Regular City Council Meeting November 21, 2017

0:04:59please there it is there's the gavel thank you all for coming this is the meeting of the el cerrito city council and we will begin by roll call council member fidelity here councilmember lyman here council member pardo akomoto here vice mayor quinto and mayor abelson present thank you um

0:05:26and next we'll have the pledge of allegiance to the flag or observation of a moment of silence your choice and i it's my turn to lead it so i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god

0:05:47indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and we'll start with uh council and staff communications um do you have any no okay okay good evening last week i attended uh the west contra costa mayor's association and uh we had uh speaking from the public defender's office in

0:06:17contra costa who's a staff attorney there he will also be in charge of the contra costa rapid response program and this program is to make sure that our immigrants who are arrested and taken to san francisco have get advice asap from to their folks and to family members and

0:06:45to see what's going on there this is an important item that especially in our county and i want to make sure that our residents here know about this program i've asked them to speak in september in uh january uh so he will be speaking on uh exactly what the rapid

0:07:06response program is so um i also would like to let folks know that uh on december 12th is the last time that folks can return their their passport from the centennial events that everyone uh participated in and we have some prizes for folks that have the most stickers on there so i

0:07:32hope everyone turned that in at city hall and uh i look forward to that and hopefully we'll we'll get some winners there so thank you okay thank you and um rochelle did you have anything yeah yeah okay and greg yeah good evening everyone um i've got two related announcements um the city is

0:07:56looking for applications for our el cerrito boards commissions and committees we have a multitude of organizations that assist staff and the council and we're encouraging people residents to apply for things like the street oversight committee the committee on aging crime prevention committee

0:08:16economic development committee the environmental equality committee the tree committee the library committee i think we even have arts and culture civil service so there's a large number of opportunities for you to participate in your local government and so we're encouraging people to go to

0:08:35our website and look at the positions that are available and apply and that's at the city website http www.e-l-c-e-r-r-i-t-o-dot-o-r-g and there's one special committee that i'd like to highlight um on november 7th our last meeting the el cerrido council decided uh

0:09:01that we would form a charter review committee to assess a new charter city charter for possible consideration by the city your voters next fall in creating a committee to prepare the charter the council provided direction to the committee regarding components that the

0:09:22charter should include and so we want to go through a public process to get input on those components as well as other topics the charter committee will consist of two members of the city council council members fidelity and myself a member of the financial advisory board

0:09:38an active participant in the el cerrito real estate community a representative of the local labor groups and two members of the public the members of the public could be residents or owners of el cerrito businesses so we're hoping that you will again go to our website and look for

0:09:56applications this review committee application is there also at www.el-cerrito.org 93 boards and commission the deadline to apply for uh for this particular commission is december 18 2017. so if you're interested in being considered for our charter committee please

0:10:22go and apply by december 18th applications will be reviewed by council member fidelity myself and staff and recommended applicants will be interviewed by the full city council between saturday january 6th and tuesday january 9th and we will be looking for to approve

0:10:46those members at our january 16th meeting and finally uh committee members who want to apply should be generally available for four to six meetings uh typically we are considering mondays and wednesdays in the months of february and march and at least one saturday during that period so that we

0:11:06can provide a full spectrum of access uh to this topic uh to our residents so again uh please consider joining one of our board's commissions and committees and if you're interested in participating in the charter committee please consider that as well thank you

0:11:23so i have a question uh regarding that in reading that it um said they needed to be present at all meetings but then it says in a different place that there will be one meeting on a saturday does that mean they need to be available at this point all saturdays in

0:11:41that time frame or what does that mean once we get our group selected we will obviously poll everybody to find out what are the best dates so that we can pick the dates that are most accessible for our committee members as well as the public so it it we are hoping that they

0:12:03have general flexibility during that time frame for mondays wednesdays and saturdays but it it'll only be one saturday out of those eight or nine saturdays in that february march time frame thank you okay um and are there do you have anything yes i do thank you and happy holidays

0:12:22everybody um i want i went to the uh parks and rec workshop on the future strategy of our city's parks and recreation facilities on saturday in the community center was well attended and very a very good meeting um and speaking of the community center and the rec department i just want to

0:12:40announce that on december 9th is the annual christmas holiday breakfast which is great sausage and pancakes and i get too fat from that but i go every year i also want to say that i noticed on our el cerrito police blotter and around the bay area that there have been some

0:13:00exchanging craigslist issues happening some crimes that have been happening and i just want to reiterate to elsa readings that because of our police department we have our own safe exchange zone right across the street that uh is up and working and so we there's not a need to exchange things at

0:13:16people's houses anymore in el cerrito it's an important thing to know a note to the councils that i was appointed to the league of california city's transportation communication and public works policy committee so i'm pleased i get to work on those issues on behalf of the league

0:13:33and finally um uh council member lyman is our representative for um mce our community choice aggregate and he was conflicted last week and i was able to attend a meeting out in concord and was pleased to see that el cerrito got two awards there and i want to make those announcements to to everyone

0:13:56here the first award was in recognition of our city uh getting the 100 percent renewable energy for uh municipalities it's a beautiful award and because our municipal uh concerns here uh went 100 green we got an award with 14 other communities but probably more impressive is the

0:14:18charles f mcglashan award and it's recognized for outstanding environmental leadership by a community and i was pleased to to see that our environmental quality uh committee won the award uh for their hard work on our 100 for 100 initiatives that was is a year-long project so it's

0:14:41still going on and their goal was to increase the number of deep green 100 renewable energy customers in the city um so i'm very proud to announce that um mark miner who's the chair of i think you're here mark can you stand up and howdy dowdy howdy gowdy and rebecca milliken i don't know if

0:15:01rebecca's here can you can we get a picture of this can you stand up and bring the award [Applause] karen oh you're gonna do it with that oh uh thank you [Applause] yes thank you okay are there any further council communications okay are there any staff communications

0:16:43okay uh then next on the agenda is oral communications from the public which is an opportunity for members of the public to speak uh for up to three minutes on items that are not on the agenda if you want to speak for items that are on the agenda you can do so as we cover that

0:17:02item and there is a lighting system up here in front of the dice that tells you green means you've got three minutes or or something less to go yellow means you've got half a minute to go is it and then red means you're out of time and so please finish your sentence

0:17:25and with that we will go to oral communications from the public on items not on the agenda we have um six speakers um we have um about four for the consent calendar would you like to take those at this time also okay so the first three speakers are cordell hindler ronnie polonsky and sherry

0:17:47drovner so um good evening uh council uh staff i am colorado handler richmond i have some some gifts for everyone so you are cordially invited to the city the contra costa civic theaters um over the river and through the woods is playing this friday evening and the

0:18:03tickets are only 11 dollars that's just for the youth rate so and then also you are fortunately invited to the san anisa new sleigh ride on december the 7th from four to eight at east brother beer company and it's not just city of richmond folks can come el cerrito is invited too so there's

0:18:20gonna be great food beer and you're gonna meet uh some guest bartenders so come out and enjoy and i say and do what i do just use fake names so so that's two and then the third thing is um i came a couple months ago in in trying to get more young people to participate

0:18:37on some of these committees and it's really important to hear the use perspective on things that like local governments so this is a great idea for for young people to participate and that's three number four is um let me see oh yes i i wanted to thank mayor abelson and

0:18:54council for the um for the proclamation last meeting uh for the for workplace bullying i find it is very helpful because it shows that um that was the significant um strengths of what how it's like dealing with workplace bullying and then the final thing is um we are trying to keep

0:19:11alta bay hospital going because as you know i have say this every so often i said my niece was born on at alta base and if there's something happens to that hospital again we're not going to have no hospitals we already lost doctors a medical center if we lose out to base it's going to

0:19:29it's going to create not only it'll create more a struggle but it's going to be making art making things more difficult so we need to keep altibates going so i'm just we're doing whatever we can so we need all the nurses to come together and figure out how can we figure out um

0:19:45what to do with our um with our hospital if we lose this one we we the only way the only hospital we have to go to is walnut creek and that's too far for people to go so we need a hospital that uh that is provided for our communities so i'm about to stop i'm about to

0:20:01you get the idea so i'm gonna give my time to lonnie so my name is ronnie polonski and i've been living in el cerrito for seven years and i can't see when i look up only when i look down so i'm sorry i've spoken to the city council twice this will be my third time the first

0:20:25time to try to soften some of the heights of the new buildings being proposed under the san pablo avenue specific plan the second time it was to try to help the evicted seniors of autis park tonight is really an extension of those same issues the issue that remains core

0:20:41to the demographic of this city which is protection of our tenants the huge new projects impact the city in many ways not least of which is an increase in rent for all of us the autism park folks had no just cause eviction protection whatsoever my partner nick and i recently went to a

0:20:57training to be tenants rights advocates through a non-profit in san francisco what we learned was dismal in short tenants have virtually no rights throughout our state the courts are tilted heavily in favor of landlords several cities have recently tried to address this issue

0:21:13and santa rosa the city council created new rules that included just cause eviction and rent stabilization the california apartment association spent more money close to a million dollars than has ever been spent on any issue in santa rosa and they put the measure on

0:21:28the ballot and it was defeated by a slim margin other cities like richmond our neighbor have successfully had their city council on that renter protections i am here today to find out why we are not doing this in el cerrito while affordable housing in new projects is a

0:21:43good idea it does not resolve the problems our current renderers face affordable is not the same as low income and those units are open to everyone not just those who reside in el cerrito many of the apartments in el cerrito were built before 1995 and therefore

0:21:58available for renter protection despite the costa hawkins law which i'm hoping will get repealed i would love to see more renters come and voice their desires for some protection so they may stay in their homes until then the few will have to speak for those who can't

0:22:17sherry drivener followed by nick galoro and norman leforce hi good evening this is also around the issue of housing and specifically homelessness i know on the agenda tonight you have a proclamation designating november as homelessness awareness month and i was aware too because the

0:22:39temperature started dropping this month and was very cold out and i saw a lot of homeless people on the streets including an el cerrito and i guess my question or concern is this is that we are part of the region in in west contra costa county and part of contra costa county

0:23:01and i know several months ago there was a presentation by core the coordinated outreach referral engagement group through the county and they're doing their best efforts to try to go into the communities and work with a homeless population and it would be nice to see el cerrito

0:23:24be part of that regional effort so i just wanted to put forward the idea as part of this resolution and thinking about this in the very near future that we think about providing funding for that program with our city thank you hi i'm nick laurel ronnie and i are on

0:23:50mce so we're part of that program and we encourage everybody to get on it um i'm going to talk about um the el cerrito affordable housing plan um i'm definitely in favor of more affordable housing my focus right now though is what we can do to protect tenants and to keep them from

0:24:09becoming homeless we need rent stabilization and just pause protections in el cerrito rents have been increasing rapidly the situation has become so grave that governor brown issued a temporary executive order in effect until next april that limits annual rent increases to 10 percent

0:24:28annually i mean how many people know about that about that okay i'm just curious as uh i didn't know about it until a few days ago tenants know cerrito have basically no rights they can be arbitrarily evicted and have no choice when that happens but to pack up and leave

0:24:46some of them have no place to go and will end up on the streets rent stabilization and tenant just cost protections are needed to protect the 64 percent of all households in the el cerrito flatlands it's amazing to concentrate the tenants are basically concentrated in the

0:25:03flatlands along the san pablo avenue corridor and this comes right out of the strategic plan that the strategic economics plan or this one of the statistics they present sixty-four percent of all households in the el cerrito flat flat lands are renters rent stabilization and just

0:25:21pause cause protections could be enacted right now by this city council you can impose a temporary limit on rent increases similar to those imposed recently by san jose and sebastopol the san jose said it's limited as five percent and that was just sometime in mid-november

0:25:40you can pass full rent stabilization and tenant just cost protection ordinances as has been done in many california cities like los angeles san jose san francisco and oakland and it won't cost the city anything since the ordinance ordinances could include landlord fees that will cover

0:25:56the cost of administering the program and you can create exemptions for small landlords so the question i keep asking is what are we waiting for elsa real tenants need your help now to save their homes thank you norman leforce followed by howdy gowdy good evening mayor council members of

0:26:19normal force um i want to thank you for your proactive approach to the operation and maintenance of the el cerrito pool i know you have an item on the agenda consent calendar for that it's very important that this facility be maintained in the top quality condition that we're accustomed to

0:26:40it's a definite calling card for anybody who comes to the city realtors will tell you that and everybody i talk to whoever has been there basically rates it at the as the top outdoor swimming hole in the east bay at least and so it's important that we maintain this pool i was on the city council when

0:26:58we voted to essentially rebuild it in 1999 put that on the ballot voters supported that it was reopened in 2004 it's now in need of upgrades and rehabilitation for equipment that's uh you know running down because it's now almost 15 years later so it's important to keep it going and

0:27:17functioning properly and well and basically i urge anybody to come out and swim great exercise aerobic exercise given all the talk about high blood pressure that we've seen in the press best way to reduce it of course for most of you people you should come in the afternoon and evening

0:27:37so us early birders don't get too crowded there no any everybody's welcome anytime um but thank you for your support and i look forward to working with you and other members in the community to make sure we keep that pool in great shape thanks good evening marion council members my

0:28:02name is howdy gowdy i live at [address removed] so it's been three months since you approved the affordable housing strategy in august 15th there were several priorities called out for action within one year such as inclusionary housing and protections to avoid displacement of tenants from

0:28:22existing rental units i'm concerned by various comments i've heard that suggest the affordable housing focus may become sidelined to other emerging priorities including the charter city process rescuing the san pablo specific plan and waiting on the 15 state laws recently enacted to

0:28:42also addressing affordable housing i was reassured to hear that in a recent progress report offered by staff that affordable housing remains a high priority and the actions are underway to hire a consultant to conduct the nexus study for potential inclusionary ordinance as well as

0:28:59hearing interviews for a new affordable housing analyst position community development i encourage council to keep the implementation of the affordable housing strategies at the top of your priorities for this year i hope you will ask for a sixth month progress report to be heard

0:29:19um during a council meeting in february to keep attention on these important topics and make sure that we're progressing as part of the study of inclusionary housing i also hope you'll recommend to staff that they also look at affordable requirements for rental as well as for

0:29:36sale projects as this is now allowed under the recent passage of ab-1505 while the strategy in august stated it was not allowed under state law because that was the case at that time and you know getting back to the shifting focus on the san pablo specific plan you know it's it's been mentioned

0:29:55that you know this 1700 unit cap that was part of the eir for the um the area is you know nearing uh well we're roughly 50 there with existing projects and those that have complete applications but i don't think that if this comes to you for further direction that it needs

0:30:23it really needs to have the affordable housing strategies in the forefront before we look at expanding to more market rate units and likewise for the funding side of things you know i know there's a lot of interest in the transfer tax associated with the charter city but and

0:30:42affordable housing has been mentioned as a potential beneficiary of that but if that happens it really needs to be um accompanied with an explicit program that's going to you know get funding for affordable housing programs rather than just kind of a a generic promise that the fund the

0:31:05general fund will be used in that way so anyway i just want to mention that and i'll be back in a few months and hopefully we'll have more progress thank you i have no more requests to speak okay thank you the next item on the agenda then is the adoption of the consent calendar items number 4a

0:31:27through 4g and i um there are two items that i would like to pull so that uh presentations can be done and one is the item on designating november as homelessness awareness month and the other one is the item honoring brett guest for his commemorable actions and those are items number

0:31:58um see and uh where'd the other one go it's actually it's not consensus oh it's not excuse me it's not just one of them is on the consent calendar so that would be item 4c the homelessness awareness month proclamation and as i understand it there's a person here

0:32:22from contra costa county sarah marsh who's the director of support services um from contra costa interfaith housing um and so uh let's uh first first we'll do the rest of the consent calendar and then we'll have you um we'll have you speak on this and mayor i wanted to pull

0:32:464d 4d okay which is a swimming center the swim center item okay mayor i'm willing to make a motion for item 4a approval of the november 7 meeting minutes uh 4b repeal of the local campaign literature disclosure ordinance to achieve consistency with state law for e ohlone greenway bart

