Special City Council Meeting and Regular City Council Meeting August 21, 2018

0:04:47good evening may we have recalled our roll call please councilmember abelson here councilmember fideli here councilmember lyman president mayor pro tem pardue okamoto president mayor quinto here please join me for the pledge of allegiance observation a moment of

0:05:15silence of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty good evening everyone we met at 6 30 and we are in our interview process for boards and commissions and i'd like to announce that richard fernandez and may papito

0:05:51have joined our arts uh and culture uh commission so uh congratulations to both of them she said she came here oh can you hear me okay okay thank you so again i want to mention that uh we have decided to choose richard fernandez and ame papito for the arts and culture commission

0:06:23council staff and communication uh we'll start uh with council member paul fideli none tonight okay council member abelson i have a few things if i can get close enough to my um can you hear me yeah can you hear me now volume is up at the highest oh how's this is that better

0:06:57okay um i attended the [Music] advanced leadership workshop of the league of california cities in at the end of june and that was on city finances and all the myriad details about what are important and i also attended the east bay division meeting of the league of california

0:07:26cities on july 26th we talked about and had presenters on the topic of the november ballot which is still upon us let's see here i also uh let's see that's the same thing um i also attended the committee on aging meeting of the city of el cerrito just this last week

0:08:00and we said goodbye at least that was the last meeting she of that group that she would be coming to we said goodbye to janet bilbus the outgoing leader of the senior services and we're really going to miss her she's done a fantastic job for a number of years in that role and i

0:08:26understand that plans are underway if not completed for finding somebody to try and step into her very worthwhile steps and we celebrated with cake and that's all i have no no report tonight thank you yes this last week uh we had the honor and the privilege of attending the ribbon cutting where the

0:09:00mayor was able to cut the ribbon for our new 24-hour fitness here in el cerrito and i have already signed up and i went to a yoga class this morning and it was fantastic and so i encourage all of you to support one of our local businesses and meet some local community members

0:09:21also i attended a save the alta bates meeting which is led by mayor eragine of berkeley and this last time we are coming a little bit closer to having a health impact study that the uc berkeley has done for us and the city council here has put money into and is under review right now and will be

0:09:47coming out shortly to see how it's going to the potential closure would affect the our east bay region here also we are continuing to fight to keep the hospital open join us in a stroller brigade that we'll be having um at the solano stroll a baby is not required just bring your

0:10:13stroller or just bring your tennis shoes we're all going to wear red and we will be meeting at fresno avenue and solano at 9 00 a.m on sunday september 9th and we will you know fight together for all those babies that have been born at ulta bates i bet half of you here either

0:10:34were born at alta bates or had a baby there it's the birthplace of the east bay so we're continuing to fight it to save it thank you so on earlier in the month i attended the contra costa mayor's conference and we had the chair of the american medical association speak on

0:10:54the epidemic that we have with opiate abuse and it was an eye-opening experience to hear that uh ground zero is in uh uh is happening here in contra costa in our wealthy suburbs which includes el cerrito so i asked the chair of the maa to speak here at our council at a future

0:11:16date i also attended with my colleagues here the 24-hour fitness super sport opening and i congratulate uh the new general manager there joe beckles and it was a a fun uh event to see uh uh i was actually at the first opening back and it was either the late 1960s or early 1970s when that mall

0:11:42opened and i was like in second grade and there used to be a movie theater there besides uh the old safeway there so to see uh uh the transformation of a new gym there we've been waiting one many many years for this so i'm excited i hope everyone joins it's our first gym

0:12:00that we've had here in 101 years so uh i'm sure it will be packed so uh again i congratulate everyone and this will be uh fantastic for the surrounding uh commercial area there who have been waiting and waiting to have a new tenant there and it's about time that we have a

0:12:22new life there in that old mall and i and congratulate everyone who was involved in making sure they get um that they set up shop here and open in el cerrito um also i'd like to congratulate everyone who participated at el cerritos national night out we had over 40

0:12:43neighborhood parties there and i congratulate all of our neighborhoods who participated it was an amazing thing i ran into folks i haven't seen in many many years from retired judges to present judges to classmates that i haven't seen since uh high school so it was uh great to be in

0:13:05a different area that i haven't been to yet so again uh congratulations to the residents of el cerrito yes um yeah if i can i just wanted a second what a couple of our council members have said about the 24-hour fitness i can i go back even farther than gabe the mayor

0:13:25in in el cerrito here when it was a asian-owned food farm a supermarket and my dad used to take me there as a little kid and then safeway and then the theater and i mean i think safeway then but for so long it's been kind of the symbol of stagnation in el cerrito and whether

0:13:43over the past few years most of us remember an empty lot and not a lot of stuff happening there and now it's the symbol of growth in el cerrito and san pablo avenue coming back to life which is very exciting and if you hadn't noticed cvs even got a new sign the week that 24-hour fitness

0:13:59opened so there's some services for else readings and that's good news thank you okay let's go to oral communications from the public all persons wishing to speak please sign up with the city clerk remarks are typically limited to three minutes per person the mayor may reduce the time per

0:14:21speaker depending on the number of speakers please kindly state your name and your residence for the record and comments regarding non-agenda presentation and consent calendar items will be heard first individuals wishing to comment on any closed session scheduled after the

0:14:37regular meeting may do so during this public comment period or after formal announcement of the closed session the first excuse me the first three speakers are cordell hindler d d lum and audrey goldie williams so so ready so good evening mayor quinto council members i am cordell handler

0:15:00richmond so there will be a west county mayor's meeting uh this coming thursday which i will be in attendance so i just want to put that on record too so the second thing is i was looking at the minutes from the the last meeting which you had on last month on the 17th

0:15:15of july one of the things that i forgot to mention was um i have keep seeing el cerrito police coming in through my area and not only my area but certain parts of the southern district and i find this is this is unacceptable we've had incidents like this before us and i said

0:15:32not again this is keep happening in my area and i'm like i mean this is this is not helping i say that's one then number two is um i have a future agenda request here it is the internship i have i have seen this ec stars uh presentation like a couple of times i find them very fascinating so

0:15:52this will be put on for next month's agenda and which i will be speaking to that and and i've been saying this if you if i said it before upstairs i'll say it down here we need young people young people can bring a whole lot of perspective to these committees we need them because

0:16:07they can provide a lot of perspective because one dealing with human rights the other one dealing with uh crime and all that stuff we need some young people and i'm and i'm gonna keep coming back to these meetings every time until these young people and all these vacancies are

0:16:21completely revamped so uh didi your turn good evening hello uh my name is uh didi lum and i am lived in el cerrito since uh 1958 and i see i've seen elsewhere grow from a sleepy town to a big city to me kids housing and trees my issue tonight is about the city el cerrito hillside

0:16:55natural area north and south which has all the trees in there that are just jam-packed it's the heart of el cerrito it's a gem that we have established it's a hundred acres of woods grounds and grass creeks and from schmidt lane all the way through madeira to the east i

0:17:13mean north side to petrara a week ago i was trekking with friends up there and it was so smoky up there i worried immediately and are we in danger in el cerrito of a wildfire too we looked up in the trees and were stressed by the dry tops of those trees yes el cerrito park clears the grass

0:17:35well what about the trees the big oaks the red the blue oaks and the eucalyptus we we called cal fire and they told us el cerrito needs to plan for defensible space between the trees and all the houses that run along from madeira from the to all the way up to the wildcat

0:17:56canyon so we need to think about it a little bit more as to how we are living in el cerrito um lots of there are lots of not areas that have been cleared lots of hundred feet trees still poking at the residents of this area i called the city of el cerrito's stephen pre

0:18:21who is charged with the natural area and he told me that he has no support for cutting trees and he can only cut the dead ones he told me to call the kensington preventive service uh the guy's name was a mr gamey and anyway mr gainey was of the opinion that he was the fire marshal all

0:18:42right but all he can do is suppress the fires at hit the request of some city agency so their hands were tied we know about the pacifi the park and rec facility master plan which only goes to talk about repairing and replacing the park and club houses but what about

0:19:00the trees what about the el cervido the elsewhere tree committee of the urban forests in el cerrito what about their planting all planting trees but what about all these other trees or talk about the el cerrito trail trekkers or the friends of the el cerrito trees

0:19:17they need to consider what we have here we know about the australian master plan along san pablo avenue developing all this mass density high density housing but what about the trees so what about all the trees along the hillside mid section of el cerrito heart

0:19:37of elsewhere lowlands excuse me uh complete your statement okay i shall read as a homeowner there's no defensible space i want the city council to be able to think about residents of lco what can you do what can we do what should the city do about these dry dead

0:19:57trees or aging trees we cannot afford a fire help me save me thank you thank you after audrey goldie williams it's michaela aga and heidi goldstein good evening good evening council please excuse me i'm suffering from allergies really bad my name is audra goldie williams and i

0:20:24go by coach goldie i'm the new head cheerleading coach at el cerrito high school just wanted to let you know about the program introduce you to myself introduce you to what we're doing up the hill um we have a jv squad this year and i hear through one of our alumni that it's been

0:20:41about 20 something years since we've had a jv squad so i need to confirm exactly what that is but we are doing some new things up there i've got nine jv cheerleaders and 15 varsity we are a program steeped in tradition and just like the city of el cerrito we're also

0:20:58looking to have new growth cheer is a sport it has been deemed so by the state of california and by coach goldie as well so you can say that i approve of that message we are student athletes and one of the things of my program i'm looking for students to be focused on

0:21:14their education as well as earning college scholarships there's actually scholarships for cheer so i'm this is my first year but i'm developing a program so over years you're going to see my hope is that elsa rita will be known for one of the things el cerritos got

0:21:28great cheerleaders we'd like to partner with the community and figure out how we can be of service we'd also like to partner with local businesses we've already got a wonderful ambassador in police chief keith we're appreciative of him and you'll hear more from him about us

0:21:45we do have some fundraisers coming up and you'll hear more about that some of the things that we're looking to pay for are tutors for our study hall s.a.t prep mats for our stunts some of my students have a difficulty paying for uniforms so we're looking for fundraisers to help them pay for

0:22:01uniforms as well as cheer camp tonight i'm here on behalf of our um both our cheer and football program and we'd like to invite you to come out to a game next friday august 31st it's the first time we're calling it the city of el cerrito day at el cerrito high school

0:22:18because again cheer is a sport i have a gift for you we put some nice green and white mints in a heart bowl because we would love for you to come and support us green and white mince for el cerrito but also we want you to stay fresh and i just want to give you each of you has an individual invitation

0:22:37as well as your clerks and i just want to read this to everyone is invited i didn't know your name so i didn't give you a personal invitation i'm sorry okay you are culturally invited to come out and have some fun el cerrito high school cheering football program cordially

0:22:51invite you to support our season next friday august 31st 2018 4 30 p.m for jv and 7 p.m for varsity please council members rsvp if you can attend so i can make sure you have a special seat i appreciate your time thank you good evening heidi goldstein richmond hello everybody we're missing about

0:23:23kayla did i cut in line i think she was with her okay hello i'm heidi goldstein senior community library manager for the el cerrito and rodeo libraries and this is the first city council meeting at which i've spoken so it's exciting i live in richmond so i am part of this

0:23:47community and i am lucky enough to work nearby and i'm very happy to be here and i've come to thoroughly appreciate the community of el cerrito during my time here i am here tonight to let the respected city council and attending residents know about an exciting change occurring

0:24:04here in our library prior to passing away kensington residents and life partners eugene troy and james deloach donated and trusted large amounts of money to libraries all over the country luckily for us el cerrito library was one of the recipients of their abundant

0:24:22generosity we were given a trust that we have used to start contra costa county library's first lgbt plus collection to be housed here in el cerrito the collection is just getting started but so far we have over 500 titles both fiction and non-fiction for all ages

0:24:43that serve as entertainment education and guidance to those within el cerrito and the contra costa county library community overall i am here to invite you to join us all of you on september 4th from 6 to 8 p.m at el cerrito library we are going to have a fun event to celebrate the rolling out

0:25:04of this exciting collection we were we are going to have uh activities that will include musical theater science yarn bombing temporary tattoos button making art drag queen story time poetry mayor gabe and more rainbows than you know what to do with come on down and have some fun with us

0:25:24admittedly it will not be a good place to study that night but we will but it will be a good place to celebrate you elsa readings love your books your fun library programs and you love your library and that makes it all worthwhile to me thank you to the el cerrito city

0:25:38council and community for your valuable time thank you al miller followed by michael fisher good evening good evening mayor kentucky council members and staff my name is aaron miller i live in el cerrito i'm here tonight as president of the el cereal library foundation to give

0:26:05you an update on the 2018 one city one book program the book selected for this year's event is the 57 bus a true story of two teenagers and the crime that changed their lives it's the story of the two two teenagers that were involved in a tragic event on the 57th bus in oakland

0:26:30uh recently and uh as the amazon description of the book says that event that generated international attention the book is a co-winner of the 2018 stonewall book award and a finalist in the young adult library services association or yalsa award for excellence in non-fiction for

0:26:55young adults the el streeter library foundation the friends of the el cerrito library the friends of the kensington library have funded 200 copies of the book which will be distributed free of charge at the el cerrito library the osrido city hall the community center recreation office

0:27:16and the kensington library there are several events scheduled at the el cerrito library that will give the one city one book participants the opportunity to meet and discuss with the author dashka slater followed by another evening by youth discussion and community

0:27:36discussion events the times and dates for these events are meet the author evening is tuesday october 9th from 6 30 to 7 45 pm the youth discussion group is on monday october 15th from 5 15 to 6 15 pm the community discussion group is also monday october 15 from 6 30 to 7 45 pm

0:28:05and all of these events are again at the elstredo library the books have just been received they're being catalogued and made ready for distribution and i'm sure they'll hit the streets soon all the participants who pick up one of these free books are encouraged to read

0:28:23them enjoy it discuss it and then pass it on to another reader thank you good evening good evening mayor and members of the council my name's michael fisher and i have the honor and privilege to serve as your library commissioner the increased hours that the council

0:28:49voted last year continue to produce increased usage when we look at the same month last year in june and july we saw circulation up six percent registrations that's new library cards up nearly 30 percent and computer logins up nearly 50 percent this shows just how much our library and

0:29:16its resources are needed by our public and a survey of public attitudes for the library that were conducted county-wide got its biggest by far west county response from elsa readings we have at least two book clubs meeting at the library each month including the

0:29:37newly formed mystery book club which at its opening meeting featured gigi pandian an agatha award-winning author and el cerrito resident during the summer the library served free lunch to children three days a week now including wednesday which used to be a day the library was closed

0:30:01so we were able to serve 796 lunches this year compared with 457 last year there were a number of one-time programs like a discussion of senior travel exhibits at the asian art museum migrant birds of the el cerrito hills and local artists local author yang hwan

0:30:30there were also ongoing activities such as legos in the libraries the knit and crochet club esl conversation computer tutoring and a coloring club for both adults and teams and if you ever need to raise your spirits come to the read a dog event where new readers get a judgment-free

0:30:54opportunity to read to four-legged furry critters who love the attention that they get all of these activities take place within the basic one open space which constitutes our current library and this points out the need for a new 21st century library for our city

0:31:15when they can meet the many needs people have for libraries that start with books and go way beyond that i'm expecting that we will soon have a working group that will explore those needs and how best to meet them thank you thank you there are no other speakers okay thank

0:31:37you let's go to adoption of the consent calendar a is approval of minutes b 2018 curb ramp and sidewalk repair program c is a cash and investment report for a quarter ending june 30th 2018.

