Regular City Council Meeting September 19, 2017

0:00:40good evening everyone welcome to the el cerrito city council meeting and um this is a particularly uh exciting night for some of us tonight i am one of those people because tonight we have our el cerrito stars so it's a very special time and we thank the el cerrito stars for

0:01:01all of the hard work they did thank you um we'll start out with a pledge of allegiance to the flag or observation of a moment of silence led by council member greg lyman i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands

0:01:27one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you the next item is council and staff communications personally i have so many it's kind of embarrassing but i'll start out with the one that to me is the most exciting which is that we just

0:01:52attended the league of california cities and i received some awards so i'm going to share and there are three levels of what's called the torch award and i just got the top two and this is kind of what they look like i'll just hold up one um and you get the award for having attended uh training

0:02:19primarily or having served as an officer in the leadership of the league at some level over time so it's something that takes a while to earn and so i'm very proud of it there were and this is for the ab-1234 there were a number of sessions that we could attend on all kinds of

0:02:47different topics ranging from the driverless car to a number of other things but one of the more exciting ones let's see if i can find it here was um uh our one of our keynote speakers whose name is bernice flygirl armor and she has broken a number of barriers and i think what it was the purpose of

0:03:22having it at our conference was to tell us that we too could break those barriers and achieve things that maybe we didn't way back when think that we could accomplish so she was very high up in the air force she flew airplanes and then i don't know if i can share the picture

0:03:46very well but this is her and then after that she had a baby so i thought it was pretty interesting because it shows that it is possible to do it both ways and i thought that was pretty inspiring and she was an amazing speaker so that was perhaps my favorite thing that i

0:04:09heard and i will since five of us attended the league of california cities i won't go into any more sessions i'll move on to some other topics so today i attended the chamber of commerce luncheon where our very own city manager scott hannon gave a speech that was i think people

0:04:30really and appreciated they appreciated the opportunity not only to hear about what was going on but also to ask questions that he did a very good job of answering um the um another uh thing that i did since the last council meeting was to meet with the [Music]

0:05:00i can get my information correct here so um [Music] i met with president dr lopsing sengay do you think i did a fairly decent job of that okay and members of the tibetan association of northern california it was a very exciting meeting and gathering and council member

0:05:34quinto was also there now let him elaborate on what he would like with that and it was very impressive because we're talking about a head of state and and we're not a head of state we're ahead of a city so it was really kind of it was very um i was very honored that

0:06:00they chose to meet with us and then later i saw them they marched in our parade on saturday so i thought that was just really fantastic and then so we had three different activities really four i think you could say this extended weekend on thursday there was a movie

0:06:25at the cerrito theater and an old time movie with cary grant and i forget the woman irene dunn thank you and that was pretty exciting and then on friday there was a movie for children there was a family movie it was toy story and i attempted to go to that i did make

0:06:51it there but i froze to death before it started so i didn't quite stay the whole time but many others did it was very popular the the real um item that i thought was the most exciting was the parade we had over 40 units in the parade we had i heard 800 people i don't know

0:07:16if that's right but i heard that and it seemed like that but i'll have to tell you the thing that excited me the most about it was all of the people lining the street we went down richmond street who were watching the parade it's i haven't ever seen anything like

0:07:36it in el cerrito and there were a lot of people that made that happen all the whole event and i personally want to thank each and every one of them suzanne was one of the suzanne yarla could you stand up please thank you she did [Applause] and we had a number of we had a

0:08:02volunteer committee for it and uh everybody worked really hard and um and i heard rumors that suzanne was up at 1am the evening before is that right suzanne not quite close oh it was 2 a.m then [Laughter] thank you very much um and um it i think it's something that our community will remember and i

0:08:31found it on youtube in case you want to watch it so uh it's it's uh there and then the last night we had a gala dinner at the country club and that was well attended and i believe the sellout number is 200 and it was sold out and the band was fantastic and everyone i think had a really good time

0:09:00and uh very much was into the spirit of celebrating our city uh in a positive way so it was it was really enjoyable and let's see i think i may call it a day here so that my fellow council members have a little bit left greg uh sure um it's staying with the centennial theme um i i want to invite

0:09:26everyone upstairs the new centennial time capsule uh was uh unveiled since our last council meeting and it was on august 23rd and it's a beautiful time capsule where we sealed it up to with items to be opened 100 years from now and i really want to also give a special

0:09:44shout out to the centennial event that was the afghan african-american cultural event held at the community center it was a very uh great event to see all of these pioneers that helped el cerrito become the diverse attractive place that it is today so those are the two the centennial

0:10:04items that i certainly wanted to give a shout out to um and on i i would uh be remiss to not remind everyone about saturday this coming saturday between i think it's 10 and noon i'm checking real quick i think that's correct is try safety day and that's at the plaza el cerrito plaza

0:10:28in the parking lot area you'll find the ladder truck up and that will be your best way to find it and i see the chief looking to see are you looking to tell me what time no okay he is excellent thank you sir good evening i'm lance maples i'm your fire chief it's from 11 to 3. 11 to 3.

0:10:52okay great maybe i was just thinking about the times that i was going to be there um rochelle are you going to cover this event no no okay and then um i would like to uh as part of the centennial day parade there was a flyers being handed out uh acknowledging an event that's coming up

0:11:10in october this is october 21st from 2 to 5. it's part of the arts and culture committee it's el cerrito arts day in 2017.

0:11:22it will be at the community center which is 7007 moser lane and it's it's a day of music um it's tia carroll uh the saddle cats los arribenos uh the sakura ren and vincent medina are the art some of the artists that will be playing that day so it is free admission if that didn't catch your

0:11:48attention let me just say free music between two and five on october 21st at the community center paul do you have any yeah thank you yeah i want to reiterate everything the mayor and and councilman lyman mentioned about the centennial it was uh incredible week and

0:12:10the parade was wonderful i want to thank suzanne as well i mean she did an incredible job and i'm just hoping that our city manager gave her the day off that he was talking to me about that you deserved okay so i hope you get that if you don't come back and talk to me

0:12:26okay next week i'm very excited to see the fencing up around the del norte station because work has begun to re-modernize the station after a long time in our north part of our city needs that modernization and and placement of place incredible improvements coming on the

0:12:5027th i know the bart general manager will be there and our mayor and several others so that's very exciting and finally i want to say before the arts day in october will be restaurant week i'm i'm liaison to the economic development committee and in our town let's

0:13:06celebrate the new restaurants we have we have one on potrero that's pretty exciting el moly and we'll talk more about that later thank you very much thank you um yes what a busy month and uh um i also would like to uh thank suzanne for all of your work and uh up to

0:13:31sunday and i can't tell you how grateful uh the council is and and uh the city and our residents so thank you so much for everything um i also um would like to talk about sunday's dinner it was amazing i saw a classmate that from fairmont school and we took music

0:13:53lessons together and played in band in middle school in high school and he ended up being our guest speaker and now is a professor a law professor at nyu and i haven't seen him since 1979 so it was great to see him after many many years i also would like to mention that

