Regular City Council and Special City Council Meetings February 6, 2018

0:00:46it's about 70 708 commuting the regular city council meeting pledge of allegiance to the flag or observation of movement and silent with mayor pro tem rochelle pardue okimoto pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation

0:01:12indivisible with liberty and justice for michelle all we have roll call yes uh councilmember abelson here councilmember lyman president councilmember fideli president mayor potem pardewa komodo president and mayor quinto all present thank you council staff communications

0:01:45anything uh i have various things okay um first of all i i'd like to mention that i attended a conference and i'm reporting under ab1234 and the name of that conference is [Music] new um uh what's called new second here let me find what i'm doing here i thought i had this here we go

0:02:20any partners for excuse me it's new partners for smart growth it was a three-day conference in san francisco and i found it really interesting i always uh go to these things hoping that if i bring back even one thing it's probably worth going to the event and there were a

0:02:39number of things in this particular conference on a variety of topics it was pretty large this year it was about 800 people and there was absolutely no food served that was three days so that was a little hard but anyway the outside of that it was a great conference

0:03:03and i have marked some of the things that i participated in and want to report out on first of all there was a really good opening speech given by the head of the organization and [Music] so it was it really kicked it off um in a a very exciting and dynamic way and

0:03:37uh maybe very enthusiastic about uh participating uh the name of the person who's the [Music] head of the organization which is the local government commission is kate mize and she's been involved with the organization for a number of years now has grown and is really

0:04:04i think doing well in her role also back was pam o'connor who's on the city council in santa monica and has been one of the instrumental leaders in the organization over a number of years as well as others [Music] the initial opening topic was climate action in america integrated

0:04:31solutions for a rapid response and i think the key word there was rapid response and it was there was a theme of that throughout the different topics that were covered by the conference and [Music] so um just sort of going through this really quickly because i have other

0:04:50things i need to mention too is um the self-driving vehicle there was a really interesting um talk on self-driving vehicles one of the more interesting ones that i have heard and as a member of the contra costa transportation authority which is doing the naval weapons station

0:05:16driverless car testing project i i do hear quite a few of these presentations but this one sort of there was one person saying it's not a good idea for these reasons and then there are other people saying it's good for all of these reasons so it was left up to the

0:05:34listener to decide uh what you thought and um the um i actually thought the people promoting it did a a a better job but uh the um um so that that was pretty interesting to me to see that that dynamic uh from where i sit um and um then moving right along here um

0:06:08the um there were a number of uh uh speakers on a number of different sessions talking about doing transferring development projects how to get them in the ground how to make them work that kind of a thing and one of the most interesting ones to me was one that

0:06:31pitted people from washington state and oregon state on the same panel because then you could start to see the differences between different regions and so that was a [Music] a great deal of interest to me the um i'm just really racing through this um the um the other um

0:06:58theme that i think ran through the conference was the use of low-tech solutions versus high-tech solutions and um no matter what topic they were looking at they would look at that issue and different people would talk about the pros and cons of both of those what

0:07:18you i think got a as a sense overall of what was going on there is that there are good ones either way and maybe there are not so good ones either way um but it wasn't one size fits all for sure so that was i thought really interesting one of the fun things we had was a

0:07:39display and i can't really i could put it in the pack packet if i could ask cheryl perhaps and they had little uh forms and together you could put together a project area like a um some sort of a project for a parklet maybe out of these pieces and and build your

0:08:02own so to speak and that was uh quite interesting and um there are a number of um special sessions where you could go on a tour of some part of san francisco i actually didn't get managed to get signed up for any of those so i didn't participate in that but it was really

0:08:28worthwhile again it was new partners for smart growth they put on something i think every year or two and with that i will move on to the next thing i went as i usually do i went to the chamber of commerce luncheon and this month the speaker was fiona ma from the state board of equalization

0:08:52and i will leave it perhaps to our mayor to talk a little more about that if you were wanting to i don't sure okay um since i'm first out the gate i guess i get to say something more another one was the opening of limebikes and i'll leave the details specifically of that

0:09:10to our mayor again but i do want to say that as i've been around town since that happened [Music] i am amazed at the number of places i see examples of this new program using lime bikes where you use an app to make a reservation on a bike and it's even permeated so much that my next

0:09:38door neighbor was able to do it and find a bike at the end of the block which i thought was excessively cool and i also went to the league of california cities where we heard from the seated assembly members and senators in representing our area and this is a session they do every year and i think

0:10:04if you ever get an opportunity it's well worth hearing and um i think i got through everything in that section so i'll be quiet thank you paul yeah thank you yeah i'll be quick here i went to the crab feed that supports our recreational department uh a couple weeks ago which was really

0:10:27great um and i went to my first meeting as the new liaison onto the arts commission in the city he used to be on that commission so it was good to come back there and two things that were nice to hear is that our famous fourth of july celebration um we're going to be we the

0:10:44arts commission are going to be supporting music on the third the third year in a row so there's a whole evening the night before the fourth to sit and this year will be polynesian music with food trucks there so it's a very nice event and also the arts commission is

0:10:59supporting efforts to give stipends to our local down-home music store on san pablo avenue or our houli which is a national treasure and i'm very pleased about that so i also did the league of cities and i'm excited about the lime bikes as well thank you okay yeah i just want to

0:11:19make people aware that the charter committee did have its first meeting last night and our next meeting will be next monday the 12th and we the agenda will come out later this week and we will have a tentative schedule of meetings uh in february march and even april

0:11:40uh there's a schedule of attentive meetings that should be in the minutes uh or in the yeah in the minutes of the of yesterday's meeting so if you're interested in how government is made please feel free to come out to the the charter committee meetings again the next meeting will be monday

0:12:02uh the 12th at 7 pm right here in the chambers or actually it might be upstairs in the conference room but the agenda should come out later this week i had the pleasure of attending the contra costa mayor's conference uh recently it was in san pablo and at the beginning of the conference we

0:12:26were able to tour their library and it was a very nice library they had a lot of laptop computers that people could easily check out and use all over the library as well as areas for teens and kids and they had some really nice artwork that went along with the various areas

0:12:52it started out showing a map of the city of san pablo and as you move to kind of the older and that was for the kids and then as you move to the older and then adults and so on the maps will get bigger and bigger until finally you would see at the very end a picture of the entire

0:13:10earth so i really enjoyed the artwork that they put in the library as well and it gives us inspiration over here in el cerrito to to find a way to build a new library for us because it shows what is possible when when you're able to to find a new space for a library

0:13:33and then they also had a very interesting presentation by the usgs the folks that are studying are faults here and one thing that i took away from it um you know we always hear uh you know three days worth of water um but i i see council member lyman shaking his

0:13:59head um there there sounds like there could be some serious disruptions with some of our um aging infrastructure and and i won't quote him because i don't remember the exact quote but it could be a lot longer than that so i just want to encourage everyone here and at home to

0:14:18please if nothing else store water because that's what you're really going to need is water water water and also to develop a plan for you and your family and of course we have our cert program here which i strongly encourage everyone going through the training if possible

0:14:38anyway it was just a really good reminder of that nothing else will be as important when the time comes then this last weekend i was honored to be the emcee of the save the ulta bates rally that we had in berkeley and it was very well attended by community members members from el

0:14:58cerrito showed up and we are continuing to try to keep that hospital open so that it can serve el cerrito and beyond after that event i was able to go to the the event speaking about race that was held by mark desonia congress congressman mark desanie and congresswoman barbara lee

0:15:24and it was also the panel had various members from uc berkeley and it was a very good opening discussion it's the first one that i've been to quite like that it was very well attended at contra costa college and it's something we're going to have to keep working on

0:15:45that's all thank you on january 17th i attended the new mayor's conference and training for the league of california cities so i was there for three days which included hosting co-hosting the asian pacific islander caucus reception with asian pacific islander legislators in

0:16:11sacramento and we had a big crowd there just wanted to say thank you to our co-sponsors that sponsored that and i see some of them with the yellow vests here so uh thank you for for co-hosting that um i also attended the um on the 25th the league of cities berkeley

0:16:33um east bay division where we had our sacramento leaders assembly member thurman senator nancy skinner and assembly member quirk senator and a couple of other folks from contra costa and alameda county and they gave us an update on what they're working on many of it is

0:17:00of course dealing with housing dealing with immigration dealing with education and i look forward in working with all of them to make sure their bills go through on the 26th of january i attended the bachma the bay area quality management district board meeting and they had an update on fuel

0:17:23cell technology and we'll be seeing more of that in california that is we have one in contra costa right now in san ramon the closest fuel cell refill station we have now is in emeryville we will have one close to us on gilman street in berkeley and we're working on having one in west

0:17:47contra costa so all the car companies are working on fuel cell technology uh ferry boats are there the new services that uh will be going online in the next few years will be hydrogen power as well and it's clean and and it can be done in a green way so i'm excited about this

0:18:08also with the eevee infrastructure that the governor just signed billions of dollars will be spent on more ev infrastructure in california on the 30th we have the lime bike grand opening and i want to thank uh city staff will provost for uh handling that then introducing

0:18:31toby's son the ceo of limebike and his family who grew while they were in berkeley uc berkeley they lived close by in albany and did their shopping here in el sarita so they knew about our city and uh they were happy to be here and to see lineback finally opening

0:18:50here in el cerrito i spoke to our colleagues and in albany uh richmond will be going online soon uh albany started the same time we did for a six-month trial so uh um you're gonna see more of this uh in all the cities in west contra costa uh on february 1st i attended the contra

0:19:12costa mayor's conference with my colleague mayor pro tem rochelle and i did hear someone from the usgs speak on what can happen and what will happen during a big earthquake and we're overdue here at uh we're close to the hayward fault and many of our homes are on top of the hayward fault so

0:19:36i encourage and i want to make sure that our residents are prepared for this uh i did ask the usgs if they can do a presentation here at city hall and they'd be very happy to give us a presentation and let us all know here and elsarito what we need to do again on the third i

0:19:58attended a forum with rochelle and that is on race hosted by barbara lee and mark desolnay and that was held at contra costa college so but that's my update thank you so oral communications from the public all persons wishing to speak should sign up with the city clerk remarks are

0:20:23typically limited to three minutes per person the mayor may reduce the time limit per speaker depending upon the number of speakers kindly state your name and city of residence for the record comments regarding non-agenda presentation and consent calendar items

0:20:38will be heard first comments related to items appearing to the public hearing or policy matter portions of the agenda are taken up at the time of the city council deliberate deliberates each action item individuals wishing to comment on any closed session scheduled after the regular meeting may

0:20:56do so during this public comment period or after formal announcement of the closed session thank you mayor we have six speakers at this point al miller followed by robin mitchell and howdy gowdy good evening mayor and council members city staff i first want to address the vacancies on

0:21:21our city street oversight committee when we passed the measure providing a half cent sales tax to rebuild and maintain our streets in el cerrito one of the items in the measure was the requirement for a citizen streets oversight committee to ensure that the money was

0:21:42spent only for approved uh projects authorized by the measure and the city council i was a in the naval we call him a plank holder in the old days i had a wooden ship you came aboard you got a piece of the plank that the decks were made out of but i served for the couple of terms and

0:22:06extended a little while they're waiting for you to select a replacement i know you're all working very hard to fill them my concern is not with you it's with my fellow residents in the city that insisted that we have that in the measure without accepting the responsibility to step forward and serve

0:22:24on it to make sure that it can happen right now we have a member and one applicant even if he gets approved we only have two it's a five-member board they can't do business with i also want to add my thanks to officer of the year sarah perez our professional of the year records

