Special City Council Meeting and Regular City Council Meeting October 16, 2018

0:00:00okay let's see we last met just a a few announcements here october continues to be arts month here in el cerrito which is something we can all be very proud of the free folk festival just happened restaurant week is happening with music at a few of the restaurants throughout

0:00:18our city um and the contra costa civic theater i just went to the allegiance which is a musical on the internment of japanese that sounds kind of an odd mixture to have a musical but man that is something very powerful it's a great show and the rotary club at the berkeley

0:00:38country club on that sip and savor did a fundraiser which will assist the contra costa civic theater which is a great thing so arts month is incredible here and go to the website for any further uh events coming up um greg lyman and i met with the new california public utilities commission

0:00:57lays on to the city and they deal with a lot of important issues in our city and we're happy to have a liaison that we can talk to call up and complain or give information to and they deal specifically with our mce community choice aggregate issues and we'll keep a

0:01:16fine tune on that and finally i participated in the league of women voters in the contra costa votes debate in martinez some time ago and it's on the website now dealing with our charter initiative our charter measure v here in el cerrito and hoping you can all look at that if

0:01:39there's any other questions it gives the highlights and the benefits of why we believe elsa why i believe el cerrito should become a charter city thank you okay i have a couple of announcements about activities that i participated in one was today and it was the

0:01:59chamber of commerce meeting and the speaker was tracy young who's a business engagement manager for rubicon programs and her talk was entitled el cerrido's economic health needs a three-point approach and there were a variety of viewpoints on that and mine was outside of all of that because we

0:02:27had once had a speaker come here that we had hired to tell us their answer to that question and their answer was a fourth thing so um anyway i had to leave slightly before it was over so i don't know if there was any resolution i doubt it i think everyone had their own opinion

0:02:50about it which is just fine probably and the lunch was prepared by el mono [Music] restaurant in el cerrito the um other thing i attended was the senior resource fair which is i think getting better every year it's a really interesting array of booths uh it's held at the

0:03:19senior center excuse me the community center and it is um starts early in the morning and then goes through lunch and there are a lot of people that do come and i think there are a number increasing number of organizations represented that provide items or resources or

0:03:47information to seniors and so it's a really nice event and it's put on by our senior services and that's all i have to say okay uh like council member fidelity i also was able to see allegiance and i was so impressed with the the performance um and i had i had the opportunity to go

0:04:16there with my father-in-law who was actually in an internment camp so i think it was a special day for our family to see that and then in addition i wanted just to give a very brief report on the alt debate subcommittee we are still awaiting the health impact assessment that uc

0:04:36berkeley has performed it's going to be really groundbreaking there's not any of this type of assessment that's been done on how hospital closures affect communities and i will be reporting back on once the final is out and it is coming soon also i was able to go

0:04:58we saw a few weeks ago our cheerleaders here from el cerrito high and i was able to go out to the junior varsity game and see them perform and they're really a great squad i was a cheerleader several several years ago and so it brought back memories and i want everyone to

0:05:19support our local cheer squad the el cerda high school jv and varsity cheer yeah my reports are mostly associated with regional activities so i'll report the recycle more later but i do want to build on council member fidelity's report with regards to our meeting with the california public

0:05:42utilities commission the california public utilities commission does regulate more than just our electricity they do natural gas they do transportation they actually manage some of the transportation uber and and others and we did quiz them about uh natural gas uh pipelines in our community and

0:06:03whether they're safe or not so that's one of the things that the cpuc does help regulate but the cpuc did have a decision on the 11th last thursday with regards to the pcia which is the indifference charge it's the customer indifference charge which is associated with uh those that

0:06:27leave pg e and leave stranded assets behind and so the um the meeting the decision they made last thursday was um not good for ccas in that it will we will have a higher cost for our pcia for the next couple of years until pg e has more of their stranded assets uh retired

0:06:53um so there there is uh a pretty large uh pcia increase in our future we did have a board retreat the mce did have a board retreat and there has been a technical committee meeting both preceding that uh that decision and in all cases the board the mce board is continued to be

0:07:19committed to having our prices be below pg e so what it means is that we are actively finding ways to reduce our generation costs so that your cost when when you buy your power will still be less than pg e even with the pcia added so i just want to let you know

0:07:40that um because some of you i do see some of you in the audience don't track this issue and are aware that the pcia decision did not go in favor of this the community choice aggregators um but the i can tell you that as a board member i am uh committed in making sure that our

0:07:58costs are stable and we remain pg e and competitive with pg e um both in um pcia and greenhouse gas emissions uh because that is one of the areas where i think i mentioned this about two months ago that as pg e uh as pg e loses customers they are um reducing the greenhouse

0:08:21emitting uh gas the gas the greenhouse gas emitter energy contracts and as a result they're getting they're getting less carbon dioxide discharge they're getting fewer greenhouse gas emissions and so mce is addressing that issue as well so those those are big picture items that i wanted to make

0:08:44sure that our community is aware that mce it does align very well with el cerrito and i'm doing my best to reflect our our beliefs with regards to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and keeping our costs competitive thank you on september 18th i attended the chamber luncheon

0:09:06at the berkeley uh country club and we had the honor of uh having our city manager scott hannon uh our staff was eric as well so that was back on the 18th and i as well attended uh i attended at the opening actually of allegiance it's very fitting to have that musical that play here in el cerrito

0:09:32where we have a large number of japanese americans that were interned so i got to sit with one of the longtime residents from the japanese american community in el cerrito and it was great to see them after many many years on the 24th through the 26th of last month

0:09:56i was in baltimore with the city manager scott hannon and our chief of police chief paul keith and we were there to introduce the new city manager president international city manager icma and that is assistant city manager karen pincus we had staff there as well so uh

0:10:18so we had a good el cerrito uh city hall there uh group to uh see kim pinkus become president and she is in london right now so and it was amazing to see we had a full crowd over there and so i congratulate our assistant city manager karen pincus on the 27th i attended the west county

0:10:44mayor's association and they we had someone from the county that spoke on modular housing and housing for the poor and they are the county is building a housing made out of shipping crates and they will be put one on top of the other and it does not look like shipping crates

0:11:09afterwards and it looks like a very nice apartment building and they're going to put that right next to the old richmond health center you see a huge parking lot by the target it's going to be over there so i'm hoping we can all take a look at that and know that these are fast answers to

0:11:29our need for housing affordable housing and housing for the poor on the 28th i attended the el cerrito sip and saver no i'm sorry the 28th i attended the rotarians and they had a meet and greet at los molly's restaurant on the 4th of october i attended the mayor's conference in hercules

0:11:58and on the fifth i attended the el cerrito art association and i chose my favorite artwork and it went to uh someone i believe he lives here in el cerrito on the seventh i did attend the el cerrito rotary sip and saver at the berkeley country club on the 12th i attended

0:12:30the west county wccu sd breakfast at dejohn middle school it was great to hear from our superintendent schools what's going on over there and i'm very happy to tell everyone that they're working on things and i appreciate the teachers and they were able to get a raise and

0:12:56hopefully uh scores will be better they're they're not right now and i'm hoping that with our new superintendent in schools our students will get better test scores and we'll start to read better and to have better math scores also and today i attended the chamber

0:13:20luncheon with the council member abelson where they had a speaker from rubicon in richmond that's my report then let's go to oral communications from the public how about staff i think yes i'm the fire chief please hi good evening council members thank you for this

0:13:46opportunity i'm lance maples i'm your fire chief um based on some recent concerns that have come forward here at council meetings also through fire admin in regards to the hillside natural area i thought i'd take this evening to give you a brief update of what we've completed this far