0:14:16most of us except for greg were at the california league of cities convention i was there the last three days last week and a lot of things happening first of all i was nominated and elected to the board of the east bay division that's contra costa county in alameda county

0:14:42and i'm also uh was elected to uh the api caucus and i'm now the secretary treasurer of that group so back on the ninth of this month i attended the national ev week with the sierra club with uh many members of the sierra club including uh supervisor john joya and it was at the hilltop auto row i

0:15:10want to thank uh honda of el cerrito for uh bringing their new clarity uh ev plug-in there and honda of america uh brought their new clarity hydrogen power fuel cell car and we also had the hydrogen partnership of california there and they brought their toyota mirai

0:15:34fuel cell cars so we'll be seeing more of that we need to add more infrastructure and i'm looking forward to having a hydrogen infrastructure here in west county one will be set up on gilman street in berkeley that will be the closest one so i know john joya will be busy trying to

0:15:56make sure we get one here in west county on the seventh i was invited by a group of young people and attended at kennedy high school a talk with high school kids and that was amazing we they were asking questions about how to get involved politically and how do you register to vote and

0:16:27so i'm grateful to see a group of el cerrito high students and many from all over west county attended that thank you i'd like to also say that i really appreciated all of the centennial events over the weekend the parade was fantastic the gala was fantastic the

0:16:51movie was fun a little bit cold but also fantastic and so thanks to suzanne and all of the people that worked so hard on it all of the staff that took their time over the weekend to be there i really do appreciate that one of the centennial events as greg mentioned was the

0:17:14african-american celebration which i had mentioned last time i did attend that it was very well attended it was such a great sense of community there and one of my favorite things about that event was that belva davis was there um local journalists as many of you may

0:17:33know her and she was able to give a talk and she was also promoting a book of hers which i got her to sign for me so that was a great honor to be able to meet her that day i as well attended the league of cities convention and there were lots of great seminars and

0:17:56speakers there there were a couple of seminars that i went to on uh marijuana and how cities are dealing with putting in dispensaries and prop 64 and local control and how that's all going to be changing as of 2018 so um we will be talking about that more in our next

0:18:22couple of meetings here in the city so i invite everyone to come and share their thoughts and opinions on that as well it was a it was also the last week of legislation in sacramento while we were there so it was a very busy week all of the all of the sacramento legislators were

0:18:45there and they passed a lot of legislation and a couple i'd like to mention are things that we had passed resolutions here in support of so one thing that did pass was sb 687 which is nancy skinner's bill that would make it more difficult for non-profit hospitals to close their

0:19:07emergency rooms without more input input from the community as well as needing approval requiring approval from the attorney general so that is on its way to the governor's desk and that would potentially affect us all here in el cerrito as alta bates has said they were planning

0:19:30on closing their emergency room so we as a community need to speak up i know i am personally against the hospital closing because it's very bad for our community i've spoken with a lot of community members who agree with that and we don't want to end up in a hospital desert here in el

0:19:50cerrito another that we had supported was a single-payer bill sb 562 and that is on hold in california however if you may have seen in the news that senator bernie sanders introduced s 1804 which is a medicare for all or another form of single-payer bill and that is co-sponsored by our

0:20:19california senator kamala harris and there will be a rally in san francisco on friday in support of this and that is at yerba buena gardens on september 22nd at 1pm and i guess that is all i have to say right now thank you thank you are there any staff communications or

0:20:41announcements no i was going to embarrass suzanne but you took care of that [Laughter] well she deserves it [Laughter] okay with that we will move on on our agenda to oral communications from the public and this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on items that are not on

0:21:03the agenda if you actually want to speak on an item on the agenda you can do so when we call that item by and all of that by filling out a speaker slip if you haven't filled out one for items not on the agenda you can do so now and we will actually start calling yes mayor we have two speakers

0:21:24for general comment cordell hindler followed by david montez okay so justice mike so good evening uh mayor edwardson council staff i am colonel handler richmond i have four things today and i'm gonna do they're gonna be like a minute a piece and i'm gonna save the last for 30 seconds so

0:21:41what i just passed around was on our 58th year for contra costa civic theater it's called cabaret it is going to be it's going to be playing this friday on the 22nd uh and the tickets are only 15 if you get that's the youth rate that's one thing and then the second thing is um if you

0:21:58recall at the last meeting i did propose that idea that it came to me in the head and so i said we got to get some young people like to participate because we have a lot of committees that have a certain number of vacancies and i say this is unreal i mean if i mean it would

0:22:13be a lot helpful if we get some some young people to participate on these commits because they have a lot of knowledge that they can bring to the table so that's number two number three is um if you're also at that same meeting um when i was looking at the presentation for the affordable

0:22:27housing strategy i found one house on craigslist that was a that really you know captivated me and it had everything i had four bedrooms and six bathrooms but you know how much it is almost close to ten thousand dollars for a house and i said that is too much for a four bedroom house nobody

0:22:44can't afford that on on a on a on a fixed income i said no thank you but then and then the last thing is um i agree what uh what councilmember okimoto just said about the about saving our hospitals because out to base we cannot lose we can't lose out the weight

0:22:59because my niece audrey she was born in alta base and if anything happens to that hospital it's going to look it's going to look really awful so hopefully this uh it'll be put on as a future agenda item and then the the last thing for 30 seconds uh let's see i had an

0:23:15idea um let me see okay the the idea was we gotta get some we gotta figure out how we can like save our senior center because everybody has been talking about this for for quite a bit of time because i had spoken with some of the members of in our in the city of richmond they said

0:23:31how would they feel if they lose the senior center they will feel horrible we have to rely on the senior center because they have a lot they have a lot to offer for our seniors i mean if anything happens to that place it's going to be looking terrible so i'm thinking that uh we got

0:23:44to do something with our seniors that we got to keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it so with that said i'm going to give my time to the next speaker thank you david montez followed by uh cheryl sardoth good evening council so i'm a el cerrito resident and fairmont dad

0:24:08and last year in the months preceding the termination of the senior center lease or the expiration of the senior center lease there was a lot of anxiety in the community about what was going to happen when that date arrived and where programs going to cease were people going to be kicked out

0:24:29and then as we all know the lease was extended 12 months it's already been about 3 months now and so to avoid a repeat of similar anxieties this year i think it would be prudent if the community were provided with some regular updates on what the progress is uh from city staff

0:24:53toward finding alternative venues for some of those programs uh and what the plan is for relocating programs or finding a new venue for the senior center so i'm just here requesting that the city council and city staff keep everybody informed about what the plan is for the senior

0:25:13programming moving forward thank you thank you cheryl saddith good evening um you know i called el cerrito home for about 12 years so i was so proud when i was at the centennial celebration thank you for she thank you it was um probably one of the best prairies i've been in a lot of horrors

0:25:44in el cerrito usually the baseball the kickoff for the baseball so it was beautiful it was a beautiful day and it was a beautiful event and like rochelle said the african-american celebration was one of the best the wall the history wall was probably the most exciting that we've seen

0:26:02i actually came here today um to see the ec stars but also to let you know that this morning we had two big wins for contra costa county at the board of supervisors meeting if you hadn't heard one of them was rubicon programs was awarded its contract that they've been