0:33:09station area access safety and place making improvements project 4f the i80 central interchange improvement project phase 1 and 4g cash and investments report for quarterly ending quarter ending september 30th 2017. a second okay um and um so there's a motion by uh lyman seconded

0:33:33by pardo okimoto all in favor please say aye aye any opposition or abstentions motion carries unanimously um and with that we'll go to item number c which is the homeless awareness month proclamation and so at this time sir yes sir marsh if you'd like to come up and

0:33:58make a comment about this yes thank you um i am sarah martian i am the director of support services at contra costa interfaith housing which is a non-profit one of the many service providers in the county that works with homeless individuals and families and individuals that are at

0:34:17risk for homelessness i'm a el cerrito resident and i wanted to just thank the council for considering this proclamation to help publicize and raise awareness about homelessness for the month of november as well as all the rest of the months in this national effort and i also wanted

0:34:35to thank you for your ongoing efforts regarding increasing affordable housing in our city as well as in our community and providing more stock because that's really truly what we need thank you thank you for so next we'll vote on it and then i'll do the i move for

0:35:01see the homeless awareness month proclamation not second time yeah all in favor all right any opposition abstentions motion carries unanimously and then uh why don't we go ahead and do the um the go down there and then we'll do the other item sarah they'd like to take a picture with

0:35:49you oh [Applause] um so the remaining item on the consent calendar which was pulled is the one on the swim center locker rooms and pool equipment room upgrades and renovations and paul i believe you'd like to speak on that and i uh i just had a i'm fully supportive of this i'm it's

0:37:02it's great to be able to talk about our pool it's so great so to get a little public support on this verbally just a couple questions because i've had a couple people come up to me in town and ask about this extra money and i don't know if their staffer can come up

0:37:15and answer this or not but i just want to make sure that this extra 220 000 is money that we have and to clarify that so that the public knows about this and it's part of a funding that we already have and it's not new money's being spent on the pool good evening mayor and council members i

0:37:33am yvette ortiz the city's public works director and to answer your question yes it's from the existing fund balance in the measure a el cerrito swim center fund so the 220 220 000 would come from that fund and there would still be remaining fund balance after that

0:37:50great i just have one more question when we talk about improving the ada accessibility and the lockers any further information about does that mean we'll have some bigger lockers in that area which is important these days students and kids have big backpacks correct it includes regrading the locker

0:38:09room floors and adding accessible features including locker rooms wider locker rooms thank you very much thank you okay any other comments from the council okay hearing none ready to vote yes i'd like to move that item okay but you want to move the item and then is there a

0:38:28second second i don't know who was first michelle are you first second i love the poll okay okay um with that all in favor please say aye aye any opposition or any abstention motion carries unanimously and now we'll move on to presentations and the first one is the where the

0:38:52proclamation honoring brett guest is and i believe we have a speaker in our chief paul keith good evening mayor and council members i'm paul keith your chief of police i'm before you tonight to present the details of a proclamation for one of our residents brett guest

0:39:10the morning of august 22nd 2017 around 6 30 one of our residents was out for her morning walk as she returned home a man attacked her and forced her into the driveway of a nearby house the woman screamed for help as luck might have it the driveway belonged to mr guest who was awake in

0:39:28preparing for his day mr guest ran to the window saw the attack and decided to take action he ran outside shouted at the man and scared him off mr guest chased the man as he ran up his street and then around the corner onto another street when the man started jumping fences in the

0:39:43backyards mr guest realized that he could be of the most used at his house providing information about the man's subscription to the police using the description from the woman of mr guest our officers developed information about our suspect because mr guest described the suspect's flight

0:39:58toward a nearby school our officers contacted the school's i.t staff and located video of our suspect as he fled from mr guest armed with a photograph of the man our detectives reached out to our law enforcement partners the man was quickly identified by a number of agencies our

0:40:15detective our detectives obtained a warrant for his arrest and he was quickly apprehended in berkeley thanks to a vigilant resident mr guest is here tonight to be recognized for his quick thinking decisive actions and motivation to help his neighbor mr guest acted out of the spirit of

0:40:31neighborly protection that i hope all of our residents strive for mr gass acted quickly to protect his neighbor even though it meant risking his personal safety to do so i'm grateful to be here tonight and have this opportunity to publicly recognize the actions of mr guest a man who went

0:40:46the extra mile to help his neighbor mr guest is with us tonight and i hope you'll give him an opportunity to make some comments if he's willing to great thank you [Applause] i don't have a whole lot to say i just wanted to thank el cerrito for recognizing me been a part of the community for a very

0:41:09long time and i said it once i'll say it again i hope anyone would do the same for one of my family members or myself he speaks of you know doing what we want for our neighbors what we would like done to us and you know that's kind of what i'm here to echo to the

0:41:25community so we live in a wonderful place and i appreciate the graciousness and gratitude that's been shown to me by my neighbors so thank you i appreciate it thank you okay uh with that we do have a motion uh to do this presentation is there a motion i'd be delighted to

0:42:00make the motion to [Music] move an el cerrito city council proclamation honoring brett guest for his commendable actions i will second that okay um the motion was made by council member lyman seconded by councilman member quinto all in favor please say aye any opposition any abstentions

0:42:23motion carries unanimously and so with that we would like to present you with this proclamation and we'll have another photo op last one in the evening [Applause] speakers [Music] it was just uh relayed to me that there is actually a speaker for this uh item and i apologize that we didn't do

0:44:04it before we made the motion but i hope that you will forgive us uh and and the speaker is cordell that's me yes that would be kelly dale hindler and that's me please make your comments sure so uh good evening again mayor council staff i it just blows my blows my mind to see

0:44:24someone you know like risk their own safety to to help out a neighbor i find that that was very helpful so i think mr guess deserves another round of applause i like he says um you got to rely on on a neighbor you don't like to help out in their um in their time and need so

0:44:44all i can say is that um people can if if he can like risk his life for the help of others i mean we can all do the same thing so i'll be coming back up for the arts and culture commission item okay so um with that we will move on to the next item on the agenda

0:45:05which is the arts and cultures commission work plan and is there a presentation by that i mean a speaker okay and this is okay uh good evening mayor abelson city council members hardworking city staff and my fellow residents i'm very i feel very privileged and i feel very

0:45:47proud uh to be a member and chair of the city of el cerrito's arts and culture commission we've had a big year we did a lot of work we have a lot of achievements uh to to to talk about tonight um i could put it very briefly in terms of firsts first poet laureate program for the city

0:46:09first artisan residency program for the city and first ever city sponsored one city one book campaign throughout the city this fall so we've done a lot on top of the the work we usually do all year um i think tonight you know i'm just going to show a few slides and we'll go

0:46:30through you know the the work plan for the year and also what we've done and what we've accomplished in the past year but i think what you'll see are three main themes to what the um arts and culture commission is all about first is diversity uh everything we do everything

0:46:49we work on that we conceive that we uh help fund uh is with the purpose of reflecting and engaging the many different cultures and communities of this city that's it's not we don't give that lip service we don't fill out any check lists that's what we do it's integral to

0:47:10the way we think the other major point that you'll see is local our work is in the arts but it's about building relationships whether between artists and audiences or professional artists and buddy young musicians and students out there learning the the craft of being an

0:47:31artist or the the joy of being an artist that's what we do we don't go to san francisco i'm sorry i need to talk to you folks right um we don't go to san fran we don't need to go to san francisco we don't need to go to vegas or berkeley we go to san pablo avenue

0:47:50uh where we work with aalon dance studio and down home music we go to fairmont avenue where we talk to folks and do things with play with clay uh pottery studio and hardy elementary we go to moser lane where we connect and we do programming with contra costa civic

0:48:09theater and keiji oshita's uh sf sakura ren dance group i mean i could go on but this is it's local okay and then and the last point uh that you'll see um it's local but it's a very high quality caliber of of performance um you'll see we're doing this in a community of only 30 000 people but

0:48:34there are many big cities and even cultural capitals that would be proud to do the some of the things that we're doing actually they'd like to be able to do some of the things that we're doing here in this city so again um those those themes of diversity the emphasis

0:48:51on the local but always at a quality level i think um it's it's uh it's really been a great year to be involved in the arts in this city um i just want to you know i have a few sort of standard size in case people aren't even familiar with us i mean who is this guy what is this commission

0:49:08well um you know our basic mission uh it's just these are sort of general points but we're advising the city council on the needs of the arts community where encourage and promote arts programs and events uh that to engage community members and local businesses

0:49:27always with this goal of creating a flourishing and a vibrant arts and cultural environment we provide advice and support to artists and arts and cultural organizations through the events through the year and we'll get into each of these things a little bit we help

0:49:45carry out the important arts and public places program so these are you know among the sort of in genera general terms what we do members of the commission there's seven of us um a few are here tonight judith tannenbaum uh george geiger myself um it's a great uh group of people um we're a

0:50:09hard-working commission we roll our sleeves up we and i think we get along very well together it's people we come from different backgrounds we have different skills different experiences but i think the proof is in the pudding a a commission that works well together uh

0:50:27produces and i think that's what we've done but yeah if these are our seven members um so you know as far as the plan or work plan for um 2018.

0:50:41um tonight we'll you know i'm going to do a little bit more with a few of these things but just to go through the list one as i mentioned before we've started we've launched and we're i'm going to introduce sandy dropny our first ever artist in residence for our city

0:51:00we've done our most recent arts event as part of arts month uh was in october but we'll be doing that again in the next october we do as you'll see we're supporting uh among other things three major musical festivals each year in the city um and the other points are are uh just

0:51:24to give a little bit of meat on the bones here um when we say developing uh resources and support for local artists we're doing that in a couple of important ways one we're partnering and performing a uh joint committee with the economic development uh committee

0:51:43so we're going to be supporting local artists identifying local artists arts organizations and our business as an important part of the el cerrito economy and something we want to support with in in a variety of ways that i can talk about more um we're also uh uh

0:52:06in the last two points in the ways to promote literary arts and also just the sort of a general active promotion of the arts uh we have our uh poet laureate martian nguyen who's been doing all types of uh workshops and and uh open mic sessions and going into the

0:52:27the high school and working with high school students um we're also developing for the first time a uh summer course we're partnering with the parks department to create a course um for young writers ages eight through twelve we're working with iowa writers program

0:52:46graduate debra pugh who's also a local now so we're doing a lot of different things i i don't want to take up too much time because we've got a big agenda i know you guys have a big agenda tonight but this is the level of work that we're very energetic we're doing a lot of work

0:53:01in the city um this is you know our our ongoing work this is year in year out uh so again we're doing the poet laureate program we have we make use of funding that comes from our one percent uh public art program we're helping on a few different projects uh the bart el cerrito del

0:53:26norte station we've advised them the selection of an artist for the murals there but we'll also keep in contact with king king kyung mee shin who's uh going to start putting the mural up it's going to be a beautiful new public artwork in the bart station there and we

0:53:46in general we're looking at other ideas such as murals on bart pylons in the city and the large mural space along the lonely greenway uh i don't know if folks have been upstairs but on the second floor we do we have a gallery space and that's available for residents and uh folks to apply to

0:54:12present their art to do exhibitions so we do about five or six exhibitions we judge artists and uh they display their work up there and as we'll see we we participate in a wide variety of city events fourth of july earth day and of course centennial this year so in fact very active

0:54:32roll up their sleeves you know we roll up our sleeves as you can see um this is sorry okay so you know i want to talk about a couple of things more specifically um the first is our newest program and this is with uh sandy drumny we've we if you look on google and you type in

0:54:57google recycling artists and residency programs you will see san francisco ecology you will see philadelphia's program you will see brooklyn's program and on that same page you see el cerritos program okay that's the level of work we're doing edmonton doesn't have one yet they're

0:55:19sending out a call we've beat edmonton but that's uh but when if you look at the top 10 things that come up on google el cerrito is one of them is because we're one of the few cities in the country that have created a artisan residency program directly working with a recycling center

0:55:38we've we all know we have a fabulous one here in el cerrito and so we've i main credit goes to heidi rand who literally took four years in developing this program we've launched it we made a call for artists cindy drobny who's in the audience and i'll have her come up

0:55:54in a second was interviewed presented her works and will be our first ever artist in residency i'd um i thought i'd just maybe uh turn the over the mic uh to sandy um but first if i could introduce her just a bit because this is such an important new initiative for the city

0:56:20um a crew is the el cerrito creative reuse um program uh which brings in an artist to make use of the materials at the el cerrito recycling and environmental resource center she has full access to the center we've provided a storage area and she has the six months residency to produce

0:56:45works sandy has previously done art residencies at sf recology and at st vincent de paul she holds a bachelor's degree in design from uc davis and an associate degree in arts apparel design and merchandising from the college of alameda she also has years of experience as an art teacher

0:57:06and weaving instructor and she's been an el cerrito resident for 20 years i just thought i'd quote from sandy's application she says one of the main objectives of my artwork is to educate when people are able to see items reused in unique and artistic ways they may be

0:57:26inspired to manage their discarded materials more innovatively i am a weaver and i work with repurposed materials i want people to see that weaving is not just an ancient pursuit but it is alive and well in this century i want to engage the public and educate them about

0:57:44creative reuse as well as weaving as an art form if i can introduce to you sandy droby our first city artisan resident mike so i am an elementary school art teacher and i'm an artist as well and i love other people's junk and our recycling center is so beautiful

0:58:14and so well organized and as part of this i got to take a tour and learn about everything that goes on behind the scenes and it was just so great so i am excited about looking at things in new ways i mean many of you probably go to the book exchange and pick up something to read but i look at

0:58:39the books differently so i look at the images i want to know how i'm going to use that in my artwork and so i will be looking through the things that you discard and planning my next artworks i do mostly textile art and so i weave fabrics out of reused things like plastic bags

0:59:02initially started to do that to call attention to the bags and the ubiquitousness of them and the waste and so i'm looking forward to showing you what i can do with this opportunity and it's great to be the first in the city and i'm very excited thank you thanks so much

0:59:30if uh folks if you want to see sandy currently has a work on display at the tilton park environmental education center and that will be on display through december it's a work a part of a group show from the golden gate weaver's guild so if you want to check out her

0:59:44work and it's great i think it's accessible and really shows i think that what we need to do with and think about our recycled materials um and our level of waste um so that's you know a big initiative that we've started this year um many you know i'll just go through

1:00:07the i th this was our big event just recently but it's the kind of program that we do i was very thankful that four of our five uh city council members were able to come we did a program this year the arts day event was in conjunction with the city uh centennial and we made sure to

1:00:29cover the history of the city through music and dance from a variety of folks and again these are local folks 95 percent of the money that was used for this event went directly to the nearly 40 artists who participated so this is the kind of work that we like to do and we've and it

1:00:48was really fun event in the city um also what we did i mentioned this earlier we did a first ever one city one book event we had san francisco chronicle writer and east bay native vanessa walcom daughter of chinese immigrants and fiction on and short stories on the

1:01:10many different immigrant communities and experiences of uh in the united states but particularly california and we did two events with the come come partnering with the library uh among the music events we did and this many folks probably have attended we do uh we we just sponsored

1:01:30the el cerrito free folk festival which uh brings together many artists and actually workshops and sort of master classes done at the el cerrito high school all the performers perform for free it's that level of um work to sort of give a sense of the accomplishments and i think we've i've

1:01:51touched on a few already but just to give you a little bit more of the depth of this um i want to just say that uh our poet laureate uh who uh did a tremendous amount of work this year she's been a and when i talk about quality and local she combines both she brought

1:02:12brought both the former u.s poet laureate robert haas to speak for free into the city we had a full house for that event um she also brought the former director of the national endowment for the arts dana joya and i mean the big nea in washington he also read because ma is

1:02:32here on the local front though she does it just as well we've had open mics where she we have to cut off the number of people reading it's 20 residents amateurs you know some published that's what she does and she's spoken at our centennial parade she spoke at july 4th

1:02:50and she's worked closely with their senior center and our high school the woman's a dynamo and you know people may say money for let me tell you something arts dollars we we provide a tremendous amount from the the amount of funding that we give i think we're really cost effective if you want to