0:14:02and thus far in 2018 um as you know the hillside natural area is a true gem for our community um but with that valuable piece of land we have there's risk with it and the risk is a wildland interface fire so uh our goal every year is to go through and do as much vegetation

0:14:22management as we can within the season within the time and within the funding that's available uh this year in april the fire the fire department worked in conjunction with cal fire burning slash piles over 25 slash piles in the grove area known as julian grove our

0:14:42motorcycle hill the slash piles are vegetation uh that has been removed in the last season um from dead down trees ladder fuels poison oak berry vine non-native species we transition directly from that at the mid april when we hire our contractors to come in and work in the park thus far

0:15:02we have done 19 different projects within the hillside natural area mowing flashy fuels doing roadside clearance cleaning around the quill system also working on ladder fuels throughout the groves it's something we've done throughout the years and it and it it is very effective

0:15:19in reducing the risk we have to our community also this year we brought cal fire back and cal fire has been a great asset for the community they come in at a very low cost they bring crews to 15 to 20 people in work along line a couple of our fire captains that supervise the work this

0:15:36year they work specifically in the memorial grove area the kinsmith grove area and up the fire trail to the edge of the kerr property where they once again worked on ladder fuels dead and dying brush saplings small eucalyptus non-native monterey pines small trees of that

0:15:53nature also during this time period thus far the public works division through the use of the city arborists has gone through and identified sick or dying trees within the hillside natural area and we've removed 21 up until this point should be noted that when we work in the

0:16:12park it's never ending the seasons come the seasons go so at the beginning of every season we kick off we have our hillside natural festival which that's the start of when we can really start to mow and not see a regrowth and things um have to be done twice in one season because the cost is

0:16:29it starts to outrun what we're capable of doing this year we've been creative with some volunteer groups we've had the friends of five creeks come out and pull scotch broom do some very effective things that we wouldn't have to do otherwise um in the current period of time right now

0:16:45fire prevention officer joe gagne and fire marshal dave gibson have met with pg e to see if they're interested in doing some partnership work along the moser easement into the corey hill area there our goal is that if we can get them interested to push back into the

0:17:01hillside natural area there on ladder fuels and things that wrap around the courtyard and wrap around up to the upper entrance of the hillside natural area we could really do some good and pg e seems like they want to be really helpful right now so we're happy about

0:17:14that one main complaint we've received i'd say multiple times this year is the fact of illegal fires within the hillside natural area there's one specific spot it's right at the top where the trail wise together if you go in from memorial grove we've had multiple reports there we've

0:17:33had law enforcement up the patrols there we've put a camera motion camera in sight we just haven't had luck with a 911 are any pictures taken where we could catch who just doesn't want to play by the rules that being said public works has recently put a new signage in

0:17:49that location that now there's four separate signs one directly in the middle and on the 18th of this month there'll be a fence put around the lower bowl section so folks can't go down and be out of sight and and have a fire and ultimately increase the risk that we

0:18:07have for the community by having a fire this time of year um in closing as i've always said to counsel anything that comes with emergency services uh i'd ask you if you get complaints emails or concerns about the quality or quantity of work that we're doing that you would forward them

0:18:22to mr hannon he will get them to the right division and we will work on going in the right direction and move forward we're more than willing as a fire department to go out and do tours of what we're doing and what we're trying to do i believe some of the council members

0:18:36have taken advantage of that and some are in the future i'd i'd appreciate any questions you have or any changes in policy you'd like to see to be forward and we'll see what we can do thank you chief mayor do you want to talk about the closed session and the need for

0:18:56continuing it can i mention the fire thing though can we make a comment about the fire yeah sure before that yep is that all right i mean thank you chief i mean i think all of us heard last council meeting the need to be more than proactive and this city has been proactive and we've you've been

0:19:19complimented on your pro-activity and cleaning up neighborhoods and responding before the fire but as you said it's an every month every day effort these days and and it we have to be on it and um i applaud that this week i walked up along the trail and saw i was impressed with the work

0:19:40that's been done i've seen some good letters from citizens coming in um and i also went to the the famous area you were just talking about and there are five signs there and there's one right in the middle of the fire pit so if anyone can't see those there's something wrong with that

0:19:58i took pictures of it too it's it's a concentration of signs warning about this it's good to hear i think there was something where you guys were pre-positioned this week with the red alert can you mention what that means because i thought i heard that on the news and thought that was great you were

0:20:14ready for action before council member fidelity thank you for the opportunity to speak yes recently in the last adoption of the state budget cal chiefs and metro chiefs work together to have some funding pulled aside and put in oes that specifically to pre-position resources

0:20:33within communities when then there's an increased hazard this all comes from the reports that came out of the sonoma fires and the napa fires that they knew there was going to be red flags there knew there was going to be a wind event everyone prepared but there wasn't that

0:20:49extra resource so in the last uh three weeks we have had pre-position resources three times in the county um one thing that uh that makes me really happy about that is are when they select pre-res the resources for the county they select five of a type and they place them in an area

0:21:10where they feel the need is the highest these last three times they've done it they've also selected a strike team leader or a task force leader to be in charge of these resources all three times we've been able to make sure one of our battalion chiefs fire marshal dave gibson was able to be

0:21:25assigned to that so he had the command and control of the five extra engines when we do that we backfill his position but just like when we respond on our oas rig it's fully reimbursed by oes with an administrative fee and ultimately it adds depth to our organization and all of our neighboring

0:21:44organizations and it's a it's a it's a great enhanced asset that the state has added this year um and they've absorbed the cost so local government doesn't have to so it took a lot of work but a lot of people came to the table and made it happen thanks for taking advantage of

0:21:59that um i've also heard around the community a lot of talk about new volunteer efforts that may be happening with cert and some of our folks that have been working for sure our discussions in and around the hillside natural area have stemmed a lot of thought about

0:22:14where could we pull in more uh volunteer efforts could we have a larger earth day program in the hillside natural area where we could get more volunteers involved maria sanders is really interested in trying to grow that program um it's one of the things that uh will get people more familiar with

0:22:33the park and also see exactly what the city does and what we don't do within the park thank you and i just want to finish by saying we've been out walking about what it means for el cerrito to be a charter city and my view is that that in addition to having a reserve for our

0:22:49finances going forward fires high on that list of what we can spend and add to if in fact on november 6th it passes in el cerrito thank you very much i appreciate that and and also i i shouldn't let it go without saying i also appreciate the concerns i also appreciate the citizens that do bring to

0:23:07their attention and my attention and the fire department's attention that this is an area we should be focusing on we live here and uh that that helps us manage our priorities so i appreciate thank you chief thank you chief yes the follow-up question janet has one follow-up question right

0:23:25um and it it has to do with another aspect of what was going on over the weekend in what they call the north county areas but when i watched it on the news on tv they kept referring to contra costa county and i know we're not a north county city or we're not a north county

0:23:47region so the um and that has to do with pg e uh turning off the power do you have any um thoughts as it relates to this region well ultimately pg e is uh this is another thing that has come out of the north bay fires that that they knew this was going to happen

0:24:06and the high power transmission lines that run through the vegetated area should have been shut off it's something that has gone on for years down south especially in the san diego region i recently was at a meeting with pg e and it was involved with some discussions with this they really

0:24:21believe if they if they monitor the weather study what they the forecasts look like that they will have the ability to forecast where it's going to be the worst and shut those areas down um there's good and bads with that because there's people that need power and that communities can't go a long

0:24:37period of time and a lot of times when they shut lines off in a certain area just because the way the grid is set up it's going to shut areas off that are uninvolved so i i believe there's value to it i will be honest with you i asked the representative from pg e what