0:26:19fighting so hard for for those of you who don't know rubicon has been their award for their re-entry programs that's been on hold that contract was awarded this morning the board of supervisors approved it and then the second thing was i've been preoccupied i'm from puerto rico and this hurricane

0:26:41has got me preoccupied so i'm trying to stay focused but a lot of community-based organizations have been fighting very hard for um rapid response and a program called stand up coco stand together coco and this morning that program was approved and the board of supervisors has allocated

0:27:07500 000 from ab109 discretionary funds for that program which will help and immigrants and undocumented immigrants with um rapid response and um that to fund that program temporarily for 2018-2019 so if you hadn't no now you do thank you thank you thank you no other speakers no

0:27:36okay thank you uh with that we'll move on to item number four adoption of the consent calendar which is items number four a through four f four a is approval of the minutes or b is an ordinance enabling expedited building permit oops process for electric vehicle

0:28:04charging stations c is award of external financial auditor contract d is the iolani greenway pedestrian and bicycle wayfinding project e is renaming the city's portion of fairmont park to centennial park and f is an amendment to the el cerrito tree ordinance in enabling resolution

0:28:32is there a motion or is there um some thing that people want to say i'll move uh approval of the consent calendar for a through four f okay second okay we have a motion by lyman seconded by pardo okimoto all in favor please say aye aye any objections any abstentions emotion

0:28:56carries unanimously with that we move on to presentations uh the first one is presentation a which is a presentation honoring brett gasper's come commendable actions this is actually being postponed because he was expectedly called away to florida and he will not be at this

0:29:21meeting so we'll do that later when he is able to attend so now we move on to item number b which is a presentation on the 2017 ec stars internship program and here's suzanne good evening mayor and council members my name is suzanne airline i'm the assistant to the city manager and thank

0:29:53you so much for all the compliments and feedback on the centennial weekend it definitely was a group effort with a lot of staff working to fulfill the vision of the centennial celebration task force so thank you for that but the reason i'm before you um tonight and with my colleagues is to

0:30:09talk about the fifth year of the ec stars program um this year is the fifth year of the partnership between the west contra cross unified school district and the city of el cerrito to host a summer internship program and it is a program specifically with the information technology and media

0:30:41academies at el cerrito high school and the program is intended to give students the opportunity to not only learn about their community but also to gain valuable job and life skills and to enhance the curriculum that the school teaches as part of the 21st century

0:30:58skills programs and i'm actually just gonna get some assistance with this remote real quickly thank you for that support okay and with that i would like to actually introduce my colleague kristen cummingham she's the senior human resources analyst with the city of el

0:31:36cerrito who co-coordinated the event or the program this summer on the city's behalf good evening council this year we had five ec stars participate in our program and they were assigned to various departments and divisions within the city uh we had adonis diaz he was in community

0:31:57development in the planning division josh rizzola was in i.t zechariah lou worked in administration which included city management and human resources getting gladstone was in public works and recycling division and valeria alana was in recreation and we'd like to give a special shout

0:32:13out or thank you to all of our mentors that uh work with our stars this year we know that the time that they had to put into the program was uh very difficult for some and they made it happen they made this program a success this summer and those mentors are sean moss pete salazar

0:32:29suzanne arla cheryl mosby maria sanders lauren team brazil janet bilbus and bridget cooney and we know this program would not be successful without them and with that i will actually pass it over to mr corey mason who will talk a little bit more about the west contra costa school on the school

0:32:45side he's a teacher at the el cerrito high school well good evening mayor city council members quinto fideli lyman and parto okimoto it's a delight to be here thank you for warmly welcoming us again this is the fifth iteration of ec stars internships for rising gaucho seniors it's our pride and

0:33:06pleasure to present our stars summer 2017 city interns stars as you know stands for students training and ready for success these students are currently seniors at el cerrito high enrolled in career and tech ed in turn within the auspices of wcc's career and college

0:33:23readiness suzanne's already described some of the important features of that career and college readiness program for general information i think our citizenry would love to know that throughout the district these programs also include sequence courses and internship opportunities in

0:33:39performing arts engineering health i.t of course law and media ec stars itself wishes to acknowledge original guiding lights janet abelson and mike aronian who's with us tonight and our added appreciation for the collaboration of wcc's college and career coordinator

0:33:58mary codry we salute and thank our instructional colleague chris merida of tech futures mr ron whittier the founder of tech futures and finally a robust bravx that'll learn how to do that bravex that's right to an ec star in her own right suzanne yarla suzanne thank

0:34:16you very very grateful so we give you our ec stars to briefly present their respective program experience highlights if you will the ec stars [Music] good evening city and council members my name is adonis diaz i'm sorry and i was an intern for the playing division this summer

0:34:50my mentor was sean moss and i was located here in the city hall for the summer during my time here as an intern i was able to apply my communication and tech skills in my workplace i had the ability to actually express my opinions on upcoming projects and knew how to accordingly use

0:35:06spreadsheets and google docs i learned new habits like actually being to work on time and tracking my hours when i was here i was assigned to research other cities municipal codes organized packets for meetings and i was able to talk with my co-workers to hear about

0:35:20their stories and learn new things every single day f another activity i was part of was accompanying inspectors on their jobs out in the field i learned certain requirements for the necessary for having a necessary safe home that i can apply in my home now for example the placement of fire

0:35:36and co2 alarms i just want to thank you for teaching me a new experience and something i always retain and also having the ability to talk to some amazing residents and having professional work experience i want to thank sean moss the city of el cerrito the planning division the public

0:35:52works department my sounding co-workers west contra contra unified school district and having the teacher team at el cerro high thank you [Applause] good evening mayor council members my name is joshua rosolo i was the i.t intern here at city hall for over the summer

0:36:19my mentor was pete salazar and i think probably some of the best parts of this internship were being at city hall i've always loved the place i've always loved just everything about it it seemed very official which i've always envied and it's just been an amazing experience to work here i've

0:36:42i worked upstairs i worked on the computer checking invoices and i also was cataloging any things that came out of one of your storage closets because it was needed to do and so i found i think one of the main highlights besides obviously working for pete salazar um and kevin ma actually

0:37:02was finding a bunch of different stuff in that closet for example polaroid camera i also found a cool kodak projector there's a bunch of cool stuff in there that i think you guys might want to check out and you know not throw away uh i kept them of course but also i

0:37:17think um my just the third thing that i have to speak about with highlights is that all the work i did felt so rewarding uh schoolwork usually feels like kind of a slog but here everything i did i did felt like it mattered and that was important so here while i was here i definitely

0:37:35learned more patience i am used to rushing through things carelessly and that doesn't work when you're actually doing things that matter as well as i learned to follow directions in that same vein because usually i'm used to just rushing through things and trying to figure them out myself

0:37:51sometimes that doesn't work as best as you know it usually does and i learned how to better just follow directions instead of trying to figure things out myself so overall this was a wonderful experience it prepared me for the real world it gave me some job experience it

0:38:04gave me something to put on my resume and i loved working under pete salazar and kevin ma so i would definitely like to thank those two as well as corey mason suzanne yarla chris merida the rest of the stars you all and everybody else you provided for this program thank