0:31:55d is parking time limit modification on east side of san pablo avenue between manila avenue and madison street e is a support of is a letter of support for innovative clean transit and f is compensation agreements regarding disposition of the former el cerita redevelopment agency properties

0:32:16move approval okay second i wanted to pull the minutes there's a correction for the minutes i'll make a revised motion to exclude item four a bidding but two include items four b through four f a second that okay so i have a motion from uh councilman abelson and a second

0:32:41from mayor pro tem which will exclude number four eight okay all in favor all right ocean carries yes um on the minutes for uh june 18th uh page five of five on my comments i had mentioned about giving an update on the recycle more meeting and the jpa um and in here and we i think i call

0:33:13it gpa and that's for the recycle more it's the joint power authority jpa and not the government information public access act so that correction is all i have yeah for for uh the clerk's benefit it's j e p a is is how uh the acronym goes and that's where we use gpa j e p a joint

0:33:37i can't remember what the e stands for exercise exercise excuse me now that we have a now that we have a 24-hour fitness we can actually use that word right thank you okay uh so let's uh vote on that all in favor aye aye aye motion cares so let's go next to uh presentations uh introduction

0:34:03of danielle gabriel poet laureate thank you mayor and council members in public judith and ma and dan if you could come forward i'm the staff liaison for the arts and culture commission so i'm going to give a brief overview of the this item and then one of our commissioners will take it over okay

0:34:23the arts and culture commission is responsible for the oversight review and recommendation of all public art acquired by the city and installed on public property through the city's arts and public places program in october 2015 the arts and culture commission established a poet laureate

0:34:40program and the goals of the program are to promote literature and arts in the city inspire and encourage residents in their writing and personal expression bring attention to poetry in less traditional settings and initiate dialogue between local poets cultural

0:34:56organizations and community institutions and with that i'd like to invite judith tannenbaum one of our acc commissioners to present the rest of the item thank you very much maya thank you so much our community has been so lucky to have you as our first poet laureate

0:35:15i've been and i've been so lucky to get to work with you so closely you brought your love of poems your connection to just about every poet in the bay area your poetry and places vision your warm heart and generous spirit to everything poet laureate that you've

0:35:34done for these past two years from a former u.s poet laureate to the current state poet laureate to more than a dozen bay area brilliant poets to probably 100 local poets reading at open mics your work has hugely enriched our lives and our community and we all thank

0:35:52you [Applause] and now it gives me great pleasure to introduce el cerrito's second poet laureate danny gabriel to you mayor council staff and neighbors danny is a wonderful poet um and an exceptional teaching artist and mother of two teenage i mean two school-age elsa retains who are here

0:36:28and i'm looking so forward to what she's going to bring us over the next two years of her laureate show i'll let danny tell you some of what her plans are but i do want to invite everyone here to her sort of official launch which is part of the um library's introduction to the

0:36:48lgbtq section new collection and that's going to be september tuesday september 11th at 6 30 um at the library so i hope everybody can come to danny's reading then and i'll let danny speak but first i have to give her flowers [Music] so ma and danny will speak to you okay

0:37:19um good evening good evening mayor gabriel quinto and members of the city council it has been such an honor and a joy to help promote poetry music and the arts in our city these past two years i've enjoyed organizing and hosting poetry in place which has featured writers of all ages

0:37:42with poets from around the bay area and i've met so many wonderful people at senior centers open mics festivals and our library one of the many things i've learned from this experience is how poetry and the arts have become even more necessary and meaningful in these challenging times

0:38:06i'm truly grateful to everyone on the el cerrito arts and culture commission in particular judith tannenbaum margaret livingston as well as chris durba for their help and guidance thank you mayor quinto city council members and staff and especially to the people of el cerrito

0:38:25for your support and encouragement thank you for showing up and participating together thank you finally i wish to extend my gratitude to my dear friends and family my sister's here writing and art communities and to my partner tom for being here i'm excited and happy to welcome our new poet

0:38:49laureate of el cerrito um and but first i'd like to read a poem that i wrote during my term and it's called fortunes we enter the forest from villages cities countries continents a canopy of trees surrounds us bamboo pine cherry blossom we consider our fates our fortunes

0:39:28among the animals that sleep here leopard dormouse badger raven listen to birdsong at dusk we move alone and together swiftly lightly among flora of all shades amber saffron fern we hold thin strips of paper threaded with twine our blessings and longings among the rustling bamboo

0:40:04thank you very much thank you everyone mayor we do have a couple speakers on this item okay um you can go ahead hi i'm danny i wanted to say thank you to all of you and to judith and to the arts and culture commission and to ma for being so lovely um excuse me and i yeah i just wanted to

0:40:37say how grateful i am and how excited i am to be poet laureate and one of the things i'm excited about is um i am hosting a series of events at off the grid in october november and december the first wednesday of the month we're going to have spoken word features open mic

0:40:55writing activities and food trucks and it's going to be really great so i hope everyone here can join us all ages and here's an introduction low rent profit it's not the tattoos it's not the chip nail polish or the shaved hair it's not the scars even or the swearing it's

0:41:17something about the way i say things i keep getting called authentic like old jeans i guess or busted fry boots like something filthy but original a crusted coin you found deep in the dirt out back of the house maybe it's worth money i have stories burning a hole in my

0:41:38pocket i spend them unwisely dropping them awkwardly into pleasant conversations someone's survival depends on you knowing who lives in those tents by the bart tracks those run down apartments by the freeway i'm telling you the truth of the girl on her back in the bathroom in that cute

0:41:59house with rose bushes and a nice lawn the girl who has nobody left to trust i'm a low rent prophet i'm not speaking for the god in heaven i'm preaching about the god sitting behind you on the train the one who's not sure how he'll pay rent the one who's considering the box of razor

0:42:19blades in the cabinet you don't have to believe me but there will be no more silence to disappear him in my credentials get me through the door on sunday i fit okay into the second pew i don't start screaming halfway through the service i gave up drinking i gave up the drugs

0:42:37no more packs of marlboro reds to bang against my wrist but i still carry matches in my backpack in case i need to light something on fire thank you [Applause] okay not [Applause] shelly we had two speakers yes uh cordell hindler and i'm not sure if michaela's speaking to this item or not

0:43:47after which presentation okay thank you just one speaker okay so good evening again mayor quinto uh council members so i i have a poem too so here it is this the city of el cerrito is is far and near but you heard what the coach said earlier you gotta give these girls

0:44:09a cheer that's one number two is um the city of el cerrito police department are very are near and far but i see them shining around in their little and their black and white cars so that's it [Applause] paul did you have a good match okay all right great let's move on to a presentation by mce

0:44:39on electric vehicles we have brett wiley mce customer service manager yeah let me get it going for you good evening i am not brett wiley uh my name is justin marquez and i'm here with my colleague brett wiley i'm a community for affairs coordinator at mce which is el cerrito's local

0:45:06non-for-profit electricity provider so thank you mayor quinto to the council for having us tonight to give you the introduction to mce's new electric vehicle charging and vehicle rebate program and it's exciting to be back in el cerrito i actually i used to work for

0:45:21the city as a civic spark americorps fellow working with maria sanders and will provost in the operations and environmental services division so excited to be back here and talk to you more about this new program that mce is offering so first is a refresher for the council and

0:45:37for the el cerrito residents in the audience is that too dark that might be also just clicker yeah if we could click thank you brad you can start with a refresher uh as to what mce is and what our mission is like i said we are a local not-for-profit electricity provider a government agency

0:45:59and it is our mission to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and we do this through various ways one by providing stable and competitive rates for electricity service two by providing our communities with local economic and workforce benefits

0:46:14three by providing energy efficiency programs for our customers and finally by using renewable energy and our electricity sources we want to make sure that renewable energy is absolutely present that way we can lower those greenhouse gas emissions associated with the electricity that we

0:46:30are using so again why renewable renewables are pollution free when we think about solar wind geothermal bioenergy and hydroelectric sources those are pollution-free greenhouse gas free sources for electricity which are definitely a lot better than the fossil fuels which are the largest

0:46:49sources of u.s air pollution and that includes coal oil and natural gas so again fighting climate change by using renewable energy and making sure that el cerrito residents and community members have a part in fighting climate change as well so in looking at the actual emissions

0:47:08eliminated by mce customers between the years 2010 and 2016 over 199 000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions were eliminated so that's the equivalent of taking over 42 000 cars off the roads for an entire year now i want to also think about what would happen if we had another 42 000 cars

0:47:30converted from those combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles cars that did not have all those associated air pollution all those associated greenhouse gas emissions so that's why brett and myself are here today to introduce mce electric vehicle and electric vehicle charging

0:47:47infrastructure program mce ran a study a couple years ago through grant funding from the epa and we recognized that there was a gap in the infrastructure within mce service area throughout marin contra costa and part of solano county and napa county as well so this year we're offering one and

0:48:05a half million dollars in rebates to one install 540 charging ports throughout all of mce service area two to allow greater access to electric vehicles for 100 low-income households and three to provide technical assistance so that mce customers can participate in these

0:48:21programs with full knowledge so track one of that program is actually working in conjunction with pg e's electric charge network program so those are for commercial and commercial workplace sites which include cities as well as multi-family units to build charging infrastructure on their

0:48:40properties in 10 or more ports per site so that's one track with an mce program that'll be working again with pg e to provide rebates for affordable charging infrastructure the second track which we're calling mcev is uh mce rebate for a commercial workplace sites which again include

0:49:03cities as well as for multi-family units and that's for sites that are installing two to ten i'm sorry two to twenty ports per site again we're targeting workplace and multi-family unit dwellings and we're also offering again an up to 35 3 500 rebate for new and used

0:49:20electric vehicles for low income qualifying customers so the big question is why should el cerrito expand ev charging so i want to outline four different reasons one looking at the city's climate action plan and the goals for the city to reach those climate action goals

0:49:37two anticipating the infrastructure needs we're going to see an increase in the number of electric vehicles on the road in the coming years so we want to make sure that el cerrito as a community is prepared to support that influx of electric vehicles three we want to serve the residents and

0:49:51businesses to the best of our ability and four el cerrito right now has the opportunity to take advantage of timely incentives both through pg e and through mce so going again to that first track the climate action plan for el cerrito this is something that i actually got to work

0:50:08on as a civic spark americorps fellow working on the city's greenhouse gas inventory for 2015.

0:50:15but if you look to the far right you can see that that small those little words they say transportation transportation accounts for the majority of el cerritos greenhouse gas emissions uh and again we're posing a question what if 20 percent of el cerrito households

0:50:31switched to an electric vehicle and did so on mce deep green electric service which is 100 renewable energy so that is sort of a scenario that we want to think about and if we can get to the next slide right so we can see uh in the graph sort of the projections of various scenarios

0:50:50for the greenhouse gas emissions in el cerrito and if those 2 000 households like i said switched to an electric vehicle using deep green electricity we would reduce emissions in el cerrita by over 9400 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions so that's roughly eight percent of 20 of

0:51:08el cerrito's 2015 emissions in total which is again helping elsewhere to achieve those climate action goals far more quickly uh than they would uh with just the measures currently in place uh second thinking about the infrastructure needs for el cerrito as it is today there are five stations and

0:51:27eleven charging outlets within uh is that two miles of el cerrido zip code which is sort of a lack of infrastructure available to those people that are already driving electric vehicles if we look to the larger five mile radius within that zip code we see 37 stations stations and 112 charging

0:51:45outlets so there's a gap in terms of how el cerrito is serving its community versus the larger west contra costa and almost into the northern uh alameda county greater area so again helping el cerrito residents and businesses meet the needs for that electric vehicle

0:52:02adoption looking at some of the barriers to community adoption the top two of the top three were including the inability to charge away from home so that means folks might not have chargers at their work sites or places that are not their home but then number three is

0:52:20the inability to charge at home so again one of the reasons why mcu was focusing on workplace and multi-family units was because we saw these two as some of the more serious barriers to adoption for electric vehicles again with the goal in mind of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the

0:52:35transportation sector and according to a study by the doe for every single charger that's installed in a workplace we see that folks are 20 times more likely to switch to an electric vehicle so again how can we support this electric vehicle movement how can we support folks driving more clean

0:52:55vehicles and reducing their greenhouse gas impact so that fourth reason again why el cerito should care is that there are timely incentives on the table right now so through uh pg e's ev charge network you have various incentives for multi-unit dwellings and workplace uh

0:53:13focused on disadvantaged communities as well as non-disadvantaged communities um and on top of that mce again is offering a complimentary program to help fill the gap in between uh the pg e rebate and the cost of the charger and then looking at mcev we have a ev charging

0:53:32rebate for 2500 per port that's again for multi-unit dwellings and for workplaces including city halls and city facilities as well as a 3 500 rebate for low income qualifying customers to buy or lease a newer used electric vehicle so sort of thinking again electric vehicles they're clean right

0:53:53but they're really only as clean as the fuel that's used to charge them so again this is a refresher as to what mce offers our light green option right now is a 61 renewable energy you can see the the top line over there but our deep green option is 100 california renewable

0:54:12energy um so in conjunction with this program that we're launching to for electric vehicle adoption we're actually also promoting a switch to deep green opting up to deep green last year for el cerrito's centennial celebration there's a very successful 100 by 100 campaign in

0:54:28which many el cerrito residents and businesses opted up to 100 renewable energy service in deep green mce saw that success and we wanted to mirror that in our other communities so we launched a living lightly campaign which is a program to sort of incentivize more of our community

0:54:43members to opt up to 100 renewable energy and we're really excited because el cerrito again is leading by having another team participate in this living lightly campaign getting more elsa reading households and businesses into deep green so having this in conjunction with our

0:54:59charging program we're hoping to see again these huge reductions in greenhouse gas emissions specifically here in el cerrito so yeah together we can change the future uh we're really excited to be offering this program we saw the need for it within our service area we have

0:55:15been hurting we've been hearing about it from our community partners including the el cerrito environmental quality commission and we're excited to launch this program and at this time i'd like to take any questions from the city council or from any members of the public but

0:55:30thank you for your time and yeah great uh discussion questions thank you very much for coming tonight and giving this presentation i i know it's uh was i asked for this presentation because uh it's important for el cerrito in part of our culture to embrace the electric vehicle movement

0:55:51but especially now when there's money available so this is an opportunity for us to take advantage of some of the rebates that both pg e and mce are providing um so i wanted to make sure because the people think that electric vehicle charging can be expensive and the rates i just

0:56:11want to make sure that you touch on the rates right now as long as we have so many people present this is your opportunity to remind them that mce actually is not more expensive than pg e so i was just curious if you wanted to elaborate on that i know it's a slight difference three percent or two

0:56:27percent less but but i was wondering if you had the the actual facts yeah absolutely so i'll answer that in two parts first uh our light green option which was that 61 renewable energy option at the moment uh in comparison to pg e is about three percent cheaper for your

0:56:43average resident i say that at the moment because at any time i'm sorry not at any time but l uh pg e does change their rates multiple times throughout the year while uh else i'm sorry mce changes their rates once a year so what pg e changes as a matter of fact i

0:57:00actually just received one august 15th they're asking for a new rate change to cover some costs we get them as elected officials we get them routinely yes and then i do want to also emphasize that for electric vehicle drivers we do have electric vehicle rates specific

0:57:15for the increase in charging the increase in usage of electricity um when you say there's a three percent difference does that include the pg e transport charge for using pg e's facility so this is like a total cost because i note that there is a much mce is much cheaper per kilowatt hour

