tax at what time at one time and it was um repealed or cancelled um how many years ago was it i might pass this on to others who are more familiar with it do you want to finish your question oh i want to know why was it canceled without without going into the details of the history which

1:52:13probably your assistant city manager is the most informed i'll just say that under current state law for general law cities um the maximum rate of real property transfer tax that can be imposed is a dollar ten per thousand dollars of valuation and that is split typically between the city and

1:52:33the county okay thank you so if we were to do a transfer tax again it would have to go through ballot and we would have to change from we would have to change to from a general city to a chartered city is that correct that's correct so as an adjunct to what i just said that is the

1:52:57state law that's applicable to general law cities charter cities are not subject to that law and so in order for el cerrito to levy a real property transfer tax in excess of that maximum the voters of el cerrito would both have to approve changing from a general law city to a

1:53:17charter city and also approve the the levying of that tax that could be combined into a single measure but but voters would have to approve both and it's only by becoming a charter city that el cerrito would be able to levy the higher real property transfer tax

1:53:32okay would that be a two-thirds vote that's a simple majority simple majority okay and both and if the it's a simple majority to become a charter city it's a simple majority for the tax if it's levied as a general tax um but but if it's levied as a general tax then both would have to be

1:53:50consolidated with the city council election okay um also um melanie i wanted to ask you about the granny units and uh the um and i know this was just pass and and tony thurman uh uh helped on that one and i wanted to find out i when i was at the speaking with neighbors at the national

1:54:15night out i did have neighbors ask me what is the procedure in building the granny units a lot of people didn't know about it they're concerned are parking and and a lot of these lots do not have the extra parking space but they do have large lots most of the homes are built

1:54:36before 1950 in the neighborhood where i was at and but many of them had more than a 5 000 square foot lot where it can be put in a granny unit but they are concerned about our ordinance about making sure that there is enough parking can you explain how many parking

1:54:59spaces you're supposed to have it could it's a short answer because you progressively the city council just took that requirement away so accessory dwelling units we it just happened recently so we haven't had a chance to promote that widely but that was an issue before there were ways around it

1:55:14but it was pretty um it was a process so you as you recall not only removed that requirement from near transit stations but actually city-wide well i know the neighbors and uh south el cerrito will be happy about it i received that question a lot also during my actually in north cerritos

1:55:32during my visits to national night out parties thank you if we were to pass a ballot measure to ease um well to make it to make some sort of rent control or other protections if that were happened like tomorrow what would you need in order to implement it if we were to pass it yes

1:56:01tomorrow yeah i would need the time to evaluate what i would need to be able to implement it um i might pass it on to strategic economics if they've helped create one of these but you know one is looking at the cost and i believe in here you can see what the various cost is and how

1:56:16um cities um raise those funds um talks about the fee charged per rental unit um for example um so so my overall question my overall answer is that i would probably that would be a big part of the analysis before we obviously were to be able to go to a ballot is what would the

1:56:35impacts be but um sujato would you like or either anybody to add anything additional if you've seen one be developed or is that the only thing i would add is because it can kind of take a series of different forms so sometimes it's binded mediation binding mediation

1:56:53sometimes it's something that is more of a rent stabilization program like you have in berkeley or oakland so they the the the way that you design the program has a lot of implications for how you might be able to recover the cost too um and the more uh i guess i would just sort of say as a

1:57:10general rule the more restrictions you place on um how much you can raise rents and how formalized the program is the higher kind of the bar is to be able to get it approved so there are certain types of programs that you might be able to implement that are more

1:57:28you know non-binding mediation types of programs that that might not require as arduous of a process right but non-binding mediation i mean right what does that really do so that's discussed in heroes as well we've seen that um you know i mean we can monitor the process richmond is starting a new

1:57:45program so you're seeing um from scratch and we haven't been able to monitor that so that is one of the implementation items we talk about is really to study that and learn that proactively to really learn more if it's if it's of interest to council to think that maybe in

1:58:01some period of years that that would be important you know we could start to do some of the um studying to see what that would take and share that information okay and then i saw that there were some various funding um mechanisms but i guess it's not particularly for

1:58:18for protections but can you just talk about some of the currently available federal and state funding to to promote affordable housing um i can tell you that the county and there's others here who directly deal with this woody from eden and others but i think the county has said that they've

1:58:36their funding has been reduced by about 60 to 80 percent um and so that means the funding available um other cities sometimes also larger cities get community development block grants i don't know what's happening with those because we aren't eligible it's usually larger cities in

1:58:52our case the county gets those and then projects here compete for it so i think the threshold is like 50 000 population if you're going to get those directly and so that's why we don't have our direct housing program like that the county administers that and they are

1:59:08experiencing a significant decrease in funding the other large one and i think it's in flux and there's others here who could also speak to it but is the low income housing tax credit that the federal government has provided and that's also creating some uncertainty um

1:59:24in the market maybe would you like to add anything to that or i could also invite um eden there's people here from east bay housing organization who might be able to answer that better or do you want to add and the the biggest source of subsidy for very low and low income housing is the

1:59:41federal tax credit right now the value of the credits has diminished um so it it's become it and and if the tax rate is reduced as the government as the administration has proposed that would create a big uh dip in the amount of tax credit funding that you can get um so that's

2:00:03kind of something that's kind of been changed it's a great question because there's a lot of there's a there are a lot of outstanding issues that are unresolved but the the way that it's happened in the past it's been primarily federal tax credits there's been some support from the state

2:00:18in the form of the cap and trade funds which is the affordable housing for sustainable communities program that's the grant that hana gardens received and then there are the the local funding sources and then a variety of other types of financing and funding that i'm

2:00:34sure the developers could tell you more about okay one thing i wanted to add to that and if you do want to hear a direct experience of someone who just uh did go through an arduous process to fund a 65 million dollar project uh woody carp is here but what i recall through going through that

2:00:51with them is um having all of these and this is uh affordable housing or tax credits um have tiebreaker scores it's very competitive and so the more local participating funds and other funds that there are in it the more competitive those are um so that is one of the issues with

2:01:05local funding we would never have enough funding ourselves to help build such a project like that but we could help leverage those additional fundings in a highly competitive environment thank you okay for like i think it's my turn now i'm going to switch what we're talking about

2:01:23a little bit to what i was talking about earlier and something i have [Music] more awareness of probably than most and that has to do with the special needs housing and accessibility which are i would say greatly lacking in a lot of housing stock and even in the regular

2:01:49the state regulations are not even very protective and so i'm wondering uh what could be done in this program so that all the wonderful benefits that people are talking about would in fact be open to people with special needs people with disabilities one thing problems specifically that i'm

2:02:13thinking of are things like uh stoop lack of elevators um so i might be able to invite from transit such that you asked the question is there a parking place if a lot of people with special needs could care less whether there's a parking place because they can't use it

2:02:33anyway so it's not even though it's an expensive item to produce there you know because they're unable to drive just like i'm unable to drive i'm one of those people i guess you could say so we don't really care about those things but yet we get to pay for those things

2:02:54that are only used by people who are not in the group i'm talking about thank you so there's several items bundled into that so let me see if i can touch on some of them and one i do want to remind you that in the specific plan area we do require that parking is unbundled

2:03:15so anybody who goes to rent or purchase a place in the specific plan area is not charged for parking unless they want it and so that is a requirement that we implemented with a specific plan to get at your last point which is why you're paying for parking and the cost of

2:03:29parking that are so high when you don't even need it so in a specific plan area we require that's unbundled um second i might also ask eden again but i believe that our affordable housing whenever something is has an elevator they are all built to be accessible and

2:03:47our building official is here too and you can talk about that but the fair housing act as we've seen with town homes and others sometimes that's not a requirement we did just see two projects that were just approved um not have an elevator originally so they were not going to be

2:04:02accessible but they actually did just switch their design and were approved so it robs automotive and at south of eureka in the specifically in here the item that we do talk about remember in the specific plan we do talk about tier 4 benefits and we do say that we should identify

2:04:20increasing your level of accessibility and that means not just access but actually again our building official or woody carp might be able to speak more to this when it's built to for you to be able to get a disabled person to be able to get in or through it doesn't mean that it's

2:04:34necessarily retrofitted for um you know the handles and different things might not meet certain standards until an occupant is there we could um we talk about if somebody were to do that that would be considered a public benefit and we could give concessions um

2:04:53would you like to speak about um kind of in the non-profit housing world how this issue is kind of more about the uh like the discussion of the missing middle so missing middle it does is not in the specific plan area that's right so in that it would follow the

2:05:10state um building code what we'd be looking at is try it's kind of a single family environment and we'd be looking to increase the density and it doesn't specifically ask in any way that those new homes go beyond the the building code requirements for ada [Music]

2:05:27which don't which i guess my understanding is that the stoops are allowed it well i don't think it's ada but i think the stoops are allowed under state law i believe so i could um mark our building official was here if you'd like me to ask how the what kind of requirements ada has

2:05:45for example i think it's state building code well right but the state building code is where that's implement implemented um would you would you like the building official to speak to how that applies to those building types i'd like to know how the units that might be produced in the