0:38:19you [Applause] okay uh hello city council my name is zachariah liu and i will be talking about my internship experience here at el cerrito city um so my main managers were mainly cheryl and suzanne and i worked with other people in the office so my job in the human resources

0:38:47department was to make sure things were running smoothly and help other departments with their work so some of the skills i already had before i was i joined ece stars i work part time in my family's auto body company so i worked in the office area and so i was already skillful in

0:39:06basic jobs such as filing labeling envelope stuffing stalking and data entry so i was uh so i was very used to the office environment some highlights that uh i had during the program was working on the july 4th festival we printed out some signs for a festival and then we laminated and working the

0:39:27laminator was pretty fun um we also mailed out letters out to residents to let them know about the festival um another interesting project i worked on was the el cerrito time capsule i insisted in keeping the items in order and i also made sure that all the items we got

0:39:46would fit into the time capsule so some experience and things i learned that would be helpful for my future career was learning how to work with other people and how to respond to emails and website design i also learned how to use excel and outlook better i just want to say thank you to el

0:40:10cerrito city and the ec starts program [Applause] hello my name is kevin gladstone i've been an environmental operations intern at the elsewhere recycling center for the breadth of summer i've been given this opportunity by the ec stars program my responsibilities as

0:40:39an intern for the recycling center include data entry customer assistance and conducting sales at all times while i'm working i'm at the front desk ready to assist customers with any questions and concerns that they might have sometimes customer might request the

0:40:55sale of compost salvage permits and other carp and carpeting disposal services over the course of my internship i've completed several projects given to me by my mentor one of these projects was creating a digital database for all the salvage permits in need of renewal

0:41:14another was using microsoft excel to enter all the city's gas and electric bills into an analyzation program called energy cap which allows us to do advanced analysis of the city's gas and electric consumption over time during the program i've learned how very different a professional workplace is

0:41:32from a school the classes have taught me the importance of networking and self-advocacy in the professional world thanks to this program i have the tools and skills to both kick-start my career and manage my professional life i'd like to give my deepest gratitude to chris merida and cory mason

0:41:52both for encouraging me to join the ec stars program and for helping me through it every step of the way i thank my mentor laurentine brazil and maria sanders and all of the other mentors for personal personally seeing me through this internship and making the experience both enjoyable

0:42:11and memorable finally i'd like to give my thanks to the council for their hand in this program and forgive me giving me and all my fellow stars this opportunity thank you [Applause] hello my name is valeriolano and during my summer i was lucky enough to be a part

0:42:43of the easy start internship for the internship i worked for the recreation department senior center and community center i really enjoy working in both these places because it gave me the opportunity to experience two kinds of workplaces um my supervisors were bridget cooney

0:43:05and janet bilbis both of my super supervisors were really kind and made me feel at home right away um my duties at the senior center was a one-on-one ipad iphone with class with the seniors and i really enjoyed this duty because all of the elders were really nice and

0:43:25good learners um at the recreation center my duties was to you know like make flyers for like the 4th of july and like whenever i would come in bridget would give me a different project what it has taught me i learned a lot of skills through this internship um one of them was communication skills

0:43:52i learned communication skills by making phone calls at the office and trying to find a good way to communicate with the elders so they could understand my lessons i also learned a lot of self-confidence because at first i didn't know if i was going to be a good enough teacher for the elders

0:44:12but it made me happy to to hear that people walked out satisfied problem solving was one of my favorite skills because it really made me challenge myself and that's a good life skill um three of my highlights were um the style of appreciating barbecue and bingo night

0:44:32because it really brought everyone together um being able to have a real job experience and that's good um feeling accomplished every time i got the job done um i would like to say thank you to the city of el cerrito for giving me the opportunity to have such a great experience through this

0:44:53internship working for the city was really a great experience i would also like to thank bridget and janet for being the best supervisors ever i would like really miss working with them and the rest of the staff um last but not least i want to thank mr mason and chris marita for because they

0:45:12were a big help throughout the internship and i'm really proud to be part of the ita because if it wasn't for chris i wouldn't be here um i will miss the ec star morning classes that were being taught by mr mason and i will always remember how much fun we had learning how to get the job we love

0:45:34[Applause] so that concludes the presentations by the 2017 ec stars did you have any questions or comments i do call i just want to say to you five achievers thank you very much and years from now you're going to realize how important this and other internships are to your life so

0:46:03congratulations and keep it up yeah i look forward to this night every year and and you guys have fulfilled uh my expectations of how you remind us about how important it is for us to look to the future and build the future and you remind us how uh import how generous our staff is and how much they

0:46:31mean to you as part of that so i thank you for uh reminding us about these two important values [Applause] watching you guys today remember made me remember um my first internship i i did an internship at the viticulture and enology research center at fresno state

0:46:56um which is where they basically study wine making although i didn't get to sample any because i was only 18.

0:47:04but i i do remember one of the tasks they gave me it was somehow like picking out sorting through grapes and there were like spiders crawling out of the grapes and i i was like this is too creepy i can't do it and they said okay well you can take the day off then

0:47:19[Laughter] but i did some data entry and things like that also and i it just made me wonder um what i learned from it um was that i was interested in math and science and it was partially working in a lab and i what i learned was i really didn't want to be in a lab all day i

0:47:38wanted to work with people after that happened so no spiders please in my my line of work i was wondering if any of you are more encouraged to to participate in the particular field you were interning in or if there's some other kind of tidbit that it made maybe might

0:48:00have steered you in a slightly different direction or you have any comments like that um i realize i realize that working with people is actually very entertaining and more so that you hear about everybody's life stories and they tell you things and you're able to actually interact

0:48:22with them rather than kind of being in like office the whole day but actually going out and talking to people that definitely steered me into more of a direction where i want to work with people rather than staying in office a whole day thank you thank you i found um looking through the storage

0:48:41closet highly interesting because of all the stuff that was in there and so i learned that maybe i would like to go into something that was more discovery related rather than just working at a desk or working with people thank you i'm still unsure of what kind of career

0:49:02i would like to pursue but um having this internship experience uh allows me to figure out what i enjoy more and what i dislike so yeah thank you thank you uh this internship at the recycling center has given me a great deal of respect for people who manage uh logistics and other resource

0:49:26management so i think that i now have more experience in this area and would like to pursue it thank you like adonis said i would like well i would like to work around people because it makes the job more fun thank you [Applause] i and i hope that not only did you find

0:49:57what you like that did any of you find what you don't like because that's a valuable experience too did anybody learn what they don't like no i think they're being polite let's not put them on the spot they're definitely valuable experience go ahead suzanne there definitely were some um

0:50:26reflections and other opportunities um through the class assignments that mr mason had the ec stars do over the summer in terms of you know what what did they like and what strengths were they learning that they had or what direction might they like to choose as

0:50:40part of a career so that is a very important part of an internship learning both what you do like and and things that you don't like so it was definitely explored as as part of the curriculum and i would also assume that you uh learned it at least it used to be that