0:22:47specialist stacey core and the police department volunteer of the year bob rudroni another example of the excellent professionalism and service that we have on our city staff that contribute to making our city safe so thank you all for that i also want to give thanks again to city

0:23:08employee stephen pray for his support and management of the el cerrito baxter creek workday that's the first saturday of every month from 10 o'clock to 12 30 at baxter creek we remove invasives we install or plant natives we remove trash and garbage and there's usually quite a

0:23:32bit of that to go and we carry out other projects that stephen organizes and supervises us on it's a wonderful day especially when the weather's nice everybody's welcome you get a great feel in working out it you can bring your kids if they're supervised properly

0:23:54but i would encourage people to come and join us thank you thank you um good evening mayor and city council members my name is robin mitchell and i live at [address removed] on july 21st 2015 the city council approved a proclamation recognizing the donation of the

0:24:20rosenberg property to the city of el cerrito to be used as a public park in august of 2015 a group of el cerrito residents formed the friends of dorothy rosenberg memorial park and filed an adopt a park application with the city this application included a proposal for

0:24:35turning the property into a real city park which i included in an email to all of you earlier today which i suspect you haven't had time to read the group was originally submitted who originally submitted that proposal has been volunteering at drmp which is what we call it

0:24:52for the last few years working with the city to do minimal landscape maintenance to help with fire protection and general upkeep however the property needs to receive more attention as as it is not currently in a condition that can be opened up to the public the city needs to either allocate funds

0:25:08to in the city's budget or aggressively go after grants or both to get this property into shape so that can be used by the citizens of el cerrito we would like to work with the city to help realize marvin rosenberg's vision for using his property as a public park

0:25:24and i just want to read a couple excerpts from the executive summary in 2003 the marvin rosenberg trust bequeathed 1.6 acres including a single-family home located at 945 king drive to the city of el cerrito in 2013 ownership of the property was transferred to the city by mary

0:25:41rosenberg and the process was completed on april 9 2015.

0:25:45this proposal captures the breadth of ideas from a group of el cerrito residents who are active volunteers in the community it is envisioned that this document can support a public planning process for the park the ideas in this proposal strive to realize marvin rosenberg's vision that

0:26:00the property he loved would be used as a public park for all the citizens of el cerrito to share and enjoy and as a lasting memorial to marvin's first wife dorothy the park has distinctive characteristics that enable unique opportunities that benefit the city park

0:26:15system including diverse grounds with natural areas and gardens as well as the house and out buildings these characteristics allow the park to be used by the public in many different ways for example the grounds could include trails picnic areas and demonstration gardens while the house

0:26:30could be used for a public environmental resource center offices for non-profit organizations and living quarters for a caretaker the diverse nature of the park allows a myriad of possible activities that could include nature education art and music events and workshops

0:26:45because there are is a house on site this is a unique opportunity to have a live-in park caretaker which i suspect the neighbors would appreciate the organizations most active in creating this proposal were the el cerrito community garden network and the el cerrito trail trekkers there are many

0:27:00more partner organizations and individuals that could be engaged in the planning and implementation process as this project moves forward the final vision in this proposal will take many years and the goals may evolve over time understanding that at least some of the

0:27:13projects envisioned for this park will take considerable resources and will be based primarily on volunteer effort it will be important to prioritize the effort and start with small projects that can reasonably be accomplished with limited resources i hope that in the

0:27:26upcoming budget cycle some funds can be allocated to the dorothy rosenberg memorial park and that city staff prioritizes applying for grant funds that can help turn this property into a real city park thank you thank you good evening council members and mayor quinto my name is howdy gowdy um

0:27:51so i guess this comment takes some inspiration from something that mayor quinto alluded to which is the state's very strong commitment to electric vehicles that was stated in january governor brown has created the goal of 5 million evs on the road by 2030 which is a very ambitious

0:28:13goal it's a 15-fold increase in 12 years and i wanted to encourage the the city to make sure that they're doing their part to contribute to that important transformation for meeting our climate action plan goals and um and also to save money in the topic of of the budget um you know electric

0:28:38vehicles are far too often thought of as an expensive uh thing but they're not they're cost competitive and they actually save money over time with reduced fuel costs and and lower maintenance costs and i think these are things that we need to proactively engage to actually you know shrink some

0:28:55of our budget um expenditures and and allocate them where they're more useful so along that line well and as was stated there's a lot of money available and incentives from the state so you know this doesn't all have to come out of our budget um and along that line of you know using uh

0:29:19energy efficiency and renewable energy to to actually save us money and and improve budget circumstances i was rather surprised to hear that a um a solar power purchase agreement that the county has arranged will actually net them four hundred thousand dollars a year

0:29:42you know ongoing um beginning in the first year and so that's you know real money i mean i realized the scale wouldn't work the same here but i think even though the city has a very good uh municipal solar deployment that was done a few years ago it's worth re-looking at the opportunities because

0:30:02you know you can actually save money it's it doesn't necessarily just cost you things so that's what i wanted to bring up thank you thank you dave weinstein followed by william jones and terry court mayor and members of the council i'm here speaking as president of el cerro

0:30:24trail trekkers we've been around for eight years now and at the start of every year i like to tell you guys what we've been up to because mostly in partnership with the city we do a lot of things that i think really benefit people in town and the town as a whole

0:30:40so i'll very briefly i hand it out i think you all have a copy of our accomplishments and goals i'll go through them really briefly we put on a lot of events during 2017 including eight centennial events approximately two hikes two free hikes every month some of which were really well attended

0:30:58the one on architecture in the hills had 70 people speaking of earthquakes we had two really popular seismic hikes with a seismic geologist that it was so good we we did it twice we did about a dozen half a dozen not not enough work parties where we were actually working on um

0:31:16trails working with the city we finally got the motorcycle hill steps done you remember that that's a pretty big accomplishment really making that whole section of the hillside natural area much more accessible we put on our annual hillside festival i think one of the biggest things we did

0:31:37we got on the rotary club international in the el zorrito rotary donating ten thousand dollars we matched that with four thousand dollars raised from our members and we got another thousand plus from the local rotary and that will result in an interpretive nature and cultural trail in the

0:31:55hillside that will probably be installed in 2019 coming up in 2018.

0:32:05one of the things i did just the other day i took the two the two consultants were working on the park master plan on a tour of all the trails and pathways in the city that are not in the hillside surprisingly enough they didn't even know these things uh actually existed so we're working on on

0:32:22making sure that the trails are an important part of the park plan we're still going to be watching fairview estates where people want to build houses on what we would like to see added to the hillside as open space as fairview open space this year we will finally come out with

0:32:38a printed map we've had a map of all the trails in town hillside and nine hillside on the website for a long time but we'll have a printed version this year the hillside natural area trails trail signs that were funded by the national park service those will be

0:32:55installed probably in the summer a lot of volunteers from trail trackers will do the installation although some installation will be done by professional installers we're going to have the hillside festival again this year it'll be bigger and better it'll be not one day but

0:33:14it'll be three days so you shouldn't miss it it's the first weekend in may three days and that's about it this is a long project that we're involved with which is to preserve open space which is to uh extend expand and improve the trail system in el cerrito it could take a

0:33:31couple of decades and as a group we hope to continue working with you guys on that so thank you very much for listening thank you william jones good evening mayor city council and staff um i'm having a problem with two parking tickets in your city this one was well publicized in all the

0:33:55major news agencies about the fighting at el cerrito high and kennedy football game i took my grandchildren 15 and 10 and i got a ticket for parking in the red trying to get out of the way the second ticket was handicapped parking i didn't post my sticker because

0:34:13i got bad shoulders i couldn't raise my arm i got a ticket for that that's not the problem the problem is i appealed it when i appealed it they sent me a notice saying no these are the charges but they didn't give me any directions as to what to do next the second level

0:34:34administrative hearing i talked to a sergeant who's in charge of tickets on the phone and he said he was the one that would adjudicate that and i said well that doesn't make sense and then he said some other man's name well then i lost all credibility with this guy he said

0:34:54telling me two things i made many attempts to contact the city to see what do i do because the sergeant in charge of tickets said it's supposed to be on the ticket of the decision but it wasn't i emailed them both copies showing them it's not here i don't see which you're i'm supposed to do

0:35:16usually you post the bell and you have a a uh a hearing uh well i'm just gonna chronology i wrote the appeal to the ticket first second i called the mayor's office to see what to do because it didn't state then i called the city manager's office i talked to the traffic sergeant after

0:35:47that then i came to the police station i talked to two ladies at the police department they sent me upstairs to a lady office manager nobody knows what to do then i spoke to the police chief at last month's last city council meeting he said he'd look into it and i didn't

0:36:04hear anything unfortunately he's not here tonight right now understanding he may be here later uh so here i am now i think maybe i should have contacted the city attorney's office but i didn't think about that until just tonight so in the meantime the tickets have gone up

0:36:26so i'm coming to you to see what your advice or suggestion is i don't know if you have any adjudication i think they should be dispensed because of improper uh handling of the whole thing california's vehicle code4902 states that i'm allowed to post bail with the written declaration it doesn't

0:36:53it doesn't say anything about that i looked at your website i told them more than six hours at least trying to find out what do i do nowhere it only talks about pay paid this is how you pay i want to know how do i appeal it what is the process and it's nowhere nowhere

0:37:15so i don't know what to do at this point sir um this is public comment and we cannot discuss what you're talking about we can listen and we were listening uh so i appreciate you stating your case and i know our police chief will uh contact you well i thought he was too but he didn't

0:37:44not yet yeah he will thank you about the city what about city attorney can he can i call him um no the police chief will contact you okay thank you thank you very much william jones followed by terry court oh i'm sorry mr jones good evening mayor and council my name

0:38:08is uh terry court and i'm ex president of the el cerrito tennis club i'm also an el cerrito resident and have been for 32 years i was raised in kensington and went to kensington elementary portland junior high and el cerrito high school and my family still lives in kensington

0:38:28i grew up playing tennis in the area and i'm really grateful to all the beautiful courts that there are here um also my mother was a um one of the founders of the bay area ladies league and that was 45 years ago she's still she's 92 now but not playing tennis um

0:38:48we're here tonight uh on behalf i'm taking the opportunity that matt duffy is here and we're addressing the council and the district and hoping that we can work together on these this question that we have we the el cerrito tennis club would like to be able to use

0:39:10the tennis courts at the el cerrito high school and have access to the restrooms that's the problem it is very difficult to play there without access to restrooms the el cerrito and the west contra costa unified school district taxpayers were under the strong impression that the el cerrito high

0:39:33school tennis courts were built for all residents of the west contra costa unified school district which was paid for with a partial tax we were led to believe that the restrooms that were built by the football stadium with the intention that tennis players would have access to them

0:39:59a little history on the el cerrito uh high school tennis courts for about 40 years from 1962 to about 202 000 the west conte costa unified school district gave the el cerrito tennis club a key to the restrooms that were near the old tennis courts i'm sorry you're out of

0:40:20time can you finish your statement no excuse me and we would like to be able to obtain a key through the el cerrito tennis club and the ulcerative recreation department whom we have a great relationship thank you thank you that's all for public comment right now

0:40:37thank you next is adoption of the consent calendar and that's uh numbers 4a through 4g and i was asked to pull 4c so uh 4a is approval of the minutes b graffiti abatement co ordinance c is el cerita police department recognition proclamation d black history month proclamation e