2:06:02missing middle would uh if they would in fact be accessible and so forth they would not be required to be any more accessible as we're proposing it um then the state building code requires which of course incorporates uh the disability the guidelines um from the from the federal government

2:06:20and the state adag it's my my understanding is that's not true um i can again write a building with and address it see here yes there okay the question is just how the how accessibility is handled and stoops actually and i'm not quite sure i understand which type of housing you're talking about are

2:06:54we talking about multi-family or single family i'm talking about the uh well single family would be the thing what i'm really talking about is the missing middle where we would duplexes triplex's courtyard apartment right all of that and apply differently in each of those

2:07:10scenarios i'm talking about outside of the specific plan in particular right uh there are different requirements for one and two family dwellings which there aren't a lot of state requirements or ada requirements for the entrances to to the units or the approach or the

2:07:34steps leading up to them it is until you get into the multi-family that you start hitting the requirements for accessibility or adaptability most of those units depending on whether it's an elevator building or whether it's depending on the topography of the of

2:07:52the land they're all taken into consideration and we even have to look at things like are they privately funded or do they receive any government funding so it's kind of a complex issue depending on all those parameters there isn't anything in the codes that outright say you can't have a

2:08:13have a stoop but you know there are some guidelines to what your main entrance has to achieve in terms of the step up into it or the path of travel through the unit and even out into the balconies or public accessible areas in some cases so we take a look at each one of those

2:08:41projects that come in and we at least in the building department we look at them and try to make them comply uh to the fullest extent with whatever the accessibility requirements are for those units so is there anything that we could as a city do so that um people in uh

2:09:04you know who are uh you know could so that all people could get in to and fully use units like get into the bedroom so let me share a couple of thoughts in response to this conversation so one of the things that we stated at the beginning with this affordable housing

2:09:21strategy is that one size doesn't fit all and so the point of this missing middle conversation and adding it in here was something that was very important that came up at the workshops um i believe some council uh greg at some point you've brought up the issue of missing middle as well um

2:09:38i believe what we were aiming to do was to increase in our single-family neighborhoods the development of more of a variety of types of housing that um again mid-rises require certain kind of financing those are certain kind of developers um you know a smaller homeowner could

2:09:54potentially decide to build a duplex um so so that's one answer is again looking at uh most of on san pablo avenue where most things are going to be five or six story those will be all elevator served buildings so the increase in the number of units that don't have stoops

2:10:12um and are accessible by elevator are going to increase dramatically in this missing middle housing type we did not propose any restrictions which could also be considered potentially disincentives and i think in response to your question sure i believe mark or the city attorney

2:10:33might be able to answer if we could require it'd be odd to do it just with missing middle because you'd start to want to do it potentially with single family then too which is required that everything exceeds state law but again i could the building official or the city attorney could speak to that

2:10:50our purpose in adding missing middle was to create more of a variety of housing types and this is also sometimes called affordable by design it was about increasing density in the non-specific plan neighborhoods so i would like to hear from i don't know but so i'm not sure one of the things that

2:11:09the mayor asked um was whether we could adopt guidelines that increased the requirement for accessibility in you know beyond the fair housing laws we can absolutely i mean we can research that and what the parameters of that would look like i'm not sure that it has

2:11:28a role in this affordable housing strategy document we could try to figure out how to make it a component of that strategy but it might be a separate research project if that's what they want the reason it would have a uh relevance is that there's there was a section in

2:11:44the presentation tonight early on i believe where you talked about uh the um one of the special populations yes the need for house affordable housing in those groups so if you're in fact creating affordable housing but those groups can't use them so again we're looking at that's the

2:12:09issue actually so we are looking at a variety so the 67 units for example that will be built by bridge at mayfair will all be built to again i can invite eden to talk about those standards so we didn't say that each um each unit that was added to the city was going to meet all needs so just like

2:12:26there's income categories we also talk about in here really trying to partner and potentially we could try to partner just like the city originally did with hatland center for the blind you know tried to really partner with non-profit housing developers who specialize in

2:12:39special needs populations so i think there's like like the rest of the strategy it aims to identify a lot of different tools to meet a lot of different needs i mean what what could be done though would be to say that enough you know whatever amount of units of housing could be designated

2:13:01for in some on some basis we could identify a target and we'd have to identify the fund again and that could be something if the city did have its own funding it could determine that that was a priority for example to try to leverage i'm just wondering um mayor if

2:13:16what you're looking for is as part of one of the strategies for pillar c which is encouraging the development of missing middle housing types you're looking for us to explore whether or not there are ways to encourage um the development of accessible units within that housing

2:13:33type that i was that was what i was what you'd like is to have a strategy along those lines but i'd also like to know that in the specific plan area it's there but i have a higher comfort level that it is there in the missing middle i have a high uh discomfort discomfort level because i've

2:13:53been in meeting many meetings at places like mtc where we've discussed this concept of their it not being adequate and not working under state law so you know would it be helpful if we identified as you just suggested both what the city attorney just suggested which is that we add a

2:14:19strategy what looks at you know identifying mechanisms to encourage new missing middle housing type to provide a certain percentage except um of accessible units again incentives it could be an incentive yes that's something that people you know seems to work yes so identify

2:14:38you know try to try to create an incentive program to increase the that's one of the things we talk about this stuff somebody has to pay so we could add that right yeah that's the sort of thing to increase the percentage produces more product then rather than i mean just i'll give

2:14:55you one example of an experience i've had over at the richmond bart station i was chair of wic tech and i was invited to come and to the grand opening i couldn't get in any single unit there yeah that's what i'm talking about so incentivize missing middle housing to go be on state law to provide

2:15:17increased accessibility right explore mechanisms for doing so in may or if i may it sounds like it would be strategy 13.2 it says page 39 we have a strategy 13-1 which is exactly what uh miss mints has described which is incentives for uh going beyond state law for this type

2:15:42of housing in the uh spa the san pablo avenue development area but 13-2 could then expand that and go into uh the missing middle area it would be consistent with uh provide language incentives developers to build developers and homeowners to build a higher share of

2:16:02accessible units other than required by state law so there is a we i think that that would be a natural fit for it so i i would certainly support that thank you that sounds great we will we will um add that to the final document and look for both kind of short-term

2:16:24ways and kind of increasing ways that we could ramp that up to have more of that happen and we can identify a target number the other another way is to um in out and this i don't know the legality of but if you in allocating who gets units in affordable housing

2:16:41to uh have higher percentages for people with disabilities somehow enable them to be the ones getting i mean sometimes people have shown me units where it's totally accessible for say a wheel you know it's at wheelchair height and so forth but the people living in

2:16:58them are not in wheelchairs yeah i might have to ask others to speak to speak to that and the funding sources that um go in would you like um i think woody would you like to address that good evening my name is woody carp i'm the senior project developer for hana

2:17:18gardens um uh you're you're raising a a question regarding you know fair housing and the providing of preferences for special populations or special individuals and circumstances it's a significant challenge to to do that uh the fun a lot of funding sources preclude the

2:17:46the availability of special need of preferences being provided unless you can show that you're providing doing that in a fair manner and so depending on the funding source whether it's from hud or another source you would have to have that vetted to make sure that that was a viable uh

2:18:07preference that could be given a lot of cities for instance will will seek to have a preference for people in their local community and that can only be done if there is if you can show that the community is representative of the greater uh county um so that you're not

2:18:31you know providing um a a significant benefit to one population over another so for instance when i built a project in orinda i could not show that that was that orinda was demonstrative of contra costa county when i built in antioch i was able to show that the population

2:18:54antioch was was fairly representative of the greater county and therefore preference was allowed in that circumstance so so i can't give you a a simple answer and i can uh but if we were to build a a special needs project um just partly you know maybe we're not

2:19:18saying a hundred percent of the units or anything but just you know to allow the ones that are yeah we we have this problem uh repeatedly because when we are building our uh occupying a building we're trying we we get something on the order of 2500 3 000 applications for

2:19:3963 units and so we go through a lottery process in order to be the most fair and so so in that circumstance are you going to say well before we even do the lottery we're going to look for people who have meet this special criteria um a lot of people would object to that um

2:20:03thank you sorry so you see all of these are complex in the selection process i think at this point we were very happy to add um you know to explore options for increasing accessibility both mechanisms for increasing accessibility in the missing middle housing type is i think

2:20:20and this issue of selection is something that we can also kind of continue to explore and i think the best way is to try to partner with those that are providing housing for a a specific population thank you you're welcome i took a tour of the the rcd project and

2:20:38as i remember there were several units that were retrofitted um for um people with disabilities so so i don't know how that was done but but if rcd can do it i'm i'm sure they weren't retrofitted they were it was built that way it was killed that way now the question is does anyone who uses

2:21:00those features live in them that's what i don't know i don't know one way or the other but um the frustrating thing i've heard from like the i call it the gray where are we here the gray units the great gray apartment building del norte um the civic center plaza civic center apartments