0:57:41but when pg e adds their transportation charge that's where the three percent comes in is actually providing okay incredibly good and so let's quickly get at that um those charges for distribution are across the board for all pg e customers so that's no matter whether you're in pg

0:57:59e total service or if you're an mce and pg e service so when you add those together with the generation rate which is what mce can control that's why it only comes down to about three percent cheaper just wanted that to be clear okay so um and then the you know i for

0:58:16everybody who is a mce customer you should have gotten a pg e power difference card recently this one came out this summer and i carry it for exactly this purpose um so justin the or not justin yeah justin the last question i've got for you went out of my head but it does talk to

0:58:37um some of the projects that are local projects and the fact that contra costa has just rolled out to a number of new communities and just wanted to give you an opportunity to potentially talk about some of the great projects that are going on locally for power generation and um that

0:58:55that we as all of our for deep green customers who have the local power um that it is actually not only it's california but some of that is coming from as close as richmond yeah thank you council member lyman for the opportunity to talk about that there are definitely a lot of things to celebrate

0:59:16uh that mca has been doing in contra costa and also specifically western contra costa in end of december last year we actually opened up mce solar 1 which is a 10 and a half megawatt solar farm on a former chevron uh brownfield site near uh the chevron facilities in

0:59:36richmond which is really exciting because that project was in partnership with the city of richmond uh the program richmond build again with a 50 local higher uh local hire requirement to build this 10 and a half megawatt solar farm so it was bringing jobs to richmond to western

0:59:53contra costa working in partnership with non-profits and community organizations as well as with the city to bring renewable energy very locally to our service area so uh what council member lyman was also alluding to is that part of the funding for that project came

1:00:08from the deep green fund so there is a premium associated with 100 renewable energy option and half of that premium which is 50 cents for every kilowatt hour goes towards building local renewable energy projects just like mce solar one right here in richmond or

1:00:23right here in contra costa i should say so it's absolutely something that we're excited about and also council member lyman you mentioned we did complete an enrollment of 11 new communities into mce service so now the majority of contra costa county is now serviced by

1:00:40mce and we actually opened a new office in concord uh which is where myself and brett have our offices as well thank you okay um yes just while i have you here one of the things when i was reading over the report i just wanted some clarification in terms of the light green versus the

1:01:01deep green could you give some examples like for example here i see that small hydro is considered light green but then large hydro is considered not green at all just some clarification on that for people that might not be very familiar with the various types of energy

1:01:18production absolutely so for small hydroelectric that is considered renewable energy that is carbon-free electricity that's being produced but electricity that comes from large-scale hydroelectric that is not considered renewable because those projects tend to have other

1:01:33environmental impacts that might not be captured by the greenhouse gas emissions but have impacts apart from that so that is the clear that is the definition that's set by uh california actually and i don't have the exact number of megawatts that distinguish small from large hydro at the top of my

1:01:52head but that is the general difference okay what about the other ones i see that only solar and wind are considered deep green but how are the other ones kind of a lesser oh so the other bio energy geothermal small hydra those are still considered renewables but for the mce deep green

1:02:11product our procurement team wanted specifically to procure 50 california wind and 50 california solar so that was a choice by mce to only utilize those two sources in our deep green service okay thank you great council member for delhi yes justin thank you very much for this

1:02:31um it's timely and it's needed um i know a couple people in el cerrito have come up to me and asked why doesn't mce do what sonoma does and sonoma was giving financial assistance so this is excellent it's wonderful um ironically and sadly just a couple hours ago our president went to west virginia

1:02:51to pull back the power the um clean power plan that our former president obama put into place so uh that's bad news it's sad news and we're going to need to continue many more local efforts like this to use our our re um renewable energy sources i'm hoping that you will personally mce

1:03:13make a commitment to us to maybe try to meet with the el cerrito plaza owners and see what you can do over there build a relationship and while we're shopping and doing some economic interest over there it would be great to be able to well if someone does drive to

1:03:32be able to plug in their car and get electricity yes so within this first year for the program we are actually focusing specifically on workplace charging and multi-unit dwellings so something like the el cerrito plaza is something that we'd have to discuss to figure out okay how can we maybe

1:03:49designate some of these charges for staff folks working at the plaza to utilize those charging stations stay in touch with us on that we'd love to see some charges over there thank you very much councilmember abelson um well first first off i'd like to say that there is

1:04:05a new housing project over there at the plaza i don't know if it has a charging stations in it currently that perhaps you could just go speak to them and that would be at the plaza yeah thank you for that suggestion and it's they've got a um a parking garage full of cars seem to sit there

1:04:26all the time which is great because that means they're not out driving but um anyway i i did have a a comment or question about natural gas it can address natural gas and its place on that chart and um how those of us who may think that we're 100 percent green are only 100 green

1:04:49on our electricity our electrical use but on our overall profile we're not a hundred percent and the reason is natural gas and could you talk about any um possible future plans that anybody might have in that arena yeah so i think what you might be referring to is use of natural

1:05:11gas outside of electricity for stove top for home heating water heating um there are programs offered through uh well not by mce for what's considered fuel switching switching from natural gas to an electric version of those appliances a stove top or uh or home heaters

1:05:32but at the moment mc does not offer and then actually i'll let brett wiley who's a customer programs manager speak to some of those programs great residents of el cerrito and the council if you have any follow-up questions you can just ev mce clean energy.org i am our customer programs manager i

1:05:55manage all of our experimental or new programs i have six other colleagues who provide services for energy efficiency programs which we're expanding into new programs next year serving all sort of customer segments and currently our energy efficiency programs do cover small commercial

1:06:15and multifamily and our multi-family program specifically our low-income multi-family program we do have a fuel switching program so if someone wants to switch from a natural gas heater to a heat pump electric heat pump we do have a program for that so for anyone who is a low

1:06:33income tenant or owns multi-family property you should please contact me at that email and i can connect you to our energy efficiency programs mc is also committed to the napa rebuild and for the napa rebuild we're dedicating 7 500 per resident who's rebuilding from the fire

1:06:54and all that money is going to fuel switching programs to make sure that the infrastructure doesn't contribute to fires which the natural gas infrastructure was a contributor to the fires in napa but the fuel switching allows a full electric electrification of those homes

1:07:13so that in case of a fire they can shut down the electricity uh before it reaches the home and and make sure to to isolate the fire just to natural causes instead of energy causes okay is that it okay great um any speakers yes um we have one howdy gowdy okay glenn cordell wants to be

1:07:37i think cordell is always so good sorry cordell handler as well good evening yeah i'll go first thanks uh thank you uh mayor quinto uh council members um thank you to bret uh for this presentation it was very deep no pun intended so i really like this presentation i really

1:08:00would like to see more um charging stations not only in this facility but other facilities so i'm thinking that this this is a wonderful presentation so i want to give credit to mce for this and it's very nice so howdy now it's your turn so good evening mayor quinto and council

1:08:21members my name is howdy gaudi i live in el cerrito um so first i want to appreciate council for hosting this presentation by mc and also i appreciate mce for coming and giving this presentation and i want to recognize el cerrito for being um an early adopter of

1:08:42electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging back in 2012 when um you about that time i think it was that you did both of those actions and that was you know right at the beginning of this wave of eb adoption that we're currently in so that was you know a great leadership

1:09:01action um however since that time i've been disappointed that there's been no further progress in ev adoption and charging station infrastructure in the city and you know it's been six years there's a lot of development that's happened in the ev industry i think the economic and

1:09:22environmental incentives are even more compelling right now than they were then and so it's really [Music] important that uh you fully engage this opportunity um you know we have uh well i've seen like four or five vehicle purchases come through in that six or so

1:09:46years since you got the first ev in the city and and those were all purchasing decisions that ended up going with traditional fossil fuel vehicles and i think there were opportunities in every case to actually save money and have less environmental impact by choosing an electric option

1:10:10you know we have as was mentioned a climate action plan that identifies vehicle greenhouse gas emissions as emission reductions as a priority and we have a environmentally preferred purchase plan which also you know directs um purchasing this decisions in that uh

1:10:30direction so i feel like we're not um upholding our own uh policy positions and um so i'm hoping that we'll really make a concerted effort to to reverse that and um and this charging infrastructure opportunity is a good example of something that could uh incentivize some action

1:10:55i'll just note an observation that the community center appears to have some abandoned conduit for an old lighting system that hopefully could be helpful it may not be big enough but it's it's worth looking at i think the community center could be a good location but you should really be

1:11:12looking at charging opportunities for public employees and municipal operations and i think there needs to be some thought to how to implement those because sharing a single charging station with with all those is is difficult and i'll just end by saying you know

1:11:31um we have a lot of renters and multi-family um uh property owners in the audience today and i hope they've been paying attention to this opportunity and will contact mmc about both the ev charging and the um energy efficiency and electrification program so thank you

1:11:51thank you okay discussion anything else okay uh to our our two reps here from mca i just want to say thank you for being here and it was uh very interesting to listen to all the amazing things and the possibilities of adding new infrastructure here in el cerrino

1:12:10please reach out to our county supervisor john joya he and i have been trying for years to entice our mall owners to add infrastructure so uh please work with him and and hopefully you'll get it done uh and to our residents here who have evs uh know that uh uh you know i hear you and i uh

1:12:32received many of your emails in the last three years and so i appreciate staff looking into this as well and it will be done sooner or later hopefully sooner so thank you very much for being here okay next we'll go to policy matters a study session el cerrito 2017 affordable

1:12:53housing strategy pillar b reduce the risk of displacement and help stabilize at risk populations [Applause] good evening there it is good evening mayor kento and council members and members of the public my name is isari i'm the affordable housing analyst for the city

1:13:26and the community development department um thank you all for being here this evening and participating in this very important study session as we dive into the tenant protection tools and what that means for el cerrito just want to give you a quick overview of tonight's agenda i'm going to give

1:13:44you obviously the purpose of the study session some background and context as well as existing laws at the state level and pending state laws as well as tenant protection tools both near term and medium term policy considerations other tenant efforts and new tenant efforts coming soon as well

1:14:04as next steps and discussion so a copy of this powerpoint is available online but we'll also be publishing it on our affordable housing page for reference the purpose of tonight's study session is to inform and discuss the various tenant protection policies and tools available both existing and

1:14:27possible and for you to consider staff recommendation for proceeding and giving direction for program development this is a study session so there will be no formal action tonight but we will have a lot of dialogue just to remind everyone we adopted our affordable housing strategy last august

1:14:50the affordable housing strategy identifies various tools to protect preserve and produce affordable housing stock it lays out specific objectives key considerations and implementation actions over five year periods so it's our work plan of how we're going to tackle this large issue

1:15:09within that it does give timelines and strategies immediate term those that are action required in a year or less short term one to two years and medium terms so as you know the strategy involved a public engagement process and technical analysis so we are now going

1:15:29to explore what the four policy pillars of the strategy our and we tackled pillar a with the adoption of the inclusionary zoning ordinance so we're definitely leveraging our private development to address our affordable housing needs and today um we're going to get into a

1:15:47little bit more of a complex policy policy discussion around reducing the risk of displacement and we will continue to focus on pillars c and d in terms of who we are population about 24 000 3.66 square miles um county median income for a household of four is one hundred and four thousand

1:16:12four hundred so what the median incomes means is that half half of our um county residents make more than that and half make less than that on the types of affordable housing income categories and you'll notice that about 10 percent of our residents are extremely low income so to give you a

1:16:33number behind that that means a family of four making about twenty five thousand or less annually eleven percent of our residents are very low income so again a family of four and about thirty thousand annually we have about 12 percent of our residents um who as a family of four at

1:16:51low income making less than 90 000 annually and for moderate income households we have a roughly 18 um and that for family 4 is 125 000. the remaining 50 percent of our population is above moderate income so it's important to also note that um according to our affordable housing strategy uh about 17

1:17:15of our residents are rent burden and what rent burden means you're spending more than 50 percent of your income on rent um generally the housing formula assumes one would spend about a third of their income on rent or mortgage payments in terms of our occupancy tenure we are

1:17:37at about 61 percent owner occupied and 39 percent renter occupied we're a little higher than the 35 percent number county wide 61 owner occupied please proceed um thank you in terms of according to the california department of finance um 55 of california residents own their property

1:18:08and 45 of california residents our renters our population is about 39.5 million statewide in terms of housing stock stock as of 2014 um this is our current housing stock we are have a little over ten thousand housing units seventy percent of those are detached three percent or single detached town

1:18:33homes basically and about 27 percent are multi-family units so that's two to four units and five plus units it's important to also note that um 22 of our single family um households are rent our rent 22 of households are also renting single family homes and we also have a

1:18:57the the remaining three-fourths of our housing socks um single-family and then a quarter is multi-family this is this slide here just highlights um this slide is based on average asking rents um so this is just an average of asking rents it's not actual rent so

1:19:17you'll notice in 2013 for multi-family units the asking rent was near 1900 and currently it's near 2600 in terms of single-family over the same five-year period it went from about 2100 to about 31.50 fly 10 is actually new it's not included in your packet um this this particular table has been

1:19:42updated it's actually in our affordable housing strategy but we basically updated it to include 2017 data and so what this is looking at is it's looking at average effective rents for multi-family housing units for properties both in el cerrito and contra costa county

1:20:01the graph here illustrates price per square foot so between 2013 and 2018 the average price per square foot um went up from 2.26 to 2.79 and we're pretty much on track county wide um during that same period and 2013 county-wide it was a dollar eighty-nine per square foot and it um went up to 245

1:20:28so what that what this data means is for example a household who's renting a 900 square foot apartment you can assume a rent um of about 2500 a month um so to get to that 30 housing costs you have to make somewhere near 100 000 as a household so that just gives you some

1:20:47more context on that as i mentioned pillar b addresses the following characteristics among a wide variety of issues we know that high cost rents are obstacles especially those who are low income affordability affordability affordability that's the key issue that's why we're here today

1:21:10california has the fifth fifth largest economy in the world and so as a result of that it's definitely creating some barriers with predictability and stability and it's um you know it's essential for us to be able to tackle these issues because the inventory is shrinking and

1:21:31with new high wage with new jobs there's new high wage earners coming in and so therefore as a result you know our traditionally lower wage earners are now competing with people who make more money so it's important to you know there's obviously supply and demand but

1:21:48that's leading to displacement and eviction and it's also you know compromising our income diversity and our workforce so you know we need to maintain balance where wherever possible in terms of existing state law just wanted to kind of walk through um what some of the existing state laws are the

1:22:09costa hawkins rental housing act as many of you may be familiar with it limits local jurisdiction's ability to impose rent stabilization ordinances it also allows vacancy decontrol so what that means is when a tenant moves out the rents can be reset upon the next tenant and it also

1:22:33excludes single-family properties condos and properties bill after 1995.