1:03:10reduce it to that but she's been incredible last year we did a different type of arts month celebration this we partnered with a latin afro pop band guarandingo locals um on dance studio also with um uh local artists like ma shane nguyen this is the kind of work we do

1:03:34music not just the of cerrito free folk festival but also our a large major jazz festival done done through the high school with johnson of the musical director at the high school we work closely with corey mason for the july 4th festival we do a special evening of music ev the last few years

1:03:54on july 3rd sponsoring that and we did a showing of another local treasure christwitz in the documentary we filled the house for an event at the cerrito rialto this is just what we did this past july 3rd brought over 600 people attended a special night concert and dance of our hawaiian

1:04:18communities throughout the bay area came and our of course our local residents so this you know this is the type of work we do we work with our one percent fund we participate in city events we jury the city our hall gallery space and uh on you know i just want to give the full

1:04:37range without getting too much more in detail and maybe just last we're always looking for ways to participate in city events providing tables with in this case hands-on artwork for kids and and families in this case for earth day but we do it throughout the year

1:04:57anyway uh sorry i've taken up this much time but uh i you know to me it's just about sharing the the joy of doing this kind of programming throughout the city and again always with the emphasis on the local on the diversity of the city and on quality high quality

1:05:18thank you thank you [Applause] i feel like we should do another uh proclamation or ourselves oh that's okay no more photos we all appreciate um and exactly the level and quality of work that the members of uh your group have done uh i think uh as one of the people who

1:05:48worked on its initial creation up in eve ma's dining room uh it's it's much more than i ever thought it could be and it seems like each year it grows and grows and grows and so i would really like to thank all of the members of the committee and for the community for supporting it

1:06:09it's really become quite a happening i think the thing that impressed me more than anything this year was the centennial event that you did where you showed art and music over the period of time that it covered and showed a number of different uh music forms and and sort of rose to a crescendo as

1:06:38it were uh you started out with one person i know in the beginning on the very first opening prayer uh the iolani prayer and uh then you at the end you had everyone in the room dancing even me i and it was just utterly amazing the the great work that this group has done

1:07:00so i think we all owe you an immense round of appreciation and thank you for doing what you're doing and keep up the great work you're welcome anybody else want to have something i know rochelle is the liaison to this committee but i'm a refugee from the committee and i just want to it was a

1:07:22superlative year you guys did a great job i wanted to thank chris and heidi and the rest of the committee and and i just want to say that since chris has come on and it's been an incredible amount of growth in el cerrito on our profile in the arts in the community and

1:07:40when chris is in charge of something he's an educator we're all educated by it and we're seeing the effects it's really wonderful i did have a couple questions because i want to shout out on some of this stuff with sandy and the new effort that's about to happen i've been to some other

1:07:56cities where some of this work is actually in the city out in the city so i'm just hoping it's not a question but i'm hoping that whatever you do from our recycle center we will be able to see throughout our city and that will make people smile okay um also a lot of music you did a lot of

1:08:13music like janet said that was an incredible concert at the community center and it really um the history of el cerrito and the music it was really wonderful you mentioned july 3 which i think is a great addition to our community and hopefully we support that the free

1:08:29folk festival and july 4th you also mentioned down home and i wanted to emphasize i mean that is a jewel that we need to keep in el cerrito and support and i know there have been some efforts even when i was on the commission to give stipends for local concerts can you tell

1:08:44me if that's still happening or there's emphasis to have that happen yeah um you know i think what we're looking at particularly paul is with the um economic development committee um the the emphasis that i think we're going to bring is again looking at ischian

1:09:04violins looking at down home music looking at play with clay uh pottery studio looking at all on dance studio katie's dancing we've got many businesses in this city who need our support need our whether that's you know just partnering and doing programs getting

1:09:23visibility but one definitely that we need to work with is down home music and i'm trying to promote we try to promote the in-store concerts as much as we can but what we'd really like to do and that's one of the things that we're looking at with edc is to do some type of larger

1:09:43engagement whether it would be a an actual concert uh or um the venue is small in the store but we can you know i've talked to both jc and john about can we support help you with surprise providing stipends or honorariums to the the artists that come because they do these

1:10:05free in-store concerts probably a dozen or so a year and they're wonderful i mean top grade entertainment from across the country roots music so it's definitely a priority and and i'm the liaison to the economic development committee so i'm glad to see you guys working together

1:10:21whether it's musicians out in restaurants or whatever something in the holidays at the plaza those are nice things to think about so congratulations on that my final my final question is how big is the budget and what's left from after all you know i just i was just in contact

1:10:37with karen oh karen do you want to no um right now well see that's a good question because you know that because of the arts fund we're we're looking at the development pipeline which i think you guys are much more informed about than i am but currently we have uh

1:10:53about fifty six thousand dollars available for and that's what we draw upon um each year in you know for instance the big event that we did would cost about 3 500 um but we're drawing from the arts fund for that depending on the development projects and whether the

1:11:14developer decides whether to do the artwork themselves or whether we would make use of it that's i i don't i don't really have a probably city staff would have a better statement on that um again you know the when we use that funding though just the example of that

1:11:33event again almost all of that went back to went to the artists that's why we do it at the el cerrito community theater because we're not spending a tremendous amount of money for the venue um i can also sorry one other item um paul that we're doing which you've talked to

1:11:49me many times is we're working very closely with edc about doing film type work in a film series we were honeycomb with documentary graduates from the cal school of journalism and i've talked to all the time about putting together programming for that thank you guys keep

1:12:08it up i'm sorry all right go ahead michelle i just wanted to mention that i had a really great time this year being the council liaison to the arts and culture commission and i really appreciate all of the work that you've done and particularly i enjoyed going to the poetry readings i

1:12:31was able to make it out to that event and i was amazed at the level of poetry that i was hearing from the people that were presenting there and then also i was able to read the deceit and other possibilities and that was also really great i would recommend that book to

1:12:51anyone who hasn't picked it up and read it yet lots of references to the bay area and it was very interesting to me and then third i'd like to say that since you're interested in um culture and community and equality that possibly you could uh partner with the human relations commission around living

1:13:13i've worked for this part particular last event i work uh and talk with our human relations i i think of us as kindred organizations that's how close we we think of uh our work with our work in a city it's an auxiliary of human relations really in that respect great great

1:13:34and uh i should just say with mashay nguyen i know that her her initials should be different but i her initials should be sro because her events are standing room only and if you told me poetry would draw 100 people filling standing room only the library again and again and again

1:13:51you could have knocked me over with a feather the woman does it i don't know how but yeah she's great he's amazing and also i'd like to say that i'm recently changing my schedule from working every weekend at the hospital to every other weekend so hopefully i can

1:14:06make it out to more events oh great thanks thanks chris i also uh would love to thank my my friend that that followed me up here from san francisco from long beach uh followed me up here to san francisco and ends up moving at the same town el cerrito and that's

1:14:26our poet laureate ma wen and i've always known since i was 19 what a talented woman she is and her combination of her politics and her writing it's something that we need right now so i congratulate uh my dear friend that i've known since 19 years old i guess uh to uh um congratulations and and uh

1:14:49great work for our poet laureate here in el cerrito thank you you hear anything now yeah i want to thank the the full committee for everything you've done uh this year it you guys really rolled up your sleeves and did a lot of work uh it showed in the number of events and the

1:15:05high quality of those events hopefully you haven't burned yourself out and we can get another year of that level of events so yeah i'm really looking forward to next year we're just getting started we're counting on that [Laughter] thank you so much thank you thank you

1:15:24okay um that uh let's see do we have speakers we do mayor we have two um cordell hindler followed by al miller so uh good evening again mayor uh council um this is one of the this is a good presentation so as some of the council members know i have attended some of these arts uh events and i said

1:15:46this is very extraordinary so when i went to the october um event last month i find it it was very it was very inspirational i was like i have never seen so many artists in in the city of el salvador and i said this is excellent this is excellent so hopefully by next

1:16:04year we can do it more so we gotta get more people involved because art is a wonderful thing um enriching so when i hear the poetry it's like it's like it's like you're listening to a the wind it's like it's just it just blows you away so i'm thinking that this is a wonderful

1:16:21opportunity so i came up with a poem related to that so the city of el cerrito um is very joy and true but sadly it it you hear like the cloud it you just blew so that's it made up poem so so l you're on a poet i'm not uh al miller from el cerrito good evening mary ellison

1:16:52council i just wanted to add a few extra details in some of the events you've heard about that were at the library uh this one city one book i hope it's become an instant success so it'll now be an annual event rather than just the first event uh also i want the people of elsewhere

1:17:10to know that about a hundred books were distributed to residents free those who are funded by the friends of the cerrito library they donated over 600 dollars to pay for them the events where the one city one book events at the library were the sro type uh one of the teachers from el cerrito high

1:17:35school i believe he's in a ethnic studies class teaches an ethnic studies class he had over 20 of his students were there the night that the author was there they were actively participating in they were asking questions the author loved it you could just tell she kind of lit up when this younger

1:17:57group of people in the audience started participating she stood around afterwards after the event closed and the kids were all circled around her so it was really great i can hardly wait to when a standing room crowd in the library isn't 40 people but it's like 150 people when we

1:18:19have a new library that's capable of supporting the efforts of our arts and culture commissions in the way our citizens deserve it thank you thank you okay let's see so we're now ready for the next item i believe yes okay and the next item is uh 6a the commercial

1:18:40cannabis ordinance and um we have a script for that thank you okay and first of all uh i'm going to announce that there will be a that this is a public hearing on the commercial cannabis ordinance and um i'll just first of all tell everyone what we're actually the process is here

1:19:08and then we'll go back and do the process so first we announce the hearing then there's a staff presentation by sean moss our senior planner there will be questions from council followed by an open public hearing which is an opportunity for members of the public to speak

1:19:27then the public speak and then there's at the end of that the council will have a discussion and possibly followed by a motion ordinance if the council decides to make such a movement and that will be the process then we'll have two more public hearings and i'll go

1:19:51into those later so sean would you like to open this after um do we need to call for the public hearing anymore or is that changed um we need to open the public hearing i i think you can open it when it's time for public testimony but i believe sean can proceed with okay thank you

1:20:15thank you mayor abelson council members i'm going to try to keep the presentation somewhat brief i know there's you probably have a lot of discussion and folks here that want to speak on this item so the city council has had study sessions on uh this topic on april 18th

1:20:36and uh most recently on october 3rd of this year um so this shouldn't the ordinance shouldn't look all that different than the information that's been presented to you in the past but i will briefly go over kind of the the general framework of it so this ordinance that's before you

1:20:54tonight is to regulate commercial cannabis establishments in el cerrito uh the general framework is that there would be uh is that it establishes is an operating permit scheme and there the city would issue two operating permits under this uh scenario the permitted activities would be

1:21:17storefront retail establishments and delivery and the delivery would be limited to delivery by those two storefront retail establishments the ordinance establishes an application process and minimum application requirements the applications would require a variety of

1:21:40materials that staff would review and the city manager would have approval authority of the two operating permits so some of the elements that would be included in the operating permits include background checks for applicants a business plan or pro forma and an operations plan of the business

1:22:03information to demonstrate compliance with state licenses and state regulations a security plan for the business insurance requirements and insurance certificates and a description of the community benefits that would be provided by the business in addition the ordinance establishes

1:22:23location requirements for these businesses so they would only be allowed within the san pablo avenue specific plan on san pablo avenue specifically with a 600-foot buffer from parks and schools um and only on upper floors uh in the theater district in locations that are

1:22:46accessible um via an elevator or other means and i'll get into that a little bit in a little bit more detail in a second so there would also be performance standards on on for all cannabis businesses these standards would include things like hours of operation odor control

1:23:03inspections as needed notification uh the business would be required to notify the city of um staffing changes that would necessitate additional background checks or if their state license was suspended or revoked things of that nature there would be no display or advertising

1:23:25of merchandise permitted outside of the business and semi-annual meetings with the city manager and the chief of police would be required in addition there would be performance standards for deliveries those would also include hours of operation limitations providing a list of all vehicles to the

1:23:45police department the vehicles would have to maintain a copy of the license when they were conducting uh deliveries the vehicles would not be allowed to have any sort of identifying markings and payments would be delivered would be limited to cashless types of of payment

1:24:06um so now we'll go through uh the revisions so that's that's the general scheme of the ordinance as i said that shouldn't um that should seem fairly familiar to you that's that's generally the um the same um type of general uh structure that it had um at the last study session in october

1:24:25that the draft had and that's based on the the council's input from the april 18th meeting so the revisions that have been made to it since october 3rd one of the revisions centers around deliveries so we did there was uh there was there were some questions um related to

1:24:49deliveries um at the october third meeting um it was not as explicit at that time as it could be that uh deliveries would be limited to the two uh commercial storefront businesses in el cerrito that would get operating permits so that has been made more explicit there's language that was added

1:25:07in two places um to make that very clear in addition a public process has been added the the council wanted directed staff to create a process for public input um throughout the um throughout the operating permit process that has been added so uh the the the process that has been

1:25:29added to the ordinance would allow for notification to be sent when the two operating permit applications were selected and then there would be a period where public comment would be accepted and the city manager would take into account those public comments when

1:25:51reviewing you know when doing the final review for the applications um and weighing the the totality um of all of the aspects of the application um and in uh crafting conditions of approval um that would specifically affect those uh those permits that were issued

1:26:10the accessibility requirement for the theater district has been added the locations in the theater district would be restricted to upper floor locations this is because of these types of businesses are a little bit of an unknown but the examples that we have so far of

1:26:30medical cannabis dispensaries tend to be more auto oriented and so we wanted to restrict those uh locations in the theater district where we're trying you know which is an area where the city is really actively trying to encourage active uses on the on the ground floor

1:26:46especially but the language has been added to clarify that those upper floor locations would uh would have to be accessible via an elevator or other means of accessibility um there a requirement has been added that limits and this is also part of the state regulatory requirements but

1:27:10the ordinance specifically now includes language clarifying that advertising and marketing to miners those under 21 who are not legally able to to use cannabis products that marketing to those folks would be prohibited language has been added to clarify some of the video surveillance requirements

1:27:33um there were some some questions and discussions uh related to that at the october third meeting um some language has been added to clarify that this um that surveillance cameras would only be utilized for the purposes for basically police purposes for investigating

1:27:55either in progress or past crimes um that the they're not intended for general surveillance um at other times um also there were some questions at the october third meeting related to the provisions for air quality and greenhouse gas those sections have been deleted

1:28:17those were actually from that language had come from other examples and are really more tailored to activities like cultivation of cannabis so we felt that they were not um applicable to the retail and delivery activities um presented in this ordinance so those

1:28:33have been struck uh and then the last change is a clarification related to personal cultivation to limit personal cultivation to indoors basically indoors of homes and accessory structures and that is consistent with the requirements in the state legislation the

1:28:58m a u s what is the acronym m-a-u-c-r-s-a that require that require us to allow cultivation of six up to six plants per household um for personal use um so this would would allow uh cultivation consistent with that but would restrict it to indoor areas so that is um the scope of the the

1:29:25changes that have been made since the last time you saw the ordinance um and that concludes my presentation i'm happy to answer any questions you might have okay um so this is at this point we'll have questions from the council and let's start out with rochelle

1:29:44okay um my first question is on this is operating permits i no i take that back operating permits m letter m hazardous materials it's talking about the handling on premises of cryogenic gases such as carbon dioxide nitrogen and others is that typically something present at a dispensary i was

1:30:37wondering why those gases would be stored there it um what does this is let's see hold on let me let me just read this quickly it it's something that may or may not be applicable um we you know one of the i should have said one of the things um just to kind of back up for a second one

1:31:15of the um kind of overarching philosophies that governed the the development of this ordinance was was kind of initial caution um as you know a lot of these things are are unknown we have the model of um of uh medical marijuana dispensaries and and the medical marijuana industry now

1:31:34um but a lot of things about the the recreational um industry and exactly how it will function and develop or are unknown so we wanted to kind of um you know exercise initial caution um so we did try to um craft the ordinance um in a somewhat broad way that while you