2:21:23but anyway people have uh said come see my apartment to me this this is i'm just going by and they say this come see my apartment it's totally accessible you can come inside my front door you can use all these features she said but i don't need them i mean you know people say things like

2:21:43that so they're building those things but then they don't connect them to the to the people so anything that could be done uh to do that connection um we can look into it again yeah that many people every person who gets into one it's almost impossible to find housing

2:22:04we can continue again to kind of keep as a strategy which is just continuing to look at making sure that that match is made and sometimes it's um like other programs we're just making sure that the disability able community knows about the places but i can if you'd like

2:22:19in terms of special needs we could kind of figure out where but just kind of identify to continue to explore how how to both increase the number of units that are accessible and then how to if there are ways that we can look to make sure that the disabled community actually

2:22:33benefits from those we could we could definitely keep exploring that i don't know if there's any easy answers but i think as a topic to explore and we might you know stumble across or invent one so thank you and any other comments if not maybe why don't we listen to the

2:22:52public now okay do we have some speakers i bet we do we do we have 12 uh requests to speak so i'll call them out in three cordell hindler followed by howdy gowdy and steve barton goody thank you so good evening uh council uh staff codel handler richmond i when i was listening to the

2:23:19presentation um it suddenly it suddenly triggers in my mind i said how can we make uh housing more affordable for you know like um with people with accessibility so i so i was thinking that um that would they need to like you know find more um find the middle part of the of the

2:23:38structure and so it would it would clearly you will see that the vision of the of that housing you know right there on the screen so you just have to visualize what what could be what kind of changes do you see in this type of housing so i was looking at doing my research online

2:23:55like like craigslist they have like you know afford like housing you know like in in richmond and and the most that for a three bedroom house is like a little over three thousand a month and i said nobody cannot afford uh a three-bedroom house on on that on that certain amount

2:24:11of income i said okay this is not going to help much so i figured that this is an example of what what type of housing is um is a is more is affordable but then you got to look at the other options you know like senior housing is one other thing and then so i figured that this is something

2:24:30that um that staff can like look into and to some more to figure out what other what other options are out there for you know like for these types of housing so so hopefully that they will come back with you know with a pro with a revised um structure of the of the model you see

2:24:46before you so that's all thank you howdy gowdy followed by steve barton and ann oganowski good evening mayor abelson city council members i thank you for your attention to affordable housing issues in el cerrito i was pleased by the two well-attended public meetings on this

2:25:07issue and the resulting affordable housing strategy that's before you now is a very admirable broad cross-section of potentially meaningful measures and i strongly support adoption of this by council i really appreciate seeing the timeline that was put forward and that some of

2:25:23those items are designated for immediate action and the inclusion of accessibility into tier 4 and incentive zoning my concern is that all of these well-intended strategies will have no positive impact unless there's timely follow-up to implement policies based on these

2:25:40strategies uh i urge council to direct draft to promptly implement these strategies and that includes really emphasizing you know these immediate actions that were discussed because i got a little confused there appears to have been two different versions of the

2:25:54document maybe and things move from short-term to immediate and i think you really need to be clear what you want to move forward with and i would advocate that those be you know very strong look at tenant protections including just cause eviction and rent stabilization

2:26:13those were kind of sometimes put off into sub-bullets and maybe we'll eventually get there but we really need to look at that hard and we also need to look at the inclusionary or impact fee for for new construction as well i realize there's practical limitation

2:26:34on how much can be accomplished in the immediate time frame um but you know we really need to set clear priorities there and um and realize that you know el cerrito residents are living with month-to-month uncertainty about their housing security and this is a very

2:26:54serious issue you know incomes have not risen anywhere near you know commensurate with housing price prices and it really you know it demands action so um i think a market-based solution to our housing affordability crisis is is frankly not an answer it um the market is not bringing affordability

2:27:18you know the the great record we have of all these affordable units it's the legacy of the redevelopment if you look if you really pare it down to the new projects that are coming in with affordability it's like 10 units it's not that many i'm not counting central because that's

2:27:33not in el cerrito but you know this is this is something that needs to be addressed in a different way and i just want to quickly you know remind you that you know there's lots of other areas where we impose regulations in the common good you know we have clean air regulation

2:27:48clean water regulation you know all of these things are to protect the community and for some reason when it comes to private property rights we're we step back and say no we can't impose anything there but you know the housing really is part of the commons and we need to

2:28:06include it in you know things that we protect for the good of the whole community and not just allow it to be abused by the few which turns into the tragedy of commons and that you know people acting independently destroy everything for all of us so thank you good evening madam mayor and members of

2:28:32the city council i'm steve barton i live up on king drive just up the hill from here i see that somebody has hunted up one of my papers on the benefits of rent conver stabilization and put it in your packet of communications i don't even know who the person is but thank you it's always

2:28:52nice to know one's work is being read and i don't need to comment further on on that issue you've got what i have to say you desperately need a local probably multiple local sources of funding for affordable housing and you need something that's going to pass if you can't pass a library bond with a

2:29:16two-thirds vote i don't know whether you're going to be able to pass a housing bond with a two-thirds vote i'd love to think you will i'd love to think the library bond will pass next time around but you need some things that will pass with a majority vote and you have a possibility in front of

2:29:36you you've now you've talked about becoming a charter city and then passing an increase in the real property transfer tax well worth thinking about the real property transfer tax in berkeley and oakland is more than 10 times what you get to charge here but there is a sector of this community

2:29:57that are profiting directly from the affordable housing crisis those people who have invested in rental real estate in el cerrito and elsewhere in the bay area are getting 50 percent more over the last few years than they were before i mean rents have absolutely skyrocketed

2:30:20they didn't need that much rent to operate and maintain their property they're getting an amazing windfall and it would be perfectly reasonable and i really urge you to start looking into putting a measure on the november 2018 ballot it's really not too early to do

2:30:39that there's a pretty good lead time needed to get measures together come up with the details and prepare a campaign to increase your business license tax on residential rental property there could be nothing more fair than that the landlords of el cerrito should share

2:31:00some of their windfall profits with the rest of the community particularly as a source of funding affordable housing in november of 2016 the cities of berkeley and east palo alto increased their real property transfer i'm sorry their their business license taxes on

2:31:22residential rental property in berkeley it's now 2.88 percent of the rent almost three percent of the rent um here i believe it's something that amounts to around half of one percent it's a it's actually a fixed amount per of a hundred dollars per uh per unit if

2:31:43i recall correctly so there's a lot of scope for you to increase that tax um and just you know say hey two percent of the rent should go for affordable housing you don't need to do it as a special tax you can do it as a majority tax with a uh referral to um you know your

2:32:08one of the your commissions or even create an advisory group to advise on how best to spend the money with a particular concern to bring in people who um you know have expertise on affordable housing i see the red light ahead of me is on so i will wrap up there thank you

2:32:28thank you ann oganowski followed by ronnie polanski and miguel espino your honor honorable mayor and city council members i'm just more or less putting a face on on the situation i'm a senior i'm a senior retired i have lived in el cerrito in the lowlands and rented for 18 years

2:32:58my rent last year went up 10 percent i am now paying 48.9 of my net income social security income to rent i am holding my breath about the next increase because that puts me out of the city so i definitely is an element of very strong insecurity fear anxiety i've spent a lot of time in this last

2:33:27year going to workshops on housing for senior women there's not a lot out there i don't know where i'm going to go or what avenues i will investigate so all i can say is the need is immediate it's pressing and the other thing i do want to commend the report the strategy report for its

2:33:49emphasis for highlighting homelessness i do a lot of volunteering at creek projects in el cerrito particularly at baxter creek and it has been very obvious to me how many more people are trying to establish tents and camp out there um it's a growing problem i don't want to join them

2:34:16thank you um my name is ronnie polonski hello everybody i wrote this out so i would remember everything i want to say so i'm sorry if i read it thank you okay i'll hang on to it for dear life um so i have grown old not that i find that surprising what is really surprising is

2:34:41the changes i'm living through not compared to the 100 year old woman that was here and told us about the farms in el cerrito but still great changes for over 30 years i lived in oakland and watched my comfortably middle class neighborhood with homes in the 35 to 45

2:34:56000 range grow to a place where the homes are now worth over a million dollars that's conservatively speaking teachers and secretaries and government employees gave way to stock brokers lawyers and google employees i have seen apartments built all along shattuck

2:35:12avenue in berkeley where rents started 2500 a month for a studio apartment and the old eclectic crazy wonderful berkeley mix gave way to the very rich and now it has arrived in el cerrito where rents at the apartments in the plaza started over twenty seven hundred

2:35:28dollars a month i like the mix of people we have here in el cerrito i like the mix of income levels and the feeling that young families who aren't wealthy can come here and rent or buy but this too is changing sadly we are not protecting our current renters there is no ceiling to how high

2:35:46a landlord can raise rents i talked to a woman who lives on san diego street who had lived in her apartment for nine years and she kept referring to her landlord as a really nice guy he had her rent raised eight hundred dollars a month and her lease changed to a month to month rent from a yearly