0:41:07lunar new year plus proclamation and f authorization of an additional property assessed clean energy pace financing program for el cerrito property owners okay annual payment of el cerrito shearer of the west contra costa integrated waste management authority operating expenses

0:41:28i'd like to move the consent calendar consisting of 4a 4b 4d for e for f and 4g i skipped um 4c second i wanted to make a comment on d okay so are you asking paul d i just want to make a comment on it before we pass okay okay go ahead thank you um so 4d is the proclamation of black history month

0:41:57and i just wanted to take one moment to recognize the month more formally and to take a little look back at what we had done during our centennial year here in el cebrito we had a really great day of african american appreciation at the community center and one of the

0:42:19people that came and spoke at that time was el cerrito former resident belva davis who many of you will know she was a journalist here in the bay area for many many years and i bought her book at that event and i have completed it at this time and i just wanted to

0:42:43recognize her during this black history month and particularly because she was a resident of el cerrito and she had a very um she's still alive she has a very interesting life and she she's really an inspiration i would um advise any of you if you have the time

0:43:04to pick up her book it's called never in my wildest dreams and it tells how she she grew up in or she was born in monroe louisiana which i feel a connection to because my grandmother was born just right outside the same area and i believe that they were born i want to say in the same year or maybe

0:43:26one year apart from each other so they might have passed each other on some dirt road back then um anyway and they both made their way out to california my grandmother settled in fresno california and belvis settled out here and she's had she's lived in a lot of the same cities

0:43:45that i lived in since i moved to the bay area she's lived in berkeley in oakland el cerrito san francisco so i just found many ways in which our lives kind of mimicked each other in certain ways and i i admire her for living out her dreams and for being brave and for being a

0:44:05pioneer and um if any once again if anyone has the time to read this book i highly recommend it thank you thank you so we have a motion by uh lyman second by abelson all in favor aye aye okay that's unanimous 5-0 so going back to uh 4c elsarita police department

0:44:30recognition proclamation good evening mr mayor members of council city staff i'm robert de la campa the police captain and it's my honor this evening to introduce you to three members of our department who are being recognized for exceptional service we uh just a couple years ago started

0:44:53the volunteer program as everybody knows our volunteer of the year this year will be mr bob rugaroni who's to my left he is also a resident he's been a volunteer with us since 2016 very active uh he volunteered 450 hours in 2017 doing a lot of logistical projects

0:45:11around the building that are of great help helped us organize things helped us in our property evidence room every week his time has been invaluable and definitely big service to the department of the community so we're proud to introduce you to mr bob rugroni also to my right our professional staff

0:45:29member of the year this year it's going to be stacy core stacy has worked with us for just a couple of years her projects in the last year were varied we had a vacancy wherein our property evidence person is a military reservist he was deployed for a year so she volunteered to basically learn

0:45:47his job and do it while he was gone so work in our property and evidence room is possibly underappreciated by some but it's very very intensive labor it has to be done every day so she stepped in and did it with a great attitude the whole time and then when he returned from military

0:46:04service due to another vacancy we asked her to to fill in as our executive assistant so she was doing our payroll she was doing tasks for yet another job which is again different from her regular job which is actually that of record specialist so throughout the year she helped us

0:46:21immensely by filling in those positions and had a great attitude the whole time so this is stacey core to my left here is officer sarah perez sarah has been with us in a variety of fashions in her time working with the department she started as a record specialist

0:46:36she then became a community service officer and subsequently a police officer so in the last year she has taken on uh our new role of community liaison officer she is the person if you follow us on social media who is for the most part doing that she is uh almost every day putting out something

0:46:54on social media she's coordinating events with the public so just absolutely enhancing our ability to interact with the public she's put on a variety of events barks with bells our recent boba with the cops at the pacific east mall several coffee with cops events and she

0:47:10also talked down a person off of a roof literally in a bit of a standoff over the summer but she talked this person down over a long period of time so she does a lot of law enforcement as well so this year she's going to be our officer of the year so it's my pleasure

0:47:25to introduce you to the to the three of them and uh she will be recognized uh in the next week at the elks lodge and else bronte that's where formal ceremony is [Applause] congratulations thank you very much uh would anyone like to speak officer perez maybe officer president from the public

0:47:55frequently would you like to see some just thank you yeah i just want you guys to know that as a whole i work side by side with two of the best people um here asked them to help out on numerous things likewise i help them as much as we can i don't think either all of us would be

0:48:11here without each other so we appreciate it you all work really hard thank you thank you very much mayor and council members before um captain della campus sits down um since we're correct congratulating folks in the police department i want to make sure that you all caught the subtlety

0:48:29that lieutenant de la campa has been promoted to our captain so congrats to him thank you if i can embarrass you [Applause] so bob we need to vote on that yes we do i'll move item four c uh el cerrito police department recognition proclamations officer of the year

0:48:56police department professional staff of the year and police department volunteer of the year second okay um moved by uh greg lyman and second by uh party okimoto and paul fideli all in favor aye all right so that's 5-0 thank you very much so we are now at uh presentation update on west contra costa

0:49:42unified school district we have super superintendent matthew duffy who will present an update on schools in el cerrito and the roadmap for increasing student academic achievement good evening i have a few slides so i'll wait for that to come up uh oh great thank you um

0:50:03well uh mayor council staff thank you very much for having me i've been spending a little time this year getting out and around to all of our cities to just share a little bit about what we're working on and then happy to take any questions and engage in any dialogue

0:50:19around the work of the district and i'm glad i came because i just learned about a tennis court situation that i hope we can we can solve so we are now in february so we have turned the corner into the second half of the school year and it's a really interesting time because you have one

0:50:39foot in this year and schools are already starting to think about next year as they receive their budgets and plans along the way so this is no surprise to you but there are six schools in el cerrito one high one middle three elementary and one special education school and

0:51:00including that school cameron there's about four thousand two hundred and fifty students in the el cerrito schools in our district uh el cerrito high school is uh edith jordan mccormick is in her second year as the principal there we have almost 1500 students and you see a

0:51:18little bit of the statistics there so i'll work through a few slides and then take some questions koromatsu and the three elementary schools you see the numbers there that we have and then in our sbac scores which are our student achievement scores from the state

0:51:40last year the el cerrido schools did very well and so we saw about a one to two percent increase overall district-wide last year so you can see that the el cerrito schools were outpacing the district one thing i will say and maybe next year when i come back is that the state is

0:52:02moving towards a different system which is what they call a dashboard system and it really gives a lot of weight also to growth so we're also seeing that not only are these schools doing well at the high levels but students who are coming in are really growing in those

0:52:21schools some highlights we wanted to share with you there's so many fantastic things going on across the district and at the el cerrito schools all of the el cerrito elementary schools have adopted the teacher's college reading and writing project so this is a readers and writer's

0:52:42workshop approach to literacy that we have going in about 20 different schools we also have a group of schools um doing work around math lesson study and it's a really uh fantastic piece of work because it's personally working with a math master teacher named phil darrow

0:53:05who's one of the personal authors of the math common core standards and so these schools are getting a chance to work with him really talk about math instruction and study their lessons and study the results of them and actually right now madara and koromatsu are hosting exchange students

0:53:24from china and so i think it begins later this week i know definitely on friday because i'm going to madera for a meeting on friday and i know those students will be there a couple other things to note while we're doing amazing things for african american month there are many things going on in

0:53:45el cerrito but fairmont has really sort of really stepped up their game and doing a lot of work this month and harding is leading a lot of the work around common core english and math for the district and doing a lot of work there a few other notes um koromatsu i think did something really

0:54:08bold and courageous this year they eliminated in their seventh grade tracked classes so they used to have some advanced classes and then the advanced classes grew more until there were six of the eight seventh grade classes were advanced and two weren't and they really said what

0:54:30would it look like if all eight were doing the same curriculum not just six of eight and they've seen the morale go up the discipline referrals are way down and they they took a chance there and there and it was led by the teachers and really excited about that

0:54:48um and echs the high school retained more than 90 percent of the teachers this year so we're really proud of that work as well and we're continuing to grow the dual immersion program that starts at washington and then goes to koromatsu and then into el cerrito high

0:55:08i wanted to share a few district highlights this year our enrollment increased both over projections and over the number of students who are in the district last year and that's really big for us because we've been a declining enrollment declining district for a number of years

0:55:26so this year we stabilized basically and we hope to keep that trajectory going it symbolizes that people are interested in our schools and it is also our revenue source so it's very important that we keep the numbers up we have significantly decreased suspensions

0:55:44district-wide over last year and this year our attendance is up from last year we have a new positive school climate policy and i know i've worked with city manager hannan on that policy and its potential implications for school resource officers which i'm happy to

0:56:02talk about as well we have a new mandarin immersion school which we're really excited about and it's going to be entering year two next year so we started with three classes of kindergarten up at the sarah facility which is in the east richmond hills and that's been fantastic to be able to

0:56:22create a new school that's not a charter school frankly that we could we showed that we could do that also that we had the ability to create something new and we're also adding k-8 schools so we have three schools that were excited to grow into k-8 whose families have told us they

0:56:41were really really interested in staying for grades seven and eight so we looked at that model as well so some challenges just to be up front it's not all rosy some things that we are certainly dealing with teacher retention continues to be a challenge across the district

0:57:01and charter school expansion is something that we continue to deal with mostly because we're pressed on facilities you all know of some of the fairmont questions that we've had to take up because of the squeeze in facilities so we continue to have to look for facilities for our charter partners

0:57:22and that goes into the next one which is facilities which is a constant challenge um that we're dealing with so as you may know our roadmap that we're working on at the district level really talks about what if every third grader read on grade level what if every

0:57:40english learner in the district was reclassified or re-designated as english only first by sixth grade and what if every student was college-ready at graduation so about 44 of the students in the district graduate with the eligibility requirements to go to a uc or csu it's about 49

0:58:02at el cerrito high school we have a goal to get that to 80 percent in the next five years and then we're working around three things these three areas achieving students engaged communities and invested employees we've been hiring over 200 teachers a year the past few

0:58:23years and we want to get that down dramatically i walk into the new teacher welcome and it is just it's way too big so we're working and happy to talk about some of our campaign there and then some of our current statistics that i mentioned the a to g but we only have right now

0:58:46across the district three out of ten third graders reading at grade level three out of ten english learners reclassified and four out of ten forty four percent a to g so we've adopted these campaigns we're rallying everybody around that and the other thing is for our students who are

0:59:06already there that's another big piece of the work that we're doing is making sure that our students who already there are constantly challenged and can keep going and keep growing and don't have to wait so that's a little bit about what we're doing i am happy to take any questions i'll go

0:59:24just leave it at the front slide there's plenty more we could have put in here and so also for a next time if there's other things you would like to see we're happy to to share those as well okay thank you sure janet okay yeah i saw on one slide that it said increasing enrollment in el

0:59:45cerrito i think it said both so we've increased enrollment in the district and the two areas that we saw some increase the bigger increases in the schools uh were hercules and el cerrito sort of the book ends of the district and el cerrito we saw that at korematsu

1:00:05was up el srido high was up and the elementary schools were up a little not as much as everybody had thought and i can all bring some of those specific numbers to you as well but we did add a couple of portables one at fairmont and one at madera so we could house full day kindergarten

1:00:26classes what about harding harding we didn't add anything in terms of portables there and i i believe the enrollment was slightly up but harding is like it's basically at its capacity it can't really go any further and the el cerrito schools as you know the footprint of the elementary schools

1:00:50are pretty small they're not schools that we can easily go to 600 or 700 or 800 if we had to so do you have a plan for [Music] how to deal with that well we've based on all the demographic studies that we have and based on what happened this year we think we are okay so we think between