0:50:56way with the program how to dress and you know mannerisms how to interact with people um and i hope you did did you find that valuable yes [Laughter] did you learn anything that was interesting that you want to tell us share with us go ahead um do you guys have brown bag meetings

0:51:28i realize that it's just bring your own lunch i i thought it was more than that but just bring your own lunch [Laughter] anybody else um i learned how hard it is to um like get the fourth of july fair ready it's like a lot of work and like a lot of stressful things like

0:51:57setting up the booth and who wants to be next to each other yeah that's really hard that's a good that's a good skill because people don't always want to get you know they always they usually want what they want i have one more comment um also when i was 18 so about your guy's

0:52:19age i was my senior class president and by the end of the year i was kind of over it i was like all right i don't think i'm going to go into government but here i am 20 years later 22 years later so you never know even if you do something at that age you know it's still planting a

0:52:38seed even if at the time it doesn't seem like much corey do you want to add anything yeah i actually could okay [Laughter] only to support the stars so the internship thing i um i didn't i had internships in my mid-20s right out of college i went to work for pan am

0:53:03and after several years of working six or seven or so i decided it was time for a career change i was enrolled at university of hawaii and esl and i had a full-time job in a part-time graduate career and i decided i need to see what's out there so i actually interned uh

0:53:20in my mid-20s and i went to work for an advertising agency in the first year that like pcs were being rolled out into business we still had those ibm's electrics and then i went to work for a production company as a grip doing video production you know hawaiian airlines that kind of

0:53:37thing out in the hot sun and both of those times i found out it wasn't for me i did settle on radio voila i went to work for honolulu radio station that was that like 30 years ago so internships matter go career technical education go get yourself thank you any uh last comments from our stars

0:54:06no i think we're all done okay thank you and i believe there's one public comment oh there's a public comment okay let me adjust this mike so uh good evening again mayor abelson council staff colonel handler richmond all i can say that this was wow i was really blown away by this um

0:54:27presentation so i think they deserve a round of applause what i got out of the presentation was that um each of them like you know had had some help you know around the offices so everything i mean like human resources i know it'll like you know it'll be helpful like to keep uh suzanne on there

0:54:47on her toes you know to remind you know about the about certain things so what i got out of the presentation was uh every i mean each of them had you know like a unique you know uh distance you know of their uh what they want to do i mean uh in the human resources office i said this is an

0:55:04opportunity that'll show that um that we need to like you know bring in more jobs into the into that department so i'm thinking that this is wonderful and i say someday there might be a new uh an assistant city manager she's not here for that so i'm i'm reprieved so so it's it's a good feeling

0:55:22to have some of these like you know mentors you know like uh giving the students a confidence self-esteem issue so i said this is wonderful i say thank you suzanne i mean this is presentation is one of the best so far i when i got out of this i said wow this is it's incredible i mean i

0:55:39mean these i mean these talented students i mean they have a lot to offer to this table so hopefully next year and the years to come that this that this present that this um ec stars will last long and i guarantee you because i mean all the students i mean provided a lot

0:55:53of interns and i said this is perfect and i said this is incredible i said the council i mean i mean you i mean everything you usually gave them in the right directions uh and as far as like the your story uh rochelle it was like i i just can't even think about uh

0:56:12working around in a vineyard oh i don't want to work in that so so this is an opportunity i said hopefully i can bring this back to the city of rich and to tell them to say i said that they need to take a take a lesson from el cerrito they should be the model because i mean

0:56:25we have a lot of easy stars you know like um they're talented they have a lot to offer so hopefully richmond can take a better example than that so i am finished thank you and i do notice that i think i see my caronian in the back of the room would you like to [Applause]

0:56:48thank you okay well i would uh also like to thank you uh students for uh participating in this and i wish you and i think we all wish you the uh the best let's see yeah do you think a group photo would be appropriate okay why don't we um have the council go down there somewhere

0:57:13great me all right it works [Music] [Applause] it's your job today [Laughter] spiders okay that was inspiring i think that was great okay the next item on the agenda is the human relations commission work plan and it'll be presented by margot hunter para risi parisi thank you

0:59:11from the human relations commission um thank you good evening um how do i switch this okay press the x the arrows perfect great um good evening uh mayor and council members my name is margo hunter parisi and i'm the chair of the human relations commission and i'm here tonight

0:59:56representing the commission to give a brief overview of our work plan for the current year and into next year and then also a quick list of highlights of some of our accomplishments from the past couple of years i'd also first like to acknowledge i think at least two of my fellow

1:00:16commissioners are here in the audience um georgina edwards and jessica laird i don't think anyone else from the commission is here we do have miss pat who's our honorary amarettos commissioner and plays a big role in helping us with our martin luther king event

1:00:37so as we as you all know the purpose of the human relations commission is to initiate educational and cultural programs in the community to promote tolerance diversity and mutual respect um between all persons and we do this of course through various community events

1:00:57that we plan throughout the year in different programming so quickly turning to the work plan you're all very familiar with one of our biggest projects which is the martin luther king day celebration obviously the goal of this event is to honor the legacy of dr king

1:01:19and also to celebrate our community's diversity and cultural richness the tasks that the commission undertakes include participating in the planning and organization of the event assisting with you know getting the program together with outreach and with all the logistics on the day of the

1:01:42program and generally the timeline for our work for this is around now through the event which is in early january another project that is part of our work plan is the human relations commission student commissioner this was a i guess in the years years prior there

1:02:08was a student commissioner but since i joined the commission um in the beginning at least we didn't have a student commissioner it's something that we sort of reinstituted and so the goal of this project is to just increase involvement of our students in the community you know something akin to the

1:02:27el cerrito stars program and to you know get young people more involved in the work that we do yeah i think you can go on ask adonis diaz if he is willing to join great we have a yes a list of potential recruits um and so the tasks that are involved in this obviously are conducting outreach

1:02:51at the high school um putting together a fro flyer and brochure soliciting applications interviewing the candidate having them join the commission um and assigning them tasks as appropriate and so the timeline to get this going obviously is now and it runs through the

1:03:10end of their school year and obviously it's tricky because we have to work around their schedules and finals and such but i'll report a little bit more on that later another project that is on our work plan for the coming year is the not alone becoming allies workshop

1:03:30this was the title of the event last spring i'm presumably the title will stay the same or be something similar and this event was created last year in response to the hate crime that was committed in el cerrito back in 2016.