0:24:52statistical information can you bring from the southern area that shows they've had effective uh results from doing this they didn't have any um they said they'd look into it um but at this point with with the change in climate and the weather we've faced the fire season that

0:25:08seems to go year around um i think we have to look at alternative strategies for all these things to keep us safer and if i can ask ask another question that relates to that my next door neighbor at the time was on some sort of life support um equipment that required electricity

0:25:32and i was told by them that they had a [Music] permission as a result of that medical condition that they would be exempt from any uh turn off of anything my understanding is through pg e and through the representatives that if you have a situation at your house where you have

0:25:51to have electricity there's a process to let them know and then they will make sure that that part of the grid is either not altered or therefore another means of electrical support for your home so anybody whose family might be in that situation currently could follow

0:26:08that protocol now they should contact pg e directly okay thank you thanks for the questions okay thank you thank you okay i wanted to mention that we had two closed sessions uh city council here one was dealing with uh interviewing for uh boards and commissions and the second is

0:26:30uh dealing with labor negotiations and with uh our incoming city manager and we will continue that close session meeting after this meeting is finished let's go to oral communications for the public all persons wishing to speak should sign up with the city clerk remarks are

0:26:55typically limited to three minutes per person i may reduce the time limit per speaker depending on the number of speakers kindly state your name and city of residence for the record comments regarding non-agenda presentation and consent calendar items will be heard

0:27:10first comments related to items appearing on the public hearing or policy matter portions of the agenda are taken up at the time the city council deliberates with each action okay there appear to be 17 speakers okay okay let's reduce that to instead of three minutes two minutes each

0:27:33the first three speakers are court cordell hindler michael fisher and davis todd hunter good evening so good evening mayor quinto uh council i'm cordell handler richmond so and i do apologize for missing the last meeting due to scheduling conflicts so that's one and then number two i really

0:27:52want to commend the city manager's office for a a wonderful presentation regarding the ec stars it was wonderful i'm sorry i missed that too because it was another schedule i had to deal with so that's true and then the third thing is um i have seen elsa and elsa rita pd

0:28:08car coming through my area once again uh because one of my neighbors brought this to my attention she said that she has seen el cerrito pd car coming through because i live on 45th and wall and she lives on 47th and wall and i was like not again this is this is unreal so i

0:28:25just want to know what is i don't know want to get into that but the last item i want to put in as a future agenda i'd like to invite uh miss martin to come and speak to you all about the housing um about the micro housing so that's an idea so i'm finished so michael it's all yours

0:28:48good evening good evening mayor and members of the council my name is michael fisher and i have the honor and privilege to be your library commissioner at the as i mentioned when you appointed me i have promised to update you on various events involving the library

0:29:08at the last library commission meeting we voted to recommend to the board of supervisors that the library system eliminate overdue fines both in the future and retroactively to all existing accounts overdue fines adversely affect people of lower income and can drive them away

0:29:29from the library which is exactly the opposite result that we want the experience of those libraries that have re removed fines is that this action does not significantly affect the return of books and our neighbor berkeley started a similar program last july charges for lost or damaged books will

0:29:53remain as will finds under the link plus system as that is not under the control of the library finally there is a fix-it clinic scheduled for the library on october 27th this is the second clinic this year and is sponsored by the el cerrito progressives contra costa libraries and the city of

0:30:17el cerrito environmental quality committee this free event invites anyone to come with a broken item and learn how to fix it in a learn and share atmosphere and in a family-friendly format it is both a great event to watch or participate in and will show i'm sure once again why we

0:30:40need a library with one or more separate meeting rooms so as not to disturb the other patrons thank you thank you good evening davis todd hunter i live in el cerrito the city council has seen fit to send out two information mailers on uh measure v the information was already out there

0:31:13they had had meetings they had sent out mailers and the fair political practices act i don't know if they will act on it but we're looking into a country across the taxpayers association it has been said that it will mainly be paid by or much of it would be paid by

0:31:31businesses the fact is that less than 20 percent will be paid by businesses my wife died last month when we got married 36 years ago we both had adult children and we both had trust we elected to keep our trust we didn't form a family trust by merging them well the house is in my wife's trust

0:31:53i'm going to inherit it directly to me that's one real property transfer tax then i'm going to move it into my trust to protect my children from having to pay go through probate and all that that's a second real property transfer tax i'm going to be taxed if if i don't get

0:32:14it done before this gets enacted into law i would be taxed over 30 thousand dollars for inheriting my own house thank you very much this is a tax measure measure v and if anybody wants to debate me on that if anyone wants to discuss it in more than two minutes my email address is on the no nv signs

0:32:38across the street from the city manager's house there were two no nv signs those were both stolen the yes on v sign on the city manager's property was not stolen there have been no yes on v signs stolen there have been no on v signs stolen thank you i'm not sure for what

0:33:07christian teal al miller and susan duncan greetings distinguished members of city council city staff and most importantly at cerrito people i'm talking also about measure v i'm a strong opponent of this tax and making el cerrito charter city the tax basically effectively decreases

0:33:35property value it's by extension is going to increase rents we renters are going to see an increase and it's pretty much being advertised by taxpayer money with pictures of police and fire and parks and recreation when we all know the actual funding the money goes into the

0:33:58general fund the city is grossly underfunded which is not a surprise with 61 million dollars in pension liabilities that have been accrued over the past years with starting salaries of over 120 000 dollars for say a police officer so you guys are overspending and now you're

0:34:19trying to like grab the money from us the citizens and i'm strongly opposed to that as you know that any city in california who has ever gone by bankrupt was a charter city without the checks and balances from sacramento i foresee this for el cerrito and i really love el torito as my

0:34:39community community for the last 10 years and i don't want this city to be going bankrupt or overspending more it's time to you know tighten the belt and actually not overspend and i'm strongly against and i urge any elsewhere to resident to vote against measure v thank you

0:34:59thank you good evening good evening mayor clinton council members and staff i'm here as president of the el cerrito library foundation excuse me to give you an uh update on one city one book program you'll remember that the 57 bus was the book chosen by the kensington library

0:35:24and else real library as the one city one book we've had three meeting events related to that so far last tuesday we met with the author in the library a rather crowded library to discuss the book why she wrote it how she wrote it in the process that she went through and what she

0:35:52learned about the families on gosh i guess it was tuesday we had two discussion groups one was a youth discussion group that went from five to six and they were discussing uh from their point of view one of the el cerrito high school teachers had his class there as a class

0:36:22project and that went very well the other community discussion group was held afterwards and it was a interesting different informative and compelling discussion that we had next monday night will be the final event and it's going to be a written writing project

0:36:46where the library staff has structured it so that everybody there will be challenged to express their ideas briefly in writing on the different aspects of the book and they'll go and plan to go through and share those it'll be held at the library again starting six o'clock thank you

0:37:07thank you after after susan duncan it's scott perry and nick um the lord or galora good evening good evening i'm susan duncan king drive i am here to speak on the fire hazards in hillside natural area since the last council meeting when a lot of us spoke on this issue much brush has been

0:37:32cleared in the area below king court creating buffer zones to houses and clearing for several feet on either side of the trail that goes into the grove it's good that it's been done but as everybody knows this should have been done quite a while ago without us having

0:37:48to come here to ask for it to be done however thank you for the ulcer thanks to the el cerrito fire department the arborist and the public works for getting this done finally starting the process much is left to do in the city managers updated report of october 4th of this year it is stated