1:22:40so that's the cost of hawkins rental housing act and there's also part of the california civil code termination of tenancy it requires a 60-day notice or 30-day notice if you've lived there for less than a year and then we also have another part of the california civil

1:22:57code is rent increase notices currently it's um if it's less than 10 percent it's 30 days if it's greater than 10 percent it's 60-day notice requirement there are also some retaliatory eviction laws that state that it's illegal for a landlord to retaliate against a tenant who is

1:23:20lawfully and peacefully exercising his or her rights and then there's also the ellis act which allows the withdrawal of units from the rental market so that's our current state law there are some pending state legislation that lots of people are following because it's definitely um

1:23:40going to have an impact on new development with the costa hawkins rental housing hack act as i mentioned it does set restrictions such as exempting single families and condos as well as units built after 1995 and the vacancy and decontrol that i talked about on a couple of

1:24:00slides back so what prop 10 which is the repeal of the cost of hawkins act is going to be on the november ballot and it would allow cities to to restrict units constructed after that 1995 time period it'll also remove vacancy d control and it may restrict single family condos and

1:24:22accessory dwelling units so these are some of the things that are currently on the ballot for voter decision this fall winter some expire state legislation i thought it was important to include this um just because of all the wildfires and disasters the state had enacted the

1:24:45anti-gouging law it's part of the penal code as well and it's normally triggered when there's a declaration of an emergency it went into effect in october and it expired in april for statewide but it still does apply to those impacted counties for up to a year and

1:25:02it what it does is it sets a 10 rent increase after emergency disaster has been declared in santa rosa they lost about 3 100 homes so we heard you know that this was something that was well received but obviously there's a lot of rebuilding to do housing stock housing stock as you can see we we

1:25:27produced um the majority of our housing stock between 1940 and 1980 um however we've definitely lagged over the last three decades um during which time we're you know we produce literally just a little over 2 000 units in that same time period so we're on pace to actually

1:25:49produce more as you can see um through the adoption of our san pablo avenue specific plan form base code we have lots of new proposed and entitled projects as well as the adoption of our inclusionary zoning ordinance for new construction projects and a lot's changed you know we're definitely an

1:26:09auto oriented community when our housing stock was created but given the proximity of el cerrito near public mass transit it's what was once a bedroom is definitely highly desirable now especially with our proximity to the larger cities so in preparation for this study session

1:26:31we did some early outreach as i mentioned there was definitely outreach done with the strategy and we did some outreach and preparation for this um discussion we talked to folks at the east bay housing organization el cerrito progressives the california apartment association the

1:26:49non-profit housing association of northern california we talk to other cities albany alameda so forth we talk to staff members at urban habitat and also a variety of property owners and tenants so i'm gonna actually go ahead and just give you an overview of the tenant

1:27:08protection tools none of no two programs are alike so there's not i mean there they have common characteristics but they're all built different according to the needs of the community so the uh the programs highlighted in green are our near-term programs so these are programs that we

1:27:27are able to adopt in a short window of times and then we're going to go into medium-term programs so our near-term programs are tenant landlord mediation enhanced lease terms extended noticing requirements and relocation assistance triggered by demolition projects

1:27:48and some of our medium term tools are rent stabilization binding tenant landlord mediation just cause evictions and harassment protections so i'm going to go into greater detail of each of those but just to give you a sense of how we're looking at these buckets of

1:28:05programs and tools so the short term the reason why they're short term is because they're lower generally lower budget items and you know in terms of staff costs so that's kind of how they're organized is of course you know capacity and funding is obviously something to take into consideration

1:28:28with these programs so the first program that i'm gonna walk you through is the characteristics of the non-binding mediation program generally those include multi-family units of two or three or more but they may include all rental properties uh traditionally um the rent is set

1:28:48based on a threshold so it can range anywhere from five to ten percent and limits are increased to one once per 12 months um what the mediation program in essence does and also in talking to others it really increases the communication between the landlords or the property the property owners and

1:29:11the tenants and so it's really facilitating a discussion um and with the goal of you know if what happens is if your rent increase goes beyond this certain threshold the tenant is then able to file a request for a rent review and then there's a process that goes

1:29:31along with that which includes conciliation mediation and arbitration this process can be waived if it's settled beforehand but what it really does is it brings people to the table it also what we hear is um it's really working it's really effective in the cities that

1:29:50have recently adopted this so we wanted to just kind of provide what that means and how it would look and what the program costs are would generally be about medium or so um the way that it works is the city its staff is definitely involved but there's also a designated service program provider so

1:30:09there's providers that provide professional services to actually undertake this program the next one is enhanced lease terms so it can apply again to all rental properties or two units or three units and what it does is it requires property owners to provide a minimum

1:30:30lease term of 12 months and then upon renewal provide that as well does not require a tenant to enter into that but it does it is required to be offered so knowing that you have a minimum lease term it does provide in terms of some predictability so you know what your

1:30:48rents are and then when the 12 months once you hit the 12 mark it resets the extended notice requirements are tied to the termination of tenancy so if if you recall i said at the state level it's either 30 days for less than a year or 60 days for more than a year this

1:31:06would increase that to 90 days and in terms of property types that can apply to all rental units or two to three units we have also some characteristics here for relocation assistance it's traditionally multi-family or all rental properties it's triggered by demolition condo conversion repurposing

1:31:30of units um it does provide relocation assistance anywhere from two to three times the amount these are again policy things that could be worked out later but just kind of like what it looks like in general and it's generally a low-cost program so this is basically

1:31:47triggered when an application is submitted to the city for ministerial approval of land use change and that will result in displacement so it's low cost because anyone that would be required to you know be relocated under this the application would be filed with the city

1:32:05and that is how we would be noticed and also on the mediation program there is also required language for rent increases that must be included with all rent increases just letting the tenants know what their rights are and how they can seek um further counseling

1:32:24now i'm going to dive into the medium term tools um they're more medium term because they generally require more resources so staffing and some upfront startup costs to get the programs running so the first program that we're going to talk about is just our general rent

1:32:43stabilization characteristics so these are the type of programs that you'll see like in berkeley and oakland and um these sorts of programs only apply to units built pre-1995 that are multi-family the rent threshold it's actually fixed so the adjustments are a fixed number

1:33:02that are generally tied to consumer price index and these programs can be highly controversial and you know they're generally adopted via ballot measure currently of the 482 cities in california 19 cities have some form of rent stabilization then you have the binding mediation

1:33:29program so again this applies to properties that are built multifamily built before that 1995 marker that we discussed with the state law um it's generally the rent threshold is generally set at five percent or it could be tied to consumer price index so alameda has this

1:33:48sort of program where they have a binding mediation for their multi-family units and non-binding mediation for all of their other units parts three and four are just cause and harassment protection so just cause evictions restrictive evictions to specific causes and it can

1:34:12be applied to all units with the exception of those evicting under the ellis act it does require program administration from city staff and some legal aid because eviction proceedings are a legal process and so those are about medium costs and harassment protection protects tenants

1:34:32from harassment and retaliation so similar just similar to the state law but just more fine-tuned at the local level so those are the eviction protection programs i'm going to take you through just as we're talking near-term medium-term once again just give you

1:34:51some context in terms of what other cities are doing so generally the near-term programs their budgets range from about thirty thousand to two hundred thousand and they're these programs are run on a cost recovery basis so there's a registration fee so as you can see um albany is

1:35:11getting ready to bring their program on board this winter concord established their program in 2017 san leandro's had their program around for a while and union city recently adopted a mediation program as well in terms of medium term budgets generally vary from

1:35:31about 500 000 to 5 million um as you can see alameda has their bond binding and non-binding they're somewhere around two million a year they're bigger than us berkeley is um been around for as long as i've been alive um they're about four and a half million a year east palo alto

1:35:52had adopted their program in 86 and recently updated so this just kind of shows you in richmond was the most recent city um along with mountain view that have that has recently adopted um rent stabilization programs so things to consider for policy so there's you know benefits and issues

1:36:13with everything in life especially housing which is a big one the mediation program it creates an increased communication some people are great at communicating some people just aren't and some people are intimidated and there's reasons why there may be language barriers so this

1:36:31program would be good because it's going to bring that those important conversations forward some of the issues is that it's not it's not tied to the cpi um and then some of the other programs as i mentioned the enhanced lease terms they provide predictability and stability

1:36:49that can of course create more intense screening um relocation assistance helps with moving costs but obviously there's housing inventory challenges just because you're getting a certain amount of money doesn't mean you're going to easily be able to find a place

1:37:03and then some of our other medium term programs such as rent stabilization the rent increases are based on cpi um it's high as i mentioned it's not means tested and it's more of a high cost program and then just cause eviction definitely sets established guidelines

1:37:22it traditionally requires some legal aid and um you know with in bigger cities that are at least 50 000 they would get at least some cdbg funding to kind of fund non-profits to partner with the city so that's kind of one of the obstacles in terms of pricing and costs and then we

1:37:41have harassment protections which are added local protection and also may require legal aid so other tenant related efforts in el cerrito we have our residential rental inspection program that was established back in 1997 property owners are required to have business licenses

1:38:02all housing units are subject to the residential rental inspection program and the goal of the program is just to ensure health and safety for the rental housing stock we also have our condo condo conversion ordinance that was adopted in 2008 and to date we haven't

1:38:18had anyone use this but we know that in the bigger cities it's been an issue so we wanted to get ahead of that and just have something on the books and then of course we have our inclusionary zoning ordinance that you all adopted and it requires a 10 to 12 percent set

1:38:35aside as well as in lieu fees that are earmarked for future affordable housing some of the things that we would um definitely that we're going to be working on that are coming soon and underway um with me being here in el cerrito now for about seven months um we're going to start hosting quarterly

1:38:58workshops we're going to complement our tenor protection efforts collaborate with different partners different non-profits have different topics of discussion we also were in communication with our property owners for the residential rental inspection program but we can beef that

1:39:15up and just send out annual newsletters surveys data collection and then just in general we want to collect more data because we want to be able to really understand no like i said new pro no two programs are like no two situations are like so we really want to

1:39:35jump into that and data is always good to just have in general so you as you think of program design and policy considerations so um tonight we want to open it up for discussion about the toolbox and timelines and then of course um continue this dialogue with next steps

1:39:56um we want to examine program implementation additional community outreach and you know with your guidance proceed with near-term ordinances we want to be able we don't have anything right now we want to be able to get something into place quickly and and take it from there and see what the

1:40:17short term can do for our tenants and all cerrito and how the more medium term programs would be consider thank you so much great thank you let's bring it back to the council uh let's start over here okay so um i need some help on uh understanding terminology it for starts

1:40:43um so just cause could you define that a little bit i mean just saying the words doesn't like tell me what anything about it yeah yeah so just cause what it does is it lays out 10 to 12 specific reasons why someone can be evicted breach of contract non-payment of rent

1:41:06move-in by an owner for example so that is just cost so there has to be a cause i was pre-listed pre-known or that's just to be defined at the time it's uh at some point in time there's some general standards um that exist and so yeah we would we can work through those and see what

1:41:27they mean it would be nice to be doing that as you present the word okay i can give you i can definitely include that and get more information on what the list might look like so we were just kind of informing policy and figuring out what direction and how we you know

1:41:45will define that and um these um these costs like the two million that you just ran by like it was nothing that would have decimated our city budget um where are those numbers coming from how do you how do you calculate those numbers yeah so even you know as we go

1:42:09deeper into this we can do a fee study um the these programs are generally generally ran operated on cost recovery so what that means is there's a per unit registration fee that would then fund the program so we once we figured out from a fee study what that amount what

1:42:27the staff time would be because we can only charge a fee for actual program administration not you know for more than that so we would definitely need to figure out what that fee would look like for for el cerrito he would charge the property owner yeah it would be a registration fee yes

1:42:47it would be built into every year like when they register their business license it'd be a rental registration fee for example if if um one had a property worth i don't know pick a number a million dollars because it's an easy number to calculate um then what would likely the fee

1:43:09per be so if they had five units depending on the program cost so for example in concord i believe their fee is 31 per unit so what you do is you look at your inventory of housing units that are going to be subject to the program you then look at the program administration

1:43:26fees and then that's how you determine what the per unit registration fee would be but how do we know [Music] that it's um i don't know what the word is viable uh you know if the cost of the program is such that the uh per unit cost turns out to be twenty thousand dollars say

1:43:51the highest ones were like two to four two to three hundred oh okay okay that's the kind of thing that would help it helps to know the yeah so with direction we can definitely do a fee study that's um before any decisions were made by the council yeah we can do a fee study and

1:44:12explore further what the program costs albany's estimating that their program is going to be 95 000 for example so we can definitely do it and then because what i'm more concerned about is the unit the per unit cost to see if it's viable or is it gonna what i'm what i'm

1:44:38my real bottom line concern at this point is whether or not developers will build housing or go or or pick some other place to do it in if they see these numbers because when i see a number that's in the millions i get concerned i'm the city's um development director

1:45:03and tonight depending on the suite of programs that you direct us to continue to look at i think isu was we would look at what the cost of that program is and depending on the program it could be paid for for example with the mediation program it would be paid for through a registration fee on per

1:45:21unit and this would be existing as well as potentially new development again depending on your direction but we would come back some of the programs as aisa mentioned some of the programs have would have a higher per unit cost and some would have a lower so we would have

1:45:36to do a fee study depending upon which programs you like from a policy perspective in terms of what objectives they achieve what i like from a policy perspective until i have a sense of what the impact will be and i won't know that unless i know the cost so again if we look back at

1:45:57so these uh near-term on the slide those are the near-term programs and you can see in general what other cities have had to charge per unit in order to implement those programs or what what they did charge but this is el cerrito and i'm wondering in in this city what would it be on it's just an

1:46:18estimate it would likely scale right so depending on the size of the city so albany is 18 000 people and ours is 24 000 they presumably each of them also had to do fee recovery for the size of the their program scale based on population of our city number of units

1:46:35so we would only be able to charge around you can see there's an average population of the city 19 000.