1:03:52um the commission we heard from community members and discussed amongst ourselves different ideas of how we could get more involved and bring the community together the project we came up with was this one and we plan presumably we plan to repeat it and in conjunction with the

1:04:11anti-defamation league we plan to provide a workshop at which community members can learn how to support each other as upstanding allies and citizens and so the tasks that are involved in this event would be to work with um if it is again the anti-defamation league would be working

1:04:33with them as our co-sponsor developing the workshops the structure for the event facilitating breakout groups and things of that nature the timeline for this would be uh in the early part of next year obviously another big project that we plan to work on is continuing with the

1:04:57loving day celebration um which as we all know is the brainchild of council member uh produ okimoto when she was on the commission and so we've been continuing with this project the goal here is obviously to celebrate the loving decision and then also to celebrate generally the idea of marriage

1:05:20equality excuse me multiculturalism tolerance and diversity within our community and the proposed activities involved organizing the celebration getting together tables for community members who want to share information their children activities screening of the loving

1:05:40documentary and things of that nature this event occurs in june so the timeline for working on this is may to june of next year lastly some of our ongoing projects and goals these are somewhat general but generally continuing to recognize you know various important societal events

1:06:01and milestones that occur such as through recommending proclamations to council members and also consideration of planning potentially other events depending on what's happening in our community and more broadly in the region and in the country um this past year you know there's been so

1:06:23much activity um we've kind of changed and developed different sorts of programs and ideas and so we plan to continue to do that depending on you know what that we feel is needed in the community another important goal of ours is to continue to promote and encourage

1:06:45people to come to our commission meetings and to use this as an avenue to voice any ongoing concerns they have or if they have inquiries and such you know we hope that we can be a resource for people in the community when things happen such as the incident with the

1:07:00hate crime or when community members have ideas about different projects and such we welcome folks to participate we had a lot of participation participation this past year and organizing some of the things we worked on which helped tremendously because as you all know it's a volunteer

1:07:20commission all of our commissioners work full time many have families and so it can be very hard putting on some of these programs we really appreciate the support we get from community members who come to our meetings and volunteer their time to help us with our projects

1:07:39so just quickly i'll run through the some of our prior accomplishments which basically reflect a lot of what we plan to do in the coming year um first uh one of the big campaigns we worked on this is in 2016 was the stop hate together campaign as i mentioned um there was the terrible

1:08:01hate crime that was committed against a family here in el cerrito we held a forum in march of 2016 at which there was a large outpouring of community interest many community members spoke and the response was incredible so in response to this incident uh the commission we decided to create a

1:08:29via visible campaign that would kind of draw people together and to show that el cerrito is a community that doesn't stand for this type of conduct and that we really support each other and so we kind of used the not in our town organization kind of using some of their messaging

1:08:48and created our own signage which you know you now see all around el cerrito and homes and businesses and i might add that was i thought it was interesting and kind of neat too that berkeley when there were the demonstrations a few weeks ago they also have a signed campaign now

1:09:08with similar kind of themes so i think it's a great idea so that was one of our projects as i mentioned the martin luther king day celebration is uh was another one of our big accomplishments and here's some photos from that day held at the high school obviously this

1:09:29is you know such a well-attended event brings out so many people from the community um and people really seem to love it the other big thing that we did this past year was work on the sanctuary city resolutions um this was another issue that community members actually felt very strongly

1:09:53about people were attend started attending members of the public began attending some of our meetings after the election last fall and into the new year and many members expressed interest in us looking into this issue so we decided to do that we formed a subcommittee that worked

1:10:15with karen here and other staff members the police there was a lot of work involved in preparing those proposed resolutions for the council you to consider and back in march uh at the council meeting um both resolutions related to the sanctuary city resolution and then the senate bill

1:10:38which is i understand i think is waiting for the governor's signature i believe the council moved to adopt both of those resolutions and as i mentioned earlier um this was the first year that we held the not alone becoming allies event it was held back in april this is just a photo of

1:10:58that event it involved several different kind of ice breaker breakout session kind of little events many events in this room where community members broke out into small groups we had facilitated activities to kind of get to know each other break down barriers amongst each other

1:11:24and then we also in groups shared um our experiences either witnessing acts of uh bullying or hate crimes where we did not know what to do and some people shared incidents where they actually stepped up and got involved and then we concluded with brainstorming about ways in which

1:11:48average citizens can kind of step up and help each other when you're witnessing such events because they unfortunately have become more and more common and here's some photos from the loving day event that was held in june the loving quilt as you see in the picture on the upper right

1:12:11that's the quilt that was displayed outside in the lobby we had several organizations that requested tables and handed out literature there were kids activities and the documentary was shown as well other accomplishments we restarted the commissioner program we had a student from el cerrito high

1:12:39stephanie sue who we chose to be a student commissioner she attended some of our meetings and helped us recruit this was a big help for us hopeless recruit volunteers from the high school to assist with the martin luther king day celebration and some of the other events where we really

1:12:58needed some help you know getting flyers ready putting balloons up things of that nature some of our other accomplishments include some of the proclamations that we have worked on black history month women's history month lgbt pride month asian pacific islander month jewish american heritage

1:13:20month and human rights day and month and that is all i don't know if you have any questions that i can answer if not i'll be happy to take them back to the full commission at our next meeting thank you well thank you very much for the presentation tonight i it's great to

1:13:42hear what our groups are doing and and you are um brought the message forward in a very concise great way i do have um a recollection um from when i was on the parking rec commission 12 years ago or something like that um the human rights commission was the one that brought

1:14:03us all the commissions together to do a training session um that trained us a little bit how to interact with the public and and be tolerant of people who were critical of the work that each commission was doing and i was just curious if that was something that you would be interested

1:14:22in in moving forward with because certainly we can you know give you good direction to that effect at some point i don't know if we can do that tonight but um but we we potentially could give you direction to that way i was just curious if anyone has brought that up or talked about training

1:14:39of all the boards and commissions as a way to weave the groups together interacting not just on our recognition dinner but at some other time during the year yeah i think that had come up before but we haven't discussed it and i think it would be a good thing to explore

1:14:58because um we have had some cross-pollination between the commissions there was um an event when i first started that the crime prevention commission put on and we kind of helped with that um but i think that would be nice to have more interaction between the commissions and then also the broader

1:15:19issue of sort of learning how to interact with members of the public and the other things that you mentioned so i think that's something that we can certainly explore mayor if i may is mr woodruff are we able to give any type of feedback or guidance tonight i'm not

1:15:37sure exactly how this was uh was agendized presentations um well it's agendized as a report from the hrc um i think that if you if the council has comments that um that it that you can certainly make them if you actually wanted to provide some direction about um things that the commission should be

1:16:01doing it should probably be agenda separately okay great thank you okay um any other council member have comments i just would like to say something i i see a couple of members over there and and one being georgina edwards who i persuaded to volunteer uh years ago and and it's great to see you

1:16:26uh still part of the board and uh i'm grateful to uh you and and uh jess laird and i see pat durham over there and as a former chair of this uh commission uh it's just wonderful to see how much this commission has grown and does plays a big part in our community so thank you

1:16:49thank you chair thank you michelle i just wanted to thank all of you um i miss being on the commission i was also on the commission as a vice chair and i i think that the work that you guys have done since um since i have been elected has just been tremendous and um we thought that we

1:17:10were dealing with a lot in 2016.