0:38:07that the city is still in the process of bush brush clearing and that ladder fuel will be removed i hope this means that some thinning out of the younger shorter eucalyptus trees and pines in the grove that are a major part of the latter fuel will be done we also hope that this will

0:38:25be done soon it is also stated that three hazardous eucalyptus trees were removed we don't see any evidence of this we've just seen evidence of an acacia a plum and a pine being removed where were these three hazardous eucalyptus trees removed from we have started to organize volunteers

0:38:44from the neighborhood and from cert to break some of the very deep litter that is close to the path in the grove i also think that the citizens of el cerrito kensington richmond and berkeley should start pushing even more and putting pressure on east bay regional

0:38:59parks to greatly reduce the fuel load in wildcat canyon i know there are a few groups already doing this but the group should join forces to have a large cohesive push can the council and the city start working more with east bay regional parks to get this done

0:39:17also the fire danger comes from both east and west and one comment on putting the fence around the fire pit that's a great idea because putting five signs up there i envisioned kids building a fire around the sign so i think the signs were probably not really effective but the fence is a

0:39:40good idea thank you very much thank you good evening good evening i'm scott perry i'm a lifetime resident of el cerrito and i come here tonight in front of the city council for the very first time i come because of i am extremely concerned about the overgrown vegetation

0:40:05condition of hillside nature area i'm concerned about the lack of vegetation management and the critical fire hazard as a result of the city's neglect of of of this condition there are several reports made in explicit detail addressing the extreme hazard and through and although the city

0:40:24recognizes this hazard the council past and present fire chiefs um have passed impress fire chiefs the recommendation of the reports were not adopted in the meantime the vegetation grows unabated the bottom lines of these reports cite the only chance the city has in a diablo wind conflagration is

0:40:46the prior removal of all ladder fuels and small trees i would also add the removal of all eucalyptus trees on the face of the quarry as a fire break for wind coming from any direction again this information is known to the city our mayor our city manager this council

0:41:04current past and our next fire chief the absence of funding for this kind of work in the current budget is a serious and unacceptable oversight and a failure of priorities the absence of a serious and effective fire fuel mitigation effort is also an oversight and neglect by this council

0:41:21our mayor the manager and fire chief it is imperative the fuel reduction begin immediately as the entire community is at risk i would suggest the city contact the california conservation corps as they are very effective and adept in fire fuel mitigation throughout the state

0:41:39make this a priority break reorganize your budget postpone projects and follow through on the recommendations of the lsa report prior fire chiefs and current statewide fire officials who say it's not if but when the council should know i live in fear and anxiety this time of year i fear the

0:41:59loss of property i fear the loss of lives and community because not enough has been done to proactively prevent the propagation of a conflagration i live with events as i can live with the events as tragic as they might be if an honest deliberate productive and proactive

0:42:17effort is made to give our community a chance to survive a firestorm thank you thank you after nick galero it's uh robin mitchell howdy gowdy and sherry dropner good evening hi um my name is nick galoro i live in el cerrito i volunteer for tenants together every week and do a few hours attendance

0:42:46counseling i hear some real heartbreaking stories of you know people having to leave their homes not knowing where to go et cetera we have about 9 000 people in renter households in el cerrito that's a lot of people have no protection against arbitrary rent increases of whatever

0:43:01amount the landlord owner wants to charge and el cerrito tenants have no legal choices to challenge rent increases either have to pay the rent increase or move out in many cases the tenants are already paying 50 or more of their income and rent and can't pay the

0:43:17rent increase some will end up homeless living in their cars tents or rvs it's a common story these days so what do we do do we deal with the problem with compassion and empathy by enacting a rent gouging moratorium and just cause eviction ordinance or do we say to the 9 000 or so rental

0:43:35household members in el cerrito too bad sorry you can't afford to live here just live just move somewhere else farther away from your job to another state far away from your family and friends or go live in a car in a tent or on the street or in a park tough luck it's not our

0:43:50problem no we need to protect these tenants from rent routing state law gives the landlord the right to earn a fair return isn't that good enough um also i just thought of this vote yes on measure v i don't think cutting wages and salaries just creates a downward

0:44:08spiral of wages and salaries i don't believe in that and also vote yes on measure 10 california affordable housing act thank you very much thank you i'm robin mitchell i live in el cerrito so a couple things the allegiance show is incredible and it ends on this sunday i

0:44:36really recommend that anybody that can should go to it you guys have already talked about it i also think that you know what you were saying about fire abatement it's like if we don't have the money measure b is a good way to get some money so i would advocate for

0:44:50voting on yes on measure v but what i really wanted to talk about was um affordable housing and i know you're going to have a session in december to talk about it and i've been thinking we've several of us have been thinking you know the non-binding mediation may not be the

0:45:06best way to go just because it's non-binding and the question is whether you should be spending resources doing something that's not very effective and other people are going to talk about that but in the meantime it seems like we really need to do a rent increase moratorium and we need

0:45:21to add just cause eviction and the just cause of fiction i think needs to happen no matter what path you take even if you do the non-binding resolution or mediation so and i just wanted to i was looking at the affordable housing uh strategy today and under the policies and

0:45:39programs not even under the four pillars there's a bullet that says um to explore not even talking about stabilization or anything just good cause for eviction ordinance vet and adopt a good cause for eviction ordinance that would limit landlords ability to evict tenants

0:45:55without cause um and then explore and then part of pillar b was explore the potential for tenant protection such as rent stabilization so that's something that you're already looking at but um the whole thing about the um the moratorium is and i guess a lot of cities have done

0:46:13this but you know california has an anti-gouging statute and that was implemented during the santa rosa or the north bay fires because that was deemed an emergency so um price gap it's a price gouging uh it's price gouging refers to sellers trying to take an unfair advantage of

0:46:29consumers or in an emergency or disaster by greatly increasing prices for essential consumer goods and services this statute which is penal code section 396 prohibits raising the price of many consumer goods and services by more than 10 after an emergency has been declared

0:46:45and a city there's lots of people that can declare the emergency the president of the united states the governor or city or county executive officers so the city can declare an emergency it can be a natural or a man-made disaster i assert that our problem with affordable

0:47:01housing could be classified as a man-made disaster you have the authority to execute this anti-gouging to implement the anti-gouging statutes so and i think some other cities have actually um used that as part of their rent moratorium so i think it's something you

0:47:18all should explore thank you good evening uh good evening mayor and council members my name is howdy gowdy i live in el cerrito um so i hope that you had a chance to read carol lamont's letter that was sent to you that was a letter also about housing and her experience as city staff in both

0:47:45the city of fremont and the city of east palo alto who and different approaches were taken in those two cities and she very eloquently laid out how she went into the idea of non-binding mediation and in fremont with you know good intentions and and and thinking it was going to work out

0:48:06and it really proved to be a failure and and then she moved into east palo alto and helped them implement their um their rent control and found very successful outcomes there so um i think it's important for you to look to these experiences in in other locations as you consider what to do to

0:48:29protect tenants in el cerrito and i really appreciate the council had a study session in august to explore these topics and i also appreciate that staff is working really hard to bring something back in a short time frame like december to try to do something productive um

0:48:49however i am concerned that what is being offered on that um short-term package is just not going to be effective and so i think you need to look at you know the experience and these other cities where non-binding mediation really hasn't solved the problem so just doing something to say we're doing

0:49:08something isn't enough we need to actually you know study the problem more deeply i think we need to enact a temporary anti-gouging action to give protection and safe space to the renters while we can have a more robust and and deep conversation about enacting something that's really going

0:49:29to be meaningful and make a difference and so i hope you do that going forward i'll also say that um i support measure v because i think it's misplaced to say the city is spend happy happily overspending from my experience watching this council over the years i think you're very prudent