1:46:43and so maybe yeah we could go on and then talk about the other kind of policies and policy objectives and we understand that you would need to see i'm a total cost there's a lot of programs and that were presented so we couldn't do looking at el cerrito specific in

1:46:58regards to each of them to develop our program but it gives you a sense if you if we picked what we thought might be interesting let's call it and then you came back and said what the cost to the different parties involved would be the city being a party the uh tenant being a party

1:47:17and the um landlord being a party and then what the cost per what you know year per whatever the time element is and it would be nice to know the cost to all those parties for that particular program or feature or what however you wanted to present it but it's hard to for me at least to sort

1:47:41of look at it and make much sense out of the financial impact of it to anybody but i do get very nervous when i see numbers that are in millions especially when i look at our city reserves just to point out again that's most of these would um the lower cost programs

1:48:07would not aside from the staff that's in front of you tonight they would not be costing general fund dollars there were other in the long in the medium somebody dollars like that okay that's i still get nervous about it costing anybody without knowing some more detail you

1:48:30know somebody would definitely come back for more detail when we hone in on the programs that you want to go forward with if there are some see i had one other question and i think it was another definition thing um but right now i can't remember what it was we'll go we'll come back okay okay

1:48:47council member for delhi um so i agree with um council member abelson about the concern about cost and i would love to see you know my two bits is that those near-term let's cost those out the near term the green you said el cerrito has none of those right now i think these those are all

1:49:07important protections that we should be thinking about implementing and i'd love to see the cost based on fees that we would have to charge and then we can review those at a later time um i do have a concern too not just about the fees that would pay for this but the

1:49:24burden to cities to to do this effort whether it's a bureaucracy a big administrative effort do you know in talking to richmond or berkeley how big a stat how big their staff is and how long it took them to to gear up to do this because i'm i've heard some richmond has

1:49:4510 staff members and i believe berkeley is 25 or larger in our meetings aisa referred to um you know the different cities that she interviewed as well as the organizations one of the ways that we did identify the near-term programs is we felt that they could be implemented with the small

1:50:09staff and kind of reasonable fees in speaking with some of the organizations there was an acknowledgment that some of the programs that for example are not complaint based but require a universal um kind of monitoring etc did seem that they would potential the reason they

1:50:30were also not identified in our in our near-term strategies is they felt that they would be cumbersome and problematic for a city our size so the green when we did include them in the green it was partly through an analysis we'd have to do some more analysis if that's where you wanted to

1:50:46go before we brought those back and we felt that they going from not having those programs to having those programs would of course be um a big lift but we felt that they were feasible the green the green program that's right so as we head toward november and and

1:51:07proposition 10 is there a need to readjust and we look at some of the stuff that you've told us based on what might happen if it passes well the green programs we could design it with the car yeah i'm talking about mainly the rent stabilization program that would open up say berkeley

1:51:28could then extend private homes it's a bigger pot of correct right which could mean if prop 10 passes additional staffing needs and that could mean additional fee needs to yeah because it's a larger universe of properties that would so is there any need for you to wait at after you get

1:51:49what we want and you feel we should be doing here in el cerrito to see what comes out of the november election for the near term programs no no but just but the other the rent stabilization will be a whole different configuration right correct i think when we um look at rent

1:52:07stabilization i think we think that that would be if you decided that you wanted us to continue to work work on that we'd have to um pace ourselves um and potentially go forward with the green so it would probably from a policy standpoint make sense to wait until

1:52:23after the the results of something like that so that you could we wouldn't be duplicating our effort and looking at that so you could determine at that time remember prop 10 allows cities to do things but it doesn't mean if it if it were to pass it wouldn't mandate it so that would still

1:52:37be they may not necessarily so depending on where you drew your lines that would uh it would result in different staffing needs and i just have one more yeah one more question on the early slide that talked about the from 2013 to 2018 the general rent increase increases or decreases

1:53:02can you um explain the decreases in 2017 and 2018 by five percent yeah so this was just an average asking rent it's not actual effective rents and we're hearing that the rental market is softening so this data this is how recent is the this is this data is from zillow and it's um it's

1:53:23based on just asking rent that's why we actually included the effective rents as well so you can see that the effective rents were i believe it was 19 percent um for el cerrito and then i think county-wide it was about 23 average asking actual rents per square foot

1:53:44for multi-family units not for single family and so the minus five percent is there's a softening of the rental market now is what you're saying yeah or el cerrito okay i mean there's a crisis everywhere and rent going up everywhere and so yeah um again i think that kind of we wanted

1:54:08to combine both these slides and um you can see i think it was effective in the way that isa presented and of course from between 2013 and 2018 there was a jump but there have been new there's been numerous articles written about how this it both softens and there are a lot more

1:54:26units coming online maybe the rents got caught up to that point in 2015 2016 and we're even hearing from some including metro 510 that for example some of their one bedroom they had overpriced um so i think that there's you know adjustments that the market makes but you can see in 2015 they went

1:54:44up quite a bit so it's not that surprising that they might have come down from there again and again one more question i didn't mean to say it was my last one it wasn't but um do you city staff and people with your background have metrics for determining real concerns for the need for rent

1:55:05stabilization um that you use that you can share with us um because these figures might be there is more development and rents are going down i don't know if those are other there may be other speakers too so the first part of your question i thought one of the things you were looking at i

1:55:22think aries mentioned that uh one of the things we would hope to do as we establish new programs so again i'd like to remind council that we did bring on you brought on an affordable housing analyst and we're very lucky to have isis so this is really new territory for us to be working

1:55:38outside of our redevelopment area in terms of just producing in the past the city only was able to use redevelopment to produce new units and we're continuing to do that and of course with include inclusionary will increase it and so with aissa here who is uh rapidly

1:55:54becoming both our expert and brings expertise in the area one of the things in our outreach with the with the progressives and others is um you know just the need for more local data and a better understanding of what's really happening in el cerrito i think as i

1:56:08mentioned it's a regional and statewide problem but what's really happening here how how will the specific plan units once they get developed affect things where they take some of the pressure off of the older units i don't think we know and so collecting data as

1:56:24we keep developing these programs obviously it has to be accessible data that we can figure out how to get um but we look forward to trying to figure that out so that we can kind of so we're in this journey together and getting more data as part of that and coming to us to

1:56:38talk about it and okay and i want to thank you because we asked for this review the city council because we knew it was important and we're very thankful that we continue to have you begin this process for us thank you okay i remember abel i remembered what it was i didn't remember

1:56:56and i should have thought about that automatically transportation i don't believe it's particularly referred to at all here and in fact uh usually people who are with lower incomes are more likely to use public transit because they lack the funds to purchase an automobile and maintain

1:57:20it and pay the insurance and all that those other costs that are associated with car ownership so they're out there riding the bus i might add with me i don't have a driver's license um and so i would expect that the um there would be an association between uh transit friendly

1:57:46uh areas and non-trans friendly areas and we certainly have both types of properties in this town so um i because from everything i've been told there is an association many times not a hundred percent of course but many times between transit usually or the ability

1:58:09to use it and one's income level so i i don't see anything here about that at all and i i suspect there ought to be some association uh with that well this is for existing housing stocks so our new new housing stock is definitely we are the specific plan does focus on transit oriented

1:58:31development so at the mayfair project that was approved for example we're going to have 67 affordable units right next to del norte park i believe all of the apartments in town if not close to all of the apartments in town are near transit the existing apartments that's

1:58:48right so so it's uh yet another reason that rents are important to look at our multi-family rents because they are near transit and there are people who need transit and so this is helping to make sure that we're looking at rent say up in the hills you know they're not equivalent

1:59:08and there we should be we should be discussing that in this sort of report in my opinion okay and in the opinion of many people i've talked to not that they've looked at this report but they talk about the connection between uh income level and proximity to transit being an important

1:59:32thing if you have a lack of income thank you okay thank you very much for putting together this report um i was um as councilmember abelson said that you know when you look at 4.5 million dollars that is a definite sticker shock but when you look at the fee charge per unit 250 dollars

2:00:00to have both rent stabilization and good cause eviction for protection i was thinking of myself as a renter even if this fee was passed along to me that's basically 25 per month um in order for me to know that my rent is not going to go up by a thousand dollars

2:00:22and that um you know they're going to have a have to have a good cause to evict me and maybe that's something you could also clarify too a good cause addiction versus just cause eviction um and then the next line down in east palo alto i also really want us to look closely at that

2:00:43one they also have about the same fee 234 dollars and their population is much more similar to ours and it looks like they've been having this stabilization program for quite a while so i think we should definitely keep in close contact with them in terms of figuring out

2:01:02what's worked what hasn't worked because that might be one of our closest places where we can compare one of the numbers here that didn't quite make sense to me and i don't know if this is because they're new maybe because of the staffing as you said between richmond versus berkeley i

2:01:23was surprised to see berkeley paying almost or having almost twice as much in their budget yet they have the same fee charge per rental unit is do you have any data behind where that discrepancy comes from i don't but i can find out the fees were published on their website and in our

2:01:44affordable housing strategy so i can definitely look into why there's a difference okay thank you um and then based on our uh current housing do you another question i'd like answered and you may not have it off the top of your head but i know that right now under current law with costa

2:02:08hawkins we only could potentially do rent stabilization for those buildings that were built before 1995 and how many units in el cerrito would fall under that category it's about 2 800. okay thank you um yeah that's that's all for now councilmember lyman yeah thank you um

2:02:31for this opportunity this is a important dialogue for our community whether you're a landlord or a renter it's an important dialogue um and part of my line of questioning is going to actually go back to the root of what you you said earlier in your presentation

2:02:49the purpose is affordability affordability affordability um and i'll quote from our housing authority it's i mean our affordable housing strategy um first sentence so very clear i'm providing quality housing that is within the reach of the extremely low very low

2:03:07low and moderate income households as a high priority of the city of el cerrito so um as i considered this and a lot of my questions i don't have a i don't have not made up my mind and i'm looking at this very seriously and i think we are all are and and so my questions are more towards educating us

2:03:29so that we can potentially be be the um decision makers that you want us to be informed decision makers um and and so some of my questions are going to be around the rent stabilization uh slides because i i will tentatively agree with mr uh with council member fidelity that the

2:03:49near-term ones we probably should get priced out but before we go too much further in dealing with the medium terms my my biggest concern is that the that some of the rent stabilization does not do the intended purpose um that that rent stabilization in and of itself may

2:04:08not do provide high quality housing for the extremely low very low low and moderate and and so um you know we've touched on some of my questions already council member pardue okamoto just touched on one of my assumptions which is the cost of the program is going to get

2:04:29passed on to the renter and and so whether it's passed on to the renter um you know before the program goes into effect or as the program goes into effect it's going to get passed on to the renter and so the cost of the program whether it's the near term ones at

2:04:49a couple of dollars a month you know 30 a year or the medium terms those are all going to get council member abelson said it quite eloquently somebody's got to pay and it's not going to be the city because i think you said these are all intended to be fee-based programs

2:05:06it's not going to be the landlord and so the renter is going to ultimately pay for these programs um and i think council member purdue okamoto said well that you know i'm going to pay a little bit every year to get some form of protection and stabilization to that end

2:05:29when we when we go with something that is a rent stabilization how do we make sure it's to serving the extremely low very low and low populations because because i i can give you examples of plenty of people who are actually very well off who moved from san francisco to say

2:05:52berkeley and kept their rent control apartment for their weekends in the city they used it like a hotel and so there is nothing about you know they bought their million dollar home in berkeley and they still have their their apartment in san francisco so that's one

2:06:09unit off the market that a low income house can't use because the high income house is using it as their weekend getaway so is there any way for the rent stabilization program to actually benefit i mean can we do a means test is there a way for us to design it such that we can

2:06:34actually um create the benefit that we're trying to create so it's current most program all programs are not means tested but we can look into how that could be designed and what the cost could look like yeah and and also um most of the stabilization programs are you know

2:07:01traditionally through ballot measure as well so um that is another item of consideration also one of the articles i read today i mean it i'm going to build on this one of the articles i read today basically said that rent control disproportionately benefits middle income residents because they

2:07:23get in they have the ability to keep a job and um so they're not they're not they're stable income earners and they have the ability to take advantage of the rent control and pass it on to the next generation in a disproportionate way over low-income households so again

2:07:43the the the message i kept reading today was that rent control does not necessarily target our target our target audience so i'm just i just want to make sure that we're thinking through the programs that might do that if i may i'd like to also add i think we didn't highlight it

2:08:00fully but the green programs were also identified because they felt that they were very direct in what we could see they would do and i think as you're seeing when you're doing a literature review there's a lot of controversy around from economists and others and so it was

2:08:16the blue programs were not only because they were higher cost but the controversial conclusions and input um was something that we also felt we would need your direct the the green programs we felt that seemed pretty um straightforward um and we didn't see as many kind of um you can see in this

2:08:35slide here we did do a a a very light looking at the issues and the benefits but what you're bringing up is another reason that that one was not identified for near term without having some more in-depth um conversations but it but i'm hearing that the first blue line in here rent

2:08:52stabilizations the issue is that it's not means tested and that's what i'm highlighting um is there are that's just because that's the programs that are out there don't have means testing and i'm assuming that that's cost based for those programs is is that is that an assumption i can make that

2:09:12that no one's done it because they're the overwhelming entry cost to create a means testing program so i'm just curious well it would be much like operating an affordable housing development where you would have to go through annual certification and qualification process and

2:09:30generally um you know smaller landlords aren't familiar with that and unless you're you know kind of in the affordable housing field and there's training and the ability to collect all of those documents and do a recertification annually as a standard affordable housing program

2:09:46requires just to bring those that don't uh maybe know but when we talk about affordable units um as i was just referring to where there's an annual certification process so you often hear us talk about bmr or below market rate units and so for those in the audience that don't

2:10:01know for example next door hana gardens when there is a public subsidy so i think we didn't highlight in this again as we did with the inclusionary this one really comes out of the private sector and so remember when we did inclusionaire we did a lot of economic

2:10:14um looking at this when we for the city when we have um when it's subsidized housing so like next door when it gets tax credit dollars or other public funding we actually get into depends on the length of the term but into remember the links of our terms but 50

2:10:33years 50 years 99 years different levels of regulatory agreements that because there was public subsidy we're able to do that and then we annually get a re-certification of what people's incomes were so those are based on means and as isa said and as you've seen in

2:10:50previous presentations and for the public those units you both have to qualify your income and then your rent is set at no more than 30 of what your income is so again when we're looking at all of these other units that we're talking about today those are not subsidized units those are

2:11:06coming out of the private sector and out of the market and so looking at again the um the administrative side of doing something like what you've just described it sounds like it might be a good way to do it but it obviously would have an administrative piece to it and that is again looking at

2:11:23berkeley's program at rent stabilization those are much higher touch programs when you get into something like that um some of these again the rent stabilization i mean i think just cause and harassment productions are potentially not quite as controversial as the rent stabilization

2:11:40but but one of the things that i want to make sure is that as if we do a rent stabilization program that we want our housing stock to be safe we want landlords to be able to do upgrades do most rent stabilization programs allow for capital improvements for seismic upgrades

2:12:04new roofs uh to be passed on to the the renters or or does the renter stabilization program prevent that capital improvement from and and creating safe housing stock for our for all of our populations not just our low and very low and moderate uh bmr below market rate tenants um

2:12:25is it are there different programs out there that have different ways of passing that on yeah they're they're structured different ways the capital improvement pass-through so that would be part of the program design okay and then one of the one of the ones when i was talking to some uh

2:12:43peers we were we were talking about changes in ownership and this is one of the complaints that i've heard from our our residents new owner comes in and they have to raise the rent well the new owner has a large mortgage that potentially the previous owner didn't have

2:13:02it how does a rent stabilization program work when there are property changes when there's changes in ownership they're they're still subject to until the unit vacates that's when under current law the vacancy decontrol would allow the rents to be reset but it wouldn't change as a result of ownership

2:13:27with rent control with a program in place i think the answer is that you're talking about other rent stabilization programs when there's a change of ownership in those programs in the in those 19 cities that have a stabilization programs here but here yeah here right now we

2:13:46don't have if there's a change in ownership that the the new owner can raise cannon probably does raise the rent and that's what i've heard from our residents however i know uh council member lyman you're focusing on rent stabilization right now but similarly with the rent mediation program that we

2:14:03did include in the green um we one of the features that we could include would be that um even if ownership um were to transfer that that same threshold would apply okay so you would still whether it was five percent or seven percent would still be the guideline and a new owner would also

2:14:21have to um if there was a complaint from the tenant we would also go into a mediation process so that could be a feature um of the uh of the mediation program as well i believe it was on a much earlier slide that there was potentially in the mediation that there would be

2:14:39triggers uh for different levels of mediation as a result of something we could put into the into the uh you've got it up here in part one five percent ten percent would trigger where less than that would not necessarily trigger the mediation clause [Music] okay well i guess i'm i'm generally

2:15:00in support of council member fidelity's suggestion that we have you price the the near-term ones i i know our conversation on the medium-term ones is not over and so i do believe that you're going to need to do additional research on the medium-term ones which is why i wanted

2:15:18to ask the questions that i've asked because [Music] principally in in you know there's i don't think there's a silver answer here because uh it is a balancing of what we can reasonably put in place and what the tenant can afford for their own protection um and so that that's certainly

2:15:45something that uh we'll we will need to continue looking at and to that end [Music] you know we've we've done so many things like the recycling center better than other communities why stop there okay uh i just have a couple of questions number one um how many units do we have here in el cerrito that

2:16:12is section eight we are not collecting data on that but i'm sure we could partner with our folks at the housing authority it is um we do want our goal is to get more landlords to accept section 8 so that will be one of the workshops that we roll out as well i definitely support that we have i'm

2:16:35very concerned with our senior population our low-income seniors so if you can explain to us what section 8 is and and what can we do to to let uh our mom and pop landlords know that that that is another option and it's a good option yeah so section 8 is um it's basically a

2:16:57voucher program and depending on if you housing choice voucher would allow you to rent a property from a private landlord and the housing authority has a set amount every year that they would cover and so the landlord would be eligible to collect that amount and the nice thing

2:17:13about the section 8 voucher program is that your income is truly your rent is truly based on a third of your actual income um so there are some incentive programs that are trying to get landlords to kind of get back in the market and start accepting section 8 tenants as well

2:17:29and the housing authority also puts out a listing of properties on their website so i mean there's definitely the contra costa county housing authority yeah they list private properties that are available for rent through section eight so we could definitely do some more targeted

2:17:45outreach to expand um to folks who actually have those vouchers and are in need of housing okay and then also i'm looking at the near term and looking at the city of san leandro they have had their that was adopted back in 2001.