2:36:02lease from 2017 from 2010 to 2017 average rent increased here by 39 percent 53 percent of families in el cerrito are rent overburdened in that they pay more than 30 of their gross income for rent it's time i'm going to say the actual words it's time for rent control on el

2:36:21cerrito not rent stabilization but rent control in el cerrito we need to protect our current renters and offer them some security under current state law buildings built before 1995 are permitted to have rent control for now until the costa hawkins laws changed

2:36:37that would be a start affordable housing is a great idea but there will always be too few units available and way too many who want and need them growth is inevitable and so is change but it should happen in a considered way that is beneficial to those who live here now not just those

2:36:54able to afford the new apartments thank you thank you good evening honorable man council my name is miguel espino i live at [address removed] in el cerrito now in watching the report and i was trying to calculate some numbers that at seven dollars an hour and

2:37:29an annual income 11 000 gross is not going to allow someone to live here if you make fifteen dollars an hour you make close to twenty eight thousand dollars a year almost eight thousand dollars less than the low income figure that was put on this chart now affordable housing is not really the

2:37:51issue the issue is that affordable housing at market rate prices is the issue what we need is housing that is affordable for all el cerrito residents especially those residents whose wages and means do not reflect the high-end jobs that can accommodate the outrageous

2:38:11prices that market rates demand i believe that we need to move away from the standard approach to solving our community issues we need to start to seriously challenge ourselves and begin to think outside the box and looking for solutions in doing so i propose the following

2:38:31that the el cerrito city council endorsed the formation of a community development corporation made up of el cerrito homeowners landlords renters small business owners professionals and non-profits we need to start i lost my sight here the cdcs would empower our fixed low income and minorities by

2:39:03attracting investments for homeownership health employment and local entrepreneurship using a holistic advocacy approach the principal idea is to develop policy programs that will lead to a paradigm shift that would benefit all residents of el cerrito some samples of that if we look at

2:39:26baltimore maryland cleveland ohio miami florida east oakland seattle washington milwaukee wisconsin roseville california these are places where these sort of programs have been put into place and have been effective in developing the kind of housing that is needed for their

2:39:45communities thank you thank you sherry dropner followed by nicholas galoro and jeff levin okay good evening everybody so i went to the planning commission meeting and i was inspired to go to my old neighborhood which was both belmont and el dorado avenues on the other side of san pablo where it's

2:40:14mostly multi-family housing that's where i used to rent and i went and some of us in my the organization i work with we decided to go door-to-door and talk to renters and one of the reasons we did that was that at the planning commission there really weren't very

2:40:34many people at the meeting to hear the report and i don't know if there's like many renters here tonight but um so we went door to door and started talking to people i one to let them know gee there's a meeting they're going to talk about affordable housing you might want to come

2:40:52so as we went door-to-door i started to learn about i knew there was a problem but i heard firsthand from mostly immigrants in our community that for instance that residents of 3230 belmont a family three had lived there at that address for 11 years in the last two years their rent

2:41:14increased four times according to the resident others in the building were also feeling worried they don't think they could bear the increases any longer and they noted that their wages weren't going up as high so i kept knocking on doors and i kept hearing more

2:41:30of those stories i saw that people literally there was one person who was packing he said oh no i'm moving and there's two other empty rentals in this building because they just raised the rent again and that actually was a building i used to live in in 1985.

2:41:49um yeah residents of 3340 belmont lived there for five years i met their baby i met the mom i met the dad three months ago they were given a 26 rent increase 400 for them according to another tenant who was moving out there were two other vacancies in the apartment building

2:42:10so there's more stories on this and if i could have i would have done the entire neighborhood all of the blocks but i couldn't i work full time it's too hard to do sorry i tried um but those stories are important and when we talk about studying like whether we should you know do these

2:42:28strategies i totally understand that but let's study it differently let's study by going out to those neighborhoods and talking to people they're not going to come to this meeting it's late i'm exhausted people are tired they're not going to come and talk to you but

2:42:42they will if you go out to talk to them and hear this um i also learned you know about a part i came to the council i think i talked to you about a building that was being flipped for investment and i was very aggressively being advertised so i have a recommendation

2:43:01for a 3.2 a strategy under pillar b which basically says that we should convene mom and pop landlords and renters of multi-family units to collect data and implement an ordinance to prevent outside investors from using existing multi-family housing as cash cows for profit

2:43:22so that's my um one of my recommendations and i do think it's important to start collecting more data specifically about these issues that are going on i underst oops i'm red i'm sorry just just to finish off though i understand at another meeting people were asking if

2:43:38there was some information like that was being collected about you know people who are needing to move out or you know things like that and i think um just trying to start to collect that data would be very good thank you good evening my name is jeff levin i'm a

2:44:0028 year resident of el cerrito i've been both a renter and a homeowner over those years and i currently live on stockton avenue i am also the policy director with east bay housing organizations we're a non-profit membership organization that does education and advocacy on

2:44:16affordable housing issues throughout the east bay and we believe that the solution to the housing crisis requires protection of tenants preservation of existing affordable housing and production of new affordable housing i want to call attention to two issues that have been highlighted

2:44:36tonight first i i think it's very clear that large numbers of tenants are experiencing simply unaffordable rent increases and we are facing severe displacement pressures i think there are a lot of people who are just one step away from either being homeless or having to move

2:44:52out of el cerrito which really threatens the diversity of our community the other issue i want to highlight is on page three of tonight's staff report which gives you some figures on both what has been built or is under construction and what has been proposed through the planning process now the

2:45:14housing element says that the mix of housing that el cerrito needs during this planning period should be 58 percent um affordable to very low low and moderate income and 42 percent above moderate income if we total up the numbers on this page what we've got is 22 percent affordable housing and 78

2:45:35market rate housing that most existing residents cannot afford to pay so we have a real problem with the housing balance in terms of what the market is producing um part of the problem here as you all know is the elimination of redevelopment which has wiped out a major funding source and

2:45:52that's why we really start need to start looking at some new local sources we are strongly in favor of moving with all possible speed on a nexus and feasibility study to look at impact fees and inclusionary housing ebbo has worked on these in a number of other cities and

2:46:08would be happy to work with your staff on that issue here secondly we support mr barton's proposal to look at increasing the business tax on rental property this seems like a particularly um promising avenue to raise some local funds and why this is so important is

2:46:28for all the state and federal money that might be available and there's plenty of action going on in the legislature and we're hopeful that there will be new state funds you're not going to get those funds unless there's a local contribution um it's simply not possible to compete for

2:46:44those funds without a locality putting up the money if we get a contra costa housing bond my guess is it'll look a lot like alameda counties and there'll be a strong requirement for a local funding contribution so if we want to access those funds we'll have to come up with

2:47:00some funding sources here and lastly we are strongly in support of tenant protections such as rent stabilization and just cause and also the removal of barriers that make it difficult or impossible for extremely low income people to find housing for those folks the best subsidy

2:47:20is the section 8 program and yet there's currently nothing that would that prevents landlords from just advertising no section 8. so imagine you've waited three four five years on the waiting list to get that housing voucher and then you find out you can't use it other

2:47:36cities have been looking at and adopting non-discrimination ordinances based on source of income and this is something el cerrito should look at as well thank you thank you the four remaining speaker slips i have are nicholas galoro pedro galvao woody carp and robin mitchell

2:47:58can anybody hear me dear el cerrito city council members affordable housing ought to be a right and should be available to everyone no one should be forced to live in their car or on the street as unaccountab uncountable numbers of people are although most of the homeless are hidden

2:48:16i have seen homeless persons sleeping on the ohlone greenway on the sidewalks and in the doorways along san pablo avenue pushing carts down el cerrito sidewalks and streets and begging at el cerrito plaza no one should be using more than 50 percent of their income for rent as 26 percent of

2:48:35el cerrito renters are and no one should have to lose their home to foreclosure due to a job loss or high medical expenses over 20 million people in the country lost their homes due to foreclosure in the past 10 years building new housing hasn't lowered rents or home prices

2:48:51the new market rate housing being built has turned out to be unaffordable housing for example metro 510 the new housing development at el cerrito plaza has these minimal unaffordable rents posted on its website one bedroom apartment two thousand seven hundred fifty dollars two bedroom apartment

2:49:08three thousand two hundred ten dollars and three bedroom apartment four thousand five hundred and twenty dollars the bottom shares half's share of total national income in the whole country has now fallen to over only 12 percent of total national income the bottom half of our population is

2:49:26increasingly impoverished and dispossessed while paying more and more for their housing than before this is uh based on research and inequality by the solas group up at uc berkeley mentors can be helped in many ways rent stabilization is needed so that tenants are not hit often and hard with

2:49:45large rent increases as landlords attempt to profit from the area's rising rents just cause eviction is needed so that people cannot be evicted arbitrarily costa hawkins which does not allow for rent control on any rental properties built after february 1995 needs to be

2:50:00repealed and ab-1506 which would repeal contra hawkins needs to be supported housing discrimination based on gender race religion or national origin or disabilities cannot be allowed and people with housing choice vouchers need to be free from discrimination as well