0:49:50and don't share anything in common with cities that have gone bankrupt thank you thank you after sherry dropner helen dicken jeff levin and edward toms good evening hi good evening city council members and mayor um i too am here to talk about the idea of a rent moratorium and just cause for

0:50:17eviction measured to be taken up by the city council i brought with me also some papers tonight that i'll distribute to you they give examples where this has taken place in both santa cruz and alameda and they're both very different and i would really you know encourage

0:50:35you to look at them carefully there's included frequently asked questions and when you read it you can see how when the officials put this together that together they really thought about their community what works what wouldn't work it's not just a cookie cutter

0:50:53example and i felt like i heard a discussion about that when we had previous meetings and concerns about these things so i'm hoping that by looking at at least these few examples i might give you some ideas so that you can wrestle with this issue and do so um in a way that we

0:51:12don't just move to something that's easy to do or the low-hanging fruit you know let's do mediation you know when in fact um there i mean i've been doing research on it so far and i haven't found evidence of success i there's like a story here and there that's not evidence that's a story

0:51:33so um and it costs money so why not just you know be conservative with our resources when we need to be and and but but put renters at at um give them some reassurance just like the folks who were here last week or at the last meeting and how concerned they are about the fire and possibility

0:51:53of losing their homes i really feel for them and in the same way i feel for renters who are wondering what's going to happen if their rent is raised so i'm going to just pass these out to you thank you thank you good evening jeff levin long-term resident of el cerrito and

0:52:17also policy director with east bay housing organizations um to repeat what we have said at past meetings we have a housing emergency here in el cerrito we have hundreds of renter families paying more than half their incomes for rent the slightest rent increase is a problem

0:52:36increases of a hundred two hundred three hundred dollars are catastrophic while the city debates the best policy to go forward whether that is mediation or rent control or something else and all of those will take time to put in place tenants remain at risk we need to do

0:52:54something to help them now and as other speakers have said this is not an uncommon thing for other cities to take the quite reasonable and rational step of imposing a temporary moratorium on excessive rent increases coupled with just cause protections just put a cap on things for a period of time

0:53:18while we deliberate carefully based on facts what the best policy is going forward but doing nothing is also a decision and if we make the decision to do nothing more households will face rent increases and more folks will be forced to leave el cerrito so we urge you to declare a

0:53:37housing emergency put a moratorium in place and then we can proceed with a debate over the best long-term policy that really suits the conditions in el cerrito thank you thank you good evening good evening council and mayor my name is helen dickey i live in el cerrito

0:54:06i'm um here as an informal representative of the older population um those of us living on fixed incomes who are are not not able to find other i can't earn more money um at 80 i'm stuck where i am so this um issue of putting a moratorium on rents is particularly particularly important to

0:54:50people in my age group and financial situation please don't forget us thank you thank you i may have pronounced this wrong is it eduardo thomas okay and mikaya akiya and ronnie polanski good evening good evening mayor council and staff my name is eduardo torres i'm

0:55:15the northern california regional coordinator for tenants together california's only statewide organization solely dedicated to fighting for tenants rights for the last two years i've been working in concord exclusively like many cities across the bay area and across the state renters in

0:55:30that city have been burdened by ruthless rent gouging at the hands of predatory landlords who value profits over people over a year ago the city of concord finally decided to address the public outcry of skyrocketing rents however the city didn't adopt rent control just cause for eviction

0:55:46ordinance instead they decided to adopt a rent review program contrary to popular belief the ram review program in that cities have been a complete failure in fact the city is currently wasting about a hundred thousand dollars per year for a program that is non-binding and heavily favors

0:56:01landlords over tenants most recently two tenants living in skype property units in concord received huge rent increases from their landlord one tenant was given a 450 rent increase and the other 850 rent increase in both hearings the ram review board recommended a far less amount for the

0:56:18ending for the rent increase however because the program is non-binding the landlord's lawyers who was representing skype properties backed at both recommendations and refused to accept the rem review board's recommendation at the end if you'd like to see for yourself the

0:56:33reboot program in concord is a that the it's a huge waste of city funds and the complete failure for the cit uh for the renters live in the city both hearings have determinations that are available to the public and you can find out if you want to do some research the city of

0:56:47el cerritos you'll learn from the mistake that concord has made it should really look for real solutions that are proven to help tenants in the city like exploring programs like rent control and just cost predictions and not programs like review programs that offer nothing but false hope to se

0:57:01to tenants there and it's non-binding in the meantime i urge the city to uh look at adopting a moratorium that would protect tenants living in the city from further rank algin and evictions please don't wait for more families to be displaced in your city the time to

0:57:14act is now thank you thank you good evening good evening mayor city council member and staff my name is makalia and i have been in living in el centro for the past 30 years and 24 years just in one place alone and i'm one of those renters who has had 20 increase every year for the last

0:57:45three years and paying more than 50 percent of my income and that is really stressful and i do not need any more stress so i am really encouraging and and and asking the city to take some type of measure a temporary uh relief for renters like me until some type of permanent solution is is

0:58:08is is resolved so i'm just repeating of what the others have said it is very important for the city to keep the residents where we are and not displace us thank you thank you it's ronnie polanski and the last speaker is mary giaheldi gideli hi i'm ronnie polonski and i live in el

0:58:34cerrito and i'm so tired of coming up here i really didn't want to speak tonight but i thought another voice couldn't hurt so the first thing i want to say is something really positive i live caddy corner to fairmont park and it's looking so good it's really a pleasure it looks

0:58:49great i'm hoping the turtle's coming back does anybody know if the turtle's coming back oh good my granddaughter will be thrilled um the other thing i wanted to say is i'm impressed with the quick response that there was to all those nice homeowners that came in worried about a

0:59:06fire and they're worried about their lives and they're worried about their homes the same thing is true for renters they're worried about their lives and they're worried about their homes and i would really really encourage you to make a quick response for those people

0:59:20too who can't speak for themselves um so i was curious about mediation and i called echo housing because they're the ones that have been subcontracted to do the mediation for alameda county they don't answer their phone they have three different numbers um they tell you to if you want to speak

0:59:38to somebody hit zero for an operator i did this three or four times i called all the numbers they give not one single person answers the phone so if i had been a renter who was about to be evicted i would not be living on the street um i feel like if we can afford to pay the

0:59:56kinds of salaries we pay to city employees which i'm not complaining about i'm not saying they shouldn't get them we can certainly afford to get a group of volunteers together who can oversee a rent stabilization program for our city so i want to reinforce our desire for a moratorium on rent gouging

1:00:13and i want to say that even if proposition 10 fails we still need some kind of we need a rent control ordinance even more it's day has come it's not going to go away it's going to be an issue that's going to keep coming up and coming up thank you thank you good evening

1:00:33good evening mayor and council members my name is mary godela i'm very touched by the stories of the wrenches in el cerrito i didn't realize that that was such a problem so i urge you to act on the requests i think they gave you some wonderful ideas um i'm talking i want to talk about fire

1:00:52abatement i live on patreo avenue and i live in my backyard i can see the wildwood condominiums i have five pine trees i'm the only person who has five pine trees planted by wildwood wildwood that rain pine needles in my backyard and there's also a parking lot right behind

1:01:18my yard it gives me a great view of those eucalyptus on the other side anyway many times there are visitors to the wildwood and they aren't visitors to residents they're just sometimes well i guess all ages go back there um and they just sit in that parking lot

1:01:40and it's a great view and i don't mind it but there's tons of pine needles on the wildwood side and so i look at that and talking to sue i realize my house is one cigarette butt away from going up in smoke they have gardeners that come around once a month that doesn't do it because