1:17:12and boy you guys didn't know how crazy 2017 was going to be and um so i think that you guys have just done a really fantastic job uh keep up the good work and i do have some suggestions and i'll have to figure out how we can how we can do that later on thank you great thank you

1:17:32i want to say that i think you did you had had a great you did a great report and i think it's really exciting to see how uh this uh commission has just blossomed and i hope that you keep up the great work uh and thank you for the work that you're doing it's really

1:17:54been very valuable as we all know i think at this point so thank you great thank you very much okay um so um that is that and are we wanting to uh agendize something around this that we can do right um that would be part of your process but i you can and i mean and i'll be

1:18:26i believe that in the past under this the city manager and i were just confirming that under the same agenda language i actually think that the council has provided some i'll call it feedback um to the representative from boards and commissions so i think that probably

1:18:41within the purview of what the council has done in the past it would probably be fine to provide some feedback about things that the council would like to see i'm having looked at a little bit more if the council actually wants to have a fully agendized discussion of this then

1:18:56i would say you know if if you want to do something more thorough then i would suggest agendizing it so that it's clear for the public that the council may actually be providing um more comprehensive uh direction to the hrc to that that they may want to make an appearance for

1:19:12and and city manager i'm assuming that if we were to give direction or guidance or feedback sorry if we were to provide feedback tonight that it had large fiscal ramifications you would want that to be fully agendized at some future meeting if if we're going to make some sort of

1:19:33yeah i think i've i think i've made my feedback i don't think it falls into the the category of needing a separate agenda item so i'll defer to ms pardue okay i think my feedback doesn't have any fiscal considerations um so just um as i am very closely tied to loving day um

1:19:55attendance was a bit down from our kickoff year so i noticed that you had it on your agenda for may and june and i know that just from my personal experience of being on the commission i know how the whole year rolls out and it kind of all the sudden it's may or

1:20:12june so i would just suggest trying to promote earlier even if you don't have everything done but just getting maybe like a simple flyer out with the day and the time um a bit earlier because i think that that is and maybe some um some other signage because i i noticed

1:20:34like with some other community events that we have these really great banners up at various parts of the city and i haven't seen that with levinda yet yeah thank you um yeah i think it did sneak up on us and then i think part of the issue with um i believe that event and then also the

1:20:55allies event just there's been there have been so many different events competing events um and i i'm not mistaken there may have been a competing event march of some sort on the day of loving day in addition to the allies day but not positive but i know that's been a

1:21:13little bit of a struggle um because there have been so many marches and you know other events that people really want to be involved with and then i think ours kind of you know fall down the list but certainly i think definitely getting a jump start on the signage maybe different signage

1:21:34and once we have that date picked just saving the date even if we don't have the agenda fully formed like you're suggesting would be a great way to hopefully increase the numbers right thank you thanks and thank you for your great presentation great thank you okay

1:21:52uh with that we will move on to public hearings and we have one public hearing on the fire hazard abatement and i have a sheet on how to do this so i'm going to follow that so the abate we're doing the abatement of the fire hazard uh public newest census confirming the report of costs on the

1:22:16property identified in the resolution pursuant to el cerrito municipal code chapter 16.26 and we'll start out with my announcing that the public hearing is open and we're going to have a staff presentation by fire prevention officer joseph cagney good evening honorable mayor and city

1:22:41council members i am captain joe gagne your fire prevention officer and i'm here to introduce a resolution confirming the cost of force abatement on the property previously recognized as a public nuisance at the last city council meeting and allowing us to put a

1:22:57lien on the associate for the associated costs against the property uh just a quick review we had a 20 123 initial properties were inspected and found in violation we sent out letters last meeting when we got together we declared 25 and we had to actually just do one forced abatement out of all of

1:23:15them combined so we were hoping for zero but i guess one is the next best right it's pretty close uh are there any questions from the council okay where's the secret this is the lowest number you've had the entire time i've worked on the on the council so what was different this year that you

1:23:38were able to be so successful in getting this to be won uh well i think we were very consistent in uh going to the public and meeting with the homeowners and we were weren't very adversarial or anything it was more of a let's try and figure out how we can do this and you

1:23:52know i gave this guy the last one property i gave it to the very very end because i was hoping that we could get it done but um i i guess probably a little bit of luck probably went in there too so uh the people who went before me i know try very hard and it just the puzzle the

1:24:07pieces all fall where they do and and we ended up with one so well that i want to say thank you very much that's fantastic work we we are not in the business of doing abatement we don't relish getting to the last straw where we have to make the property safe and incur this type of

1:24:25cost and and debt against the property so i appreciate all the work that you've done thank you okay now we move on that's one question just uh i'm sure go ahead when we're actually the city's cleaning the property uh where's the homeowner is he there watching and well basically

1:24:42what we do do is we have we have two different contractors bid on them we take the lowest bid and so up until we do it we put a sign out on the property we go out days before and we try and make contact to let them know and the day of i actually go out there with the abatement crew the contractor

1:25:00that was chosen for the job we do knock on the door again we actually if the homeowner is available they can make the payment to clear with the contract or not get any of these secondary associated costs and that way it'll be just a uh the contractor and the homeowner can settle the bill and

1:25:16then you know everyone's happy that we wouldn't call it an abatement really they just worked it out before them you know but by themselves so we knock on the door and if they show up we tell them what's going on and if they don't not if they don't respond then we

1:25:30we still make sure the property's safe so no no problems at all no no problems we were there for i want to say four to five hours 25 hours four to five four to five yeah okay so i know that you do a process of going around town and looking at every i guess every property in town to

1:25:50see what it looks like but what if after that date uh things keep growing which they do of course well i can tell you we're still working with homeowners this stuff still is obviously growing and you know a lot of times we go out there and it's just kind of a courtesy thing we talk to them

1:26:06and they take care of it right away so it's uh there's like two kind of period where we're heavily into it but it's a process that we're constantly going through with the public and just making sure because like you said you know we're doing our community we're doing kensington so

1:26:20obviously there's a lot of properties we're trying to make sure they're all safe so things do change and more things pop up and we just deal them as we can but obviously we can't put them in the abatement process so you know it's just a matter of being real nice and getting

1:26:34them to do their stuff so um if a resident notices something that they think is uh unsafe um what would they do we do get calls into the fire department they get called an admin they call me directly and we go out and we will make contact with maybe a neighbor or a

1:26:52homeowner and try and figure out if there is indeed a fire hazard if it's a code enforcement issue or how we can get a resolution to whatever the problem is and lastly um i've had people say that there's all these weeds somewhere another and you know what can be done about it and

1:27:15what really constitutes a fire hazard in terms of is it height of the weeds or what is it well we do have it pretty clearly defined but once you do have a lot of uh you know any kind of vegetation once it's cut and it's piled up and it's drying up it's inevitably becomes a fire hazard because

1:27:35it's you know it's just organic material and it's dead and it gets if it gets crewed up you get piles of their own property you know that will do it but i mean when you drive around these properties it's pretty obviously what constitutes a fire hazard you wouldn't

1:27:47be shocked to go with me i mean you would be able to do it yourself i'm pretty sure okay thank you i think are we ready maybe to oh just one question go ahead on these properties is it like the front and the backyard or well yeah so basically um we do a curbside inspection so we drive up

1:28:05we're not allowed to legally go onto anyone's property we can't see behind their house so we're making you know our assessment from what we can see from the road when we do start clearing stuff out if there was an abatement or something we try to make sure we get the most of