2:50:17which i think the last person mentioned are in personal and increasingly irrational housing market left to its own devices cannot guarantee affordable housing for everyone and certainly fast tracking and deregulation of the housing market won't provide affordable housing

2:50:32it's going to have to be up to local and state governments with the help of the federal government to provide affordable housing for everyone it can be given done by giving preference to and encouraging and supporting the building of new affordable housing partnering partnering

2:50:46with agencies such as even housing and satellite housing it can be done by require that in requiring that any market rate housing being built include at least one third affordable housing it can be done by collecting impact fees on new market rate housing that can then be

2:51:00used to subsidize the building of low-income housing it can be done if local governments give preference to and subsidize and encourage innovative housing such as housing co-ops co-housing and temporary small houses for the homeless people are losing their homes we need to

2:51:16join with them protect them and fight for affordable housing thank you thank you pedro galvao and uh followed by woody carp i think pedro had to leave so i'm gonna jump in woody carp with eden housing i i'm an internal optimist and i think that there is a tide turning in in the

2:51:42in in our state right now there's a lot of interest in in new funding sources at the state level and i think that that bodes really well it was a really really hard struggle to get the funding necessary for for hana gardens to move forward we were very very fortunate to be able

2:52:03to secure the asic funding that was so critical to meet that gap and allow us to move forward i think that as you see the funding sources from the state that might be passed you're gonna fee you're gonna see a requirement that there is a local contribution and this effort by by this council

2:52:27tonight and the this this plan can can be the the catalyst to meet that goal so i strongly encourage that you do a nexus study and that you strongly consider an inclusionary housing requirement for future developments it is going to be that source that we would

2:52:51need to leverage it's it's a multi-pronged process we can't do it with just local funding we can't do it with just state funding we have to do with local state and federal funding it's been a challenge because on a federal level the hud funding for critical sources has been decimated

2:53:17at hana gardens we receive 2.1 million dollars in funding through the home and cdbg programs both those program and in the year that we got funded they had four million dollars to give and they and we were able to over actually a couple of years to get a total commitment of 2.1 million

2:53:40this year they have nine hundred thousand um it is it is just so hard and and we are need to rely on these different sources so um so i'm i'm i'm asking that that the city really look hard at how they can make a contribution hana gardens we had uh the city contributed the land that was a

2:54:083.6 million dollar contribution in and of itself plus it was able to give some some cash in the amount about 300 000 but it was it was critical on gaap funding that made that project successful and able to move forward so with that um thank you so much for considering this tonight and

2:54:31i'm here as a resource if the if you need for any more technical assistance and if there are opportunities in the city we're happy to partner with the city anytime to bring more affordable housing thank you robin mitchell and the last speaker is bacon baker lion

2:55:09hi my name is robin mitchell i live at [address removed] and i just want to reiterate that it would be really nice to get that powerpoint somehow available to the public um there have been a couple of people that have wanted it i would like to have it so if you include in the

2:55:23minutes or however you do it so i would like to commend the city staff and consultant for putting together a comprehensive document about how to achieve a full affordable housing in el cerrito however as others have said it's just a strategy not a policy and i do

2:55:36appreciate that staff put out a timeline to prioritize the various strategies the issue is that rent stabilization needs to have the highest priority and something needs to be done in the near term as people are being squeezed out of their current living situations by

2:55:48rising rents and they can't afford to stay in el cerrito given the current rental prices which we've heard a ton about already it's necessary to address the needs of the people already living here not just the hypothetical people that will be coming in to live in the new

2:56:02developments whose rents will presumably be in the high 2000s up to 5000 a month as nick was talking about it's clear that many people due to fairly recent rent increases are now paying at least if not more than 50 percent of their income on rent if rents increase much more than that

2:56:17they will um have to leave the that rental and there are not cheaper rentals in el cerrito so they'll be forced to move out of the area as people have already said and this has the potential to change the entire demographic of our town in a way that i don't think is desirable

2:56:33one way to look at rental housing is that as a common good as howdy was talking about a healthy diverse community depends on this common good which should be affordable to a wide range of residents rental property shouldn't be viewed as an investment in order to make as much money as possible

2:56:48i know this might be controversial because controversial because rentals are based on private property but in some ways it seems that the price of a rental should be based on the expense involved in renting the property plus maybe uh you know a certain amount of

2:57:01profit it shouldn't be based on the price of rentals at a certain time period or what the current market will bear it should be based on what it actually costs to rent the property and for example if a property was paid off a long time ago it should be based on what it takes to maintain the

2:57:15property there's it shouldn't be an investment to make a lot of money on as a lot of people have already said and then the only other thing i wanted to talk about was just these and i'm totally confused because i think that the things changed in the packet and i

2:57:29had things in one order and i think they've changed but just the order the priority of things that this you know the new short-term rental restrictions i think that's the airbnb thing i don't see why that would actually have that high of a priority i think that um and

2:57:43then in strategy four implement policies to preserve the low-cost housing stock with but there were no details and you know obviously that's a high priority i would think which i think it was in the document and then there was the consider enacting an ordinance to regulate the demolition

2:57:58of existing housing units requiring tenant relocation assistance but my question is what about the sale of existing properties that have that same effect that what sherry was talking about where you know this this apartment building is for sale it's going to get

2:58:13top dollar and the people will be able to stay there it's the same as if it was demolished so i think those follow into the same category and then just this last thing of exploring the potential for additional tenant protection policies such as rent stabilization mediation or victim

2:58:27protection i think that should actually have the highest priority so thank you thank you and that concludes our well we have one additional speaker yeah good evening mayor members of the council my name is baker lyon i'm a project manager with resources for community development we're a non-profit

2:58:48affordable housing developer based in berkeley we are the owner and developer of ohlone gardens and the idaho apartments i want to lend my voice to the many tonight that are encouraging you to continue your progressive stance and your forward-looking trends towards affordable housing to

2:59:06make and continue for el cerrito to be a wonderful place to live i want to encourage you to charge your staff with the nexus study and continuing to look into the feasibility of additional funding sources for affordable housing in your city as you know a local source is crucial to leveraging

2:59:26all of the additional sources that are out there uh to multiply that those dollars into uh buildings such as ohlone gardens or hana gardens or any of the other larger new developments that you have the the great bones for affordable housing investment along the

2:59:45san pablo corridor you have the san pablo quarter plan you have incredible transit at two bart stations in your city you have rapid bus up and down there and you have a lot of land along that that corridor as well as the the the planning to enable it so providing the funding through a

3:00:05variety of different sources which you've heard about which have been studied and which can continue to be studied in the nexus program will enable you to to build on that and to flesh that out and to provide a housing which new housing can provide housing for a

3:00:25variety of different groups seniors people of extremely low income people with special needs plenty of housing for people that need adaptable units accessible units things which elevators which really are conducive to new construction much more so than retrofits all of those can be

3:00:48accomplished in those those parcels so i think i get to back clean up here on the comments so i'm going to try and keep it short and sweet please do pursue that nexus study and learn more about the feasibility of these new funding sources thank you i'd like to ask you a question if you

3:01:06don't mind you may not be able to answer it i will do my best i uh went on was shown a unit in um aulani gardens it was really nice unit right next to the bart tracks when bart went by you couldn't hear us a sound at all which was great and i was also shown that unit because it was

3:01:27fully accessible for people in wheelchairs did a person in a wheelchair get it i can't speak to the residents of particular units in the property or their mobility you make an attempt to do it if somebody with mobility needs applies for a unit and we have a unit that suits

3:01:52their needs we would put them in that unit but how do they actually [Music] what enable what in what situation would you you sort of set those aside so that the people who um could take advantage of them get them we are not able to hold vacant units waiting for

3:02:18somebody who would would otherwise qualify for those units we do have a a policy that if somebody who does not need the mobility units and accessible units occupies that unit and a normal unit for lack of a better term an adaptable unit comes available later and

3:02:41somebody who does need the mobility unit wants that unit and is otherwise qualified and passes background checked and all the other things to move in the first resident would move units to make that that other unit available so you are making that attempt we do make that attempt okay so that i

3:02:59mean that's a good thing yes but that is that is dependent on there being another unit and something's aligning but yes that is the goal i guess i i get that but anyway so there is and so you would do that there um should that unit become let's say that it's regards to who it's occupied by if it

3:03:20became available you would how how would a person who needs it ever get i'm just wondering how people who need units that are accessible ever actually get them so another thing that we do what i've heard from real people is that it's almost impossible that's why i'm asking and i i don't want

3:03:43to discount the the experience of of looking for housing much less specific housing like that i'm sure is is very difficult another thing that we try to do and are able to do in a newer construction building is to provide the the infrastructure behind the walls to accommodate a lot of those

3:04:00changes down the road and if a resident moves in and either they need them at the time that they move in or they need them as they age in place in our in our residence and have a reasonable accommodation the the walls of the buildings would accommodate adding grab bars

3:04:18we could change flooring to suits suit wheelchair access we can make other more extensive changes as well as they are required or so you will do that right and you're a low and very low all of your units are low and very low as i remember right except one at that property yes they serve people

3:04:41below or households below 50 percent of area median income thank you baloney gardens thank you okay so i think we're back to the council now so um does anybody want to talk about our strategy for moving forward now it's my first comment on strategy is it's 10 15.