1:02:02the very next day there are tons of pine needles i've actually been cleaning up my own in my yard and putting it in their green bins because they're right there then i don't have to walk down the hill and spill them also there are pine needles in my beautiful oak tree and there are pine

1:02:21needles hanging from my mesh fence so i'm thinking about today i probably have to go clean the pine needles off my fence um because that would really lead to a fire um i'm also wondering if maybe we could get those pine needles cut down because i don't think they

1:02:40really belong there and i don't think that they're a native plant and they are a fire hazard so um i guess my next step is to talk to the fire chief and have him come and talk to somebody at wildwood i'd also like to know where i can find out who was president of the

1:02:59homeowners association there because i called city hall and i didn't get a call back i don't know how to address anybody there um you know and i'd like to talk to the president so that we can come to some agreement it is nerve-wracking to live with lots of pine

1:03:16needles behind you thank you thank you there are no more cards thank you let's go to adopted the consent calendar eight is minutes approve the minutes of it for the meeting of september 17th proclamation shelter in place education day c is records retention schedule

1:03:39d is conflict of interest code and e is proclamation united against hate week i'd like to read the proclamation for united against hate week okay just when i read this i was i was moved by it so i think it's worth mentioning and not just passing over el cerrito city council proclamation

1:04:05designating november 11th 2018 through november 17 2018 as united against hate week whereas the united states is a nation of immigrants whose strengths come from its diversity and whereas the constitution enshrines equality on all individuals regardless of race gender orientation

1:04:31religion political views whereas recently federal policies and rhetoric have generated a toxic environment that encourages the propagation of racist xenophobic sexist homophobic islamophobic and other bigoted views by embolden hate groups and individuals and whereas deep divisions within our

1:04:58country allow for the festering of extreme ideology further strengthening a cycle of mistrust and suspicion fueled by fear anxiety and insecurity and whereas the number of hate crimes across the united states has increased dramatically over the past couple of years

1:05:21and whereas in 2017 white nationalist groups held violent rallies in cities across the country instilling fear across many diverse communities and whereas the city of el cerrito is deeply committed to inclusivity and whereas the city of el cerrito was declared a sanctuary city on march

1:05:4521 2017 further affirming the city's commitment to the values of dignity inclusivity and respect for all individuals regardless of ethnic or national origin gender identity race religious affiliation sexual orientation age disability or immigration status and whereas the community launched a

1:06:12stop hate together campaign to further state our shared values and reiterate our commitment to inclusivity and whereas education compassion and cooperation are key to understanding and embracing differences between people and whereas sponsoring a united against

1:06:33hate week is an important step in bridging divisions and healing our communities now therefore be it resolved by the city council of the city of el cerrito that it hereby declares the week of november 11th through november 18th as united against hate week in the city of el

1:06:53cerrito okay drink your motion so moved second all in favor hi do i hear a motion for uh adoption of the other items on the consent calendar sure i'll move the a through this would that one was d i thought it was the whole i thought it was the whole okay let's assume it was the whole

1:07:28consent calendar very good thank you okay so let's go to presentation we're going to have a presentation by east bay regional parks district on measure ff i see some familiar faces good evening good evening hi thank you for having us here tonight my name is lisa baldinger

1:07:48and i'm the legislative assistant with the east bay regional park district and i'm here with our board director d rosario to speak to you tonight about measure ff so on june 5th of 2018 the east bay regional park district board of directors voted unanimously to place an

1:08:04extension of a voter approved funding in western alameda and contra costa counties on the november 6 ballot this funding is measure ff measure ff is a no increase in tax rate extension at one dollars a month for a single family unit and 69 cents per month for a

1:08:20multi-family unit which translates to numerous amenities and services throughout the region such services include wildfire protection public safety increased public access to open space and regional trails visitor facility improvements such as restrooms and water fountains and

1:08:39environmental engagement and services for the community director rosario will now expand on those services good evening thank you for your time fully we uh we if if passed measure ff will give us about 3.2 million dollars a year and uh it'll be split between infrastructure staffing and uh

1:09:04reducing the fuel load in the in the east bay hills as you know the wildline urban interface is one of our uh biggest concerns and measure cc has has started to address that over the last uh since 2004 and we desperately need to continue that and uh as you know

1:09:23uh we have 26 miles of wildland urban interface so we probably have the largest urban interface of all the other agencies around and as you know we're able to we're really good at uh for every dollar we we take in we're able to to bring in extra money to about two to one

1:09:47and uh so it goes to goes to the continued uh reduction of the fuel load in the wildlife wildline urban interface and we also got uh 5.65 million dollars from fema and we've started those projects there's five projects starting now we're going to be starting 19 uh

1:10:07next year and so uh i heard uh the fire chief uh we would be definitely would entertain uh working with with el cerrito in in those efforts uh coordinating it makes total sense uh and i and i would i would be advocating for that the other third is we're we're bringing

1:10:28on a lot we're doing a lot of infrastructure projects it's kind of like doing your house foundation sewer electrical and stuff you can't see uh with this measure ff we're actually going to be able to bring on a couple new parks the oakland army base and the alameda point in alameda and

1:10:50continued services here with the bay trail so and we're at we're asking for your uh is there a question yes so finish your finish your your request you know we're we're advocating your uh yes on measure ff it's it's very affordable it's only a dollar a month uh

1:11:0812 a year and uh it will continue valuable services to the to the community yeah i do have a couple questions thank you for uh staying through the public comments and and uh clearly we have about three miles of urban uh wildlife interface with you yeah that we share

1:11:26with you um i know i'm not sure if it was just the university of california or university of california with east bay regional park districts on the eucalyptus tree removal and your the joint eir that you did um can you educate us a little bit on the some of the challenges

1:11:45i'm not sure i'm going away your your your staff support is behind you she's going to back you up but if you could just give us a few words about the challenges you've faced as an organization around eucalyptus tree removal so uh as you know there was there was it was

1:12:02the three agencies applied as a group to fema and uh uc berkeley the city of oakland and east bay regional park district and uh the uc berkeley their money was refused because number one they went ahead with their project without approval and two they were clear cutting

1:12:24which we are not were thinning fema came out with the decision that the thinning program was the most effective city of oakland was denied their money because they did not have a vegetation management plan they're currently trying to do one they probably won't be done for another

1:12:39two years uh so we've we've assured mayor libby shaft that with our share of the money we would because a lot of but the bulk of those fema areas were in oakland so we're going to be doing our part on our side uh with that so so we got the bulk of the money and

1:12:58there's more money available and there's more money available not only through fema but also through the state of california excellent that's great information to know and i'm sure that our will be contacting you and your organization to try and get that information

1:13:11one of some of the public comments tonight were to pressure you into cleaning up your side of the fence as they say um can you can you speak to uh you did touch on it that that is something i know ff does not specifically go towards that but maybe some of the other

1:13:28programs you have do uh well measure ff does speak to the uh [Music] urban interface management and measure cc which is still in force until 2020 does address that so uh [Music] uh you're getting support hi good evening um in addition to measure ff eastern regional park district is aware

1:13:51of that wildland urban interface and how there is that nexus for communication for education and for engagement so we've begun sending mailers and working with the local communities to educating those who live adjacent to our park lands on how they can best minimize the vegetation that's flammable

1:14:09on their own property additionally we brought with us tonight and it's on the table up at the front this was published recently in the article or in a newspaper and it goes over how we can work together with communities to prevent wildfire we talk about all of the

1:14:22agencies who are working together because it's not just us working in east bay hills we're working with cal fire we're working with fema and we're working with the city of oakland east bay mud and the local communities to really come together to prevent fire and board member rosario i can answer

1:14:38you wholeheartedly that i do support measure ff there is no question that uh especially park district provides a great regional resource and that this continuation of this tax is a the right thing for us to be doing so thank you thank you any other questions um i'm very much interested in us being

1:15:00able to work together in the in the near future especially if um both of our measures passed we'll have you know more ability to address these issues but i was also interested if maybe because i know a lot of our citizens are very concerned if you might be able to

1:15:16come back and do another presentation on what's currently being done like we talked about a little bit so that so that people know what is being done what's not being done where we need to go and kind of um instead of just wondering what really letting the community know what's happening right

1:15:31now leading up to this putting the measure on the ballot we've been leading groups that requested a tour of uh some of our fuel fuel break projects and showing them uh untreated areas versus treated areas okay thank you yeah you're welcome okay councilmember abelson uh yes i want to

1:15:52thank you very much for coming and i i'm this is just a curiosity do you represe do you represent us i am uh in ward 2.