1:31:53know um taking uh the standpoint of uh using you know being cautious initially um would allow it to be expanded to other activities in the future if that was uh you know the desire um in the future um so you know so some of these things let's just say some of these things in here

1:32:12are are written in a more broad way you know to anticipate that um so this you know this is something that may or may not be applicable to um to a retail establishment but i you know i don't see a compelling reason to not include it right i mean i don't see any problem in

1:32:29disclosing it i just wasn't sure if that was i just wasn't familiar with those gases being present at dispensaries so i just wasn't i just wanted to know if that was something that was common but i guess we're just unsure yeah okay um then second so i was very interested in

1:32:49k which is right above community benefits for proposed cannabis businesses a description of the benefits the cannabis business would provide to the local community such as employment of residents of the city community contributions improvements to the property um

1:33:08adjoining properties and uh economic incentives to to the com to the city but then when you move on to application process c it basically says that the city manager will be making a decision about the application so i just was wondering you know as a council or as a community if there was

1:33:39any way for us to get some feedback about possible community benefits that could come in with the applications or if an application was denied um it would i think it would be nice for the council and the community to be able to know um what was being offered in the first

1:33:57place as opposed to all closed-door communication so that so that's one of the reasons why the um the process for for public input has been added um the idea um the idea behind the operating permit process is that you know there are a lot of different factors um and we're trying

1:34:19to balance a lot of things um so i think to to narrow in on the you know the the community benefit aspect of it is is one it's one important piece um of a lot you know of this permit with a lot of different pieces to it um so to narrow in on that specifically um

1:34:38i think um might um you know might might not be the um might not be optimal um we'd really want to do look at all of the aspects that are being proposed i think you know the security plan is going to take on a lot of importance along with the community benefits um and and some of the other

1:34:56aspects of the business um so you know the idea is that all of those things would be looked at in totality when the the two permits were being selected um but that there would be the the uh opportunity for public input um you know in that process to comment on you know whether the the public benefit

1:35:15is adequate whether the security plan is adequate all these different things okay yeah i just i just add that just to emphasize the point that the um the public review process that was added would include disclosure to the public about the nature of the public benefits

1:35:30that were offered as part of the application so that would be fully disclosed we would we assumed without needing to state that the city council would also be informed of the two applications that the city manager was considering approving so the city council would also have an

1:35:45opportunity to provide input to the city manager about about that without it be becoming a uh itself a public hearing before the city council although one thing that i also wanted to note was that the ordinance does allow for the city manager to call a public hearing

1:36:01on an application if he felt like it was warranted based on the input received from the public so the idea of the process in part is to be extremely transparent with the public about the totality of the applications that that the city manager is considering approving

1:36:17and then to receive comments from the public about them and take those into account when considering whether or not to finalize the proposed applications oh great thank you and then i was wondering on the next one down d public notice i know that was written in after last

1:36:38session um is this consistent with are applications for alcohol or is it greater or is it similar i wasn't sure if there was i mean so um alcohol has alcohol has gone through a bit of an evolution um in the city um during my time here so um it used to be that um

1:37:05um you know restaurants that wanted to serve alcohol it was just that was just part of their restaurant use right it wasn't it didn't require any sort of extra public hearing or anything like that um we did in the in the specific plan in a way you know to kind of make

1:37:21sure that we were kind of tracking these and the police department was was reviewing them we did make restaurants that serve alcohol permitted administratively so they do have to go through a zoning administrator hearing um so i think what you just heard the city

1:37:42attorney say is that the city manager would be would have the ability to to conduct a public hearing for these types of applications in addition to that what the the default what would happen on all of these applications is that a notice would be mailed to to all of the property owners and

1:38:00residents and business owners within 300 feet um and they would uh that you know the notice would clearly state um that you have you know this period you have until such and such a date to submit public comments and then those comments would be taken into account reviewed

1:38:15with the application okay for the surveillance i know that we currently um we have a lot of our businesses in el cerrito already have surveillance in their businesses how does that compare with the cannabis business versus say like a cafe um you know the police chief could

1:38:50probably uh tell you better than i could but i yeah i i do uh know you know there are certain business types that that have to um have uh surveillance footage and maintain that footage and um in a way that's consistent with our surveillance ordinance would you like to hear from the yeah i

1:39:08would like to hear from the police chief please good evening council members once again i'm paul keith your chief of police um so we do have a surveillance ordinance in town that requires certain businesses to have cameras uh those businesses are fast food restaurants banks um

1:39:28other types of restaurants that have takeout services and liquor stores businesses like that um so in most of those cases we don't we don't have direct monitoring we do require them to have a camera system that meets certain criteria such as monitoring the entrances of the

1:39:43businesses as well as monitoring employee actions one of the things we found when that ordinance went to effect is this would go into the security plan of a cannabis business is that cameras need to be positioned so that we can help investigate crimes and not necessarily just for monitoring an

1:39:59employee's actions so we want the entrances and exits of the business covered right but i think that the ordinance doesn't it include everywhere indoors except for restrooms yes yeah so we cover the interior of the business and the difference between the cannabis

1:40:16ordnance and our video surveillance ordnance is we do not have direct monitoring of businesses in town unless they decide to give us that ability okay thank you sure do you have any other questions but that's all for now that's all for now okay good question okay

1:40:40sure i've got a few questions some some are going to be on the technical technocrat side but uh i'll do my best not to to get there quite yet um one of the comment letters that we received from was from nick krauss with regards to uh deliveries and he was you know

1:41:00basically saying rewrite the ordinance to allow the level of um [Music] vetting that we're going to do to the ones that are in in town to any career that was coming in and i was just curious if if you guys had an opportunity to look at his comments and speak to the logic of why we limited it

1:41:25to just the ones that are in town sure um yeah i did um see that comment um and um i think what um what i've explained in past meetings is um in the in the spirit of starting um cautiously as i said um we decided to propose to limit deliveries in el cerrito to the two

1:41:51storefront retail establishments that would be located in el cerrito um the idea being that that deliveries would be uh easier to to track in this way um that if there were problems occurring that we you know we know where to find those two businesses they have operating

1:42:07permits here we hopefully have a good relationship with them because they have to conduct these semi-annual meetings with uh with staff um so you know hopefully any you know issues that might occur could be resolved quickly and easily that was sort of the the idea

1:42:25staying with the deliveries theme um is there any way to limit the amount of product on any uh delivery i mean can we since we're regulating it can we say no more than a hundred dollars two hundred dollars three hundred dollars in the vehicle at any time that would be within the council's

1:42:45purview to do that okay if we if we as a collective group decide that that's one way to deter the um violence against these these defenseless drivers um we'll certainly be looking for staff's help to figure out where to insert that um the uh the how is this ordinance changed i mean

1:43:08what is the let's say for example we want at some point it's going well and we want to allow the transition from no cash transactions in the v for deliveries to cash transactions in the via in the deliveries or we want to transition we the businesses can make a good business

1:43:29case that they want to go from 8 30 to 8 30 or 9 to 9.

1:43:34what are the mechanisms by which the ordinance can be changed for some of those minor non-really non-policy issues or some of them are it it would have to be changed through the the same process that we're going through tonight um but you know the anticipation is is

1:43:50that um in the future we would reevaluate it and um you know if warranted come back with a a package of those changes if if needed in the public notice section that was added thank you very much for adding that so that would be 0 6 0 d 1 a on page 8.

1:44:18there is a general description and that you pointed this out in response to council member pardue okomoto's question about how the benefits would be evaluated and you pointed this language out a general description of the proposed cannabis business comma the content of the

1:44:33application um however at the last meeting we talked about some things in the application would would be withheld security sensitive type stuff does does there need to be some text put into this uh section acknowledging that we would withhold some portions of the application

1:44:53associated with uh security i don't i don't think so i think it's a pretty broad uh clause like the content of the application and i think it's it's pretty specific uh as you pointed out later on in the ordinance um that certain materials are are confidential so i think we can given an adequate um

1:45:12uh whoops i just lost the um you know i think we can give an adequate portrayal of the general content of the application without violating those requirements for confidentiality in one place in the apple in one place in this same section zero six zero application process

1:45:32we we talk about ten-year background check checks essentially however under the operating permits we only do a five-year litigation uh legal proceedings disclosure is that do you feel that's consistent inconsistent would it make sense to have uh 0 5 0 h on page 6

1:45:57be ten years it it could as a yeah as i'm flipping through i i do see that there are um ten-year marks for for other things and even in that same paragraph it says suspended within 10 years immediately preceding the date of application so i'm just curious if that

1:46:15needs to be if that would be changed to 10 to be to be maybe more appropriate or more consistent with the rest of the ordinance which section is that specific requirement uh 80.050 h disclosure of litigation and legal proceedings it's on page six and in the first sentence it says has

1:46:40been involved within the five years immediately proceeding but in the last sentence it says within the 10 years immediately proceeding yeah those those should be consistent with each other all right so 10 is is the consistency 10 or 5 well given that 10 is as i've said used as a

1:47:05a period of time in other places i would think 10 years would make sense great thank you um i know we we asked this question last time about the term of the permits and it is stated in the application process under 060k permit term page 9 that it would be a maximum of three

1:47:30years and i'm just curious if the and there's a renewal clause in 0 9 0 i think it was renewal suspension transfer modification or appeal and and i'm just curious i think at the last meeting we talked about doing short-term initial applications with a two-year renewal and i was just curious

1:48:01um if that's still the intent even though the ordinance is silent on that correct okay um all right so here comes here comes the the more technocrat one um the word process is used and at this point i'm going to introduce our new uh sheet of definitions where you guys have

1:48:25appropriately created e which is a new it's not new text but as a result of formatting there is a new letter e cannabis storefront business previously it was embedded in d um in in this one in d cannabis retail means a cannabis business that distributes suspenses stores exchange

1:48:46processes sells makes available transmits or gives away cannabis or cannabis products processes is also used in c cannabis product means cannabis that has undergone a process whereby the plant material has been transformed into concentrate including but not limited to

1:49:07concentrated cannabis or an edible or topical product containing cannabis or other ingredients so in these two definitions that are uh side by side the same word process is used however we based on intent that i read elsewhere we don't mean the same meaning in both

1:49:26places we we're trying to use process in d to not mean a manufacturing plant is allowed under cannabis retail and so i'm i'm trying to find out if there's a different word that we should be using in d which is cannabis retail or cannabis retail business that it better reflects

1:49:50what you want because you don't want you don't mean the cannabis that is undergoing a process whereby its plant material is uh converted okay i i will note one in in one instance one use of that is is as a verb in one instance is as a noun and so i think they you know they do evoke different

1:50:12meanings in the just in the use of them but um you know if you'd like to clarify we can you know perhaps explore you know or discuss other language yeah and and i like the way you've structured the rest of the ordinance where we have a more grand approach to for example um you know

1:50:37cannabis commercial cannabis use includes things like manufacturing uh testing labeling retail delivery sale it it's it's a it's all inclusive and and there's other sections like zero three zero applicability which also similarly is got manufacture distribute cultivate so that so this ordinance has

1:50:59some flexibility to cover a broader uh commercial use or the broader commercial use and it's through this definition d cannabis retail canvas retail business and e cannabis storefront business and cannabis storefront retail business that we're limiting the the use to the ones we want and and

1:51:24therefore for me the use of processes in in here is potentially misleading to allow for some of the processes that might render uh cannabis into uh can into cannabis products so i'm just trying to trying to get to better language that because i don't think you mean

1:51:44manufacture and manufacturing is a term that is used in the ordinance correct i do want to be clear about that yes and and it actually should be inserted in a couple of places as we go through i'll point out some of the places where potentially should be inserted

1:52:00because as i said i like the structure where under some areas we are all inclusive of all the potential commercial uses and it's through this structure of this these two definitions that we are curtailing in el cerrito curtailing exactly to what we want so so i

1:52:19i appreciate the use of manufacturing in some places and potentially it needs to be incorporated into others but the process at this location i'm just and i'm i believe you meant something like packaging or repackaging and not necessarily processing if i could jump in i think that we could take

1:52:39out processes from o2od and substitute packages repackages label labels i'm not sure if there's a perhaps by the time we get to emotion if that's the council's desire um sean will have come up with some additional terms but i think we could we could safely substitute those words

1:52:57for processes in there and leave it in the in o2oc correct i'm i'm fine with it staying at o2oc i mean i think that the uses were fairly clear in context but you have a major point i think we understand and we can clarify by substituting a few words for the use of

1:53:13processes in o2od and to that end i'm actually going to recommend the insertion of things like processing and manufacturing in various other uses so for example in h which is commercial cannabis use potentially processing should be added there because at some day we may want a processing

1:53:35plant or and so for example i would propose that the retail delivery sale processing or manufacturing be considered as part of the definition of commercial cannabis use and similarly i think it was an 030 manufacturing uh add processing into zero three zero applicability

1:53:59uh because we do use as you pointed out we do use processing in several locations within this ordinance so it it should be potentially incorporated into places like the definition of commercial cannabis use and applicability and there was and then for example under cameras

1:54:29which is 0 7 0 performance standards page 10 c2 cameras shelby also placed at each location where weighing packaging transportation preparation processing labeling activities occur we could we should potentially be adding things like manufacturing there because this again this is an

1:54:51all-inclusive uh paragraph so i would be uh suggesting i just i guess my question is would manufacturing be an appropriate uh addition to the camera policy um and finally on the same topic of word choice uh is uh 0 7 0 l on page 14.

1:55:24would this not be more appropriate to be titled commercial cannabis use conducted within buildings and and then the text would read something like no processing manufacturing distribution storage advertising or display of cannabis or cannabis products shall be visible from the exterior of a building

1:55:49where cannabis business is located and that's substituting the word production which was this is the only place where production is used to processing and manufacturing unless you intended cultivation which then we should be using cultivation if you meant cultivation at

1:56:07this location i'm at 070l so i'm just asking if if that cl if that wording word clarification would would fit with the intent of the ordinance yeah i think that fits um let me go through my list i got that one john are you keeping track of any i i think i'll have to put them in my

1:56:37motion if i i'm trying as best i can but uh yeah i think that would be a good idea in case it's somebody else's motion uh i'll i'll i'll be sure to make a friendly amendment if it's somebody else's and i got manufacturer manufacturing okay so the last the last one and it

1:56:58it it's now it's actually a comment i'll save that one for discussion thank you okay paul yes thank you um i'm sure you're aware that the state came out with its first batch of regulatory its rules last week which deal with ads and edibles and labeling that made me feel good going

1:57:20forward that we've got a concrete list of rules to look to and i'm assuming the city will make sure everything fits with what we have it's consistent right i the last time we had this debate this discussion i i mentioned the fact that i thought it was a good commerce

1:57:42a plan a good plan for moving forward on retail but there were other issues whether it's growing at home or taxation or other things um that that weren't addressed and i know the pro the concept and the philosophy is to as you say move cautiously toward regulatory

1:58:02development here in the city do you think we should be recognizing in the body of the ordinance resolution that the city will be dealing with these other issues in the future i mean i don't think that's it standing alone it only deals with retail it doesn't deal with any safety

1:58:20concerns of growing or electricity or taxes that's all silent i'm just rhetorically saying it would be nice to let our community know that this is an evolving process and we will be dealing with those things the second city-based question i have is um this is going to take a lot of work and

1:58:43i think i addressed this the last time on i mean maybe this is a question for the city manager on staffing will there be someone dedicated to this in in the staff i mean where over the next two years gonna have a lot of different things a lot of balls and the how do you approach that staffing for

1:59:02at this point we are not expecting to add ask for any new staffing as a result of this and we will continue to do it as we've been doing it as a team approach between all of the departments between all the apartments but now sean and community development will be the lead agency on

1:59:19this and supported by the police department and whoever else they need okay thank you um following up with something that council member lyman mentioned it was my understanding from the last council meeting on this issue that um any permitted purveyor that we agreed to

1:59:35we talked about having a permit for three years that i thought we decided to make it a real one every one that we agreed to would have a one-year review and i know you talk about a lot of reviews and the city manager reviewing a lot of things i think that language