3:05:17and um so you know how it is at 10 15 we can get a little antsy are are we up for finishing tonight do we think okay and remembering that we do have these other items too okay so so since we're talking about that does somebody want to make a motion to extend the meeting right now

3:05:39i need to extend the meeting well do you have a you have to pick a time i have to pick a time okay until 10 30.

3:05:47no that's when that's our normal stuff oh okay that's our normal time just to make it speedy do it till 11.

3:05:56all right i i i suggest that we move it till 11 pm and that will second thank you very much all in favor please say aye aye any objection any abstention motion cares unanimously okay so here we go anybody want to start sure i can start if you would like okay i want to first acknowledge thank you

3:06:19staff and to strategic economics the report is clear concise and weaves together the regional information and and the regional issues with our el cerrito local information issues it becomes very precise summary of laws and history it's really readable i think you've gotten lots of praise on

3:06:38the report uh the this strategies plan so i just wanted to to make sure that you heard that from me as well i thought it was fitting that we had this discussion of housing tonight after we acknowledged the two women who've lived here over 150 years collectively

3:06:56and and they acknowledged all the changes that they've seen in their 100 years and and almost uh 50 plus years living here in el cerrito and and that they both acknowledge that they came here uh you know with regards to a small town feel and and so um i think uh miss perella talked about

3:07:16how uh she appreciated all the changes that our small government has uh been able to con to enact over that time uh and so it the discussion tonight preserving our our small town feel and preserving our existing population there's a new term i've learned naturally occurring affordable housing

3:07:38those these are things that resonate with me and i certainly want to build on this plan and move towards that objective you know the i do have i want to make a motion or make a strong recommendation um there are uh three items identified as immediate i would suggest that there be at least one

3:08:09additional one if not two uh the three the three that are currently marked immediate are 1-1 conduct a nexus study we've heard numerous people experts say we should do that uh strategy in polar a 1.1-2 consider implementing an inclusionary housing policy on ownership

3:08:26housing as an alternative to the affordable housing impact fee um i would um did i read that correctly i think so on ownership as an alternative to affordable housing impact fee um i would say that we should include impact fees because um and isn't it it's and on the screen but in the actual

3:08:54uh implementation status status it's as an alternative to a little confusing due to the state law about where you can apply inclusionary which is only ownership or impact fee so yeah so i would i would actually based on my reading of this i would want both of those strategies incorporated and

3:09:14they are allowed to be right where they're allowed to be i think it was very well defined in the report i would just like to see that carried forward to the strategy the strategy 4-2 is also marked as immediate uh consider enacting an ordinance to regulate the demolition of

3:09:28existing housing units including uh requiring tenant relocations assistance this one is clear we heard several testimonies tonight talking about other forms of displacement i'm not certain that there is clear moving forward so certainly would like to bring have you bring this forward to

3:09:43us while uh exploring what those other ones would be um and then the one that i've already mentioned earlier tonight having raised uh from medium but after hearing uh mr carp's testimony tonight and mr lyon's testimony and several others the need for local funding is is

3:10:04made crystal clear and imperative tonight by the testimony of these experts and i would like to see 14-1 consider potential for implementing new local taxes or fees for affordable housing to be something that is raised to immediate status um and and so uh that is one that i would certainly uh

3:10:22support um one that i will um acknowledge uh that should be considered or could be considered uh at this you know but as much more controversial as staff has already noticed i know i have many landlord friends that have told me that that that jumping into rent control is something

3:10:47that would potentially have short-term detrimental impacts where they would potentially increase their rents while they can before any type of short term before any type of rent control goes into effect so 6.1 continue to study potential tenant protection options and evaluate success

3:11:06of existing programs in peer cities is something that i would like to see us move forward with knowing that there is a potential for detrimental side effects of rents going up in the near term so you're suggesting on that one studying it studying is what staff is recommending

3:11:25my recommendation is that we raise it in its importance from short to more immediate terms and i would like to note that i know people have been talking about different versions in this last version we did highlight those and that in red to talk about it as a high priority it's

3:11:41correct and actually the use of red for categories such as short ongoing um it actually devalues the use of red and and i would um ask that you uh evaluate the use of so much red uh you know out coming out of tonight i would like to see us emphasize the five that i've highlighted

3:12:07if there's a way to if you can turn the word immediate into red just so that that those those red strategies have more more importance or more immediacy um i don't know the i don't know the proper formatting technique but we can work with that where you want to

3:12:25highlight priority let me just ask a question and point out something in terms of immediate immediate in this framework is considered less than a year of course i'd have to talk to the city manager and we'd have to look at things in terms of how we could proceed for example with a

3:12:40business license tax increase or real estate property transfer i can't necessarily do that in less than a year if that's not what an election so the time frame correct start working on it immediately consider if the text is considered the potential for implementing new local taxes

3:12:56i think we can immediately consider it right i agree so so what would happen out of that if i understand correctly is that you would first look at take these things and basically sort of estimate the ability to staff the function of looking at them and doing implementing them and then

3:13:20you would if that you probably then returned to us with a report on the status of that yeah i mean i think it's then the next step would be to proceed to what's possible to implement am i hearing that right i think i mean if we think of the toolbox metaphor i think it's those ones

3:13:38on the top whatever that top part of your toolbox is right where you you want to get to it immediately i think some of those somebody brought up short-term rental for example some of these are underway for other other policy purposes um so sometimes the time frame was

3:13:50identified not because it's the highest priority in terms of affordable housing but because it's also happening for other reasons in a certain time frame um but i think i mean i did hear uh council member lyman say 1-1 1-2 which is inclusionary and impact fee and the

3:14:05feasibility of nexus that needs to accompany those 4-2 to go ahead right away since to make sure that we don't leave any of those properties vulnerable but to also explore non-demolition displacement which we would come back and talk about and then 14-1 as well which is the funding and i'm

3:14:23hearing make that a priority but of course that means prioritize it but come up with a reasonable plan for doing it okay so you that's what you want to present right greg okay so let's see if there's discussion on that um yeah and i'm pretty much down the line in agreement

3:14:41with uh councilman lyman um i've already praised the report i think it's good it's readable it gives us a lot of options to do there's a lot of things to do um but i think we need to narrow these things down to the three or four things that uh the councilman has mentioned and

3:14:57i believe the goal here is to seek additional housing in all categories and i'm excited about the pending plans in the city what's happening but we need to do more including down to the homeless i agree with the planning commission i think the inclusionary policy is something that we need to do

3:15:17it's the most important thing that i see and i would agree with developing a policy on the impact fees as well you've heard my comments on displacement i give it a high priority i agree we need to do that in unison with the other two priorities and the local fee is important i just

3:15:35wanted to mention we're talking about the state legislature coming back there's two big bills that are really important sb2 and sb3 there's a three billion dollar state housing bond and there's a document fee bill that senator atkins has that together could provide a lot of baskets of money coming

3:15:54down locally and i may want to talk to city staff on how we might be to get involved in the next month to either be there presently to say that el cerrito supports these things because that will certainly help us and we can get our local act together in the county or locally so thank you thank you

3:16:11okay i agree with that my two colleagues and i also want to stress that with what's going on in sacramento it's important that that we do talk to our contacts there in sacramento to make sure that these tools that will be available will be able to use in the future so

3:16:35um looking at that and my main concern with displacement it's important that we look at and make sure that just cause eviction as well as making sure that there are strong renters rights you know we don't want to see um our constituents and and our residents to have to move elsewhere so we want to

3:17:04make sure that they're able to stay here and that includes a stronger rental rules so uh um dealing with um the ongoing um uh rent increases year by year that's not acceptable so um i definitely support uh the changes and and thank you for the report that's it's very thorough um and

3:17:31uh i appreciate the leadership of uh our non-profits over there rcd and uh eden there and uh it means a lot to uh to to hear from both of you your suggestions and uh and know that you do this in other cities as well so uh thank you for being here till 10 30 this evening

3:17:55rochelle yes thank you very much for this report i felt also that it was very well done very thoughtful and i also appreciate the planning commissions input on it i'll have to go back to 6-1 tenant protection and you know i really hear what people are saying here tonight in terms

3:18:20of this is like a crisis and um it sounds to me just a bit from the report that it sounds like we're kind of way down the road from getting you know observing what other people are doing and so on which i can understand for our size city and our budget and everything so i think

3:18:40we really need to make finding new new revenue to implement this program a priority because that seems to be the stumbling block that i keep hearing over and over again so i support what was suggested tonight in terms of trying to get more funding so that we can do these

3:18:59programs because every day people are getting you know locked out left out and homeless and everything else and it's really it's really a tragedy so anything that we can do to help implement that i'm fully in support and and some of the other things that we had

3:19:21also mentioned i think are also good to move forward with i agree with what councilmember wyman stated earlier so but i just wanted to reiterate that i think this is an urgent matter and that we shouldn't spend you know months and months and years kind of just thinking about it