2:18:04have you looked at that in comparison to the one that albany is working on yeah um so they adopted their program back in 2001 like you said and in terms of costs um they're covering it out of their general funds so they're not administering any sort of annual fee and i was able to get some

2:18:31data from them as well and um if you're interested in that uh let me get to it um so their program has been highly effective um they had about 46 cases over the last fiscal year and um you know 11 of those 11 of those were resolved before the hearing for example and

2:18:58they had 14 hearings and they were resolved and then there were some units that weren't eligible so in terms of why their program costs is so low i can find out but it looks like i would definitely like to know okay thank you so much all right one other thing yes

2:19:15okay what would be really um helpful i think in future versions of this process would be to have a definition of terms a glossary so that if one wanted to know what some of these terms meant one would be able to find out definitely we'll incorporate that thank you okay

2:19:38um let's uh see what uh how many folks we have here that is interested in speaking i believe we have 18 or 19 speakers um let's reduce it to two minutes since we have so many speakers so two minutes each uh brenda carter followed by sherry dropner followed by robin mitchell

2:20:22okay good evening good evening so i'm sheri krogner and i'm here tonight to speak about this discussion on rent stabilization and what to do about displacement of our neighbors and friends in the community i want you to think about this i was here a year ago in front of all of you

2:20:45and i was talking about an ad i used in a newspaper an apartment where they were trying to flip it to make more money and they they boasted about el cerrito not being a city with gun control so it was a good place to be and they could upgrade the tenants in the process and i checked another

2:21:03building and it did sell um in january and i made about three quarter million dollars profit so just i raise that um but what i want to say is i i appreciate the thoughtful presentation and the detail that the staff went into and i understand the idea of wanting to

2:21:22like take sort of the low-hanging fruit and and and do what's you know easy right now what we can do that doesn't seem scary in terms of cost but i'd like to say we have some kind of freeze on the rents right now because we're losing people i mean i don't know this is an issue of

2:21:41homelessness as well people it's not the people are just being displaced and moving to the nearby community they're being displaced and moving to their cars they're being displaced and moving to shelters it's you know nowhere not the fire it's not that emergency but it's a different

2:21:59kind of emergency so i feel like there's a lot of issues that you guys have to deal with you have to do fee studies you have to think about these things but we need to also figure out how we're going to address the immediacy for the tenants themselves and speaking about the tenants

2:22:16themselves i i was in the neighborhoods going door-to-door talking to people and i think it's really important there's a lot of people down here tonight there's a lot of people who are afraid to come tonight they were afraid their landlords were going to be here

2:22:30thank you okay there's no talking i'm sorry i'm sorry okay robin mitchell followed by howdy gowdy and elona clark my name is robin mitchell i live in el cerrito i actually really resent the fact that we only have two minutes because we should have the three minutes

2:22:54that we're supposed to have and i think you should allow people that want to talk for three minutes to have that time that being said i know several friends in el cerrito have issues with affordable housing i've talked to you about this before one of them moved out of state because

2:23:11of multiple rent increases one was forced to look outside of el cerrito to find affordable rentals and this is a person that has a good job in berkeley and i received a letter from my el cerrito based physical therapy office saying that 80 percent of their employees could not afford to live in el

2:23:28cerrito even though they worked there so i very much support sherry's idea of a moratorium on rent increases until something is figured out i know there are a lot of other cities in the bay area that have done this and i think it's the right approach just sort of

2:23:44chill and figure something out that makes sense i think as rochelle said the east palo alto ordinances seem very relevant to me on their on their website their their tenants are protecting residential tenants in the city from unreasonable rent increases by discouraging

2:24:04speculation in rental property and stabilizing rent increases protecting tenants from arbitrary discriminatory or retaliatory evictions and assuring landlords both a fair return and rental income sufficient to cover costs of maintenance and operating expenses as

2:24:20well as the cost of capital improvement so you know it is possible to do this it's not such a scary thing i think there's lots of models to look at some of them are more successful than others and we should be able to figure something out so i support rent stabilization i support

2:24:38just cause eviction and i think it should those things should apply to all rentals not just apartment buildings they should apply to single-family houses because there's lots of single-fam i've rented lots of single-family houses in the east thank you and i think that the relocation expenses

2:24:55should be included if the rental is remodeled and it should apply to single family as well as multi-family thank you good evening mayor quinto and council members my name is howdy cody i live in el cerrito um so to begin this discussion it's important to reflect on

2:25:19the fact that all the private property that we imbue with lofty you know unquestioned rights actually originated in genocide and theft from indigenous people and is further tainted by unfair privilege of social power and money including federally sanctioned home lending discrimination on the basis

2:25:40of race and i say this not to stray from the crucially important topic at hand but to ground the discussion in the stark reality of how we got here and recognize the damage and injustice that we ought to seek to repair there is no smug entitlement to you know property rights in this context only a

2:26:06profound call to property responsibility so let's shed that notion of unaccountable property rights and ask that the lionized image of the self-made american who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to cons to consider whether their boots stepped on others or

2:26:22already started a leg up you're just your direction tonight needs to be founded in what's best for people not best for profit what's best for this community i'm not a renter i'm not a landlord i'm a member of this community who cares that we have affordable effective safe housing for everyone and

2:26:46um and that's where we should really ground this discussion um i have way too much to say but um that's more directed to your conversation but i i do like what greg said it's like yes there are plenty of things to point out didn't go well in other instances but that's not an excuse to do

2:27:11nothing it's an excuse to figure out what wrong went wrong and do better and that's what you need to do that's the direction you need to give it's not we're scared we don't want to do anything we need to solve this problem and direct staff to solve this problem

2:27:26[Applause] good evening good evening can you hear me yes my name is alana clark and i'm a richmond resident i actually own a duplex about five blocks from here in the annex um and um i commend you on tackling this thorny pro project um it looks like this study some thought

2:27:56was put into the study i would like to make a couple of suggestions early outreach i saw caa was the only landlord advocate group cited as the um as a source for landlords and i would like to suggest that you also in your list of sources consider um consulting groups that

2:28:26work locally with berkeley oakland alameda san francisco such as the east bay rental housing association bpoa berkeley property owners association small property owners in san francisco because they have been operating under rent control for quite a long time and

2:28:45might be able to give you some more perspective on this subject rent levels that were um cited in this study are from zillow those are vacancies so it it really behooves you to look at actual rents that are being charged i know my rents are far below what the study cites and you need that

2:29:10information to craft common sense housing policy affordability is a huge issue it depends on a lot more than just renters incomes it also depends on the actual rents charged which of course you don't know yet the actual cost of providing housing which tends in the in the bay area to

2:29:34rise faster than the cost of inflation um raises are generally based on inflation and raises your statement i'm sorry please finish your statement though raises above this are limited i'm sorry distracted um last last thing consider incentives for below market rates

2:30:02you may be surprised at how many rents are actually below market in the private sector and if you incentivize the right things you will get the right result thank you very much thank you william smith followed by veronica jones followed by jeff nollie good evening good evening matt quinto

2:30:23and members of the council i'm william smith from the city of alameda and i'm former chair of the county of alameda not the city but the county of alameda planning commission so i've been involved with land use and planning for decades and this is a problem that's going to be

2:30:37with us for decades more we don't have the basic solutions ready a number of you mentioned that we need more public funding to get it that's the only long-term solution so everything else we have in the interim is going to be a band-aid solution and it's going to

2:30:52have many ugly consequences but i think many of these are the worst consequences of all is to do nothing and watch our lower income service worker communities disappear and get a situation like marin found itself in when all the teachers lost their homes in santa rita santa

2:31:08rosa and they had to close some of the schools until the teachers got resituated so but and it's getting worse and where we used to have places in closer for the service workers to go but we don't have that anymore the other thing i wanted to point out the sierra club which i'm also a member

2:31:25of published a study just yesterday on housing and that mentions that the rent control is something that really needs to has a has a role in in stabilizing things for things to happen and finally in alameda oh a couple i want you meant you asked the question there uh mr fideli about

2:31:44the uh rents and why their the why they went down lately they went down for the higher income people they did not go down for the lower income people so there's studying you'll hear from jeff levine later he can provide you the resources on that and finally in alameda

2:31:59we did put in a uh moratorium on raising rents and that worked very well for us and everything together and what that does is that focuses your attention on getting something done and done quickly because these are tough decisions and you can act you can nitpick forever and find

2:32:16little things to object to but you just have to really get through it and get it done so good luck you've made a lot of progress in the last few years on the housing issues and i wish you more luck in the future thank you veronica jones and jeff nolly okay all right jeff nolly then good

2:32:41evening uh my name is jeff nall and uh i live in el cerrito with my wife and two daughters um for the last 25 years we live on pomona near el cerrito high school my experience is that long-term tenants contribute to the this being a desirable place to live and that housing security

2:33:07gives tenants a greater stake in the community it gives them incentive to put time energy and money into their residence and their community so i want to keep el cerrito as a income diverse town with stable neighborhoods where people aren't forced to move every

2:33:28few years i think what we have is worth i have a friend barry from el cerrita who's living in a shelter in richmond right now partially because of the rents that he can't afford in el cerrito i'd like us to create a moratorium on rent increases while we come up with a

2:33:50longer term plan and to have a just cause eviction program in place thank you thank you christina redzy susan stanley and jeffrey i think it's bloomsfield my name is christina redzy and i am from richmond your neighbor um i'm a homeowner i was a renter in richmond for

2:34:18years i'm a homeowner and i'm currently also a landlord and i share a lot of the ideals that people have been talking about of course we should take care of our community members and of course we should look at some of the challenges that are facing our low-income

2:34:34community members we would be sort of heartless if we didn't consider all of that however being now a small landlord in richmond i'm going down the rabbit hole and part of the reason earlier when you asked about the discrepancy it's not a 1.9 million budget it's almost a 3 million

2:34:50budget and growing and what we have had is a tremendous amount of divisiveness in our community that measure l instead of considering the needs of all the community members it actually has pitted them against each other and small landlords who many of them are owner occupy the same buildings

2:35:08who may be senior who may be disabled who count on some of that income for their subsistence are not guaranteed a fair wage they actually have no way to increase rents that may be half of what market is and they have no way to make repairs that they need there is no fair

2:35:21market return so please do your thoughtful data gathering you sound great and just don't go for failed policies pick something that's really going to accomplish what you want thank you good evening hi i'm susan stanley i live in el cerrito i work at uc berkeley at

2:35:47lawrence hall of science i illustrate a science curriculum for kids i've been there for 11 years and i've rented in el cerrito in a little cottage with a yard and garden for 16 years recently my landlord asked me to vacate so he could remodel he said he would delay for a year if i

2:36:09agreed to 130 rent increase which i did i looked in earnest for two months and saw at least 20 places i was looking in el cerrito albany richmond annex richmond view cities north including panel i've been paying about 34 percent of my income now with this increase

2:36:35for rent 34 of my income my limit in looking for a new place was 1850.

2:36:43most places in that range were too small or living in the same building as the owner usually under the house in a dark space with a shared yard going up to 2000 a month places were slightly better there was one standalone house at my age i get full social security oh

2:37:04did i say i'm 73 anyway i get full social security plus a full paycheck i might be able to afford the higher rent of 2000 which is about 50 percent of my income while i'm still working but i'd like to retire in two years and i'd probably have to leave the area for

2:37:24more affordable housing luckily my landlord changed his mind and he won't remodel for a few years but i feel very uncertain about the future he could change his mind at any time i still look but i'm finding what i'm finding is worse than when i started several months ago where i live now i

2:37:46have a yard and garden and wonderful neighbors i put up with mold and peeling paint and i don't rock the boat in this unpredictable situation please complete your statement my garden is very important to me so i'll stay as long as i can thank you my name is jeff bloomfield and i've been

2:38:11living in berkeley and elsewhere for three years having been in the east bay for 40 raised my kids here and had to move out of berkeley because uh the place i was living was was sold it's how my landlord whom i got along with financed assisted living for the end of his life

2:38:35so it was good for him but not great for me i really enjoy this community i've been in this community now for three years but i don't know about the figures about uh el cerrito rent going down my first year i paid 2200 second year 23.50 the third year 2500 which has been an

2:38:55increase of 1800 every year i get along with my landlady who lives out in the sunset in san francisco she's a good person she's retired but when i asked her well can we keep the rent stable for maybe two years she said well i'll think about it but you know that's just what

2:39:14property owners do which to me wasn't a great reason okay um that was part one part two is i've been trained as a mediator you know in the seeds program in berkeley and then i was fortunate to be in the last small claims court practicum so i'm a volunteer mediator in the small claims

2:39:37court what i want to say about mediation is that when the parties start when the parties have a little bit of give between the mediation works community dispute mediation works even when it's voluntary but what makes mediation work in small claims court is when the

2:39:59judge says i want you to try mediation even though mediation is voluntary there's incentive the incentive is people save time the incentive is that they have longer to talk and work out their differences but the main incentive is if mediation fails they're back in

2:40:20court what i'm saying is mediation works when it has teeth and rent stabilization needs to have some form of teeth and of course it needs to be designed so that it takes both parties into consideration thank you elena lieberman elizabeth thorns and jeffrey wright

2:40:59hello mayor and members i'm elena lieberman ccrm i'm a california certified residential manager i work in concord and i have advanced education with my certification and i'm also a mayor appointed city public official in the city of concord i do the rent review i'm one of

2:41:20their panelists so i do know and understand you know what's going on here and the choices that you have to make i think that i just want to say that personally i do oppose rent control and just cause and i have specific reasons for it the reason being is that i also work in oakland i've been

2:41:41a property manager in oakland for over 10 years i worked for an owner there i've also owned a warehouse in oakland too for about 20 years i've been a victim of the city of oakland rent adjustment program it's been really awful and we had our hearing so i've been

2:41:58through the exact tenant petition that the when the tenant petitioned his hearing this was on a capital improvement increase all the way to a rent board hearing uh that i wanted to do because i wanted to appeal the hearing and i just want to tell you i know they

2:42:17didn't put oakland up here but there's probably good reasons why because oakland's going through a specific mess the city attorney has quite frankly put falsities in her ordinances to get items pushed through like the tenant protection ordinances we have evidence

2:42:36of that i'm a member of east bay rental housing as well i wanted to tell you that there's ethic issues there there's conflict of interest and there's improprieties that are in that city and you know i want to say that i couldn't get the money for the owner because it's

2:42:58binding decision we would have had to go into court and what the amount was it really wasn't worth that in court i just want to say too i want to put in that the problem with just cause is that yes you do have different causes that you have to go through legally in oakland to evict a