1:59:50could be a little more specific that whoever we if you don't just give a one year permit that there shall be a one-year review on whoever's in our town doing this retail so that we know that they're good somewhere and hear the language and and i i have a list a little later that you

2:00:07know we can add this to whatever the motion might be um on the credit requirement that deliveries be involved are these questions of sean are you questions okay okay yes um this wouldn't require a portable technology for sale right i mean someone from their home

2:00:35could make would make the sale on the phone that would that transaction would happen from the home before the delivery happens is that correct it could just yeah as you can i mean i i as i acknowledged um at a previous meeting um there are um obstacles to the industry um

2:00:54with regard to payments um but you know all things being equal it would be you know similar to processing a credit card payment over the phone but they could bring a new technology to the home with a credit card swipe that that could be something that this okay

2:01:10um also on hours the the state new set of rules comes up with um 10 o'clock is the last hour that deliveries and sales can happen in in retail 8 pm um i thought it was 10 p.m in the new state rules it's 8 p.m in ours yes and and i'm saying i'm i think that's a little too

2:01:33rigid i mean 8 a.m i'm not sure we need to have it and 8 a.m in there and i was hoping maybe we could talk about having a little more flexibility maybe having an 8 a.m to 9 00 p.m since the state rules allow attend let the person who gets the permit decide you know when they want to in that time

2:01:57frame run their business i don't know if there's a police concern with that or not and they want to make sure that there's a certain time frame but 8 am seems a little early they might want to start at 9am you know do you have any concerns with that um not not too much

2:02:14i think you know also we could take the approach of you know initially limit limiting it through conditions of the permit and then one you know once we have a better feel for how things are going you know the the uh hours perhaps could be expanded you know as the ordinance allows so there was no

2:02:32real reason for eight to eight that was okay so my final question just deals with informing our community and i i had a little discussion with city staff that i have a friend who's a law professor at berkeley who was concerned about quite frankly the federal administration

2:02:52the trump administration and their views on marijuana and whether or not we should be alerting or educating our citizenry to concerns about purchasing marijuana in our city do we sky do you have any answers should we be notifying at the point of purchase that you know

2:03:16um i'm happy to address that there's no um requirement in any of the various state laws that are applicable to the situation that mandates that the city provide notice to people who might be making purchases at a retail cannabis business that state law and federal law are not

2:03:39aligned on this question um but um we could um but it's understandable that i mean i think that probably most people who follow this issue believe that the public is fairly well informed about um that issue but we could also um require that operators who receive a permit

2:04:04post a notice within the businesses to inform the public that that state law and federal law are not aligned on on the treatment of cannabis just in case somebody and somebody who is making a purchase is unaware of that issue thank you thank you okay are there any

2:04:30follow-up questions from anyone before we move on on our agenda i had one more question okay yes um in regards to the no cash payments um i know we had brought this up last time but is is there a method for people to actually pay cashless with deliveries uh when you say a method

2:04:59can clarify what you mean exactly i thought there was a problem in regards to uh banking with with these establishments and that it was usually done with cash so i was wondering how that would actually happen on uh deliveries there there are some banking obstacles due to the

2:05:20the nature of this industry under federal law there are various solutions that are being proposed i think i noted in the the report for the the past meeting that um lieutenant governor newsom has proposed uh creating a state bank for example um to to get around some of the

2:05:41requirements um you know so that i i think that there there are a lot of folks working to resolve this um so i you know i'm optimistic that despite the the challenges um that there you know there will be effective means of cashless payments okay thank you greg okay

2:06:06uh i think we're now ready uh to hear public testimony so with that i think we need a motion i'm a little unclear about that you can just open open okay so i will uh open public testimony and uh just to refresh everyone's memory members of the public are allowed three

2:06:26minutes on per member of the public um and you start out green and go yellow and then red um in the process and there's a little indicator up in front of the diocese here on the the platform and that'll probably be helpful thank you and um so how many speakers do we have

2:06:53we have 10 speakers speakers okay um shall you we start with you're calling them then sure uh the first three are sherry drubner followed by delfina fung and nick krauss hi good evening again um i'm actually here to talk about surveillance i'm a little concerned

2:07:18about that part of the ordinance and i wonder if it's standard practice to give the chief of police the type of remote real-time surveillance capability over a local business are these the type of requirements that we put in place for liquor stores or firearms sellers etc

2:07:40it's not this basic cameras because i know we have cameras everywhere but it's the live remote access that concerns me and i have several questions about that in general um let's see who will have access to the live feed will they have unique login credentials to ensure accountability

2:08:04will the login be password protected how frequently will observers be required to change their passwords and will we will that ensure security will a record of who access the feed be maintained by the city will the city permit a regular independent audit of those records for

2:08:25public accountability will this fee be accessible by federal or state law enforcement will there be restrictions on who can be present in the observing room will there be restrictions on recording the feed remotely what type of other security measures and encryption will be maintained by the

2:08:45city and police department to ensure that this feed is not hacked i feel like we're moving into a different territory when we talk about the live remote access i personally find it a little chilling when i think about it when i was reading the overall ordinance i felt like we

2:09:05were looking at fort knox not the cannabis dispensary and um it seemed in some of the criteria that was we were looking with that on the idea that we would have the clear identity of the consumer who goes into this dispensary to purchase something that on live remote access

2:09:28you'd be able to for instance if i were there you would see my earrings you would see you know very specific detail about me about my license plate on my car when i walked out of the dispensary back into the parking lot that so from my perspective this is a policy that i think is

2:09:52trying to i guess and it's trying to prevent crime and be cautious but it doesn't really take into account um privacy issues and the consumers in many ways i feel like it's not balanced accurately let's see oh i'm sorry i'm red okay so that's all i have to say at this point

2:10:16thank you delfina nick krauss and mrs chung wong good evening council members manager and staff i'm here again today to urge you not to allow any commercial activity in the city based on the petition that we sign and also because the fact that it's still illegal under

2:10:38the federal laws to cultivate sell and use marijuana and also under proposition 64 we should regulate the indoor growth of marijuana and this young lady she shared her experience with the rest of the world she actually was addicted to cannabis since she was 13 and as a result of that

2:10:58she lost her friends her brain and also the trust from the family members and people that she knew so i urge you to reconsider and not to have any kind of commercial activity in this city and if you insisted to go forward against the will of the citizen i actually did put in some comment and i

2:11:18appreciate to council members brought up some of my concern and also the other thing i think in order to protect the city if you insisted to go forward with the ordinance is to include agents and contractors to be the additional insured just in case we use contractors in this process and the rest

2:11:38of it i think the council members brought it up thanks for your time request no clapping please um thank you uh hello i'm nick krauss i'm the author of uh suggested change to your approach that you're doing now i believe you have a copy of what i'm suggesting here

2:12:03i'm an advocate for having outside delivery contractors come in and deliver to the city of el cerrito i think you're taking making an unwise decision by tying the delivery issue to the storefront dispensaries i took some time to do some research on the internet

2:12:23basic internet search for cannabis delivery crime i also took the time to talk with industry industry representatives at a recent convention in oakland industry representatives of the delivery industries and i learned a lot from that i'd like to share it with you

2:12:44first thing i learned is that delivery of cannabis presently medical cannabis is actually a very safe type of a thing in most circumstances where the delivery operation is professionally run licensed by the state vetted has adequate security in place doesn't cause problems no crime

2:13:10no hardship to the community however if you do the research what you also find is that delivery operations tied to storefronts are incredibly risky they take the same risks that are associated with the storefront and spread them out into the community storefront is

2:13:32inherently dangerous uh statistics show that uh cannabis uh dispensary will be robbed maybe once every two years about the same as a liquor store but that only happens to the delivery service if it's based at the storefront you're basically putting a a target on the back of the delivery

2:13:55courier saying here he is come get him so what i'm proposing is that you take a different look at it say well what if we separate the delivery issue from the storefront actually allow deliveries from professional licensed services into the city like is going on everywhere else

2:14:16and get along with them set up an approach where the industry is in touch with the police department have a way to to respond to complaints seems like a win-win situation if you do what you're planning on doing you're just asking for trouble you're you're really creating a

2:14:37situation where what the police chief is recommending is a very complicated regulatory structure it's necessary because of the fact that you've set it up that way so i would very strongly like to advocate that at some point in the future you consider separating the dispensary from the

2:14:59delivery probably solve a lot of headaches for you thank you mrs cheung wong followed by reverend roy and yuen and vivienne chung good evening dear mayor and also council members and also our fellow and concerned citizens and radissons actually i think napoleon should be

2:15:31placed this way so we can face you and also the concerned citizens at the same time i just speak it out from my heart marijuana why you have to put it in a restricted area it is so nice so good shouldn't it be open to all so we know that it has some problem in it

2:15:57people work so hard for the money getting up in the morning early in the morning jam in the traffic didn't get home until the sun gets done but still i hear from the radio lots of people in the thanksgiving time they don't even have a turkey put on a table unless they go to the food bank

2:16:22now when they get the salary they have to think about i pay my rent mortgage first and food number two and other things in the priority what happened in the parents they are addicted to marijuana will steve would they still think that rationally i pay my rent first

2:16:47i won't put my children on the street no that's the problem of the drugs it ruined your mind it ruined your brain you could not think correctly think about it charlie wrote eight women accuse him or sexually arrest them or inappropriately touch them and he is fire right away by cbs pbs

2:17:20what about the politician they've done a lot of wrong things they touch a lot of women a lot of women accuse them they still sitting there because politicians they have a different status and therefore when the time they decide something they don't think they don't think properly

2:17:43because they don't have to hold accountable like the regular citizens think about it mgm and also the one who organized the concert now they are going to be sued by over 400 victims because they have not done something properly or about a city are we ready we have a very peaceful and nice city

2:18:13what happened after we sell the marijuana like in denver overall the crime rate raised up by 44 percent will our city be sued by people are we ready the money that we're getting from the revenue from the taxes can we pay off all these people you need to um because they said they are

2:18:34violated by people or robbed by people because some people they have no money to pay for the drugs but still they want to take it what could they do they still they rob you need to wrap up now please so overall we see the current county including bakersfield they said we don't want our citizens

2:18:56they don't need this kind of thing we won't sell this kind of thing so i hope our city members also will consider something popular thank you all [Applause] uh good evening everyone i'm pastor ryan yan the senior pastor el cerrito before you cast the vote tonight

2:19:26i hope that you can learn something from the contemporary chinese history 100 years ago china was mockingly named nicknamed the sick man of east asia why since 1840 china lost quite a few wars against the west powers like the first and second opium wars uh hunt

2:19:541839 to 42 and 1856 to 60.

2:19:59that times china was so sick indeed because hundreds and millions of chinese smoked opium the opium shops were all over china many families were ruined because of their son or husband or both became an opiate addict my grandfather was one of them his wife could bear him no more and fled

2:20:27to malaysia for a better life soon afterwards my grandfather lost his life in his prime mage leaving my mother and my uncle like orphans when they were 10 and younger before the two opium wars one of the generals of china disappearantly pleaded to the empress saying

2:20:52if the dice situation remains unchanged our country we have no man for the military forces and we have no tax to collect for national revenue if more and more americans smoke marijuana sooner or later this country the united states of america will become the sick man of america

2:21:19so while legal marijuana now becomes legalized i would ask is it is is an according property gone with its legalization you tell me not at all its narcotic effects remain the same just more and more americans turn their blind eyes to those narcotic effects the dui cases and crime rate in cities

2:21:49like denver colorado have increased significa significantly since marijuana was legalized you all know that being legalized doesn't mean that it is not sinful it is too sinful okay being legalized doesn't mean that it's narcotic effects are gone it remains to be an addictive substance

2:22:20they will let it take us down right if you pass to allow marijuana in s radio tonight you are sending a very wrong signal to our young people telling them it's okay to smoke marijuana your time is up thank you okay thank you and you know what i'm saying thank you very much

2:22:46no can't please no clapping doesn't help your cause when you uh disrupt the meeting by doing either clapping or booing thank you vivian chunk followed by albert about dean liu and olivia liu is vivian chung here next person albert vivian chung sorry i thought last one

2:23:22was me i went out already okay abba diane liu good evening council members and i heard about marijuana and i heard both sides and marijuana is good and i heard that marijuana has a lot of negative effects and i did my own research and the one thing i found is that marijuana

2:23:51is indeed addictive and the reason why is because marijuana has thc and thc what it does is that makes the brain produce a lot of dopamine and dopamine uh gives you a lot of joy happiness and pleasure and this is dangerous to children who grow up from broken homes

2:24:08out of emotional struggle and it's the reason why is because they'll become addictive to this drug because they need to build their emotional void and then they need to take it over and over and over again and what happens if you take it over and over again is that

2:24:27the brain produces less a dopamine because it's it knows it's uh it's unhealthy for the body and then they'll go into stronger drugs doesn't crack your hair on and i also found in my research is that it also affects communities in colorado crime has increa overall crime has increased by

2:24:49five percent in 2015.

2:24:51this has never happened before since uh 1992.

2:24:56are also more car accidents which involve marijuana and there are also more varieties of juveniles who use marijuana but this will most likely affect the next generation the next generation will have to live with people uh who smoke marijuana who are addicted to marijuana

2:25:17and they might get caught up with it and might become addicted to marijuana and um i hope you uh choose the choice wisely and uh thank you for your comments please stop please stop enter this just slows down the meetings and please yes i did okay who's speaking now

2:25:54um this is chen yeah he'll be her translator okay translations provided us with her mrs chen said that she likes living here what through the top of those sushi and she has lived in the city for more than 40 years this is a nice neighborhood for her and we were your opinions

2:26:31my friends who live in richmond even moved to el cerrito and saying our city is better uh i'm afraid but when we start selling marijuana el cerrito will become i've seen for people who took marijuana the brain slows down and then they're not able to comfort us very well and i

2:27:16think it's very bad for children um so i come here tonight to come in front of the council members um to say to you and don't just look at the so even though we might gain the tax revenue that's promised to us but with the crime and damages that might come afterward the money might not be able to

2:28:12pay up for the police that we have to hire to monitor our city woman our america is an advanced country but if we allow this to happen when our children take them their country will be fallen so yeah we are a country of god's people so a woman that choose we pray that god help us to reject the

2:29:14drug to come into our city that we don't say that we cannot smoke cigarettes but we can smoke marijuana may god help you to give you wisdom as to how to rule our city thank you council members thank you for your comments the next step olivia liu followed by chris josinski

2:29:49and chris gray well thank you council members and one thing i wanted to talk about is we have been promised for many things and their lies lies and lies why we were promised no crime i went to some other council members and chief of police comes to you and say oh

2:30:11zero crime is that true no it's not true denver d.a already sent us a letter and say don't buy it they're lying to you there's no truth in it they're lies how can we back it up from the d.a in denver you're going to reveal what he says he's in the middle of the

2:30:29battleground he's telling us what's happening to them since five years ago when they bought into the lies and what's happening to them they're warning us the d.a of denver is warning us not to go into it then another lie we say oh there's money into it the third district the head of third

2:30:46district of boe who collects sales tax from the vendors they are telling us the sales tax people are telling us don't buy the lie there's no money if those are the letters that they have been sent to you we have read them so we say that we don't believe it then

2:31:09you have to argue with the legality of what they have seen they're experts in this area and then we also say that oh if we have drugs um we will curtail the illegal substance people would do less well the uh the state of colorado say is not true is a lie for the ones that they got the citation

2:31:35of and not talking about the ones that they didn't get citation the ones that got citation 300 higher than before 300 percent who is going to police that kind of rise they cannot that's why they're telling californians they're telling us in el cerrito don't do it these are lies

2:31:56they're telling us and also now when it comes to january who knows what's going to happen and i would say to the council members if we're not sure hold up to it we don't have to rush into it there's really nobody pushing you to pressure you to do it and we know about rico which um we might

2:32:15know racketeer influence and corrupt organization act is ongoing in washington now they have a lawsuit going on in 10th circuit city and what's happening to them will happen to us the liability we cannot take it would you want to take that kind of liability when it comes to you if

2:32:33there's a lawsuit when the federal law comes in after january and say you know what vendors you cannot be having uh vending marijuana here and then the veto will take out these stores what are they going to do to you they're going to sue us the marijuana vendor is going to turn