3:19:41that's my comments thank you the only thing i would add um is has to do with our the problem that we have with our senior center being taken out from under us and uh what whatever costs that might um involve i'm just wondering if you know when we'll know an estimate of how much that's going to

3:20:10be even a rough estimate because i'm wondering how that matches up with this um well we that problem needs to be resolved this fiscal year so right in terms of timing that's that is a top priority so you know we're working on many different options we just haven't been able to

3:20:36price them all out yet okay but but you'll manage to get that done oh yeah relative this in a timely manner okay and the other thing i wanted to mention uh too just because i think it's it says that in fact this council does know what this is all about i've got five

3:20:56kids three of them have lost their housing two of them were living in el cerrito when it happened and one of them moved into my house in el cerrito as a result and is moving out but is still living in my house so we have uh four extra people in my house plus two dogs um

3:21:20and i will miss the dogs but anyway so i think that you know uh just because we're sitting up here doesn't mean we don't know what it's about haven't experienced it and the stories i've been telling about disabled folks are people really on the bottom edge and i've heard it time after time

3:21:43uh after time and it is just um you know it's it's really uh shocking really and um so i think i think it should be assumed that we do know we do have experience with this kind of thing unfortunately so i i would hope that people would um if you have a question want to ask me

3:22:10please do is i guess all i can say because it's it's really pretty bad um okay so do you have a motion yeah i'm i'm i do have a motion i want to make sure that the motion that is in our packet does not necessarily reflect all the changes we've talked about tonight like

3:22:31adding uh i think it was 13.2 which is the accessibility in a non-sb non-specific plan area it doesn't necessarily talk about some of the formatting changes that we've talked about so i don't know do we need to make this motion to adopt pursuant to changes that we've talked

3:22:50about and highlighting the five areas that we have uh emphasized yeah i think i think that my notes could repeat what i think just to make sure i haven't missed any of the key ones and then i think that that when you said the five areas meaning those five top and what i would like to

3:23:10articulate is that i've heard from several of you as well as the speakers that the language in six one which is the potential tenant protection measures needs to be more proactive and i agree the word study might be partially accurate but it's not doesn't elevate it

3:23:24as much and so i'm hearing a way of articulating that that is a priority with it with the new housing person um so what i do have um is little ones like add growth you know the 30 clarification um the zoning i have um 14 1 again which is um to make that more immediate and also a higher

3:23:45priority we talked a little bit about appendix a i have also adding 13 2 which would be the middle then i have others probably who are taking notes as well missing middle housing i'm talking more about exploring mechanisms to increase the accessibility in in that housing

3:24:01type as well i and looking again and then i have some of the other speakers so those are those are the main ones that i have and then again one one one two and the typo you found in the table adding zoning to the word district yeah yeah well zoning but you found someone

3:24:20that was supposed to be there was an extra well it was supposed to be after or in its prior 1995. so there are some little things that i don't want to lose by adopting the the ordinance yeah the changes that have been discussed but i think it's important that we make a

3:24:35statement tonight that we are committed to this and moving it forward so i would love to make a motion that incorporated all the changes that you just rattled off uh that it has the emphasis that we're looking for so a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito

3:24:48adopting the affordable housing strategy as amended through our testimony tonight second okay any further discussion all in favor please say aye aye aye aye any uh objections any abstentions motion carries unanimously and we will quickly try to move through the rest of the agenda

3:25:10next item thank you thank you is 7b and i'm supposed to make a statement before we do that item so i'll do that right now is that correct yes please oh karen yes please okay um it's a memor the item 7b is a memorandum miranda of understanding between the city of el cerrito and the public safety

3:25:36management association before the city council considers taking action on the public safety management memoranda of understanding we are required by legislation to announce that the city council is considering approval of a modification of the mouse for public safety management which impacts

3:25:56the fire chief and battalion chiefs the mous provide for a four percent cost of living increase in the first year and a two percent cost of living increase in the second year okay so we're now ready for this item yes your staff report yes thank you your honor i'm karen pinkes assistant city

3:26:17manager and as you just outlined the city has been in negotiations with the public safety management association over the past few months to determine successor mouse for the two classifications i'm sorry two bargaining units of battalion chiefs and fire chief and as you just indicated we modified uh

3:26:37cost of living increases with some minor language changes within the mou um essentially that's my very brief staff report i'd like to see steve benite back there hello steve i want to thank steve and the rest of the public safety managers for their very amicable process we had a

3:26:55really good negotiation and i'm really proud to work with them so if you have any questions please let me know are there any questions are there any public speakers yes okay cordell would you like to speak on this item so um as uh karen indicated um it it's very

3:27:20it's a very difficult process you know with the bargaining units and everything so as you outline it so i just hope i would hope that this council will will will approve the recommendation um the resolution so and then because i mean it took a lot of hard work um

3:27:38implementing this um process so that's all i have thank you okay is that the only public speaker yes okay thank you then we'll bring it back to the council are there comments okay is there a motion sure i'll make a a motion a resolution of the city council of the city of el

3:27:59cerrito to adopt a memorandum of understanding with the public safety management association bargaining unit battalion chief i'll secretary um okay do you need to maybe you don't need to say what the details i guess not uh okay so is there a separate resolution

3:28:20for the fire chief yeah there is that's right okay yes that's the battalion chief resolution right okay i'm ready to are we ready to vote okay all in favor please say aye aye any objections any abstentions motion carries unanimously you have another one resolution of the city of the city

3:28:38council of the city of el cerrito to adopt a memorandum of understanding with the public safety management association bargaining unit fire chief second okay there's motion by lyman second by uh pardo okimoto all in favor please say aye any objections any abstentions motion

3:29:00carries unanimously that belief i believe brings us to 7c yes and um we do we have to do this no we don't have to do this again okay yeah the state law requires for executive positions which is what the what you had read earlier okay so now we're up to 7c yes 7c

3:29:24thank you again this is asking the city council to adopt an agreement toward a memorandum of understanding with the united professional firefighters association local 1230 we have been the city management team has been meeting and negotiating with local 1230 their mou expired on

3:29:41july 1st our tentative agreement was accepted by the members of local 1230 on august 4th you have seen the you have seen the wages and the economics of the agreement before you already in closed session essentially there will be colas for all of the classifications represented including

3:30:02firefighter fire engineer and fire captain including some equity adjustments for fire captain this is a bit unique in that we are asking you to adopt the economic agreement now the mou has been modified several times over the past 10 plus years and in the interest of efficiency

3:30:21we would ask you to adopt the economics now and we are creating a task force of management and 1230 in order to kind of put all of the side letters and language together in a in an mou package over the next few months and once again i want to thank 1230 particularly joe gagne and dave chaparra

3:30:41for their great process with this i think that we have a good relationship and i'm really proud to have worked with them if you have any questions please let me know is there a motion i move is there a speaker oh yeah i didn't ask that question speaker i'm sorry thank you sorry there

3:30:59i was guessing yes thank you i'm hurt i'm getting tired i'm hurt so um i just like to hope that this council will adopt this resolution because it has been uh in the process you know of new posi as new position comes in you got to figure out where where is this going so i just hope that

3:31:20this council will approve that every the record the the recommended recommended um resolution and and it be resolved that's it thank you any others back to the council is there any discussion is there a motion i move resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito approving an

3:31:42agreement between the city of el cerrito and the united professional firefighters association local 1230 modifying salaries and creating a new memorandum of understanding second that thank you um all in favor please say aye aye aye any objections any abstentions motion

3:32:03cares unanimously okay we might even make it here the next one is an ordinance enabling expedited building permit process for the electric vehicle charging stations we have a staff report thank you good evening mary ebelson and uh council members i failed to introduce myself

3:32:25earlier i'm mark soltis your city bullying official and i'll try to be brief here um in october of 2015 california assembly bill 1236 was passed into law and created a new section in the government code that stated that state promotes and encourages the use of electric vehicle

3:32:45charging stations by limiting obstacles to their use and by minimizing the permit costs of such systems it therefore established that every jurisdiction in the state must enact an ordinance to expedite and streamline the permit process for those charging stations

3:33:02so although we already treat most of these types of permits in a rapid manner we present to you tonight for your consideration and approval and amendment to our city municipal code that makes us compliant with state law and spells out the necessary procedures for electronic for electric vehicle

3:33:21charging station applications so that they may qualify for expedited and streamlined permitting so um with that are there any questions any questions go ahead yeah if i may uh mark thank you for bringing this forward and always obviously good to be in compliance with state law

3:33:40is there going to be any impact on staff in order to prioritize these applications in a more rapid manner i mean is this going to be deleterious to our workflow i don't believe so i i don't think it's going to take any more time than what we already spend issuing permits for these anyway

3:34:02the typical residential permit for a charger isn't much more complicated than giving somebody an electrical permit to put in a circuit for a electric dryer to be quite honest there are a few other things we need to look at when they do it but the biggest impact if if