1:01:14the three el cerrito schools we also have a number of folks who transferred other places some have gone to the mandarin school but we we do think we're okay we do have you know [Music] we do have some [Music] what would i say facilities options if if we get slammed over the next four to

1:01:38five years then that will force us to potentially look into what's the situation at portola where we have a temp campus right now for schools that are under construction and what's the situation with alvarado or we have an adult school so we've got some backup plans but right now we think the schools

1:01:58will fit the kids it does i'm just curious if one of your uh con thoughts is and i know it's not a very pleasant one about looking at redistricting the boundaries of the different schools we are not looking at that right now so the board is not asked to take that

1:02:19up in terms of student attendance boundaries that's not something that's on the table if the board chose to do that we certainly could thank you you're welcome okay paul you have any questions um yeah just a couple points i just wanted to thank you superintendent duffy you came

1:02:37to a big school district with lots of issues lots of problems lots of good people lots of good teachers but your energy i've seen your energy and i've seen your power points and they're very creative so thank you for all your ideas i went to school in the richmond unified

1:02:54school district way back when and my brother and i grew up here he was in the district for 35 years teaching at richmond administrator at port law and in panel and i was the first graduating class at kennedy high okay 50 years ago this year and if i can go beyond the borders of el

1:03:14cerrito a little bit and ask about an update on kennedy there's always been concerns and i've always looked to kennedy to see how we're doing and i've been concerned can you give me any good news sure there's a lot of good news uh coming out of kennedy what's so interesting about kennedy is

1:03:30the demographic shift that's happening so fast at that school kennedy high school as far as english learner goes english learners go has the highest percentage of newcomers newly arrived students to the country of english learners of any school in the entire district

1:03:52so something like 40 percent of their english learners are newcomers so it's a quickly changing demographic that we also have to navigate there we have restarted the music program there which we're really excited about we have built out a new industrial welding lab there

1:04:15we're building out the i.t the information technology academy continues to grow there they have continued to improve climate and culture so there's a lot going on there the struggle we have at kennedy is teacher retention and that's a place that if we can do better in that area i think we'll be

1:04:37able to really see some growth at the school what's the student body count now it's about 900.

1:04:45thank you for that um i wasn't going to bring this issue up but since you mentioned fairmont oh it's i since i mentioned that you mentioned fairmont and since actually in our agenda we deal with um a resolution to the what i considered was the hardest issue i've dealt with on

1:05:02the city council was the senior center and fairmont school it was very difficult issue that we dealt with and you heard us all five of us speak before you um in concern about some flexibility one is one question i had i'm just curious as far as making a decision that that the board

1:05:21made um as far as being a closed door session yeah what was the reason and the reasoning behind that because i'm kind of a transparency nut and we were hoping to get a little more transparency and get but i mean i think the resolution is great now i'm feeling good about what's

1:05:36happened yeah i'm feeling good for the parents at fairmont for the students and for our seniors yeah but educate me on that point that's a really good question and a question i wish i had a great answer for it's the the board decided to handle that in closed session that's

1:05:55what they wanted to do and i that that's really as far as i can go with it as their sort of head of their staff we should ask them yes i would say you should or you can direct me to ask them that's what happens um but that's how they wanted to take it up and that was what they chose to do okay

1:06:18i i think we can succeed when we work together agreed okay thank you okay uh rochelle oh i think janet addressed a lot of my concerns but um just to maybe piggyback on that a little bit one of the questions that keeps getting brought up to me or concerns i should say um is that as

1:06:40we're building el cerrito transit oriented development around our bart stations and so on along the avenue we will end up with more families which i think is a great thing but you know how are we going to absorb that in our school system yep i think that that's a big question and

1:06:59i think we have to continue to be in communication our facilities team needs to be in communication with city team and like i said we are fortunate that we have some potential i would call them back backup properties they're not easy to get fully ready but at least we have them if we feel

1:07:20like we really need to open another school in the annex and think about what the attendance boundaries would look like we have that option we have the wilson school moving to portola for two years while their school is under construction and then back so we've got some options and

1:07:40flexibility and i think we've just got to continue to stay in communication we don't want to have any big gaps where we don't have enough space for kids right and um so what so wilson school you said and what other schools are kind of in line for for rebuild so right now with the available bond

1:08:00money that we do have it's wilson and lake and then that's it in terms of whole school remodels we have critical needs money for certain schools like you asked about kennedy i think there's 10 million dollars for kennedy there's three million dollars for fairmont there's

1:08:18these critical needs pots of money some of them were based on seismic needs some of them were based on you know aesthetic etc and then we have this facility's master plan that basically says if you if the district were to uh have the voters approve more bonds there's a specific order in which

1:08:44schools are then rebuilt and so there's two on that top of that list for full rebuilds three actually where's marcus if he if if i'm wrong fairmont stage and valley view are the three on the top i don't know if i have them in the right order one two three but those are if

1:09:07if if more bonds were passed in terms of the available money that we do have we still have to sell those bonds but they've been approved it's for wilson and lake so if we needed more room for more el cerrito students and we needed another elementary school would we have to have a bond a new bond

1:09:27passed to get those types of facilities built i would say yes and no i mean i proceed i have come after some major bond energy and there is a massive list in order about what's to happen if we raise the next 100 million 200 300 400 and there's no additional new elementary

1:09:57school on that list right but if we but if we were to say we want to take an alvarado or a portala and do we have the money to fix that up then we would look internally and see what are the funds we have what would it cost etc and see what we could do there my hope though and my belief is that

1:10:16we're going to be okay with the three uh it's going to be interesting to see how many people also continue to choose the mandarin school which is another option there and then we have to also keep an eye on korematsu and el cerrito high there were some thoughts

1:10:39koromatsu was going to get all the way up to 800 this year but that didn't happen so we still have a little we have some wiggle room there as well thank you you're welcome yeah one of my questions i mean my council members we all think of very similar things and as many of them have

1:10:56been covered i just wanted to make sure that you knew the next agenda item is about adding 223 uh residences some two-bedroom and some three-bedroom uh in in el cerritos so my councilmember racial party okamoto's question is is something that you should be paying

1:11:13attention to because our population is changing um so i'm going to uh just like mr fideli pointed out that you brought something up you did say you would come back and talk to us about the sros in your presentation so i was just curious what where where you stand on the sros sure

1:11:29so um let me just back up for a minute and say our board asked us to initially look at a certain set of suspensions that were happening in our district for something called willful defiance which can be very subjective and so in doing so we really started investigating examining opening up this

1:11:54work of a positive school climate and so we wrote a positive school climate policy around what we wanted our schools to look like within that policy there were a number of folks who wanted us to look at the question of school resource officers and their contribution

1:12:11to a positive school climate or potentially not contribution what came out of that was the board asked us to make a recommendation or ask staff to make a recommendation to them about staffing levels of school resource officers by the end of this year so that's what we're working on

1:12:34so i've talked to mr hannan about making sure city managers and others are included in that conversation and i think we have also become clear on where at least city manager and certain city staff stand on that issue but that's what i have to do now with my team is work to

1:12:57survey as many of the community as possible and then make a set of recommendations [Music] that and i don't totally know what that's going to look like if that's a recommendation for one year three five etc but that's where we stand as of right now everything's kind of status

1:13:15quo and that's that's the work that we're charged with and i will repeat something you said communication is the key here so i hope you will continue that communication absolutely um my next one is a wild card that i'm sure you haven't thought of well i'm sure you've thought of it but

1:13:33councilmember purdue okamoto asked about new bonds and you certainly talked about how they're raising additional funds is something that is in the consideration how does the new federal tax code impact your thoughts on the next round of bond raising bonds that's a good question i personally

1:13:57haven't studied that as much so i don't have a great answer for you there um i'm happy to bring some folks back to to talk about that um it's much more of a intellectual conversation than one that we necessarily need to answer so okay thank you you're welcome okay

1:14:17superintendent i just have a couple of questions on number one i just want to let you know that i attended fairmont school back in the day and so what happens there really i have a soft spot and want to make sure that parents when they say that school is overcrowded

1:14:39i was able to take a tour last year of the school um and i saw deep overcrowding there um i understand there's uh looking at the chart there you said that it said there were 537 students is that correct i think that's that was the number that's there and usually at fairmont school what's

1:15:01they should have what 300 maybe or well you know i can't tell you what they should have but it's it is very thoroughly used and so tomorrow actually at our board meeting we have a contract on the agenda to approve architectural and engineering scoping of the senior center building to really

1:15:24understand what that would take to allow students to be in that space and see you know what we're going to be able to use that space for and we really hope it's not too much to get it ready uh structurally and legally for our students that's a big space that we hope

1:15:46and we thank you of course for that uh we'll take some pressure off okay i appreciate that and also um you know many of the the children that attend fairmont school are from richmond and are from uh richmond annex i know there's a school in the richmond annex area that's only half full

1:16:05can you give us an update on stage school sure so steed school which doesn't as much include the annex so to speak some of it but includes further i guess that would be kind of south and west towards the train tracks that way stage has about 300 students there's some space there we currently

1:16:35house some staff and some instructional staff there so they don't have as much space in the building they have some portables outside of the building and that's a school that's also struggled academically so we've got an eye on that school to see how we can help support it okay and

1:16:53last you know we have someone here from the senior community from the japanese american community who's here and she has met with me and she has concerns because she has a saturday class the sakura saturday class and i want to make sure that you personally speak with

1:17:16our our japanese american seniors and uh please take care of them they're stuck in the middle of this and they deserve an answer and i want to make sure that you work with them and make sure that they have a home sure we would be happy to do that and i'm happy to sit down and talk and yes i've seen

1:17:33some of your communications about this and we're working with our team to see how we can support okay i look forward to working with you and thank you for being here you're welcome thank you very much thank you okay we have a public hearing i think melanie's gonna use it

1:18:07we're convening a special municipal service corporation meeting board and staff community oh sorry that will follow the city council meeting oh my god [Applause] so it's this one which item are we on we're on six good evening good evening mayor quinto city council

1:18:47members my name is melanie mintz and i am the city's community development director and let me just find um i'm proud to be here tonight to recommend that the city council authorize the execution of a disposition and development agreement with holiday development mayfair and

1:19:05mayfair affordable for development of the mayfair block i will keep my presentation brief and from at a high level present a brief project overview including the timeline for that which that has brought us here review the highlights of the proposed disposition and development agreement

1:19:27including the projected schedule moving forward and touch upon the regulatory agreement and proposed financing timeline for the affordable housing component of the development project i'm joined tonight by a whole team of people more technical than me who have brought the dda to this point

1:19:43and the development team who will carry it forward uh karen tiedemann from gold pro club littmann is here she really guided the city through this process and did the heavy lifting on drafting the disposition and development agreement sky wood or varsity attorney also

1:19:56reviewed the dda and will be available for questions from the development team kevin brown is here representing holiday development smitha shasadri is here representing bridge housing uh ken lowney from lowney architecture is here and mark rhodes from rhodes planning group i've probably missed some

1:20:11but i do want to let you know that during question and answer i will be um and calling on others depending on your questions pat o'keefe with management partners i also want to say and one of the city's early redevelopment agency managers also provided valuable

1:20:25consulting services on development of the cda now this project has been a long time coming with the goal of developing the site to improve the city's fiscal well-being the area's attractiveness and communities quality of life the former redevelopment agency began acquiring parcels on the mayfair

1:20:47block in 1987.