1:16:00i'm here because uh i'm the chair of the campaign for measure ff but i'm uh so i represent oakland piedmont lafayette moraga and rinda you're doing a very good job of doing that oh thank you and we appreciate that too because i think we all think that it's a very

1:16:17important uh item on our um plate yes we do have to take care of this and the this particular measure ff will help do that so thank you very much for coming tonight and presenting it you're welcome okay council member fidelity god bless east bay regional parks they're wonderful um i think i just

1:16:38wanted to say i got the postcard this week that you guys are sending out great talking about working together on fire so thank you for that it's beginning and we have to keep it up again every day every month every week thank you keeping our fingers crossed for the rest of the

1:16:51month okay until it rains yeah so uh dear rosario thank you for being here and el salvador you're welcome i'll come back here anytime yeah thank you great to have you here as well and know that i believe i'm going to be in the next postcard for measure ff so i look forward to getting it oh great

1:17:08thank you thank you we support it el cerrito they love their uh parks wildcat tilden uh and uh point isabella specialized so uh oh yeah thank you very much i really appreciate all of you thank you can i leave these advocacy cards here i wanted to find out if we have any

1:17:27public comment on this yes mayor uh we have one speaker cordell hindler so um good evening again mayor uh council um thank you to our east bay parks uh people to come that uh it's really i mean you heard what some of the things that was said this revenue this um this this measure

1:17:44will will certainly bring a whole lot of money uh into this so i'm like this is wonderful 3.2 million i was like now that's something we that is something this is definitely generating some revenue so that's pretty much it thank you okay let's go to uh next we're going to do a presentation by

1:18:08west contra costa county unified school district elections good evening good evening mr mayor members of the city council the city manager and city staff my name is marcus walton i'm the director of communications for the west contra costa unified school district and i'm here

1:18:49today to give you an update on our transition to trustee area elections as you are probably well aware the california voting rights act of 2001 was passed by the state in 2002 and expands on federal voting rights act the federal voting rights act of 1965.

1:19:09now a municipality or jurisdiction is said to have violated the california voting rights act if there is evidence of racially polarized voting and it's important to note that there is no there does not have to be any intent to discriminate just that racially polarized voting has occurred i would

1:19:30like to point out that um we're having this discussion although the there's not been any study to determine whether racially polarized voting has occurred in the west contra costa unified school district so we're transitioning to trustee area elections and currently as you know our

1:19:49five-member board of education is elected at large which means all of the voters within the west contra costa unified school district vote for all five members of the school board our transition to trustee area elections will mean that we will split the district into five

1:20:07geographic areas and only the voters within a specific geographic area will be able to vote for one representative on the school board um so what this means mainly is that instead of voting every two years for either two or three members to the board of education

1:20:27those of us who live in this area will vote every four years for one representative to the west contra costa unified school district board of education um most of you know about our school district but for the members of the public who are not aware our school district was formed in 1965 and it was

1:20:45made up of the four elementary school districts and one high school district that served this area we currently serve about 29 000 students in five cities in the unincorporated areas of west county and is governed by a five-member board of education a little bit of background to why i'm in

1:21:02front of you today back in january the district received a letter alleging that we the school district has violated the california voting rights act in march a lawsuit was filed based on that letter now that very same evening the board voted to approve a resolution indicating that

1:21:20it did intend to move to trustee area elections between april and june six draft trustee area maps were created and the school board held five public hearings as well as a number of other sessions to gain community feedback and input on those six maps in june the school board did approve

1:21:41one map it's called cities and schools b it's just the name the demographer gave that specific map and it took the map as well as a proposal to the county school board the county school board rejected the map and sent us back to the drawing board which leads to me being here in front of you

1:22:00this evening as i mentioned so currently as i mentioned we were faced with a lawsuit the school board and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit reached a partial settlement and so you know we cannot reach a full settlement until there's actually a map and a few other uh loose ends are tied

1:22:20up specifically attorneys fees but that partial settlement that is that the court uh signed mandates that the anyone who is a successful candidate for school board in november of 2018 uh will be limited to two-year terms there are currently three open seats 11 people running for those open seats

1:22:43in the school board election and the reason for the two-year terms is so that it will help us transition to trustee area elections in november of 2020 and the third and probably most confusing part of this is that in november of 2020 uh either two or three of the seats that will be up for

1:23:03election in 2020 will also be two year seats so that means anyone who is running for school board could theoretically need to run three times in six years and i wish them all luck with that so what's next we're we're in the process of doing community outreach because we need to create a map so that

1:23:25we can have trustee area elections in november of 2020. and so we're going to school board to uh city council meetings to municipal advisory commissions we're going to neighborhood councils and homeowners associations and pta meetings just to encourage people to join us in this

1:23:40process now what is the process going to look like basically the process is this we now have an opportunity at three community meetings to have members of the public work with our demographer to create maps that best represent them and their community members those meetings will be held on october

1:24:0022nd at riverside elementary school in san pablo october 29th at stiege elementary school right on the border of el cerrito and richmond and october 30th at the latina center on barrett and 37th in richmond hopefully out of those three meetings where community will work with our

1:24:18demographer directly will be able to bring map options to the board of education on november 14th and the board will be able to make a decision on a map to move forward with now in order to create a map the board has some legal requirements and has also established some other goals and

1:24:34standards that they would like to see reflected in those maps first is that it's legally required that the the trustee areas are equal in population i believe there's about a five percent variance that's allowed secondly those trustee areas cannot be racially gerrymandered third the trustee

1:24:53areas cannot be drawn in a way that diminishes the power of someone's vote or a group of voters number four if possible those areas should be as compact as as possible number five that trustee areas are contiguous you do not want someone to have to represent a district that

1:25:14stretches from kensington in the southern end of our district all the way to hercules by way of north richmond and parchester so the idea is to make sure they're contiguous as well as compact standard number six the board has approved is that we want to observe

1:25:32communities of interest and that could mean any number of things but which leads into number seven to take into consideration but not necessarily be bound by city boundaries and school attendance areas as much as possible number eight we're not to take into account where

1:25:51existing board members live and number nine another goal the board has approved is to try to make sure there's at least one trustee area with 50 latino voters and one trustee area with as close to 50 percent african-american voters as possible and again i'd point out that

1:26:08these are goals rather than requirements that the board has put into place except for the first four which are legally required so to start the process and to start the conversation uh there have been three draft maps published and these maps are starting points so that we can have a

1:26:26conversation with the demographer people can say i like this i don't like this what happens if you move the line here or there and the demographer can have that conversation so there are three maps this first map is the map that was submitted by the plaintiff in the law the plaintiff's