2:43:16tenant and sometimes there's an interim issue where if it's not just cause and then you have a bad tenant that can lead to conduct your statement okay i just want to say briefly that if this does happen if you go to rent control and just cause i think it's going to destroy el cerrito

2:43:34as you know it you've worked so hard you've done a really great job you want a safe city you know you have to make those tough choices thank you elizabeth thornton thorns and jeffrey wright and helen dickey good evening good evening hello uh i'm elizabeth thorsness uh

2:44:07i'm a landlady i can't tell you how scary it is to say that i used to feel proud of being a good landlady but now i just expect rocks to come on me so i promised myself i would say it um i would like to um uh point out that the somebody else already did that the

2:44:24numbers on the the the rents that were shown are all estimates and and if they're taken from zillow or craigslist or something they're they're what somebody's hoping to get they might sit on the market for a long time i just heard from somebody who has two places well-priced that are

2:44:40they haven't gotten one call in two weeks and so it's uh you know who knows what's happening uh what i want to suggest though that i feel really strongly about is in el cerrito 92 of the rental property the multiple property is um landlords with fewer than 20 units now i

2:45:01don't consider that a tiny landlord myself but you know but that's not corporate either i suppose so i would like to know how many have 10 units how many have two i know somebody who has two units four units right and we can get that information um what i'd also like to know is what is

2:45:20the average rent and health certificate say for a two bedroom not just average rent they never put how many units that is it's all mixed together but what the two bedroom because you can then interpolate the three and the one and what is the median rent we we don't have

2:45:34that information nobody has that information um and this should be correlated i think this information to whether or not the landlord is a corporate landlord or a mom-and-pop landlord should be correlated and another correlation i'd really love to see is correlating it to

2:45:50whether property is handled by property management firms because it's so much easier to raise rent if you just call somebody up and say hey can you just go up on units a b and c oh i don't know let's go up 200 bucks what do you say oh so they move you know you can do that

2:46:03because you never see the tenants so i suspect i've always suspected that that there's a correlation there and maybe there is maybe there isn't uh so the the estimates if we go on estimates please complete your statement okay the reason we shouldn't go in estimates is i

2:46:17suspect that you have a gold mine of small-time landlords in el cerrito and if you could get the actual information you might be really surprised you might be surprised to find somebody is renting to a 90 year old woman for a thousand dollars a month or a two bedroom with a

2:46:34garage because i know somebody who's doing that and that would be me all right and if you freeze my rent i and she doesn't make it to 91 i won't be able to afford to redo her unit i just won't be able to so thank you sure thank you good evening good evening mayor quinto council

2:46:56members and staff let me preface my remarks by thanking you for the outstanding job and the leadership that you've shown in el cerrito we have an outstanding community major stores recreational activities theater restaurants and great development going on on san pablo avenue and it's because

2:47:14of your leadership and the leadership of your predecessors so i would encourage this council to maintain that trajectory and not come across with anything rash that could possibly disturb the greater currencies that are taking place here in the city of el cerrito

2:47:32and i was a property owner in richmond for decades my wife and i when they decided to move forward with rent control in richmond we divested ourselves of every real property holding that we had in richmond i want to share a little information with you that you might find helpful in your decision

2:47:51making this information i called directly from the 2017-18 rent program annual report in richmond the budget that they reported was 2.4 million dollars and this document only includes the expenses for the program it doesn't show the revenues the amount of money that they generated and i believe

2:48:12that's because they're running out of deficit and the general fund in richmond is having to subsidize that definite deficit so as a cautionary tale i'd hate to see el cerrito follow that type of program i would like to encourage el cerrito to look real hard at the types

2:48:27of programs that would encourage greater involvement with the section 8 program and we might even give some consideration to a mediation program as a matter of fact i also pulled bernie sanders affordable housing program or fighting for affordable housing he says

2:48:43absolutely nothing about rent control he has a lot of points but rent control is not one of them in bernie sanders fighting for affordable housing but he does make reference to vouchers such as the section 8 program and as a matter of fact in the san francisco chronicle

2:48:57there were two articles this week one by otis taylor and another one by karen velvets that you might want to look at august 15th and august 20th and it was articles that were supporting uh moving forward with section 8 programs and encouraging owners to do so so that's

2:49:12what i would encourage this city to do thank you helen dickey followed by scott collier and jeffrey levin good evening hello my name is helen dickey i'm a resident of el sridow have been for 30 some years i'm neither a landlord nor a renter i came here because i'm concerned about

2:49:44the community the good of the community i see so many people leaving our teachers particularly are stressed they can't afford to live here so i'm [Music] i really appreciate your having this listening session and i've heard a lot of good things tonight a lot of good information and i have i'm

2:50:16hopeful that we'll be able to work with this information and do a good thing for our community thank you thank you good day excuse me my name is dr scott collier i've been a el cerrito resident since 2010 i'm a family practice physician i graduated from the county hospital

2:50:41residency program in martinez and what was that 2006 i made a lateral move financially as a renter to el cerrito because well it's a lovely town and very centrally located for my needs and at that time i had a two-bedroom apartment for about twelve hundred dollars in in

2:50:562010 and this was uh rented by a friend who's a so-called socialist who really liked to maintain the rent control and we've had a lovely community for the eight and a half years in that apartment comp fourplex with uh that about a year and a half ago had 12 tenants a year and a half ago linda

2:51:14joseph a um i know she's a business owner in landlord location she's not here today to give her perspective on all this unfortunate um she uh bought our apartment complex in i believe it was april of just last year about 16 months ago we were promised six months of rent

2:51:32control five months later we signed all our new agreements with rent increase uh seven of the people had to leave at that time because the rent increase my personal rent increase at that time was seven hundred dollars with removal of a lot of amenities such as laundry and

2:51:47such um in that time period i had moved in with my partner denise and attempt to save to i mean we both have what you call good jobs but in order to save to afford a house this is just you know these rent increases we're chasing a rent increase paying for somebody else's retirement

2:52:04based on other landlords i believe our behavior is probably one of flipping the the unit we've in this time period we've had massive construction changes with a lot of inconvenience we've had most of the people have had to move out for one reason or another and i will no longer

2:52:19be an el cerrito resident as of the end of september because i was told that i would no longer have it available to me for no reason she is not what i call a good person based on my personal experience and opinion because she does not communicate with us um she just

2:52:34basically told us it would be no longer available and we are leaving we looked at pricing similar but honestly i think it's probably a good thing because if she just flips the place for profit we would have to go through the whole inspection and intrusion process and

2:52:49we're leaving thank you very much good evening i'm jeffrey levin i'm a 29-year resident of el cerrito i've lived here both as a renter and as a homeowner i'm also the policy director with east bay housing organizations and we are one of the groups that was consulted by

2:53:11staff in the preparation of this report and i just want to say we appreciate all the work that staff did to reach out to a range of stakeholders to come up with this i think they've presented you with a fine array of programs i think it's clear you're all going to move forward

2:53:27cautiously and study them ebpo is a strong supporter of rent stabilization and just cause and i will say the two need to go together under california law right now a landlord can evict somebody for no reason at all and they can raise the rent as much as they want if you don't have both just cause

2:53:45and rent protections then um you know you can have rent control if you don't have just cause the landlord just evicts the tenants and if you have just cause without rent control then while the landlord can't evict the tenant they can double their rent and they will quote

2:53:59voluntarily move because they can't afford the rent so you really need to think about how these fit together a couple of other things we would suggest you look at on the relocation assistance we think that it should extend to any case of a no of a no-fault eviction so if the tenant has to lose

2:54:16their housing through no fault of their own the landlord should pay them some relocation assistance to help them find another unit secondly we would urge you to seek out funding that would provide legal assistance to tenants who are facing eviction the number one factor that

2:54:30influences the likelihood of a tenant being evicted is access to legal counsel unlike criminal cases civil defendants have no right to counsel and that really needs to be addressed just to level the playing field and finally we are strongly supportive in the interim of

2:54:45adopting a moratorium on rent increases and no cause um evictions let's just hold things where they are while you study this i will tell you if word gets out that el cerrito is considering rent control and you don't put a rent freeze on you're going to expect a wave of rent increases

2:55:03as landlords raise rents in anticipation of what you might do in the future so please consider that carefully thank you makaya aga mike visalus ed crowley and the last speaker roe v lynn antonio good evening um my name is makalia aga and i'm a resident of el cerrito i've been here

2:55:33for 30 years and 24 alone in one place um my rent was really decent for the last three years ago and the building was sold to another owner and he overpaid for the property so what is he going to do he's going to pass the bucks on us the tenants and it was 20 percent since 2015 every year

2:56:00and something needs to be done immediately to freeze this uh increase this is ridiculous and i would like the three council to make some kind of an immediate freeze until we you know you guys decide what's going to be uh in place for the renters especially for seniors

2:56:22who have worked all their lives and they do need to retire and don't work anymore thank you [Applause] good evening hi my name is mike vasilos i'm a past resident of el cerrito uh currently live in richmond i'm also a small housing provider in richmond and it's been almost two years since our

2:56:49rent control ordinance was passed and to this day it remains one of the most if not the most controversial subjects in our city that's because it's certainly effective at something creating division and creating a 2.8 million dollar and growing bureaucracy the current status quo of rent control

2:57:07is pretty unsophisticated in most jurisdictions that are similar to richmond um it's not balanced and it doesn't really seem to intend to be balanced uh tries to justify its bureaucracy by allowing a fair return on investment but what we've learned in this time is

2:57:24that there is no legal definition of a fair return and apparently fair fairness in richmond is waiting 20 months for a hearing for fair return only to receive a 22-page reapplication to start from scratch that even a college graduate has trouble following the same roadblock exists for capital

2:57:43expenditures it's been very demoralizing and it seems that it's intentional and so not only have we lost faith as small housing providers who have acted fairly and most of us have very low rents to begin with uh we've lost face on our ability to to properly maintain our buildings

2:58:00uh and actually we've lost faith in our city so i advise el cerrito to not make the same mistake and it appears that you are taking all the right precautions to make sure you make the right decision and i really liked your uh recycling quote because i always think of like

2:58:13well this is perfect government action here i can't believe how good the recycling center works so i just wanted to throw that in there thank you thank you [Applause] good evening i'm ed crowley a 34-year resident of el cerrito and i don't have a big axe to grind in this

2:58:35because i only have a single u single uh single-family home that we rent but i can tell you that this the talk this talk now is making us think of uh thinking of evicting our tenants and putting it up for sale and taking a few hundred thousand dollar gain that we

2:58:49could get from the house that's the point you don't realize is that the vast majority of single-family homes will go on the market to buyers who are going to live in them not to renters you will lose a big part of the housing stock by going too far with this i question whether members of the

2:59:05council who rant should be voting on or have be acting on this since they have a direct financial stake in the in this in the argument uh the uh um rent stabilization is rent control and with just control just cause it gives tenants an equity stake in buildings look in berkeley and and in

2:59:26san francisco where they're being paid six figures to leave a building because they're so far below market and many of those people make above average you know make very handsome salaries because it's not means tested at all 30 of income is just an arbitrary guideline people make

2:59:44consumption choices people choose to live in a nicer place for more money because they want to and they'll give up something else to do it everybody in this room almost everybody's room and certainly a vast majority in berkeley and san francisco will say how can they be

2:59:59ignoring climate climate sciences what the vast majority of scientists say that client science is real and it's human made the vast majority of economists say rent control does not work so don't you know you don't choose the don't choose the theories that suit your

3:00:16own personal you know views let's go with the real science talk about rrip the richmond i mean the residential uh inspection program the inspections are 250 dollars where is that money going that's richmond is outrageously priced and this is double richmond's thank you oh and oh and the one more

3:00:35point is how how do they keep the uh how does rent control uh what happens when they when the building sells and how does uh how does it keep the building from going up and raising the rents that's because the building is depressed in value by rent control that's how it happens

3:00:51thank you the last the last speaker rovi lynn antonio good evening um good evening mayor city council city staff my name is roviolin antonio and i am the vp of public affairs for california apartment association contra costa division our members provide homes for over 60 families in the county

3:01:20we are here to offer feedback on the various policies and programs that's been addressed tonight and to also look at the region's housing shortage first want to make it clear that caa unequivocally opposes any consideration of rent or eviction controls which include rent control also known as rent

3:01:38stabilization and just cost eviction and also a rent moratorium these are failed policies that do not produce one unit of housing or reduce the cost of housing rent and eviction controls requires el cerrito to establish a new bureaucracy at city hall to operate the

3:01:54program they are not affordable housing programs because they are not means tested there is no guarantee that a low-income family or an individual will receive the privately subsidized unit finally rent and eviction controls hinders property owners ability to provide safe quality housing for renters

3:02:12i wanted to make a point that in el cerrito a vast majority of rental housing providers are independent family owned and owned less than 25 units many of which are duplexes fourplexes a lot of them are actually here today and when you think of el cerrito housing

3:02:28providers we don't want you to think of out-of-town corporate owners who are living outside the bay area we are talking about people who actually live in el cerrito or in the county so essentially these are your neighbors providing homes for their own neighbors so any punitive

3:02:47policies like gun control and just cause eviction has a dire impact on the residents living here we all understand that the city like the region is experiencing housing hardships and caa and our members we want to find meaningful solutions to address these to find fair and equitable solutions that

3:03:02doesn't pit one group against another caa applauds the city and meeting its arena numbers we're approved that your point your downtown i'm sorry san pablo precise plan that's going to add units here in san pablo avenue we're looking forward to those units that also going

3:03:18to add affordable housing units adding housing inventory is the true solution to our housing shortage in addition wanted to put in record that we do not ex oppose exploring what staff has presented to you looking at potential mediation programs um minimum lease terms and a targeted

3:03:35relocation assistance when a unit is taken off the market okay thank you i know my time is up and we also wanted to be i'm respectful of your time so the people who are here tonight who oppose rent control are not going to speak because we know we're running late but wanted to show hands of

3:03:51those who oppose rent control thank you that's it okay let's bring it back to the council um any additional thoughts um yes i think that um very much interested in moving forward with the short term proposals that you made i'm also interested in all of the medium

3:04:31term as well i believe that the more that we look into these and i understand not acting on them immediately but i do think that we are in a crisis of affordability for so many people that it can't be ignored and it's really interesting one of the gentleman's comments because everyone up

3:04:52here owns a home and i don't know where he got that comment from but i am happy to stand up for people that do rent despite the fact that i do own a home let's see here i'm interested in moving forward with rent stabilization media mediation that is binding just cause eviction

3:05:21and harassment protections and i am interested in putting forward a moratorium if i hear many more of these outrageous increases and if this is what the community is going to respond to as we make these discussions i will definitely bring that forward in a future meeting

3:05:43that's all my comments okay councilmember lyman yeah i want to thank everyone for coming out from both sides both the conscientious uh uh landlords and uh the rent rental community as well as those that are neither renters nor landlords um this is a as was presented by both of the richmond

3:06:04residents who spoke tonight richmond landlord slash residents that spoke tonight this is a divisive uh topic and and you know i'll go back to the first line of the affordable housing strategy what's the objective um because i just recently finished a book how to kill a city by peter

3:06:23moskowitz um in in his sub line is you know fighting for the neighborhood and so one of the things that a rent stabilization policy might do [Music] with all the renter protections might do is keep this current culture rent stabilization i mean it's been said tonight it's

3:06:45basically where landlords are subsidizing to keep the current people there whether they're low-income moderate income or high-income earners and and that's you know one of the things that potentially we need to evaluate is how do we keep el cerrito el cerrito on the flip side of that