1:20:49the final biggest and hardest property to acquire was acquired in 2009 the former rda over the years attempted within various constraints to catalyze development of the site but for one reason or another those projects never came to fruition in 2012 as you know the rda was

1:21:04dissolved under the dissolution statutes the city adopted and the department of finance approved a long-range property management plan in 2015 that required and authorized the successor agency to transfer the property to the city to dispose of the land for development

1:21:21which is the purpose for which it was acquired originally in 2016 the city conducted an rfq rfp process to solicit the most qualified team to develop the best project in accordance with the goals of the san pablo avenue specific plan as well as the redevelopment plan before

1:21:37that we were fortunate to receive numerous statements of qualifications and to have attracted the highly qualified and experienced team of holiday development bridge housing and lowney architecture who demonstrated that they had the experience vision and financial and

1:21:53organizational capacity to carry the project forward i'm really pleased to get to this point tonight in 2017 their proposed project received its design review board and planning commission approvals and finally we're here tonight for you to consider the proposed dda

1:22:09if you authorize execution of the dda the project moves with holiday and bridge at the helm into the financing and development construction and move-in phases the approved project will bring vibrancy to this long vacant lot next to the del norte bart station and in tandem

1:22:30with the del norte bart project streetscape and circulation improvements and other surrounding development will really help transform the del norte neighborhood as it's been envisioned for so long into a more walkable thriving urban neighborhood development of the site has long been

1:22:43identified as a needed catalyst also for future del norte development and really the entire north end the project includes two buildings the south building includes 156 market rate residential units eight about nine thousand square feet of neighborhood serving commercial space

1:23:00and the parking for both the south and north sites the project also features approximately twenty four thousand square feet of open space including public open space and private common open space in the form of both at-grade and podium podium courtyards private balconies and a porch facing

1:23:18cutting which you can see down on the in the bottom slide the kind of rust colored is facing cutting and that's kind of a common open space shared by the north building the public open space which i'll show a little bit in the next slide is a mew a pedestrian pathway between the two

1:23:38buildings and it'll be open from dawn to dusk and will feature art and the project will also have at least three public art installations one will be a large installation facing the bart station and another one will be in the public open space and uh last at the northeast

1:23:56corner of the building facing north there's just a couple more project renderings um you can see on the top left the retail uh space at the um in the north building facing san pablo avenue at the top right you can see um a lot kearney and san pablo avenue uh the bottom i'm sorry that's uh pretty

1:24:21and not um the bottom left is kearney and san pablo avenue and the bottom right is actually the entrance to that public open space that you'll see will be activated by the retail space and will be an entrance and start to shorten the feeling of that block which is something

1:24:37that the specific plan aim to do to improve walkability in the area again i referred to this uh the holiday development bridge housing lowney architecture and canada constructors who is also part of the team and they both have extent all of these uh qualified groups have extensive

1:24:57experience delivering projects in the east bay and tod sites so again i'm not sure if this is true for all of them but i think this is the furthest north that a holiday i'm not sure about bridge has come on the iit corridor so i'm thrilled to have them here in el cerrito

1:25:14um so on to the disposition and development agreement um kind of for the public uh what is a dda and it's a contract between a developer and a city when a when a city or public agency owns a piece of land and is transferring it um you know it's 100 pages long of

1:25:32course so i'm sure you all read the entire thing but i will just kind of touch the highlights and again if you have any questions about any of the details myself or karen will likely be able to answer that answer that um per the dissolution agreement uh the per dissolution statutes

1:25:50the city is required to collect fair market value for this property so we conducted an appraisal one thing i should mention is that out of this and the proceeds from this remember get divided amongst the 22 taxing entities as i said in the staff report we're negotiating in the compensation

1:26:09agreement to have the debt on the property first paid through the proceeds and the rest will be distributed to the 22 taxing entities um the scope of development really defers to the plans that were entitled by the planning commission and design review board if there's any

1:26:25changes to the plan's minor design changes it would go through our regular land use entitlement process it would not come to back to council through this dda financing proposals for both the affordable and market rate are included this really shows the sources of funding

1:26:41potentially available the uses of that funding in the overall projected budgets this is something that we will review as it gets refined and as both projects seek their funding for the affordable housing in particular there's a section in the dda i think it's at 4.3 that talks more about their

1:27:00financing it's much more complicated and you will see also that they both have independent time schedules and this is again because they both have really different financing resources available to them in many ways i think we talked about this when we awarded the nra and this is a real

1:27:16strength of the project because financial markets sometimes might favor market rate or affordable and so the chances that one of them can go um sooner rather than later is higher there's also a schedule that in exhibit e that is has lots of moving parts um so if you manage to get

1:27:36through that you can see that the developer will be looking to buy the market rate developer will be looking to buy the property within the next 12 months and before that they will be subdividing it the market rate developer again is buying the whole property and will be

1:27:49once it's subdivided transferring um the affordable development parcel to the affordable housing developer on that parcel that results a regulatory agreement for the affordable housing will be recorded that specifies how that will uh the the population that it will serve

1:28:08how long it will be an affordable housing development project at a minimum um and then of course um the ddas uh has lots of defaults remedies um and a lot of detail in those areas i think i just went through this um so this is again there's just going to be multiple phases so there's subdivision

1:28:27acquisition and then both of the independent parcels will go through their own um getting their own financing and development the market rate building is where the parking for both projects will be contained so when that's built is when that will be developed it's by

1:28:44everyone's estimations the market rate will go first again based on the timing of affordable housing financing applications and a reciprocal easement will be recorded on the property providing the affordable development with access to all the common amenities similarly and this is the first time you

1:29:04are hearing about this but several projects on san pablo avenue are going to be providing public open space and in consultation with the city attorney we have uh determined that those public open space on private development so privately owned public open space we

1:29:20will be recording a public access easement on those properties so this is my last slide and i think i also just referred to this so bridge housing we will be recording a regulatory agreement on that property which will restrict the rental of all of the units on that property to

1:29:39households not earning more than 60 of the area median income and prescribing the rents and how they'll work with us to annually recertify um the actual um levels of affordability will be determined based on the financing what kind of tax credits are received in

1:29:57others so it could be lower than 60 but no more than 60 uh so as i promised um i would keep it brief um hit the high points and all of us are available for questions thank you let's start on this side um rochelle party locomotive daily questions oh just if you could touch briefly on

1:30:32why uh no additional environmental impact report needs to be done um that's uh two parts so one this project was considered under the san pablo avenue specific plan where we already did do the programmatic environmental impact report so projects up to a certain point we're almost

1:30:50running out of those units are able to do a checklist that makes sure that the impacts of the project was evaluated under that program eir so that's one piece and this project went through that process the second piece as described in the staff report is that the

1:31:08drb was actually the body um that evaluated that to make sure that it was consistent and in approving and entitling the project um consider that environmental review again it's not exempt it's a word that some people look at but it was actually consistent the the the findings that

1:31:25were made and you can see that in the planning commission and in the design review board resolution the findings that were made demonstrated that it was consistent with the programmatic eir for the san pablo avenue specific plan which is one of the main tools that

1:31:39projects have been using thank you and can you describe more a little bit from the city's low-income housing trust fund so it's a small fund at this moment in time um the funds available in that the from my understanding and karen or scott can correct me if i'm wrong the state

1:31:59borrowed funds from the city to for education an education fund those funds are being paid back through the rops to the housing successor so the city borrowed from the from the redevelopment agency and so it's due back to them so there is i think our next our last

1:32:18payment is going to be coming up um out of that fund which is restricted to only be spent on creating new affordable housing units we have we gave a 300 000 loan to hana gardens next door so sometimes it's used in that pre-development phase to help a project get to when it can get its uh

1:32:36financing and that is we do anticipate um coming back with a proposal to also utilize that funding to assist the bridge project to move forward thank you um and then just finally can you describe a little bit about um what we will end up with once the sale is final in terms of revenue

1:33:10um so there's i can give you the the category so the um there's three pieces of that so when the sale is final um right now it's 3.35 million i'm sorry i didn't actually write the numbers we're about 1.8 million that we still owe on the uh property so that remaining

1:33:281.7 somebody could do it real quick um i think ours is about 400 and some 400 greg's probably done it about 435 000 uh dollars will be uh will directly come to the city as a result of the sale um at that time also the property will be um assessed right now it's in public

1:33:48ownership so it hasn't been generating tax revenue so that'll again go on the tax rolls based on that purchase price and then again after it's built it'll be reassessed again and again we will receive that one percent uh scott would know 22 percent of one percent of the tax

1:34:05that is uh collected from that property thank you as well as of course all the people living there and shopping locally and okay um janet abelson okay um i i just want to sort of review my understanding of of things and i'm not looking at the numbers but i think i have them

1:34:24fairly accurately um so what happened was that um two entities were selected to do the construction of this property and they were bridge and holiday bridge doing the affordable component and holiday doing the market rate so market rate literally means whatever

1:34:47the market is willing to pay yeah at its base yeah what basically that's what it means yeah i know that this developer is pretty committed to trying to deliver projects that is trying to look at ways to reduce construction costs for example potentially through modular construction

1:35:03in other ways but basically it does mean what the market is willing to pay okay and so the market rate i can best understand how they will be able to construct it in terms of finance uh the uh affordable portion i'm having a little more trouble uh feeling comfortable that it's really

1:35:30going to happen um can you comfort me can i comfort you i might have to call on bridge um so let me just point you to a couple places though so exhibit c1 in your document um talks about their financing proposal um i think also section 4.3 um that's market rate um 4.2 talks a lot

1:35:55about what we will be asking for one of the reasons that we selected these developers and bridge in particular for the question you're answering asking is um their financial capacity so we did have a consultant as a part of the rfq rfp process uh review their financials um

1:36:13and they're strong um so that's one piece that they could and really i think what we were looking for is can they get through the pre-development process obviously they've incurred a lot of costs to date and will prior to being able to get their construction financing

1:36:26um and then i'm i think i'm going to turn it over to them um you can see next door and the lonely gardens it took you know it takes time sometimes there's multiple cycles i'm asking the question actually at least yeah um and then i can kind of share the affordable housing

1:36:41world is changing and complex and we do have milestones in here where we assure that we keep working with them to apply and to keep putting it together and contra costa county we would love it if there was an affordable housing bond measure that would help a lot um san

1:36:56mateo county alameda county have those um matt so local matching funds as you recall during the affordable housing strategy is a challenge because it really does help them um you'll also see in here that in order to get this uh cap and trade funding which is what we got

1:37:10five million dollars for next door they have to have ninety percent of their uh financing secured so there's lots of pieces um smitha which related question that could be answered at the same time what level of affordability are we talking and we're talking uh no more

1:37:25than 60 percent of ami so that's low and very low income can translate that i think it's about 60 does somebody have that number do you yeah so it's about sixty thousand dollars uh at the top if it's at sixty um sixty thousand dollars or lower uh for an annual income

1:37:41for a family of for a family of four okay um and now i'm gonna turn it over to smitha from bridge to see if she can comfort you more if you want that just that basically to just touch uh briefly on how they will go about uh raising the funds for this project thank you

1:38:01good evening uh good evening council members my name is mata sashatri i'm senior vice president at bridge housing um so uh to actually reiterate what melanie just said uh it is really difficult for us to piece together all of our financing but bridge owns and operates about 105

1:38:19properties statewide so we really take on these challenges i think the exciting thing here is that housing has really been recognized as a priority at the state level um so there's a bond measure that we believe will be put on the ballot at the end of this year um it's been nearly ten years