3:34:22if you can call it that would be with commercial chargers to make sure that they're [Music] compliant with you know the parking spaces and accessibility and things like that that go into the public areas but really i don't foresee any huge impact and we already collect

3:34:45i think 213 dollars plus a processing fee for a residential permit and 436 or something like that for commercials so it seems to cover our costs and staff time inspection time that sort of thing great thank you any other comments questions okay um are we ready for a

3:35:07vote sure we have one speaker we have i'm sorry um howdy gowdy good evening city council members i'm howdy gaudi so i support streamlining the the permitting process um i think uh one thing that's worth considering is um there is sort of misconception that installing uh

3:35:34charging stations is very expensive you know people get estimates of you know two three thousand dollars which is really a lot more than it needs to be as the building official said you know it's not much more complicated than a simple electrical hookup and the equipment itself is only four or

3:35:49five hundred dollars and you know the installation could just be a few hundred dollars more if it's not a complicated one so that means that you might be looking at a task that overall is you know seven or eight hundred dollars worth of work and that 213 dollar permit fee actually is a

3:36:06pretty good fraction of that and i just wanted to make a suggestion that it's worth looking at perhaps waiving that fee i know maybe it's controversial to give away that income but you know you did waive solar permit fees in the past and i think in the interest of supporting an emerging

3:36:26technology it might be worth looking at mostly because a lot of people you know they look at those larger price tags or estimates they get for initial installs or or the extra hassle at getting a permit and paying for it and they just revert to you know using the um the 110 volt

3:36:45you know charging station that comes with the car which is a lot slower and frankly if you're looking at it from a health and safety standpoint it's a less you know robust solution because they're using you know branch circuits that might serve up other loads they might be older

3:37:02circuits they're not so the the instinct or the idea to really incentivize people to uh do the dedicated charging station that's that's really gonna give the best you know performance and safety for them i think it's something that the city should help incentivize and really you

3:37:19know remove any barriers that might um might be there so i just wanted to give you that thought thank you thank you are there any more speakers no okay are we we have a motion no i have a question actually in response to the testimony um the the it would be a 230 kv or 230 volt

3:37:43hookup is that what these are typically they're they're usually uh uh 220 volt 220 volt um that's you're either going to do 110 or 220.

3:37:56220 gives you a quicker charge time um and if we were to if if at some point car batteries become part of the uh power storage system you know to get us through certain types of times of the day most notably evening times where this technology is coming where your car

3:38:19gets charged up during the day when the sun's out and that at night it feeds back into the system that seems like this uh 220 volt system would be a faster way to deliver it back into the system also so to get to the speaker's point it there is an incentive to potentially

3:38:38promote 220 hookups well i i haven't seen the technology on back feeding a car into the into the home's power grid i suspect that such a system would be a little more complicated than the charging units i i don't know they can work in reverse and i suspect they can't

3:38:59okay um however you i understand you are doing a rate study uh we're currently doing a fee study yes you study so certainly if you could take that into consideration as you're going through the fee study some sort of incentive as recommended because as my quick calculation it's about 28 30

3:39:17percent of the the fee is 30 of the work um that's i know that's not our target i know we don't even have a probably a target for what the percentage of the fees should be but just as you go through your fee study you'd be interested to see how this plays out most of our flat fees are based on

3:39:36time and motion so to speak so we can consider [Music] more closely what time how much time it takes and we'll see what the our consultant comes up with with a fee for that and then i guess you could decide if you wanted to subsidize that or not great thank you very much you're welcome

3:39:55okay are you ready for a motion sure okay um i move an ordinance of the city of el cerrito adding chapter 16.14. to the el cerita municipal code relating to expedited permitting procedures for electric vehicle charging stations second okay it was motioned by uh

3:40:16you know all in favor please say aye aye any objections in the abstentions motion carries unanimously with that we move on to safe exchange zone good evening mayor and council members i'm paul keith your chief of police we're here tonight to present a staff report on a safe exchange zone

3:40:42this topic first came to my attention from council member fidelity when he discussed it over coffee with me and i recognized it as he did as a great idea for our city lieutenant steve benini researched and coordinated our agency's efforts to make a safe exchange zone a reality and he's

3:40:59here to describe the what and where of safe exchange zones so i'll turn it over to lieutenant steven e thank you good evening good lady as a chief he said we came upon the safe exchange zone idea recognized it as something the city and the police department should be part of

3:41:21and it's kind of making its way across the u.s started in the east coast and has made its way out here and as 2017 several police departments have began to adopt the idea and implement the idea within their city so the safe zone itself usually amounts to a couple of

3:41:39parking spaces on city property or police department property somewhere monitored by security cameras that record but not monitored or reviewed viewed at the time it's occurring by city staff or police department staff the security video can be pulled viewed downloaded if

3:42:01needed at any time the point of the safe exchange zone is to give people that are conducting their business via the internet craigslist let go some site like that a safe place where they can do their exchange the added benefit is that the safe exchange zone also helps in very

3:42:20emotional times with child custody exchanges and things that are very emotional for families it gives them a place where they can go and have some comfort knowing that people are there are close by so our particular safe exchange zone is on the west side i'm sorry the east side of the

3:42:39police department building where there were some visitor parking stalls there we changed some striping to highlight the particular stalls that are there added some signage and the within a few days the security cameras will be going in as well so we'll have that all set up and running hopefully

3:42:57within the next week or two and we hope to do a press release that follows highlighting this safe exchange on where people can come the most frequent use we expect is through that e-commerce craigslist or let go and it's one of those things where if you're engaged in something like that

3:43:14and you're going to make a purchase or you're going to sell something and the other party doesn't want to meet you at the police department it's probably not a good idea to go through with that transaction for any number of reasons so it gives everyone an option rather

3:43:26than meeting in a burger king parking lot somewhere that's a little bit more safe it is recorded on video and it can't be preserved if evidence is needed it's also important for the council and the citizens to know that staff from the city and the police department

3:43:42won't get in the middle of a civil dispute we're not going to decide a civil dispute there we're not going to act as a party to the transaction or a witness to the transaction that's taking place there so we're removing ourselves from that but still applying a layer of safety for

3:43:57our citizens when they engage in some sort of exchange either through e-commerce or through that emotional time with families in child custody exchanges i'm available for any questions if you all have any one but maybe somebody else wants to go first let me just start by

3:44:13thanking the chief and and lieutenant panini and the city staff i mean i really view this as an example of good government uh several months ago within one week i had about three or four people come to me and ask why don't we have this in el cerrito and i did a

3:44:27little bit of research saw on google that there were a lot of crimes occurring and some of the cities in the east bay were in fact implementing this policy so it and i believe there's only been one exchange crime in el cerrito so far but i think we're being proactive here which

3:44:46i think is a great thing and by making elsewhere a little safer i want to thank you guys very much and i'd like to move this when we can thank you i had never heard of it before and i think it's a great idea i saw the signs out there and i'm really happy that we're

3:45:05hopefully going to implement this thank you and i i just wanted to add one small thing that because we're not a city that is is huge in size and not very uh bureaucratic public works the idea comes from city council comes through the the police department the chief of police

3:45:22and we're able to get with public works right away and working together like that something came to fruition in just a very short period of time that's nice to be part of a city that can operate in that capacity thank you um i have a question comment anything uh i actually am on a committee

3:45:40at bart where uh i council member fidelity used to work and he used to uh come to these meetings that i was uh on the committee and one of the things that we uncovered about crime at bart stations which is what we were looking at specifically was these exchanges between

3:46:05guardians of children and that they became they could become very violent and we also discovered that um i don't know if you remember this part that the courts were actually ordering the exchange to occur at board stations remember that part uh so i'm curious now that we've got a

3:46:25say a safe place um if we're gonna somebody's gonna tell the court system that it's there so that they will direct the guardians to do the exchanges at these locations the court already does have exchanges take place at the elsewhere police department we do run into that frequently where the

3:46:48court has decided that the location for the pickup and drop off is in front of the police department but to answer your question more specifically there's actually an app as with most things that come nowadays and technology there actually is a safe zone app that will tell craigslist users

3:47:05and let go users where the closest safe zone is to where they're trying to plan their exchange so that does exist that's out there that's part of the so we're already on it or we're not on it yet okay we don't want it we don't want to be on it yet until the cameras are up and running we're able to

3:47:21test the server and make sure that we can pull video from it if need be so once we're all done with that hopefully in the next week or two we will get ourselves in on the app so everybody knows that we have it we'll press release and then the court can continue

3:47:33to order people to have their child custody exchanges here at the police department we'll just have a nice zone for them to do that sounds good um so are we ready are there any uh public comments uh no okay uh any further comments from the council is there a motion

3:47:53i move that the city council adopt a resolution authorizing the creation and installation of a safe exchange sound for el cerrito a second okay motion by fidelity second and by powerdo okimoto all in favor please say aye aye aye any objection in the abstention motion

3:48:09carries unanimously and are there any city council local and regional liaison assignments okay and then that means the council is adjourned until our next meeting on september the 19th at 7 pm here we will not be meeting on labor day thank you folks the day after i think maybe

3:49:17you