3:07:05we do have the consensus landlords and you and i have heard that many of you do offer as uh i don't know if bj's left as many you do offer uh below market rents so what i would ask the and whether it's the uh leadership from the you know landlord associations or the

3:07:26landlords that are here i would ask that you do one of the things you've asked us to do which is provide us the the distribution of ownership provide us the rents you're currently collecting so that we can get that data and begin to work with that data to make el cerritos policy fidel cerrito

3:07:50um it's one there's a national ad campaign out there that one size doesn't fit all and sure enough one size isn't going to fit all el cerrito is 26 000 people but we are almost 30 percent below low income we're 30 renters okay and and to there is correlation between those two numbers and so there

3:08:16is an incumbency upon us to protect those people and maintain el cerrito's culture and so i i would ask that we do get that information from the landlords so that we can move forward and not cause hardships on either side as uh council member pardo okamoto is worried

3:08:38about the hardships on the land on the renter's side and i agree with you as landlords you have hardships that you're facing the uncertainties the concerns that you have so help us help us do the right thing and please provide your information to iesa and and i want to make sure that

3:08:59everyone knows that i appreciate how much it takes to stand at that podium and state your mind so thank you for coming out and thank you for everyone who spoke tonight and i know that there are at least a hundred people that aren't here that wanted to speak and i want to make sure that they're

3:09:16they understand that their voice is going to be heard at some point so thank you okay councilmember abelson um i before we leave what you said greg there's one comment i wanted to make and that is that i have in my [Music] in the many hours that i have spent with

3:09:38seniors one of the things i have heard is that they often own a home and have very low income so this as the statistics go through make sure that [Music] the people in that situation are somehow included because that may be where that low-income figure discrepancy is coming from

3:10:04is people who quote stereotypically live up in the hills in a giant house all by themselves and they can't afford to do anything because they have no income so there is a third part of this picture that we haven't really talked about tonight but it's from what i understand

3:10:27it's a very big component in el cerrito so that may be part of what's also going on but i i guess i would in any discussion that would go forward very much would like to think that the group the people that were helping if we were to help a group would be low-income people

3:10:53and and that it not be a sort of you know anybody who wants to be part of it and gets into one of those units they'll never leave and i've heard many people tell me they would never leave a unit even though they had a very uh substantial income because it was such a cheap deal because it was uh rent

3:11:17controlled for example um so i i would um like to i somehow don't feel like i've gotten far enough tonight that i can get behind any kind of proposal one way or the oth you know any it's like i need to have questions like that answered i need to know that we're not headed

3:11:41towards um what looked to me like to our negative experiences with the um cost of things of going with one solution or another i'm really concerned about our own city health right now and our low reserves we have a measure on the ballot because of that because we're trying

3:12:11to have enough money to to just sort of have the basic needs of our city met and we don't have a lot of wiggle room in my opinion to um to get it wrong and end up with a big cost that we we can't afford so i feel like we've got to get it right and um i don't know if if that means um

3:12:35going back to to me it would be going back having staff going back to the drawing board a little bit and see if you can um kind of more address the the issues of um making sure that it won't bankrupt the city [Music] that's that would be the last thing i think anyone in this room wants to hear

3:13:01to do is bankrupt the city but we need to make sure that any solution would not do that and i would also like to think that any solution is not being done for the benefit of wealthy people that that it's actually reaching the um the people who need it and and in addition i would like a

3:13:22connection to transit to be brought into this it's totally absent as i mentioned earlier and i consider that a problem because that means that the people who need transit you know there needs to be a connection with the housing and the transit and there's no connection here

3:13:44so anyway those are my thoughts right now council member for delhi yes thank you thank you and thank the staff for coming back to us upon our request to look into this more and thanks to all the citizens and regional folks who've come in to talk about their experiences

3:14:02i think we've gotten some good staff options and the presentation was good i i do think this is a difficult time obviously for housing and renters in the bay area and i i believe there is a crisis among all housing stock that we need to address and with a strong emphasis on the most

3:14:22urgent issues of affordability and displacement i think this council too has made good decisions over the past couple years which have worked to shore up those concerns here in ways that have not disrupted el cerrito's good housing progress and that includes affordable

3:14:37housing strategy prioritizing affordability and financing and displacement issues which has been a priority of mine and our inclusionary policy just recently passed this year i do believe it's a very delicate delicate dance that we do to undertake uh certain actions to address housing

3:14:58affordability and there are all the personal stories and there is the responsibility of of a city which has a lot of different issues to consider we don't want to disrupt the good recent actions of our city to reach our state mandated housing goals and i just wanted to read one recent

3:15:18local news article said that that dealt with our assembly district assembly district 15 that most communities within our assembly district are not meeting their own benchmarks for approving new housing only el cerrito is on pace to meet its state required goal of approving new

3:15:37units for very low income residents defined as below 50 of area media income so what we hear tonight are some options that i believe we should learn more about and we should review and come back and discuss with all of you and that won't disrupt the progress that i

3:15:57believe we're really making here [Music] however i also want to all the personal stories and all the landlords to hear that stabilization is not a dirty word and el cerrito will keep on the table and must keep on the table all the options that we have moving forward to to deal with the issues that

3:16:19we have and to meet the affordable housing goals and as a city councilman i think that's the least that we can do is to make sure that all the tools that we have are available to us as we progress and meet our affordability goals thank you very much and i'll speak last

3:16:38i agree with iaco what council member fedele said and also council member abelson and my to my left councilmember greg lyman we need to remember that we have a diverse city and we'd like to keep it that way and and diversity uh is so important here and i want to make sure

3:17:03that we keep our our seniors here uh we keep our low-income uh people here and this what makes our city uh el cerrito and uh we need to look at what went wrong with the decisions our cities next door to us have done with their version of rent control you look at the rents over there and they're as

3:17:25high they're higher than what we have here in el cerrito and many times they are not protecting our mom and pop landlords and that city including el cerrito we do not have hedge funds uh running and and purchasing uh apartments at hundreds at a time like what you see in santa monica los angeles

3:17:47san francisco and oakland this is el cerrito and i want to make sure that if we look into making sure that we do not if we do have hedge funds uh that own property here i want to make sure that we know about it and i want to make sure that that that's so important because this is

3:18:07what is making uh rents uh out of control the one percent purchasing apartments at thousands at a time and i want to make sure that that does not happen here in el cerrito we have mom and pop landlords here that have an apartment here an apartment there uh bj thornson who i know has about what 20 uh

3:18:29apartments and she has many seniors and people with disabilities living in her units she's a long-time el cerrito resident and she's doing the right thing but i want to make sure that people who are raising rents at uncontrollable rates we need to watch out for them and make sure

3:18:49that yeah we look into that looking at what the mistakes of richmond did and scaring landlords to make sure looking at what they did they scared landlords mom and pop landlords and you see what they did you know they they did something that uh um now they're being penalized because

3:19:13uh they didn't the city council did not listen to the mom-and-pop landlords they were listening to advice from san francisco and santa monica this is el cerrito this is not berkeley this is not richmond this is el cerrito and we're going to do it our own way to protect

3:19:29all of our residents so one thing that i want to make sure that we look at is the simple things that we could do now like mediation encouraging and working with the county on section 8 housing i know we have landlords here that would participate in section 8 housing if it didn't have the

3:19:49reputation that that people hear about it but i know that with section 8 housing and and the good things that it does with keeping our seniors and our low income people with disabilities here in el cerrito i'm hoping that our landlords will participate in section 8 housing in the

3:20:09future another thing that i'm concerned about is relocation i'd like to make sure that we look at that and and if we do have people that are displaced i want to see for no reason at all i want to make sure that the landlords have the responsibility and taking care of

3:20:33finding a new unit for them and paying for it so i appreciate the all of the uh people working on this and staff we have a lot of people in the city listening to me right now and listening to our counsel we will i give you my word as mayor and as all of my uh colleagues here will work

3:20:56together with the residents here with the landlords with the renters with the seniors and the property owners so i'm hoping that all of us will agree not to start charging and gouging rents right now where this is a study we're going to look at it and i discourage

3:21:19our landlords from doing that that is not right so we are going to look at this slowly and we're going to tread carefully on this to make sure we do the right thing any other thoughts okay do you have any questions on yeah in terms of the next steps that were discussed um we're going to study

3:21:44the distribution of ownership rents being collected there is a slide here with average effective rents that we got from costar it's also the folks that prepared our affordable housing strategy updated the data here um we're also going to explore cost of all programs for both near term and

3:22:05medium term and also explore um relocation for no-cause evictions is does that sound about right make sure i got that in timelines i think you talk about uh for example i had questions about transit and so forth yes so i think i heard let me just see if you know we could take a quick moment to

3:22:29see what her work plan is um to see if we all agreed but i think what i heard was i mean i heard uh council member fidelity and lyman and i think all of you said um so so i i think i heard um that you a few of you said so i want to see if um we're all on the same page so i think i

3:23:03did hear that with the near-term um items that we identified meaning mediation i heard at least one of you say proceed with both pricing that out and and uh bringing a program forward i heard the relocation um program that was associated with demolitions and remodels and um items

3:23:24like that um i heard both of those specifically i we also know kind of one of our softer programs which is to really reach out and get more section 8 participation amongst um landlords um i guess my question is so again if we go back to the green i could add a point to that i've actually helped

3:23:46people do that and it's not that so much the landlords it's the tenant you help because the section 8 is through the they get their voucher from the county and then they can take it to any apartment they want um we heard that during the affordable housing strategy

3:24:02so it's also having landlords who accept it because they and we think there could be an increase first the first step is getting the uh section 8 voucher for the tenant or nothing else matters so i believe uh we could both do tenant workshops as well as landlord workshops

3:24:20but again i heard both mediation as in terms of the tools that are on this page i think we talked about all four of these being priced out right so i i think cerrito so i think that you are encouraging us to look at all four of these and come back with prices and

3:24:35kind of program details um for discussion okay one more thing if you can um look into the san leandro model yeah with it all kind of all of these kind of look at personal if you let's continue you with you've looked at these where you i think you've summarized the direction on this quite

3:25:13well um do you there was some additional direction on the long on the medium term so i'm just curious what you did here on the medium term what did you so one of the things um that i heard is um just to be honest we can only do so much at once um so we would first in terms of uh the

3:25:32gentleman in the audience just said preliminarily so i am hearing preliminarily um to to focus on these um and then i also heard an ice reference also doing indeed additional data collection just trying to get more and more fine grain i appreciate the comments that you've made both to

3:25:49landlords and um to to landlords um about the issue of um gouging um we wouldn't be bringing anything forward on that that we'd be bringing these uh for forward at this time is that kind of what you think and did you um in terms of medium term i think we're both all watching prop 10

3:26:10um and after um after we get these in place um i think i did hear um council member pardo okamoto say that she uh you and your list talked about the things that you're still interested in that are on the on the medium term and i think in the same way that you asked for this to come back

3:26:27within the year you're wanting you're going to be asking questions right about um those other programs and i know aisa is as you can tell in constant contact kind of with all the different program managers and all these um similar cities so if there's others we heard people talk

3:26:43today about east palo alto obviously as a good model san leandro as a model or just cities to watch that are a similar test and to learn from correct good i think you get to define it so uh we're missing timeline um so obviously there's all kinds of priorities but we would be

3:27:05and i think we did talk about 90 to 120 days to try to come back with something and i think with in communication with the city manager um we'll have to figure out how far you want us to get by the time we come to you next time and i think we can cut maybe some of the

3:27:18programs might be easier to develop into full programs um i saw also her last slide we would be doing additional outreach with of course our landlord community and our our tenant community both in data collection and in program development okay very good thank you

3:27:35aisha ashori and melanie thank you so much for this thorough study and we'll be working with you on this thank you thank you all okay next we will go to uh city council local and regional liaison assignments uh janet naples i think i haven't had any that i didn't already mention okay

3:27:58no report uh yes just from the urban forest committee they are continuing to work on an ordinance and reviewing that and they're also interested in hearing from they're also in here interested in hearing back from management specifically the tree list um i did have a regional meeting the uh

3:28:28recycling war our regional waste authority did meet uh in late july and um as the agenda was uh corrected earlier we continue to have uh extensive discussions on the joint power authority the joint exercise of power authority the gpa and we actually at as a board we got to a log jam

3:28:57um about what constitutes um you know adequate voting what topics should go to unanimous which you know how should any departing entities get disbursements so i can say that we are as a board at an impasse we did ask the city managers uh to work on it they if you recall a

3:29:26year ago we reached impasse and the city managers did work on it for about three or four months and we thought we were back on a track moving forward unfortunately we are not um on that track at this time and we i i the city manager and i and and uh my alternate council member fideli

3:29:54are in conversations about what choices we can make as an independent uh city um that that is a partner in this uh joint exercise of power authority um and we may be coming to you in september with uh additional news or even a recommendation so el cerrito as you may remember

3:30:19we have our own recycling programs we have our own recycling collection we have our own hauler then then all the other ones so we are in a fairly unique situation and it um might be time for us to [Music] exercise that uniqueness and uh potentially not participate in a

3:30:40regional authority and i know this is a report and janet really wants to ask me a question um and we can't go too far down a discussion is that correct that's correct and also i'd ask you to consider the time um it's it's now do i have to extend first well it's

3:30:57good to spend by 10 minutes second so i have a motion by uh ableton ableton and and this and a second by lyman all in favor all right go ahead with your questions just wanted to note we are not independent though for um the removal of garbage right um our garbage currently goes to the

3:31:23same facility that everybody else in the jeep is garbage goes to but our truck the trucks that pick up el cerritos garbages and not the same trucks as uh you know they're not a republic truck so do we have a clear path of us paying to our provider uh e-space sanitary

3:31:44perhaps yes e-space sanitary would continue to contract with republic services and and our rates would not substantially change the one area that is of that we would need to um discuss at our if we bring this forward would be household hazardous waste so i just wanted to make sure that you

3:32:02were there and then those that have patiently waited in the audience they recall that our last city council meeting that we said we would propose a straw a regional straw ordinance um and i did um actually uh maymay came who spoke last time came and spoke at recycle more she did

3:32:24another phenomenal job of demonstrating all the various types of straws that are out there even ones straw the bamboo ones that can be used with boba drinks she did a wonderful job and at the end of the meeting i uh asked for this to be put on a future agenda that

3:32:43we take up as part of our work plan a regional straw ordinance and to use the pun uh appropriately uh we were told by several that it's not appropriate for recycle more to take it up on a regional basis and that was the straw that certainly broke my the last uh the last straw that sort of

3:33:07uh drove me lost i lost my patience with the one of the one of the benefits of our one of the benefits of our of our participation in a regional organization is for regional ordinances and if regional ordinances is not something that the organization is going to take up it

3:33:26certainly loses some of its luster so it there's no question that staff was there and has heard that we potentially will be needing to move forward modifying our food um food wear ordinance similar to we're looking at the richmond model where the food food where ordinance was modified

3:33:50to include uh single-use straws in certain situations i think they even had the exemptions for people need um so but special needs yep people of special needs so that so uh the report out from recycle more on straws is they are not going to take it up as a regional uh policy

3:34:12so that's that concludes my regional report i have found a a restaurant in el cerrito that now serves their drinks iced tea for example in paper straws it just happened it's fantastic yeah can you give them a plug well if you want fat apples that apples is now using paper straws good let's

3:34:36praise them praise them good okay hey anyone else okay good um the next regularly scheduled city council meeting is tuesday september 18 2018 at 7 pm um bidding is adjourned thank you you