1:38:40the last big one was prop 1c back in 2006 and uh that really helped create a lot of housing units um and you know just from everything that we've seen um the there's a real desire uh for for um you know everybody to make sure that uh the housing bond measure passes only

1:39:01because there's just such a big need uh just all across the strait so um more recently in 2016 as melanie mentioned there were three bond measures in alameda contra costa i'm sorry alameda um santa clara and san mateo counties and they all passed very successfully so we have you know a

1:39:22little over two billion dollars available for affordable housing the state is contemplating that this bond measure will be almost 4 million 4 billion dollars so that's really a very good source for us and if you look at our timeline we are actually planning our timeline

1:39:42around those state funds being available and once we get that uh the rest of it you know the tax credits are pretty much over the counter uh the same with the tax exam bonds does that mean we i mean one of the things i wonder about and i know that we got the funds on eden

1:39:59housing and we were one of the few in the um particular category that we got the uh cap and trade money from um are we uh in a good position to receive funds from that bond measure or how is it determined the cap and trade are you are you asking about the cap and trade

1:40:19funding source that is that's a different one i'm i was just referring to the one we already got um i believe i believe that's cap and trade for the eden housing project it's next door um but in this case um we i mean we had to compete for that as my point that's right and will we

1:40:37compete for this one or is it sort of a buy right so for the cap and trade it is a competition it's on an annual basis uh uh more recently it's been um the the applications come out in january and you receive the award in june and as we stated in our financing plan one of

1:40:56the requirements to do well in the competition is to have 90 of your financing already lined up so it's the last source of money that we will seek and so do you think i mean do we have a high likeliness of being of getting the money and can you tell me what what the reason is that you're

1:41:14saying that um so you know some of the things that work in favor of this project is that it's close to transit um so cap and trade it's all about the carbon emissions um density is really important so we will be looking at all of those things and then also its readiness to proceed

1:41:33so that's where the 90 of the financing comes in place if you're entitled if you have site control if you have 90 of the financing in place uh that just places us uh better in the competition i think i think that's making me feel good thank you okay uh paul fideli

1:41:55even though i hear that cap and trade program is very difficult to apply for and there really has to be a strong connection to transit yes uh that's right and uh you know they've this is the third round this year is the third round for cap and trade um we believe it will be around for the

1:42:14next several years um they do change the regulations but one of the biggest things is to be able to prove that the carbon footprint of the project is small and you know we have our parking ratio here is really small we'll be taking a look at that again so we'll be

1:42:30making sure that we have a really competitive application going in so what do you think the excuse me what do you think the footprint will be as currently proposing than if you change it as you're thinking you might want to do yeah it's a it's a really uh complicated calculation we actually use

1:42:49a consultant and everybody does everybody that goes in with an application uh it just has a a variety of uh variables and parameters so it's not something that we can calculate in-house but i think again uh for all of the reasons i mentioned you know having density uh being close to transit your

1:43:08parking ratio all of that goes into that metric thank you sure thank you and why don't you stay there because i think i have a question for you thank you very much um so i'm very excited about this uh it's been a long long long time and if i didn't show how old i was with

1:43:26the superintendent i grew up here and went into i've been to the mayfair market my dad used to take me there we saw the market torn down so it's been a long time since that lot has been there and it's been thinking about what it may mean going away having a life on the east coast and

1:43:41coming back and still dealing with this so thank you guys very much it's uh it's nice to see this finally happening and to have 67 new affordable units is a great thing to think about and the market rate is great we need all housing so it's really great i know bridge efforts in other places in the

1:43:58bay area so congratulations on that i want to have just a broad question and maybe you touched on it on the financial side um all the financial issues but i want to talk about we talk about incentives and bonuses and the parking [Music] to try to get more affordable housing

1:44:18for developers and i want to just ask you how your experience was in this case did it work out well the the combination of bonuses density the state keeps talking and legislation keeps moving with a variety of different recipes what didn't work and what does work to

1:44:35to get us more affordable housing um besides finances i'm actually going to have uh mark rhodes our consultant that uh i mean he just told me that he's he's been looking at state density bonus for like 20 plus years um so yeah he'll he'll definitely be able to shine the light on that thank

1:44:55you good evening mr mayor members of the council mark rhodes principal at rhodes planning group i don't have to belabor this i'm almost a 30-year city planner and an urban infill developer for the last 10 or so i'm a member of the california planning roundtable

1:45:14and what el cerrito has done over the last few years from a policy perspective followed up by its zoning and its sql work is something i've been holding up statewide amongst my peers and you know significant peers as a process that works rel really well because the city

1:45:33very carefully went through its policy development process it brought together its constituents it laid out a plan it implemented that plan at about the same time with the sequa document that was robust enough for these projects to essentially fly under so you um and your staff

1:45:54have put together a policy and implementation set of rules and standards that are among the best in the state of california from the standpoint of the process the process was remarkable we were able to entitle 223 units from the day we walked the application in the door to our last public hearing

1:46:18in eight or nine months it's unheard of in the bay area especially uh for the inner ring jurisdictions so staff is very attentive they're attentive to the needs of their constituents and community when issues were brought up they were given to us to address right away um and uh yeah it's a

1:46:41flawless process so good staff is the answer is what you're saying um good staff is always the place to start and you you don't have just good staff you have remarkable i agree i agree i better say that right um but also knowing what to expect having a plan that you can

1:46:57walk into and know right away how to deal with it's probably the most important thing in infield development and what can we expect and how long is it going to take us to get there and and what are the hurdles for getting there and you know if you're going to cast a

1:47:13shadow over here or you're going to have a building of additional height over here you know what is the city getting back and we can measure those trade-offs your urban design standards are very very clear very prescriptive and really lay out a project that you know working with ken's office we're

1:47:32you know checking boxes filling in the blanks and with their architectural vision you're going to have something i think that is precedent setting for a project of this nature thank you very much member lyman good evening i want to thank everyone for being here uh this is uh as

1:47:51councilmember fidelity just touched on this is and councilmember abelson um this is a monumental night for us to be moving forward on something that uh did commence with a lot of work during the specific at the san pablo avenue specific plan it's working we're seeing development uh occur in el

1:48:08cerrito and we certainly uh don't necessarily want to get in the way of that but i would not be doing my job if i did not highlight some of the aspects of this agreement and potentially seek for improvement in exhibit e the development schedule and i'm building on a lot of my fellow

1:48:28council members comments they took they i going last i appreciate it because i'd have to do less work um exhibit e which is the development schedule commencement of construction so this is on page e1 it says for the affordable developments the latter of nine months following the

1:48:49completion of construction of market rate or five years after the acquisition of affordable development parcel by the affordable developer um it implies that that affordable is going to follow the market rate and that's not because we value market rate more it it's because

1:49:08of some of the difficulties that surround the funding for the affordable parcels but also potentially the um the market rate has to do some of the groundwork so to speak um clean clearing the site building the parking and some other things can you expand on that concept that that the

1:49:28affordable could actually go in front under certain circumstances or portions of the affordable could go in front of the market rate but there is certain components of the market rate that have to get done in order for the affordable to be built um yes i can uh go into that and if more

1:49:42is needed i can ask some of the partners so we tried to create a schedule at first that contemplated uh either one going first and it became a little bit of a puzzle that became a really big exercise and when we paused we realized that that was unlikely to happen so we

1:49:59needed to create the flexibility but to actually try to map out both was not working well so we took the market rate going first there's a couple things to remember the market rate development and market rate developer is buying the whole parcel um and so the affordable the the affordable parcel

1:50:16won't exist in in the developers hands until they've done that um in the event so let's start with that and as you said the project includes some shared components so the public open space i believe the subdivision still has to occur but the public open space is going to be on the market rate

1:50:34parcel with a reciprocal access easement or an easement and the parking is on that because the affordable housing development is all going to be built depending if they go modular but there's no podium so it's essentially i believe a wood frame building whereas there's a podium on the market

1:50:51rate so that is where the parking the two levels of parking is going to be provided um in the event um that's good to talk about in the event that the affordable housing went first we would have to solve that parking issue one of the ways to solve it for example would be maybe

1:51:04that they park on the market rate parcel until uh the rest of it's built so we did contemplate what happens if the market you know the market rate developer has an incentive to get the affordable uh project built of course because it's a part of their whole community so we think there's a real

1:51:20synergy but that because the market rate was going to be going likely going to be going first and again holiday could talk more about their financing um plan and proposal if you'd like but it does not preclude other things from happening we would have to deal with the the parking issue and the

1:51:37public open space issue and that's something that i don't think that the affordable housing financing would easily expand to accommodate more costs um so that's part of the logic great thank you um the term of the agreement of the of the dda the disposition agreement

1:51:55um it says the this agreement shall commence on the effective date and end on the earliest of the first phase the date that certificate of completion is issued for the second phase the certificate of completion is issued so that that's the term of the dda are there any provisions in the dda

1:52:16that that need to survive this this is in relationship to the term of the regulatory agreement which i'll get to the term of the regulatory agreement in a minute but the the are there any terms of the disposition agreement that should survive have survivability past this physical

1:52:39term i'm sorry um i will answer short briefly and see if karen wants to add anything but like you said and just for everyone else's information the this dda expires when both of those projects receive their basically certificate certificate of occupancy and have met all their conditions the

1:52:55regulatory agreement however is recorded on the title of the affordable parcel so that will last for 55 additional years um the dda is also recorded on the title so if anything were to occur that they weren't built people would know this if anybody were to try to acquire it the

1:53:11dda's obligations would be there um and so mrs you can you can address the underlying concern that i have the regulatory agreement it does have a life of 55 years which by definition hopefully this certificate of completion will be much sooner than 55 years so therefore the the regulatory

1:53:35agreement will survive much past the dda but in the regulatory agreement it does make reference to the dda in two locations i did search it and there's only two locations and so potentially maybe eliminating that cross-reference will eliminate part of my concern

1:53:53are there terms in the dda that i'll phrase since they're standing there i'll phrase the question differently are there terms in the dda that we should just lift wholesale and put into the regulatory agreement to avoid any of this cross-reference and therefore concerns

1:54:09about terms that in the dda that should survive thank you uh karen tiedemann goldberg and litman special counsel to the city so an answer to your question i would say the short answer is no we essentially imported into the regulatory agreement any of the provisions that we wanted to survive

1:54:29with regard to the affordable housing and those are mainly requirements regarding management and maintenance of the project so those are all in the regulatory agreement and i'll just note the regulatory agreement has a term of 55 years that commences when the certificate of occupancy is

1:54:47issued for the affordable development so you will get a full 55 years of affordability on the project so we can eliminate the cross-references to the dda in the regulatory agreement because it will be irrelevant when the regulatory agreement really becomes effective

1:55:04um and just as a matter of uh nitpickiness um the place where the 55 years is is identified is actually in the definitions as opposed to the the section that's called term if that could be just adjusted at some point that would be wonderful and also on the nitpicky scale um

1:55:29section 5.3 this is an opportunity for miss mintz to stand up i think and answer there is a blank in section 5.3 and it has to do with vehicle spaces and i just was hoping that you could make sure that people know that we really don't approve things with blanks usually

1:55:45but there is a reason why there is a blank that's right so you're referring to the number of parking spaces allocated to each project the market rate component and the below market rate component i spoke with the developer again today so in our entitlement process we

1:55:59reviewed the total the totality of the number of units and so the 0.65 parking spaces per unit is distributed from a land use entitlement standpoint across all projects the the entire project i think you just heard smith from bridge refer to that they're still working out