2:32:50around and sue the city are we going to pick up that liability i don't want to as a community member i don't want you to as a council member and all these things are going on that there are losses going on from across the country for people who are suing the cities

2:33:08are we ready for that please wait after january we can always wait for it half a year and see how it goes thank you uh the next speaker the next speaker chris jaczynski followed by chris j howdy gowdy cordell hindler and rick bonday good evening mayor uh council member of

2:33:33staff uh my name is chris jaczynski i'm a resident of oakland california and a member of oakland privacy i came here last month to talk about my concerns about the remote access for the chief of police and after seeing the updated language and the new ordinance i'm not

2:33:46encouraged by the improvements at all i find them vague and i appreciate the woman speaking earlier about the lack of security protocols and i wanted to add to that quartus that there's nothing explicitly in this ordinance that stops any sort of data sharing uh of

2:34:02this live feed from the either city of el cerrito or the el cerrio police department with nick rick if you don't know what nick rick is it is the northern california regional intelligence center and they coordinate gathering video surveillance license plates with local agencies state agencies and

2:34:23federal agencies including ice now i'm aware and encouraged that el cerrido unanimously passed a sanctuary city ordinance back in early march and i would like to see the spirit of that continued by keeping a watch on what type of surveillance we have in local businesses but more importantly

2:34:44there's a lot of talk about crime going on and two studies that i recommend you take a look at are one done by the cato institute and then another done by the drug policy alliance based out of washington dc that did statewide surveys of both washington state and oregon both of them

2:35:01found that violent crime actually dropped pretty substantially once retail cannabis businesses were opened they found the correlation was because when you have retail cannabis businesses there's no need for a black market when citizens of el cerrito have even the

2:35:21sliver of concern that the chief police could be watching them even for a crime in progress or quote in the past which is ambiguous in and of itself it's going to make them wary of entering these stores in the first place and having their faces recorded the license

2:35:35plates recorded and you're potentially creating a scenario where the black market for selling marijuana could persist i would ask you to take that consideration and strongly urge you to revoke any remote access and if at at least give the businesses themselves the

2:35:52opportunity to opt in to that remote access thank you chris gray good evening i would like to thank and compliment the staff especially sean in the planning department the whole planning department the police chief the city manager and his staff for coming up with a thoughtful process

2:36:18and a well-conceived proposed ordinance the council should be appreciated for establishing a public open and transparent process to keep moving forward even though there's a lot on your plate a dispensary or two will provide el cerrito residents needed medicine be

2:36:34responsive to the 73 of the el cerrito voters who voted for the proposition and provide needed discretionary revenue to the city i would suggest modifying the hours to be more convenient for the patients i would also suggest that you give some operational leeway on

2:36:56issues such as hours and the method of payment to the police chief into the city manager so if the ongoing operations face some minor issues that they can adjust those as they feel good for the interest of the city without having to rewrite a whole ordinance i can

2:37:16the voters in california voted overwhelmingly to make cannabis legal and available to those who need it so we have cannabis the few speakers have spoken against it act like we're not going to have cannabis or we will have cannabis no we have cannabis it's being

2:37:30sold in richmond it's being sold in oakland it's being sold in berkeley so people in el cerrito will be having cannabis the question is should the city of el cerrito pass an ordinance that's going to be able for us to regulate it and control it and benefit from it or shall

2:37:45we let those around us do that and i think for the benefit of the people here in el cerrito the city council should step up and pass the ordinance like it's proceeding to do and i want to thank you for taking that on thank you thank you howdy gowdy cordell hindler and rick

2:38:01bondi good evening mayor and council i'm howdy gowdy um so i support the premise of this ordinance um if for no other reason than what was just stated that there's strong community support and prohibition has not served us well it doesn't mean that something's not going

2:38:25to be used it just is used in a less controlled environment so i think we probably bring a better opportunity for public health management by having it a little bit more in the open that said i mean i understand you're balancing different things and and there is uh

2:38:46you know a stated abundance of caution going in with this ordinance it it does feel a little heavy-handed and i hope that you will um you know really not think of it as something that's done once you're uh establishing it but rather that it's going to be a work in progress

2:39:05as we gain more experience um so i do appreciate the addition of public interaction in in the process i think that's important um i would encourage you to maybe try to expand it from just the 300-foot notification um because we're only talking about two potential locations

2:39:32and it is something that affects more than the people immediately in the vicinity i think it would be nice to have a mechanism where there's a bit broader notification for it for the public to um to place those comments and you know a starting point might be to

2:39:49you know maintain the list that was you know gathered during the outreach process that led us here because those were people who were interested in the topic and then also maybe some of the broader lists in the in the city um just as a point of further notification

2:40:12um i agree with some of the previous comments that you know overly restricting the delivery service doesn't seem to be a very um you know meaningful part of of the ordinance i think it's a little overly restrictive given that um we're we're giving a um sort of local monopoly to it to a small

2:40:38uh set of businesses um so i hope you know that there'll be flexibility in that over time um the other thing i i know it's awkward again because there's only two proposed facilities but i do think there is an opportunity to have a brighter line between recreational and um medicinal use

2:41:02you know in general except for really large supermarkets that have a very diverse offering we we separate you know pharmaceuticals from you know a uh liquor store or something like that so i think you know we should be thinking about these uses differently so thank you thank you

2:41:23okay cordell hindler and rick bonding thanks so uh good evening again mayor uh council um i have gotten some i have some some some communications myself with uh with the pres president of the richmond addicts association um and they and some of the concerns that councilmember fideli and

2:41:42lyman brought up um you know regarding you know like the hours of operation i say 8 a.m is way too early because most people don't most people don't get get up that time of day so that's one of the concerns and then the second one is um because i have seen some activities you

2:41:56know like with these kinds of dispensaries around that area not that activity but you know like good activities so i'm thinking that um that the hours are of operation if if it's passed if they have to like you know modify their hours because you know 8 a.m is too early they're getting like

2:42:13do it changes you know like different hours so and i'm thinking this is this is something that is very helpful because like as one of the previous speakers was saying if this does the city want to get sued do does the city want to have liability i don't think so so i would like you

2:42:28know just wait you know uh a half a year you know like to figure out where is this going so i'm thinking that if if you do it now you don't it'll be like it'll be like too risky so i would just like hold it off until until you get some more go into more detail more about

2:42:45the process so so i'm thinking i'm saying i might say yes but then you have to then you have to then you have liability uh that you know that you don't want to avoid so i'm gonna pass my time to rick hi my name is rick bondi i'm a member of the community here in el

2:43:08cerrito and uh thank you for letting me speak mayor and city council council members um i wasn't planning on speaking tonight i don't have any prepared remarks or anything i just felt like i needed to voice my support for the approval of this ordinance and i decided to speak when i heard

2:43:27quite a bit of misinformation being presented to you and i just hope that you will look at the facts the science and the uh you know the the results that have come from the states and and communities that have legalized and and opened uh dispensaries uh it's it's important to not hear

2:43:47to hear the whole thing and to hear the the correct information on some of the talk about addiction and opioids and things like that we're talking about something very different than that obviously um i suffer from ms and and and i know firsthand that cannabis is

2:44:03very helpful to people that that have pains and certain disabilities so i encourage you to pass this and i just wanted to voice my support for it thank you thank you the final speaker slip i have is courtney chew oh my gosh good evening council my name is courtney

2:44:26i'm an attorney in el cerrito my comments may be the most boring of the night so i apologize in advance um the first is in response to the council's question about limits on delivery inventory permitted in the vehicle at one time the state did set a proposed limit of three thousand dollars in the

2:44:42regulations that came out last week so that's just a starting point for those considerations the city is of course permitted to sell more stringent regulations um the other is regarding the prohibition on the cash on delivery payment method the council and mr moss

2:44:56already touched on this the cannabis industry is still largely unable to access banking and an important population served by deliveries are those who are immobilized by medical conditions so until the banking issue is remedied it seems like the city's proposal would only permit

2:45:13them to go to the retail locations to make advanced cash payments which would likely be very difficult for them and if the city also prohibits deliveries from businesses located outside of the city that may accept cash on delivery then these people would essentially be

2:45:27denied access to their medicine with an el cerrito so i urge you to consider that thank you oh we're finished so we will at this point we're finished with public comment that is and so is there a motion to close the public i mean that we close the public hearing

2:45:46okay is there a second evil second okay motion by lyman seconded by quinto to close the public hearing all in favor please say aye aye any opposition any abstentions motion carries unanimously with that we will move on to discussion motion and vote on an ordinance um

2:46:10then uh so is let's see uh would you like to start rachelle with the discussion sure um so as council member fideli mentioned and the discussions i've had with some of the city staff this is definitely a beginning ordinance here and it looks like we're there's many things that we're going to

2:46:40have to revisit um as this goes on i think there's a lot of questions kind of still unanswered um but that being said um it is definitely my intention to move forward tonight um as the last speaker mentioned there are you know many patients out there that are awaiting a legal method to obtain their

2:47:08cannabis and i'm definitely as a nurse in favor of that but i would like to propose that we definitely revisit some issues after the first of the year and probably before our budget process starts because i know that will take up a lot of time so we'll have to put it on the calendar

2:47:32but the one of the things that i would like to revisit is outdoor cultivation to me it seems like you know the most natural way to grow something is with sunshine and so i'm interested in revisiting that after a period of time goes by and we see how this proposition goes into effect in

2:47:572018 um i'd also like to revisit on-site consumption i know that we have a no smoke smoking ordinance within the city but it is possible to possibly have edibles teas things like that consumed on site i'd be interested in revisiting that in the future um definitely interested also like the

2:48:32last speaker mentioned um cashless payments it doesn't release i haven't really heard a good answer in terms of yes this is possible and this is how it's done so um if we're going to allow deliveries within the city of el cerrito it should be doable it doesn't make sense to make an

2:48:55ordinance that doesn't allow for there actually to be deliveries and i know that one of the reasons why we're interested in having uh deliveries from the dispensaries that would be approved in el cerrito is to um to actually obtain the the revenue from those deliveries

2:49:18let's see and then i i have to say that i agree wholeheartedly with um some of the surveillance questions that have gone on tonight and chief keith could you please come back up because i'm going to ask you the same question again i just want to get it fully embedded in my mind

2:49:41can you give me a comparison again of what the surveillance looks like at a bank here in el cerrito versus what this ordinance says you mind if i go a little beyond those bounds as well yes okay thanks um so i've i visited dispensaries in denver and washington and just as a caveat it was for business

2:50:04purposes to see how they're run and not personal purposes but one of my observations that they take security very seriously for example the dispensary i visited in denver which was in downtown before you could even enter into the portion of the business that where

2:50:20the marijuana was capped and sold you had to first get by a security officer as well as a security kiosk i couldn't enter in the back area until i'd let them swipe my california driver's license and you know conceivably record that information once i had done that then i was allowed

2:50:36to go back when the security guard let me go back there and there were surveillance cameras all over the place um the similar situation happened with me in washington um marijuana dispensaries when they're doing it right takes security very seriously and the reason they take it seriously is because

2:50:51it's in their interest to do so dispensaries are still highly cash businesses and so their level of security really has to be near the level of what a bank does so something you may have noticed about banks and el cerrito i did go on the comparison you suggested is that uh

2:51:08banks and el cerrito typically have banded barriers you know bulletproof enclosures for people they have security guards and one of the things that i'm going to knock on wood as i say this that we've experienced in el cerrito is we've over the last 15 years had a massive

2:51:22reduction in bank robberies so that so there you go i just knocked on wood and we attribute it really to the surveillance of banded barriers in town for a while the only banks would get robbed were the ones that did not have banded barriers in place so people could

2:51:34just jump over the counter and take over the whole back area so when we look at surveillance at banks we don't have the ability to access video in real time and that's what we're asking to do is to be able to access video in real time not actively monitor video but have the

2:51:51ability to access it if a crime is occurring one of the frustrating things about a bank alarm for example is citibank in the plaza something will hit the alarm in the plaza at the city bank and the call will come out to police officers there's a bank hold up alarm at citibank and we

2:52:07all go roaring down there and we try to call into the business and we can't get a line into the business we have no idea what's happening inside of the bank until you know after maybe about five minutes into the response we finally get a hold of somebody to get them to come

2:52:20walking outside so we can say oh it was a false alarm this time but it would be an amazing advantage to be able to have that same response to it to a dispensary but have the added ability to be able to turn on the camera and say it looks like it's business normal or we've

2:52:36got four men with mass armed with rifles that are you know approaching the safe room uh so our our goal of the police department is to be a security partner with our dispensaries and to work together to increase dispensary um i think that the gentleman from oakland privacy really made a great

2:52:55observation that dispensaries when their security is handled well can be a crime reducing component to a neighborhood when they take their security seriously when dispensaries don't have a serious security mindset then you see things like happened there was a recent

2:53:13dispensary robbery in berkeley where the media was taking pictures of cash just like blowing down the street from a daytime robbery that happened on a berkeley dispensary i think on the south side of town so once again our our intent is not to do real-time monitoring

2:53:29sorry not to do uh real-time monitoring our intent is to have real-time access to the camera footage if we have a crime that is occurring um i think that's my main point okay i would just say also that uh nobody in the police department has time to watch a monitor a dispensary feed all

2:53:49day long it really is our intent to be able to have a faster response to in-progress crimes and also have an easier access point if a crime has just occurred or if a crime is reported that we can go back and access the feed just one other thing that came up in discussion too is

2:54:06we do not share any of our video feeds with federal law enforcement agencies so right now i know that we're being live streamed but there are circuit valence videos in the building that are recorded at the city and we do not share those with law enforcement partners or our federal

2:54:23partners thank you well we do share these with the general public these do yes the knickers can watch that one in that one i'll stay up if there's more questions on that i have a specific i have a specific question on this exactly you just said that it's for the purposes

2:54:48of and i'm in a it's actually stated in the ordinance this way the city of el cerrito will only monitor video surveillance for law enforcement purposes related to in progress or past crimes on the premises of a cannabis business so with regards to in progress one of

2:55:03the speakers spoke about opting in can the in progress be only would it be possible the tech probably the technology is there to access in progress only at the panic button you ask for panic buttons somewhere else in the ordinance can the can it be an opt-in through the panic

2:55:21button being hit great question i don't know the answer to that but i i imagine that technology could do that so it would be an opt that live feed would be an opt-in through the panic button is essentially what i'm asking i would definitely be uh open to looking

2:55:44at ideas around that and it seems like technology could do something like that um i haven't come across it yet because i was saying if what if someone calls it in yeah well that is good what if they don't hit the panic button and it kind of comes out a different way okay

2:56:01understood you know if we if we get the call from somebody outside saying four guys with rifles just went into the dispensary it would be nice to be able to have somebody to say you know what turn that on and give us intelligence about what's happening in there okay and i would say

2:56:14one more thing is that um i think that um because my experience at dispensaries has been that they take security seriously um i i feel that uh in colorado for example i didn't look for stickers but i think that they would probably proudly announce their law enforcement

2:56:32partnership and they wouldn't want to hide it i think that that is something that a dispensary would like to advertise as a deterrent effect if i'm a person and i'm casing a marijuana dispensary for a robbery you can't case a dispensary with a hood on your face

2:56:46that's too suspicious so you would go in there showing your face i would definitely be very reticent to go into a dispensary that i knew was getting money you know had a monitoring agreement with the police department uh and show my face in there before i had my friends come in and do a robbery

2:57:01so just another part of that i know that wasn't your entire question thank you and i get as long as we're on the topic i just wanted to also clarify one thing regarding the existing um surveillance camera policy which is in the municipal code now which is and has been for

2:57:1615 i think 12 years 10 years the police department has collected video from from those businesses in relation to crimes in the past absolutely so the city has a long track record of proper handling of that video um because and i believe in you know in the in the

2:57:36time that it's gone on there have been no issues related to um the individual privacy of any individuals as a result of that footage and their internal practices and policies regarding the handling of it which we could um expand upon applicable to the video feed just just to point out