1:28:18it that we can but our inspections are just basically it's a street side inspection we can't go beyond that legally thank you are we ready to um open the public hearing okay then let's uh open the public hearing are there any speakers cordell hindler so uh good evening again uh council uh

1:28:43handler richmond i have taken a look at some of the properties around el cerrito and uh and the weeds are about like about stacked up to here and i said okay this is this is like a fire hazard you know all these weeds growing and it's like something has to be done so

1:28:58i'm thinking that um that this resolution that uh that you that you're willing to adopt this evening hopefully this your um adopters resolution so so the weeds won't be going as scouring this high so uh i have seen some problems not only in el cerrito but in richmond so

1:29:15hopefully you'll um pass the resolution that's it okay thank you uh are there any other speakers no need to close the public room okay thank you uh is there a second a second okay there's a motion and uh by lyman seconded by quinto to close the public hearing all in favor

1:29:34please say aye aye any opposition in the abstention motion cares unanimously um the next uh item on the uh agenda here is additional questions and council deliberation are there any yeah i something that captain gagne mentioned would potentially address the most the

1:29:58public comment it's a long process the abatement is a long process and this is the end of it it's a process that i think i always asked for it to be started earlier because we do get so much vegetation growing in in april and may but it's a long process that starts in june and and

1:30:16we're just at the conclusion now so as the mayor asked you know properties that are being covered with weeds now we can't necessarily put them in the abatement program and if i heard you correctly captain gagne you you cajole those residents into compliance basically is that correct

1:30:36yeah chief i appreciate your question chief maples uh i'm your fire chief um we do one inclusive abatement annually a year like you say it starts very early and it moves to this period this is when we do the abatement there have been times when we've started the process over when we could not

1:30:54convince someone in the value of cleaning up their property that's not very often usually after we explain to them the program we show what just wrapped up in our community and how we had to do a forceful abatement it makes them believe and so we rarely have to come back but we have come back

1:31:12before for single properties that will not comply great thank you thank you are there any other questions or comments okay so i think then we are ready to entertain a motion sure i'll move to adopt a resolution confirming the report of the costs of abatement of public nuisance conditions

1:31:37resulting from the presence of weeds rubbish litter or other flammable materials on the private property designated in the resolution in order that the costs of the abatement be levied as a special assessment under the authority contained in the ulcerative municipal code 16.26

1:31:53i second that okay there's a motion by lyman seconded by fideli all in favor please say aye any opposition any extension motion carries unanimously okay thank you so now we go to item number seven and there is no policy matter so we go to item number eight which is city council local and

1:32:17regional liaison assignments uh does anybody have a report okay i just wanted to thank the council earlier for its vote in the uh um consent calendar about the tree committee changing its name to the urban forest community i think that's going to be a big boost

1:32:40to the committee that i'm the liaison on and we can attract some additional staffers to that committee and and this town wants to be a tree committee and i think we're heading toward that with a new ordinance coming up so that's very important and finally i just wanted to follow up with

1:32:57with what rochelle pardue okimoto mentioned in from the legislature we were that there was a very successful state legislature as far as affordable housing and a lot of the bills sb2 sb3 and speed35 are going to are have passed and gone to the governor that will help

1:33:13us in our affordable housing efforts and also the sanctuary state bill that went to the governor so we're very happy about those things uh yeah i have two two general reports one is uh i did visit the human relations commission they're obviously planning on martin luther king parade and they did

1:33:32her presentation tonight i gave them an update of some of the things that we've been working on and it would be no surprise yeah to hear that the human relations commission had a number of questions about affordable housing um i did my best to convey the information that we had heard

1:33:48here at council to answer their questions second i have attended two meetings and i want to thank council member fidelity for attending one of those with regards to the west contra costa integrated waste management authority we had a special meeting on september

1:34:0711th that meeting is to focus on the new governing documents for the joint powers authority i think i've been reporting about back about that ongoing effort uh i can tell you that on september 11th we uh um commissioned commissioned the the city managers i asked the city managers we took we

1:34:35we gave we gave direction to the city managers to meet and begin to work on uh some of the governing document documents the the directors have been struggling with this for over two years uh and have gotten to a point where potentially we had not quite unanimity along the the other

1:35:00directors and this approach might get us uh to a place where we do have unamininity so we that was something we an action we took on the special meeting regarding the governance of uh the joint powers authority we had a regular meeting uh last um last thursday and uh the most notable thing to come

1:35:22out of that was a presentation on the household hazardous waste budget the household houses waste budget has gone up almost 33 in the last five years uh most notably because we've added additional services uh we've added a day out at um the centralized facility but we've also

1:35:43added uh household hazardous waste collection here in el cerrito uh one day a week uh there are now um fixed household housing waste collection locations of five day tuesday tuesday five days a week tuesdays through saturday um and tuesdays hits here in el cerrito

1:36:04um also part of the household houses waste expense is the occurrence of one day events uh el sobrante pinol and north richmond are all getting uh one day events here in el cerrito uh here in this calendar year and those have turned out to be incredibly successful

1:36:24getting many many tons of waste out of our waste stream and this benefits all of us because that waste isn't being placed on the side of the road where it becomes water quality hazards it's not going into our landfills where it becomes a general pollutant in our overall

1:36:45landfill so we are very successfully managing our household houses waste but it it is continuing to go up in order for us to be successful in providing those services uh that that's part of the biggest notable one from the routine meeting that we had uh in uh last week

1:37:03and paul junior i did just do it okay just what you did okay i have um one item and uh that is just an announcement about the committee on aging uh is one of the co-sponsors along with st john senior center in christ lutheran senior center of a the third annual el cerrito senior

1:37:29resource fair that will be held on wednesday october the 4th of this year from 9 a.m to 1 p.m at the community center here in el cerrito at 7007 moser lane and this is a an activity that was has been very successful in the past and all are welcome there there is no cost

1:37:54to attend and as a bonus you can get your free flu shot um and but you have to to do that you have to bring a medicare card um so and i believe you also can't be a member of kaiser probably um usually it's set up that way so anyway uh if you're interested please

1:38:18do attend and um with that it's time for adjournment and we have a special adjournment tonight in memory of charles or chuck wing and i actually think i've known him since the 80s if i remember correctly and he graduated from placer union high school and then went on to uc berkeley where he earned a

1:38:49bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and after graduation he worked for the rimmler company a pioneering bay area radio company where he helped develop an ambulatory blood pressure recorder for ucsf he married the love of his life fong yin and they had three children

1:39:15uh over the next six years um and he also had uh three grandchildren and um after he retired he became a really a fixture in our senior program and volunteered extensively and his there's he and his wife fong their specialty was the ballroom dancing program that we have

1:39:46um and uh they have monthly tea dances at the community center and along with lunch and and i believe those events still occur but he's no longer part of that he also was a dialer driver for the city and he took seniors on trips around he was very devoted to his family and he was a good

1:40:18example and um always trying to be a man of high integrity and so he will be missed um for all that he has done for our community so if we could have a moment of silence thank you okay our next meeting is on october the 3rd at 7 pm here and so now we will be back

1:40:49on our regular schedule of two meetings a month on the first and third tues tuesday of the month thank you you