1:56:16some of the parking it's possible that different financing requirements are going to require a different ratio and so i think both the developers are trying to figure out how much needs to be allocated to each of their projects we will be receiving a developer agreement prior to the close

1:56:30of escrow in which that will be defined because they will be defining that again from this i don't from the city's standpoint um again the project is looked at as one from a land use standpoint so it's not quite as critical but from the operations of both projects i think from their developer

1:56:47agreement it becomes more important um one of the things that i found in here that is uh obviously i see on a daily basis is references to the department of industrial relations it's in uh the prevailing wage section 7.8 of the dda and and i wanted to around this and i

1:57:08want to thank the union for coming out and is there a representative from canon here i understand uh from doing a little bit of research today that canon is a signatory to some of the unions is that correct i wanted to get make sure that that got into the record

1:57:25that uh that we are uh actually moving forward with uh do you have a what i would i would consider a reputable or at least a um [Music] upstanding partner in your construction side um but the prevailing wage component is associated with the affordable construction the affordable housing

1:57:49units which is associated with and and and i i read it in here somewhere and i was searching for where it was so i could read it out tonight um there were some really eloquent words in here somewhere that said to the effect that um el cerrito values affordable housing

1:58:04and in in consideration for our selling the property we are bringing forward 67 units and and it's important that we do that but it's the 67 units that are affordable and it's the 67 units that will have the afford affordable sorry the prevailing wage component assigned

1:58:25to it the uh prevailing wage section is on page 24 of the dda and it talks about that uh if required by applicable law the affordable developer must pay and will cause the contractor and subconscious contractors to pay prevailing wages and that has to do with the public funding um that will

1:58:41be received by the affordable housing project and then uh i wouldn't be a numbers geek if i didn't point out that on c1 7c1 yep exhibit c1 which is the funding for the affordable housing uh it states that the financing for 68 unit mayfair affordable housing development

1:59:0367 that that should be obviously 67.

1:59:07and uh thank you very much thank you okay cheryl do we have any speakers we have one speaker um so the public hearing is open and uh jacob adiate i'm pardon me if i watched your name that's pretty good actually thank you good evening mayor and members of the board thank you

1:59:36for allowing me to speak tonight my name is jacob battiardi lead field representative for the carpenters union and representing approximately 36 000 men and women in the trade many of which will have an opportunity to work on the site first i'd just like to commend the

1:59:48staff as well as the development team on creating an exceptional project designing it in a way that will add life to a major transit hub here in the city of el cerrito the carbon union members in el cerrito and the surrounding barriers strongly support the mayfair

2:00:03mixed use and affordable development which will create many union jobs for our members in this community uh through the use of canada constructure as a signatory general contractor these jobs will pay living wages and be a gateway for local apprentices including men

2:00:17women and minorities from our local community begin a career in construction allowing them to live where they work furthermore we'll provide 156 market rate units and 67 affordable units for individuals who can be long-term el cerrito residents or newcomers who are

2:00:31looking to make el cerrito their home just as many others have done from generations before the approximate 8 900 square foot of commercial space will bring new businesses generating tax revenue for this city all while creating a sense of community in the el cerrito del norte station area

2:00:48to sum it all up this development just makes sense it's smart development from a developer who's really taking in account the needs of the community the bay area as well as labor where we see there's it's a well-developed well-rounded project which creates a win for everybody

2:01:04so in saying that the carpenter's unit again are in full support of this development and would ask for your continued support by approving the staff recommendations tonight thank you thank you okay that's it that's it okay let's bring it back here move to close the

2:01:19public hearing second okay there's a move by lyman second by pardo okimoto all in favor unanimous 5-0 so let's bring this back here um paul do you want to discuss uh anything else you have any questions i'm no i'm i'm just uh excited to take bart and to walk around

2:01:58this unit and have the hotel across the street from this and walk to safeway and maybe even go to jack-in-the-box and look at you guys build this place so uh thank you very much i'm very excited and i'm gonna give more detail to the actual uh as councilman lymon did the the details but

2:02:20we'll be talking to you and keeping a good relationship going over the years thank you okay jim i am excessively excited about this building these buildings and i'm particularly warmed by the last comment i don't know where that speaker went there you are this project has for me been a very very

2:02:42long time in coming and i know how much work that it has taken and i'm going to start out by thanking scott hannon um because scott you're the one without you this would not have happened yes it would not have and so i really do thank you i know but um and and we had some false starts

2:03:07and thank you for recognizing a false start as such and that's i think how we actually got here today but we've also had a great team of people both on our council and in our partners and we've heard our partners speak here tonight and i would like to thank all of

2:03:26you including the carpenters and i'm really excited about this project and the potential it has for improving the lives of people who live here who will live here here who are not even not even yet born who will live here i i think it's all about the kind of future that personally i want to see in

2:03:53our town where people can get around without a car where they can travel by bart they can travel by bus they can if they get on bart they can go to amtrak they can go anywhere or they can go to several airports i mean this is a happening place that way and i think this project is doing an

2:04:17excellent job of pulling it all together and eliminating the things that i think detract from that kind of a solution and by that i'm referring to the fact that the parking requirement is low and other such factors and i'd like to thank my fellow council members

2:04:38for being um in support of this project i hope i think you are um and so i'm ready to uh move the show if everybody else is but imagine you want to say something um i i'd also like to add that um i'm very impressed with the 67 affordable 157 market rate that's a

2:05:01pretty good ratio there of affordable housing i know that's something that we're looking at all over the bay area and beyond and i think that el cerrito is definitely doing their part in providing affordable housing and as a gentleman mentor mentioned you know housing where people that are building

2:05:21this building can live that will be affordable for them um i think that's an excellent thing you know there's too many people that are stuck in their cars every day commuting hours and hours to get into the bay area to go to work and so we'll have you know 157 plus 67

2:05:42families that will have a little bit easier time hopefully getting from a to b i'm also very excited about the work that will be created from this project and hopefully our union members will have work for for many years it looks like working on this project and um so i'm excited about

2:06:04that as well um and i just think overall it will be a way to to make the city uh look more beautiful i mean those that that drawing versus what you see there now is just this blank you know parking lot um you know i'm imagining it you know 10-15 years here with some trees growing

2:06:27and you know that public space that everyone will be able to enjoy and businesses in place and it's really going to make the entire area a better place so i'm very much looking forward to it um and i missed him and i've got a technical question do the two edits that

2:06:47i asked for do i need do we need to have those as part of the motion or they're considered administrative uh they're considered administrative and the resolution you have authorizes the city manager is the signatory to make changes so we will make those excellent

2:07:01i i want to echo the words of my fellow council members and we stand today on the shoulders of because this parcel took so long to consolidate and we did as council member mabelson talked about we did have some um interesting offers and proposals on this project in

2:07:21an earlier time it has taken many many years since we stand on the hard work of many people who've gone before us we stand on the shoulders of the the council that approved the samsung little avenue specific plan but this this is the biggest project that we've had in some time and it is

2:07:41glorious to see it come forward i can tell you that um you know our members of the design review board and the planning commission are very we're very excited to work with you guys uh and so it's nice to have such successful and and willing partners um that bring on an excellent company

2:08:00like the canon to help that's a signatory to the labor unions so that we do meet the needs of our of our community while meeting the needs of our future residents by building both affordable and uh market rate housing so uh with that i'll turn it over to the mayor

2:08:19but i would respectfully ask that because council member abelson has been on this longest working the hardest that she make the motion you know one thing i wanted to mention growing up here in el cerrito i was in high school when uh they tore down that building and uh i'm 56 now so uh we've

2:08:40been waiting a very long time now to uh finally put something beautiful up there for the north side to be proud of so uh so why i echo what my partners here and the council say and uh i like for uh uh janet abelson to make the motion i'm looking for the motion let's see here

2:08:59um so the back of the staff you i can pass mine down that would be great you've got the same one yeah i too went to the mayfair market when i was a student i went grocery shopping there all the time um let's see here maybe it can come back and it's retail underneath

2:09:20[Music] you have another one there uh [Music] um it's the it's the beginning of the no go back one page it's the top of the page thanks get it right at the top okay i move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito otherwise known as the city authorizing

2:09:44execution of a disposition and development agreement with hd mayfair limited and mayfair affordable limited and making findings and approvals pursuant to the california government code section 52201 in connection with dispatch with the disposition this position

2:10:05of that certain property located at eleven hundred eleven thousand six hundred and eleven thousand six ninety san pablo avenue and 1925 kearney second okay we have a motion by ableston second by greg lyman all in favor aye hi unanimous 5-0 congratulations [Applause]

2:10:37policy matters temporary modular buildings for senior services lease agreement with mobile modular and i'm gonna ask everybody's leaving but we still have to do the same thing again in like 10 minutes how do you know we're going to vote yes on that good evening

2:11:08good evening mayor my name is yvette ortiz the city's public works director tonight also here to answer questions on this item are chris jones the recreation director and janet bilbus our senior services supervisor at the back of the room tonight staff is requesting that council

2:11:25adopt a resolution taking several actions related to leasing of temporary modular buildings for senior services as listed in the agenda bill and i'll list them later on in my presentation just to give you some background this past may the west contra costa unified school district unexpectedly

2:11:44terminated the lease of the el cerrito open house senior center located at 6500 stockton avenue as you know and as was discussed earlier during the presentation by the school district superintendent the center has has been at its current location for over 50 years

2:12:01and the city must now vacate the site by june 30th of this year city staff investigated various options available to maintain the city's senior services given in the limited time frame and limited city funding in october the city council directed staff to proceed with accommodating

2:12:20senior services at two facilities a temporary modular facility at 109.40 san pablo avenue which is the site of the temporary city hall back in 2006 to 2008 just north of the public safety building and also a permanent facility on the ground floor of the hanna gardens

2:12:39affordable housing development just next to city hall the the modular buildings would provide space similar in size to the current senior center and the garden space consisting of two thousand square feet would provide the city an opportunity to provide enhanced programming for seniors

2:12:59in november city staff notified the committee on aging regarding council's direction and soon after held a public meeting at the senior center to unveil the plans and get feedback on the two options over 60 seniors attended they were very supportive of the concepts and believed that the city was

2:13:21ensuring continuity of programs and services for seniors in terms of the temporary facility at the 109 for zero san pablo avenue site the city contacted city staff contacted and researched modular building companies in the bay area that would be able to provide adequate

2:13:43facilities including office spaces dining room area and flexible programming spaces at the same time within a tight time frame and be able to work with city staff on designing the the site layout and interior layout mobile modular submitted a proposal that is consistent with the city's needs for

2:14:04senior services including two modular buildings totaling 5760 square feet some decks stairs steps and rails and ramps as well as some select furnishings and equipment based on their responsiveness experience with the city of el cerrito temporary city hall delivery schedule and comparative price

2:14:25city staff believes that mobile modular best meets the interest of the city to continue providing senior services without interruption so tonight staff is requesting that city council authorize a city manager to execute a lease agreement modular for one-time charges of one

2:14:41hundred and three thousand eight hundred dollars and monthly rent charges of up to ten thousand for a sixty month term we're also asking the council to prove a contingency amount of 10 000 for charges related to the installation and delivery by mobile modular to account for

2:14:59site conditions and also a wave all city-related fees for planning approvals and building permits the schedule for delivery and installations and modular buildings is nine weeks after execution of the lease which we hope to do um sometime next week pending your approval

2:15:15and so this would provide um and so the buildings would likely be installed in mid to late april providing the city for approximately two months to make all the site connections and prepare the buildings to be fully operational for move-in by the end of june in terms of financial considerations for