2:57:52that it's not that the city has no track record of dealing with this type of thing which is it to the extent that the issue is the handling and access and use of video footage they're really indistinguishable and whether or not it's recorded video or the live feed

2:58:12rachelle thank you my pleasure um so i think it does i i appreciate the comments from chief keith um but i do think it definitely would require revisiting i think there was a lot of good points brought up tonight in terms of if this if we do allow this kind of access how we can

2:58:34monitor how it's being monitored so to speak um and then finally um in terms of hours of operation i would just like to um also add that i think that they are probably too conservative and that a later period of time would be probably beneficial to obtaining more revenue in the long run

2:59:05as uh marijuana consumption is often a nocturnal activity i'm finished thank you i'm gonna give my time to greg you can't do no you just i have no you don't have any okay greg um yeah i do have six uh topics that i was hoping that we as a council could discuss and uh rashel rachelle

2:59:28councilmember pardo okamoto has certainly touched on a number of them uh actually um allowing edibles on site i was wondering if we i know at the last meeting we discussed uh you know leaving the consumption on site as not allowed uh but but uh as i read through this and

2:59:48thought about it um you know we we why not um allow for the consumption of edibles i heard a radio article that said that there it's now offered in coffee so consume conceivably somebody could go read a book and enjoy a cup of coffee at something that isn't a traditional

3:00:11dispensary i mean that's again part of what i'm looking at is that this we've we are surrounded by dispensaries so one of the things that we should be looking at is how would this opportunity add to our fabric what would stand out differently about el cerrito's dispensary from other

3:00:33dispensaries if we go forward with this and so potentially having an edible bar or an edible cafe or something to that effect might uh make the our facility different than other facilities so one of the things i was hoping that we potentially could discuss tonight would be

3:00:53permitting edibles on site it's only two sections of the ordinance that we would have to change and i certainly have already highlighted the places for change another one that councilmember purdue oklahoma talked about was the hours um changing the hours uh you've raised it um

3:01:12i know there was public comment to that effect i'm not inclined to change the hours at this time but one of my questions to staff was what is the process for changing uh you know the ordinance if it turns out that the hours should be a different set of hours and

3:01:29then one of the other ones that uh council member party okamoto brought up was was the video we've talked about that already at length um there's three other items two of them are delivery related one is the limiting of delivery value the state has limited it to 3 000 thank

3:01:49you for the testimony informing us of that as mr krause has pointed out the a delivery vehicle even unmarked that originates from a dispensary somebody's going to figure out hey that vehicle is always there so if if they if the value of what's in the vehicle is

3:02:14limited to something not as attractive as three thousand dollars worth of product then maybe it it will be less of less of an attractive soft target than the delivery vehicles that somebody else is putting on the street and also related deliveries is the idea of having the delivery

3:02:37permits the deliveries permitted writing the ordinance in a way that if deliveries become a separate entity that it's easier to to extract that from the in the storefront and potentially just doing deliveries for six months on this as opposed to a year so that we can come back in six months

3:03:03and say hey deliveries that are attached to the storefront is not necessarily working so that was my fifth concept and my last one is actually a set of questions i guess for the city attorney brought up by at least one of the speakers um and it's similar to the question i

3:03:20asked earlier about um about ending this program if we were to end this program why i i noticed in 090 that we are protected from claims if we don't issue a permit we're collect we're uh protected from claims if a permit is rescinded for uh basically failure to comply with the

3:03:48ordinance but we're it doesn't appear that we're protected if we you know for no apparent cause decide to terminate this um these permits the speaker that brought it up was talking about federal um federal lawsuits what is there any protection for repeal of a permit without cause

3:04:11i don't think there is based on the way i read it but i'm just wondering i'm sorry can you clarify the question yeah so in permit renewal there is discussion about the fact that there's no rights to a permit being issued or a permit being renewed and you know we are

3:04:34there's no entitlement or vested right to receive an operating permit and so if if they assume that if they violate a permit condition we can revoke the permit we're on good ground if they if we don't renew the permit at the end of a year or two years three years

3:04:50whatever there's no expectation that we'll renew a permit we're on good ground the specific case i'm asking about is if a permit is terminated for no apparent reason or our ordinance is rescinded for no apparent reason are we subject to um to liability at that point

3:05:11okay um so i'm going to treat those two scenarios differently because i think that that they're actually different standards um if the city grants a permit and then and its own ordinance says it will only be revoked for the following reasons then it's bound to follow its own ordinance

3:05:29so there may be potential liability resulting from a revocation that is outside the parameters of what's set forth in the city's own ordinance um but the nature of the liability i think is is unclear if the city if the city just decides to um repeal this ordinance and eliminate

3:05:49the program entirely since there's no vested right to the permit or the operation of the business i believe that the the city has the right to in effect as a as a function of its police power to say this type of business should no longer exist in el cerrito um in the context of conditional use

3:06:10permits and businesses with vested rights to operate the courts have said that cities can eliminate those businesses as a function of its police power but that they have to allow for an amortization period for the businesses to recover their their depre the depreciated value

3:06:29of their investment in capital um i think our argument would be pursuant to the ordinance itself there's no vested right to operate this type of business even if a court agreed agreed with with the business that they did had obtained a vested right we would still be able to say well we're

3:06:46going to amortize the business um pursuant to the applicable case law um and i think we'd also have an argument that the the maximum amortization period should be the remaining period on the on the unexpired permit uh because they had no right to continue to operate longer

3:07:04than than that permit term um but even so we'd be able to even if it was longer than the remaining life of the existing permit we would still be able to amortize the business and and when you say amortize the business you're not talking about their expected profits you're talking

3:07:18about their their uh they would be they would have to the city would have to allow them to continue to operate for a reasonable period of time to recover the depreciated value of their investment in capital right for a business like this i think that it's it's unlikely that there's a significant

3:07:35investment in what would typically be considered capital in those kind under under that case law but we're also venturing into a new area so i don't want to leave um the council or the public with the impression that it would absolutely be zero but but i can't imagine that it would be

3:07:51significant and so the amount of time that would have to be provided for them to continue to operate to recover those costs would would also not be significant okay so again just going down the things that i thought we might talk tonight about uh ms pardo akamoto brought up many of them

3:08:06already hours of operation limits on the delivery allowing edibles on site and a discussion about potentially handling the delivery permits separately or at least crafting the ordinance in such a way that that separating the delivery permits from the storefront is

3:08:24feasible and it and it i read through it back with the that in mind and i think it is that way generally but i certainly would love staff's feedback on that um i'm going to make some comments at this point i generally support recreational marijuana but what's troubling me is that this

3:08:43ordinance is introducing new points of sale for consume smoke smoking consumables and we have already said that smoking consumables and secondhand smoke is something that we don't want in our city so for for me having a dispensary that is dominated by loose leaf smokeables is not something

3:09:07that that i think adds to the fabric of our community given our prior position on smoking uh as as i said for me this should be a a destination location that's different from other types of dispensaries and so having one that is edible focused is certainly going to be

3:09:27something that is different and people might come and they and having them be able to consume on site whether it's coffee or or some other type of oil type of massage or something to that effect would set us apart and potentially add to the fabric of our community um and

3:09:47i certainly mr cross thank you very much for your testimony tonight and the research that you did i certainly as i said in topics that i would love to talk about i would love to have the delivery side of it be more flexible so that we can see if those if the mobile dispensary is

3:10:06a soft target that is targeted a lot so if we do move this forward i certainly would like to have that be something the term work in progress is what we've used i certainly wouldn't want us to come back and look at the delivery stuff within a shorter period of time than

3:10:26than potentially was discussed um the reason i can support edibles is that with our current manufacturing processes out there we can we can more precisely determine the the level of thc and the different types of thc that go into the various edibles so that an edible is

3:10:46better regulated better targeted and better used by the the public loose leaf uh i i i look out there and i think the young man is gone yes um loose leaf is gonna be something that is rolled up into a reefer and passed around in a group and there's gonna be a lot of peer pressure for for it to be

3:11:09potentially not consumed uh in the right way and and so for for me you know for that reason for the smoke for the second hand smoke i'm i'm i'm going to make a motion tonight um and and i'm hoping that the council will consider it and i can make the motion now if you

3:11:28would like to discuss it but it would strike cannabis or those two words from three locations two of them are in the definition for cannabis retail and one of the other location is the definition for cannabis delivery along with the other what do you mean strike as in remove

3:11:53from the ordinance where in d definition 0 2 0 d cannabis retail or gives away and strike the words cannabis or and just say gives away cannabis products i'm sorry start the sentence sure from the beginning i'll read the whole time cannabis retail or cannabis retail

3:12:16businesses means a cannabis business that distributes dispenses stores exchange packages repackages labels labeling cells makes available transmits or gives away cannabis products for either medical or recreational use and is operated in accordance with the state

3:12:32or local laws and regulations cannabis retail includes but is not limited to selling and or delivering cannabis products as part of a sale pursuant to a type 10 cannabis license or cannabis license subsequently established can i um go back and see if i understood what

3:12:49you were doing the in that this is under definitions which is 6.80.020 right correct okay d correct okay so i think you're striking out the words up through the only words i'm removing are cannabis or there's two words it's the cannabis or the definition of i don't see cannabis

3:13:13or cannabis or oh down here okay not okay the work this is on the third line and then in the using that as a landmark sixth line the same two words in from the sixth line six one two three four five six okay and similarly those same two words from the first line in letter i

3:13:47[Applause] say that again in letter i cannabis delivery strike the same two words cannabis or from the first line and then there's eight other changes minor changes around uh process and manufacturing that i would will can detail but i'm the crux of my motion or the the

3:14:24the discussion point for my motion would be uh the we're striking cannabis ore in those three locations go ahead okay i actually think in this case it may not be clear what council member alignment is proposing this is not just a minor technical change of wording he's proposing that

3:14:50the businesses that are being allowed to operate would not actually be able to sell cannabis plants themselves so they would be allowed to sell products that were produced as from cannabis plants but would not be able to sell cannabis plants themselves move on that now

3:15:08just just have emotion yeah um well there is no motion i think you could i mean i think it's a point of discussion that the council it is a point of discussion under which i if if if that survives the discussion i would go on and detail the other eight changes it's

3:15:24getting late why don't we have the discussion paul do you want to start it uh i i would oppose that that's my discussion which what you would oppose his changes yeah taking taking cannabis out of the definition of what we're going to do there's going to say about that

3:15:42i would oppose it as well okay um i believe this would take us out of compliance with proposition 64 and we would lose potential grant money as a result of that so that means you oppose it i also oppose it okay so um i think i do too actually so i think that one fails that's fine there were

3:16:04there are eight other changes that i discussed earlier that are uh around the clarifications of you want to try to shape emotion and we do it this the same way why don't you tell us what they are if you can can you do that right now i can but we do we we discussed them when i

3:16:21had questions so i will certainly try and be brief in items 6.80.020 point d which is the same one cannabis retail we discussed in the second line removing processes and replacing that with words that might be packaging repackaging and labeling i don't know if staff came up with some

3:16:47additional words yes d second line the word processes so the um it's actually the definition of um cannabis uh commercial cannabis use um in um i actually don't have the letter sheet that you have so that would be is that h h h okay um that definition is is meant to

3:17:19more or less mimic the definition of commercial cannabis activity in the um in the state legislation um so i would actually recommend um if you um striking striking processes in uh d i i think uh would be appropriate um and then i think you had discussed perhaps adding it to h correct um and i

3:17:46would also um say to make that even more consistent you could add storing and packaging as well in in what location um in that that in that series of activities so under letter d or under letter letter h okay so under letter d are we replacing processes with packages repackaging and

3:18:08labeling um you yes you could uh you could substitute those activities correct and so in a letter h i was proposing whoever makes the motion i'm asking you to add you seem to be i'm not making the motion okay okay guy motion got the motion i would make got to turn down

3:18:28so whoever's making the motion i would ask that you also include the word processing in letter h uh between sail so it would be in the fourth line retail delivery sale processing or manufacturing in items 6.80 point applicability in the fifth line down so same yellow sheet

3:18:59between the words distribute and manufacture please insert process you wanted uh sorry sean you going back to h you wanted storing what was the other one you wanted in h storing and packaging um are those in 0 3 0 cultivate distribute process manufacture cell deliver or test do you want those

3:19:30also ins applicability uh store and i'm having a little trouble following what we're trying to do here i'm asking for ford uh or consistency in this ordinance that uh someone incorporate these minor changes into the their motion but what are you saying in 0 3 0

3:19:56add the word process between distribute and manufacture in the fifth line in 0 7 sorry 0 6 0 a 1 i will get you a page number uh page seven there's two periods at the end of the line can we remove one of those zero six zero applicable a one a one there's two periods at least in the

3:20:35version we have from the packet there's two periods in zero seven zero stop a sec cheryl are you are you keeping up with this i'm i'm trying to it's a it helps if you wait like you're doing if you're citing the section number like 0.6081 correct i'll continue to do that

3:20:58um zero seven zero point c point two which is on page c2 it's on page 10 um add manufacturing between processing or labeling activities so cameras shall be placed at each location where weighing packaging transport preparation processing manufacturing or labeling activities

3:21:26occur and then manufacturing in the second sentence again same place after processing processing manufacturing or labeling activities and then in the same section zero seven zero point l uh pursuant to my question to staff uh we proposed uh during the question period we

3:21:48proposed changing l uh to read commercial cannabis use conducted within buildings no processing manufacturing distribution storage advertising or display of cannabis or cannabis products shall be visible from the exterior of a building where a cannabis business is located

3:22:09and then i've got one more i'm not married to this it's in six point eight zero zero eight zero the first sentence second line sticking the word only in such that it that they would emphasize that only on the san pablo avenue commercial and san pablo avenue community street types is

3:22:34this storefront allowed yeah what is the last one again what's 6.80.080 on page 15.

3:22:46there's no paragraph number so i can't give that to you it's the very first paragraph there is an only in there another only yeah i'm proposing a second only uh right now it says shall only be permitted in the san pablo avenue specific plan area and and on and i'm saying i'm saying and

3:23:04only on what so within to extra emphasis that within the plan area it's only on the commercial and community street types that's i'm not married to that one if the motion maker doesn't want to add that one i agree that the first only does a good job but so whoever the motion maker is i'm

3:23:28hoping that you would adopt those uh changes is there i just like to ask a question is is there a reason why you can't make the motion to make those changes i i can make them i can make the motion no actually there's a reason i'm not because that would be me making the

3:23:46motion to add smokeables more smoking in this city you didn't accept my edits to remove cannabis so all i'm asking is the motion maker because i'm voting no on this ordinance that's because we didn't because which we're at we're increasing the amount of smoke smoking that's going to occur in el

3:24:06cerrito okay so whoever the motion maker is i'm hoping you'll take on those those technical changes you have to repeat everything you just said no good okay no it would be sufficient to to make a motion to include the text changes that council member lymon proposed

3:24:23i this is a comment a question my understanding is that we get closer to the mic um my understanding is that the rules that apply to tobacco smoking would also apply and currently also apply to any kind like smoking of cannabis so we would not be increasing it in the public place in el cerrito

3:25:12that's my understanding am i correct there i'm getting a yes nod a nod of yes because it would be pro it would be prohibited the smoking would be prohibited is my understanding just to be clear and i'm and i'm getting concurrence is that do you agree with that the the

3:25:36city's existing restrictions on the smoking of tobacco would be equally applicable to the smoking of cannabis yes i think council member lyman is addressing a different issue but but you are correct that that that the smoking of cannabis would be subject to the same limits as applied to

3:25:55tobacco all right i would like to make an amendment to the ordinance um we'll see if the council is agreeable um let's see i'm in the wrong place hold on um actually does anyone else have any comments before i make my amendment because i lost my place go ahead and and i have

3:26:54maybe one to both you council member and council member lyman have addressed i mean i'm sorry before you start can i also point out that um we need a motion to extend since we're for i didn't want to cut you off in the middle so um we need an emotion to extend that's for three minutes could we

3:27:13have a we have another another uh public hearing that we need we really do need to do and so could we not have a a wimpy five-minute extension can we have i'm gonna propose an extension of one hour to to eleven to 11 30. until 11 30.

3:27:28thank you is there a second second all in favor aye any opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously thanks um i i i had two concerns that i wanted to talk about and and i've one of them about the one year review of whoever we permit to do business here i

3:27:51i'm not going to move on i think the staff has said there'll be lots of reviews lots of [Music] coming back to the staff to see if in fact they're doing a good job and i will call them on that and ask for reviews here at our city council however i do agree with the the time that the retail

3:28:09shops should stay open and i think having seen just this last week the state regulations that only allow retail businesses to go until 10 i would love to allow a flexible eight to ten they don't need to open at eight they can move to ten if it's nine o'clock that's

3:28:29fine but i agree with um michelle pardue okamoto that a little later an hour later is better than an 8 a.m retail door being open and i just want to i just want to say to you know 21 years ago prop 215 allowed the purchase of medical marijuana in california and now we're at the verge

3:28:48of allowing 21 year olds and i want to emphasize 21 year olds adults to purchase recreation recreational cannabis as a result of prop 64. i've bought into the fact and feel good about the this ordinance being a slow regulatory approach i had my issues at first it was

3:29:07concerned that everything wasn't included especially those items not addressed like home cultivation and taxes but i would hope the city acknowledges in this ordinance that these are issues that do remain to be addressed and maybe in the new year we should think about

3:29:24uh and talk about a separate city citizen committee to help us monitor concerns going forward and keep our to keep our communities safe um you know we're part of a regional change it's not others have said that it's not just el cerrito we're surrounded by this change and we

3:29:44need to show who we are and to regulate this and we will need to review and progress and listen to all the citizens that raised concerns today for input along the way as as this is a major change and we will as i said ask the city to report back to us i started by thanking the staff and

3:30:02acknowledging that their work on this was a a great endeavor and just the beginning and i'm ready to support and go forward with that ordinance and help in any way i can was that a statement or was that emotion i can't remember i can make it say it's a motion yeah just to help you out i think you

3:30:21were looking to try and change the hours in uh eight to eight yeah just so you just see six point 6.80.070 that's what i was looking for yeah yeah i was going to get you there a hours of operation and i'm not sure if it's i'd be happy with the nine o'clock edition but the

3:30:39state now says 10 o'clock is what but are you i am what's a little unclear to me since it started out as eight to eight which eight are you talking about changing to what leaving it eight a.m to ten p.m and let the retailer decide when they're going to operate within that flexible time

3:30:57zone they may not open at eight am they might open at nine they may do ten to ten i'd be satisfied with that i i just need to know the yeah i think there's an issue within eight a.m i don't know why we're so rigid on that i just want to clarify they're not required to open at 8 a.m

3:31:15the hours restriction is just that they can't open before 8 a.m ending at the other end would be yes that would be sufficient okay so have you made a i'm not i'm sorry i'm getting a little tired are you have you made a motion yes i've made a motion okay no um i'm the easy way out councilmember uh

3:31:36fidelity uh made a proposal to amend um section 6.80.070 a um to change the currently proposed 8 a.m um to 8 p.m hours to be 8 a.m to 8 10 p.m and i think council member pardue okamoto is in agreement with that yes are you making a motion though sure i'll make the motion um

3:32:04i move to change the operating hours to any time between 8 a.m and 10 p.m and i will second that no that's still not a mo that's not the right motivation you need a motion to move the ordinance with the changes eventually eventually if the rest if you're eventually we need a motion to um

3:32:24wave first reading and introduce the ordinance council member lyman has proposed a series of text amendments that i think we can refer to as a group council member fidelity has proposed changing the closing time from 8 pm to 10 pm i see so this is the moving to amend and move the ordinance

3:32:41forward it would be a motion to waive first reading and introduce the ordinance um with those changes the ones from proposed by council member lyman and the one proposed by councilmember fideli okay so i moved to move the the ordinance forward with the changes made by

3:32:59council member lyman and the proposals made by council member fidelity and is there a second i will second okay there's a motion and a second to um uh move the mo i can't i don't know if i can repeat this i'll try to move the proposed ordinance with the changes made

3:33:23by both lyman and fideli i get it right okay um and it was um the motion was made by pardo okimoto and seconded by quinto and um is there further discussion anybody anybody okay all in favor please say aye aye opposed nay abstentions none motion carried four to one with the

3:34:01no vote being council member lyman thank you i'd particularly like to thank staff for the tremendous amount of work that was done on this over a long period of time and i um and the one of the things about this is this is charting new territory and so i think it's especially

3:34:26meaningful all of the work that uh staff put into this and i don't always know who did what work but i'm right now looking at sean and i suspect he did the yeoman's share of the job on this one and so on behalf of everyone who worked on this sean thank you and with that we won't

3:34:52so now we will move on on our agenda should i be able to find it here and we're going to go to item 6b mayor abelson i'm just confirming that the ordinance that you're approving is repealing and replacing chapter 6.80 of the el cerrito municipal code you got it just right all right thank

3:35:15you thank you okay so now we're moving on to 6b which is the proposed integrated waste management fees and east bay sanitary garbage and green waste collection and process rates and i need to uh here we go and um there will be two separate public hearings staff will make one presentation after

3:35:41which the council will initiate two separate public hearings um so this is a little bit different than we sometimes do the public the second public hearing is for east bay sanitary collection disposal and processing rates the city council will provide an opportunity to hear testimony

3:36:00from the public regarding each item if you wish to speak and have not submitted a speaker slip to the city clerk please do so now remarks are limited to three minutes per person as we know after everyone has had an opportunity to speak at each public hearing i will seek a motion to close

3:36:20the public hearing so we will now begin the public hearing and our first speaker is staff member maria sanders good evening mary ebelsen and members of the council i'm maria sanders and i'm the operations and environmental services manager tonight we will be holding two the two

3:36:39public hearings that you just discussed in order to set the rates for our solid waste and recycling services and i realize that this is a long night so in the interest of time i'll just refer to the information in the agenda and not go ahead with the powerpoint

3:36:54and also the slide presentation that it was also included in the in the agenda packet the main slide that i'd like to turn to for your reference would be the fifth slide in the presentation so in brief we're asking for adjustments in the integrated waste management fees

3:37:14and the east bay sanitary rates and if you can go to the fifth slide in the presentation which is labeled proposed 2018 total rates oh you can pull that up okay thank you karen will pull it up so this is what the new rates will look like for the different customers served

3:37:39for all the customers the increase is will be to the monthly bills will average 3.66 this equates to an increase of of a dollar 26 or a dollar 70 per month for the majority of our customers respectively for those with 20 gallon or 35 gallon garbage service um so at this time i'd like to thank you

3:38:04for your time and um and be happy to answer any questions tried to make it very short and thank you let's see i think we have to they'll follow the process so um the are there any questions from staff i mean excuse me from council no okay hearing none um i open

3:38:31the public hearing uh are there any speaker slips from the public no i have no request to speak okay then is there a motion to close the public hearing so moved second okay motion by lyman seconded by quinto all in favor please say aye aye any opposition uh any abstentions motion

3:38:50cares unanimously uh with that we will move into the um let's see any additional uh comments from the council yeah i'll make a comment um i want to thank staff for bringing this forward and and i want to make sure as we look at this chart that's up there you will see that the cost of

3:39:20recycling and green waste is included in the cost of the garbage so um you know you when you look at the price of a 20 gallon mini pan or the price of a 35 gallon cart that's all inclusive of all three cans they get picked up on on your street so don't don't think of this as just

3:39:40garbage uh this is the this is the cost of doing services for all of your recycling and your green waste um and i'm more than willing to make a motion um if if you would like that mayor okay i just want to verify with the city clerk that that's what we're where we are in the process okay so yeah

3:40:04and this is the attachment to uh resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito fixing and setting the integrated waste management fees effective january 1 2018 as established in uh our resolution okay is there a second time i'll second that okay there's a motion by lyman

3:40:26seconded by quinto all in favor please say aye aye any opposition in the abstention motion cares unanimously and now we move on to the um second part the second part which i'm having a little trouble here you had it before there oh okay the uh so so now we're ready to open a

3:40:51second public hearing um so i open the second public hearing on east bay sanitary garbage and green waste collection disposal and processing rates and we'll begin by hearing um from staff or no we've already heard from staff mayor i could ask the staff to answer a

3:41:13question which i think i know the answer to but but it's and it's a good point how do our rates compare to other cities in our region or slightly higher slightly higher okay and and that's partly due to the extra services we provide through the recycling right so again it's um based

3:41:32on uh the even though it's based on the garbage can size it pays for um integrated waste management or services including all the drop-off services at the recycling center all the curbside recycling your household hazardous waste program including the new drop-off center at the

3:41:54recycling center and a whole host of other type of diversion programs correct and and so we're slightly more than our neighbors but we get a lot more services so thank you for that okay i have one question okay go ahead um there it's noted in the report about hiring a new personnel

3:42:15no just uh personal costs personnel costs yeah yeah just you know cover saiu mem mou things like that okay are there any other questions from staff okay um are are there any um i do i don't have any requests from the public okay okay open the public hearing there are no requests to

3:42:44speak move to close to the public hearing i'll second motion by lyman seconded by quinto to close the public hearing all in favor please say aye aye any uh objection any abstentions motion carries unanimously um are there any additional comments or questions from the council

3:43:06i would love to move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito establishing maximum allowable maximum allowable rates for the collection of garbage and green waste effective january 1 2018 as identified in the resolution there a second a second okay motion by

3:43:25lyman seconded by quinto to adopt the resolution establishing maximum monthly rates that east bay sanitary may charge for services provided by the company as identified in the enacting clause of the resolution effective january 1st 2018 [Music] and all in favor please say aye aye

3:43:49any objections any abstentions motion carrying uh carries unanimously and with that we will move to item number seven a which is revisions to the el cerrito wall of fame policy and guidelines is our presentation um um i i can go ahead and do this i wasn't prepared but i think i can pretty much

3:44:24wing it and you could perhaps add paul if you had anything um this came about when i noticed that the wall was getting rather full and uh there were um every year we seemed to add people to it but yet the wall is only the same size every year and doesn't get any bigger and so i

3:44:45thought it would be a good idea to look at the whole issue of of the wall of fame and its intent and um to try to make it a better place and so we had a subcommittee that was formed that consisted of paul fideli and myself and cheryl morris joined joined us and and provided a lot of um

3:45:14help did all the work do it just did all the work did everything and was wonderful as usual and um so we went through some iterations of it and um which is probably a good thing to to to do and we came up with this um concept that i really consider moving us into the

3:45:37modern era um and what so what we're proposing to do in this is to change the wall of fame so that it's on our website for one thing and so that anybody anytime anybody who has a computer wants to look at the wall of fame and who's on it and what they did that information would be

3:46:01readily available to them in their home or also here and so the proposal is to replace the um the pictures that are on the wall that personally are totally inaccessible to people like me as an example and you know the small print that's way up way far beyond my ability

3:46:28to see to something that people can view on a screen in the same location so anybody who would come here would still be able to see this and enjoy it and find out all of the history in fact we're adding history in fact it's already up there i believe on our website yes now and you can go look

3:46:52at it the work we did on the centennial um some of for example the the who who was the mayor when information is already out part of that and it's already on that website but the uh what this would do is to add a uh computer down here in where the wall of fame is

3:47:13that people could sit at and um to their hearts content go through all of that information anytime they want um you know if they're waiting for a council meeting to start for example they'll have access to it and so i think it's i think it's really adding a lot and i

3:47:34really want to especially thank cheryl and lina lina right yeah lena huang did a lot of work on it and um paul thank you and so this is what we're presenting tonight and do you want to add anything as the mayor said i think this is a modern approach to a room you know running out of space and i

3:47:58think that this presents three things that i think are improvements the first is whether whether we have a wall of famer every year or not that decision can be made by the candidates that come into the city there may be a year where we don't have one but if we do

3:48:16it will now be in a new presentation with a touchscreen uh application in the vestibule and possibly the most recent wall of famer up above that you know to be in there so there is more room and the the last thing is that we've asked for more qualifications for our

3:48:34the person that gets the wall of fame fame award some uh additional background material and two two more recommendations so it's a little sturdier and a little a little more solid and i i think it's a good it's a good plan thank you so um that's the proposal i don't know

3:48:53if there are any comments or questions i have a question yes just just so it's maybe the terminology installing a portal in the city hall vestibule you're not talking about a window from the outside world you're talking about a a electronic monitoring device like

3:49:12upstairs right now you can touch a past wall of fame person and that profile will come up got it um that's actually not in the resolution so do we do i'm looking at the city manager or somebody do we need to actually put that in the the resolution i would suggest

3:49:34in terms of a concept that we don't because over time it'll change it'll change and that's implementation not so much policy how we envisioned it happening yeah and then um one of the things i mean i definitely appreciate the the where we're going with this but one of

3:49:51the things that i and i'm looking for the actual text maybe was in one of the whereas clauses um i would i would ask that as we consider rotating images that are actually hung physically hung there uh that and i believe it was sunder shotty did i read correctly that sunder

3:50:12shotty was the first could have sworn i read it in here somewhere that cinder shotty was the first wall um i would like to make sure that uh that's you whether it's through policy or through ordinance or through resolution that uh at least uh mr shoddy's image remain

3:50:33uh as not rotating as as a fixed uh image so that people recognize uh the first uh so the first and the last the only having his image there will not actually do that what will do that are the words that say what you just said correct and um that could be done um

3:50:56that can be that would have to be you know it i mean you go there now and you can't really tell correct i think that your your overall point of making it more accessible um is is warranted and and supported um it just and and it might be additional uh oh i shoot i knew that

3:51:19[Music] creation additional curation needs to be added to make it better the um one thing that might be um what you're talking about is to just sort of number them and say what year it was that they became it happened so for example let's say that he i don't know what year it was

3:51:41um does anybody i don't know let's let's say it was the year 2000 so two we would say 2 000 and it was under saudi 2001 it was these other people 2002 somebody else 2005 somebody else you know it could just they could be um it could be done like we do the list of

3:52:04mayors which is chronologically excuse me correct that we're talking show up as number one yep we're talking about the method of creation i think i agree that it doesn't necessarily have to be in the ordinance but certainly the intent may be character and can i can ask um

3:52:22council lynn lyman in section 2c saying a dedicated monitor located in the city hall chambers vestibule is not doesn't say that's that's fine i picked it up in i was looking at the portal in the in the text but you're correct the monitor is definitely in the into

3:52:41you said 2c section 2c yeah that's fine excellent thank you for pointing that out okay any um further comments okay um does anyone have a motion i would like to move this okay oh we have one speaker we have one speaker okay i am so sorry i did it to you again here

3:53:08that's number that's number two so cordell that's me so um good evening again um mayor uh council i know this has been a long night so i'll keep my comments real short so i think the idea you know moving into the modern age you know with the putting like the wall of fame i say

3:53:26it would be more helpful because you're running out of you're running out of room here and like in front before when you go inside the chamber you're running out of room so i think you should adopt this resolution and make it more virtual you know it's very helpful

3:53:42thank you okay so we have a motion all second okay so motion by fidelity segmented by uh lyman uh in all in favor please say aye aye in the opposition in the abstentions motion carries unanimously that takes us to um city council local and regional liaison assignments um

3:54:07paul do you have anything um i think i mentioned the christmas breakfast and no i don't that's it okay no report from mce other than the announcements that's right okay from the integrated waste management authority we passed the rates um this last meeting and we are

3:54:27[Music] we had a presentation after a long discussion about the participation of city staff in consulting to the um regional director that was resolved that we would essentially do status quo and we um that's it for waste integrated waste management okay michelle yes

3:54:54i attended the financial advisory board and most of the discussion there you can see in item 4g on cash and investments for this quarter reporting and then i also delivered to them the news that we are exploring the possibility of becoming a charter city and they were very interested in that in

3:55:17particular to help with our reserves thank you i don't have anything then and i don't have any um with that we are ready to adjourn this meeting and our next meeting will be held on december the 19th 2017 in this council chambers thank you all for being here and

3:55:43joining us in this long evening you