2:15:37this fiscal year the expenses related to the mobile modular lease would amount to approximately six ninety six thousand dollars that includes the delivery charges and then three months of rent we're still refining the city staff is still refining the other cost for

2:15:54utility hookups parking lot striping communications and other equipment that will be needed and will be coming back to council with those numbers this concludes my presentation at this time and again i'm here to answer any questions that you may have okay thank you if i could just add

2:16:17i think a vet is reluctant to say this but i i will i will um it is it's our hope to continue to refine these costs and bring some of them down we're doing everything we can we basically have as you might imagine all hands on deck working on this and we're trying

2:16:36to bring as much of this as possible in-house without disrupting kind of everything else going on so we're hoping those cost estimates are high so at this point that's why we're not asking for a supplemental appropriation we are all my outside goal is to bring this in within this year's

2:16:56fiscal year budget so i'm not committing 100 to that but that's our goal we will come back at mid-year when we do our budget and report out to see if we're still on target but based on our first six months projections i'm i'm hopeful but either during mid-year or during

2:17:15budget we're trying to move a little bit slower on some hiring holding off on some purchases doing a few things here and there and mostly our staff is stuff stepping up and trying to take on a lot of the roles and particularly of that um dropping kind of other things they're

2:17:33working on to try to make this a top priority because it's our project so again we're not i'm not yet promising but my hope is that when we bring you the the final bill for all of this it will be much less i mean it'll be less and hopefully we will do it within the budget we already

2:17:54have for this fiscal year which would be amazing so i just wanted to add that okay thank you let's start with questions janet i guess the main question or i have two questions one is um what do is there some planning done around what if we don't make it by uh june 30th

2:18:18just in case i hope i mean i'm hoping that will be not needed but do we have some just in case planning for that i would defer to chris but i but i think based on our conversations one we don't think that's going to be happen but if we did we would probably rely on the

2:18:35community center okay and um the other um what was my other question i forgot what my other question is at this point so i'll just move on okay got i don't have any questions okay paul fideli um yeah i'm um i'm i'm just impressed by what the city has done yvette and chris

2:19:00i've heard of you guys exploring the whole city two and three times looking for space and and with all the big big projects that we have to do this is kind of dropped down on to us in a difficult time and a difficult price tag so thank you scott for that goal that you're setting here um

2:19:22i i want uh i would i think i'm going to follow up on what janet was just asking if in fact we don't make the deadline it's not just like the swimming pool that will be closed there will be a place for seniors to go and do do things is that right it will be i am chris jones city's recreation

2:19:46director i think you know we have a number of options that we could explore because we're also heading into our summer camp program we could we're utilizing the community center and prospect sierra middle school for our summer camp and so perhaps we could approach prospects here

2:20:07about using more space so that the community center is available to house senior programming temporarily we could also look at our clubhouses which when we transitioned to summer they're no longer being used for child care and we would be able to host programming there as well

2:20:27so it's a matter of reaching out and educating them too on the timetable and how we're doing yeah but this is why um we need to approve the the lease this evening so that we can we can meet the timeline because that's the the time sensitive aspect of all this my last question is

2:20:45um we had talked and i know the effort was to try to get some flexibility in a little bit longer time maybe a year to find a better place you think the cost would have been lower had we had that time that additional time i think it depends how much more time i mean certainly if

2:21:04if there was uh two to three years maybe we could have explored uh revenue opportunities to either build or renovate a permanent solution one year what but one year i mean it was all that we could do really to go around town and look at everything and then come up with a plan that we

2:21:26could execute by the deadline thank you i remembered my other question it was when i looked at the various documents related to this item i noticed five years like we're running the portables for five years we have a an agreement with um next door for um a dollar a year for five years what

2:21:50why five years and and is this a the plan that assumes that we get out of the portables into a better solution well five years we're still working on the lease agreement with uh eden housing and they've indicated a willingness to extend beyond five years and with the

2:22:09portables um you know we're running the parks and recreation facilities master plan at the same time and seeing [Music] how much of a priority space for adult programming will be in the future and so at the end of five years or in five years we have the opportunity to explore

2:22:32permanent solutions or to purchase the portables okay that we've been leasing for the past five years okay thank you okay councilmember lyman yeah um it's unfortunate that all the people who um were against us extending our lease that at uh at portland aren't here tonight uh so

2:22:55they could help us do the math um but as far as i can tell 60 months times 10 000 a month is 600 000 and a hundred thousand for the portables and another three hundred thousand for uh site preparation is a million dollars um so this is an unfortunate expenditure

2:23:13that we're being essentially forced to do in a um in a less than ideal situation manner more haphazard than anything else is really unfortunate um the you just talked about the 60-month lease and the buyout if at some point earlier we realized that we are not going to be

2:23:34in a position to move to a different portable permanent solution can we buy out at an earlier time is is or we have to get to the end of the 60 months to do the acquisition i've talked to mobile modular about that option and they did say right now that options not on the table but

2:23:55because they're so such high demand for the moba the modular buildings but down the line in a few years we can always approach them and figure out the purchasing terms great thank you okay let's go to public comment howdy gowdy good evening mayor and council members

2:24:20my name is howdy gowdy so i'm totally sympathize with the short timeline and recognize that this is really the only option and i also recognize that everyone's really focused on what's most important which is the continuity of services and i think it's you know

2:24:38laudable what has been done to assure that that can go forward but that said i just i feel compelled to you know recognize what is happening here and i think you know greg pointed out with you're basically talking about an investment of a million dollars over five years

2:24:57um it's it's really regrettable that that much money has to be spent for what it are basically you know very modest and not very inspiring facilities and and so i mean actually one of the most alarming things i heard tonight is just the idea that we would buy these out

2:25:18after five years it's like i don't think we should consider modular portable buildings the end you know place that we want to be for a senior center um especially having just you know looked at you know the high quality of constructing construction we're going to

2:25:37see you know on the mayfair site it's it's really quite sad that we would be you know accepting that our seniors are going to have you know this kind of modular construction in perpetuity so i really encourage you to look at this as a very temporary step and develop an

2:25:59escape or you know exit strategy rather than just being lulled into a sense of complacency that the problem has been solved and you can go on to something else so um you know my observation is just on the finances that the amount of money that's being spent on a monthly annual basis is

2:26:22equivalent to you know the interest in principal payments on a three million three plus million dollar loan which could build a five 000 square foot building at high quality like the 500 per square foot they're doing at mayfair so you know that's where we should be thinking we shouldn't

2:26:42be pouring this money and at the end of five years we have a dilapidated trailer that they'll let us buy because they don't want it back so um please we need to go beyond this i understand the temporary need but it needs to be better thanks thank you shelf that's it that's it okay we'll

2:27:02bring it back to the council michelle would you like to yes i i think that it's very unfortunate as well that we're in this situation and um and i don't think it's a permanent solution either i think what our our seniors and beyond our seniors just our community in general need better

2:27:24facilities to um to have these types of meetings in and one of the things i think is positive is it's made us rethink the senior center and hopefully when we do rebuild it we'll be able to rebuild it better and in a way where more community members can be involved

2:27:47and you know mixing the age groups a little bit more i think is a is also a something that we should look at long term and bringing more people into the fold so um i'm i'm in support of this resolution because we we need to do something we need to make sure that we continue to

2:28:08take care of the people in our community and that they have places to go on a daily basis and continue to have their connection to the community because if nothing else it's it's vital to a person's health to be connected to other people so i am definitely going to be voting in favor

2:28:28of this today and we'll hear from the other council members okay council member lyman i certainly stand by the public comments this is not my not my ideal solution i'd much rather have the funding in place to you know either acquire or build a better more permanent solution in el cerrito

2:28:55okay did you make a comment already or do you want to well yes yeah just i i believe seniors deserve the best we can provide them and under the circumstances our city responded when needed and this is not a permanent solution we will continue to look for the best we can provide in the

2:29:12future council member abelson well i agree with what was said about this is not an ideal solution i commend staff for finding this solution it actually is an improvement over the existing condition in terms of square feet and we will be bringing services to what will be our

2:29:33new population in el cerrito at next door at the eden project and um so we'll be able to bet you know incr by using the space there and it will be very close to the the sp the other space so i think that um while the facilities are not ideal and why while i would like to see us work as

2:29:57quickly as we can to move on to a better solution i i i do commend staff for the work that you did in making this happen i'm looking at various ones i see in this room who i i suspect of being highly responsible for it so thank you um and i'd be happy to make a motion

2:30:18okay okay i move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with mobile modular for leasing of temporary modular buildings for senior services with one-time charges of 103 800 dollars and monthly rent charges of

2:30:40up to ten thousand dollars for a 60 month term approving a contingency amount of ten thousand dollars for delivery and installation charges by mobile modular and waiving all city-related fees for planning approvals and building permits a second okay uh moved by abelson second

2:31:01by arduino all in favor aye it's unanimous five zero city council local and regional land liaison assignments yeah i'll just report quickly that i as your representative to the waste authority we had a meeting all the city managers from the various cities were there

2:31:29city manager hannah and his peers did a wonderful job working out a solution that looks like it will solve um the jpa and and uh we're continuing to work through the uh details of it but uh the the general outline um that the city managers proposed is gonna be adopted

2:31:56and it looks like we will have an ongoing joint power authority around recycling in west county so i don't know if mr hannan wants to add anything okay okay thank you michelle yes i have a report back from the jpa of gilman fields so the jpa has received the money from el cerrito that

2:32:23we had approved and they have been working on replacing or putting in a pad and replacing the fields of the soccer fields and that is under construction and should be done by the third week of february and opening on saturday march 3rd so that's really good news that that's

2:32:47all moving forward and then in november the city of berkeley passed an infrastructure bond and so there will be some work on possible bathrooms at the northern end of the field and i clarified that will not be at the southern end of the field where they did not receive grant money from

2:33:11the state so but at least there will be some additional bathroom work there done and we also saw some really interesting um still in progress um that maybe janet would know more about um uh the gilman interchange that caltrans will be doing no i don't know oh okay yeah it's it looked really

2:33:33interesting how they're going to try to kind of clean up that area and make it easier to get on and off the freeway and also how that will affect the fields right there as well as the extension of the bay trail so those are things to come okay uh councilmember abelson i i just

2:33:51have a couple all uh trying to do them quickly uh one is i attended my first meeting as liaison of the parks and rec commission and um the main thing i would talk about would be to say that they worked on their work plan and they had an update on the facility's

2:34:13master plan and [Music] i also attended the meeting of wic tac where we had elections and um so i was elected for a new term as ccta rep for west county congratulations and um for two years and um the chair um went to cecilia valdez and the vice chair went to chris kelly

2:34:45from uh hercules and uh cecilia is from san pablo and so our leadership is spread out our other ccta rep is from richmond and it's tom but but he's he's continuing on and um so um we worked on a number of items um i think the uh trying to think if any of them um we also had an ad what we're calling

2:35:17an ad hoc meeting uh on the um topic of i-80 and our and concerns that we have about the functioning of the new system the uh integrated waste indicate integrated corridor management system um and um so we're going to be meeting with caltrans and others about that

2:35:41and hopefully make see some improvements in that and that includes san pablo avenue so stay tuned for news okay good so our our next regularly scheduled city council meeting is tuesday march 6 2018 at 7 pm in the city council chambers a special city council meeting is

2:36:05scheduled on february 20th 2018 for the sole purpose of conducting board and commission candidate interviews so we are adjourned