1:26:41attorney in the lawsuit um and by the way this is how the plaintiff uh the plaintiff's attorney uh submitted the map so all the labels belong to the plaintiff's attorney and not to the school district or the demographer as well as the lines and the other issues with the map or the way the map

1:27:01is drawn uh the next two maps were drawn by the district's demographer based on input received from the school the county school board as well as the input we've received through community meetings and public hearings uh this map is labeled october a and this next map is october b one thing

1:27:21i will note is that in all three of the maps uh all of el cerrito is together um and so i know that that was one of as we mentioned that was one of the criteria or standards that the board set for the drawing of these maps and finally so a few resources you can see all three of those maps much

1:27:47larger you can print them out they're in pdf and there's also an interactive map tool on the district website that you can type in an address and on each of these map options and see where which trustee area you could potentially be in you can type in points of interest etc you can

1:28:05blow it up as large as you need to to see streets and blocks etc to investigate where you or your neighbors or other places of interest are on these maps and finally if you have questions or you have concerns or you want to give your input and can't attend any of

1:28:23these meetings you can send us an email at our communications at wccusd email and before i end i just want to point out that every time you mention the word boundary when you're talking about school districts people automatically assume you're talking about moving where

1:28:40their children go to school that is not the case this has to do with how you're represented on the west contra costa unified school district board of education and it does not directly impact where your child goes to school so with that clarification i'm open for any

1:28:56questions or comments from members of the city council okay thank you let's start over here mr walton thank you very much for coming you and i have interacted over the years and i appreciate how knowledgeable and and calm you are so i hope this you're weathering this storm uh well

1:29:15thank you um i i did actually take the time to look at the five or six previous maps that were up on your website and um the as you've pointed out actually el cerrito was pretty consistently represented uh in most of the maps um and these maps that are presented tonight

1:29:34are not variations or they're not exactly those maps there's some variation of those maps these are three different maps yes the county school board rejected our map our school the members of the board of education decided to publish brand new maps just as starting points the old maps were a

1:29:53bit controversial and so hopefully we're this is a clean slate and we can start from here with our conversation and and are you at liberty to tell us why the county rejected the map that you had selected the main uh reason that seemed to bubble to the surface was they did not feel

1:30:11there was enough community input okay so it wasn't necessarily the map you selected it was the process there was some concern about the maps that were in the discussion as well so um i'll leave it hit that okay and then if there's members of the public that that

1:30:31want to study these and and provide you may want to go back one slide for the answer to this question if there's a member of the public that that want to study these maps on um at home and come and give comments the best way they could do it is through one of these

1:30:45through these two contact points that you have up on the slide correct the website has a couple of great tools you can print the maps you can blow them up as large as you like plus another thing is that the the demographics of each of these maps and how the trustee areas are built

1:31:03are available on the website as well it's a lot of text to try to put up on on a slide otherwise i would have tried to get some of them there but i i can't stress enough the interactive map tool you can type in your address you can type in street corners you can type in some points of

1:31:18interest to see where you lie on any of these variations great thank you very much for your time tonight thank you okay mayor parker i just had one curiosity um there's a lot of people running right now so i don't think it'll be a problem but what would happen if no one ran in a certain

1:31:36area i believe that california education code allows the board of education to fill that seat and have the uh gives them a couple of options on how they can fill the seat okay thank you you're welcome councilmember abelson yes um so what you're going to do now is go out

1:31:58with three new maps these three maps yes that are there yes and then um and then how does so you get public input at the locations that you mentioned correct people can actually work with the demark for the demographer will be there with a great tool he can move lines and talk

1:32:17people through things and so it's supposed to be work a work session all three of these will be work sessions so what i think i'm noticing is that there aren't any locations in the upper two cities or that region of the school district that is correct is it possible to get the

1:32:37slideshow back well it's okay if you look at all of the maps we think that uh penal and hercules are okay there was one there there was one request for pinon hercules and i'll show you uh it's just that those two communities stay together that was the only request out of those

1:32:54two communities and on all of the maps that we have and in fact the last four maps of the original maps in these those two communities remain together so their only concern was about that the real conflict happens down here in the southern region of of of the district in richmond a piece of

1:33:17el cerrito maybe well not el cerrito but in the southern portion of richmond and central richmond on how to draw that that's the most controversial part of this process right now and what about kensington kensington's with el cerrito here as well it's all considered one

1:33:35yes we believe that uh yeah so on all the maps that are that have been drawn right now uh el cerrito and kensington are together um and we believe they'll remain that way however anything could happen during these meetings which is why we're encouraging people to still come out and

1:33:54just make sure that uh the that the that your community is represented in any map that goes before the board but what you also said is that this has nothing at all to do with where your child goes to school only in as far as the person who gets elected may wish to

1:34:13uh tackle school boundaries right but actually it's three out of two the five oh well through who live in el cerrito right now no oh i'm sorry that that hasn't helped us i can't can guarantee you um the um no i meant that the um that what everyone will of course hope

1:34:35is that at least three out of five of the school board members chosen across everything uh represent whatever their point of view is that's probably what people care about i would imagine more than wherever they happen to live um i think they that's what everyone would hope for on

1:34:57the issues that they care about but um well if i may i would hope that we would hope that all five of them would uh come to some consensus and care about the entire district uh after i should say at least three because that way yes that point of view prevails but what i was wondering it was kind of

1:35:15more about for these meetings the um the distance that people would have to go to get to a meeting and i'm thinking about for example people who don't drive i'm one of those people so i guess that's why i think about it more than most but so it would be really difficult to get

1:35:32to some of these meetings depending on where you happen to live but it isn't just about are you what city do you live in but can you get to you know if the city in your area whatever that is is on a day you can't go then you have to go to if you're interested in going

1:35:50that is go to one of the other meetings and there's it seems like they're all kind of bunched together in this what vaguely looks to me like the center that's pretty much true as i mentioned most of the uh concern has been about mostly south central richmond and so that's why we put more of the

1:36:12meetings there but also we are working on trying to make sure that we're able to stream those meetings so that folks be able may be able to follow them online as well and be able to give at least listen in to uh what's going on there we're we're not so sure if and

1:36:28then maybe i missed it but are they going to be able to give comment online they won't be able to give direct comment online we'll try to monitor it we're working through that now i'm working through that with my staff to figure out the best way to ensure that uh there's an ability to get

1:36:44comment if it's not online people can still send an email to the the uh communications website and you've already got that that is set up yes okay so it as long as you can can you is this going to be televised at all these will not be televised the november 14th board

1:37:03meeting will be the only one televised the other three we don't have that capacity which is why we're looking into the streaming option okay but so you'll try to rectify that problem yes we're working on that yes yeah i believe that ccta has had some experience with doing this that

1:37:23kind of stuff so if you're looking for somebody to help show you how to do it they've been very successful at getting large volumes of people responding that way okay we will definitely reach out to them okay councilmember fideli thank you mr walton for coming um so is

1:37:45it safe to say that the district probably wouldn't be going in this direction without the lawsuit it would be safe to say and was there a determination made that the cost to fight the lawsuit was too much there was a definite understanding that no municipality or jurisdiction in the

1:38:08state of california that has gone to court to fight these has won so the issue of whether we're going to be better off or not is hasn't been determined it's a matter of moving forward with a legal case a legal situation that's correct okay last question is just you mentioned that

1:38:30these districts shouldn't be racially gerrymandered yet you talk about two districts being 50 latino and 50 africa can you talk about that a little bit one is just a guy it's a guideline and so the purpose is to of california voting rights act in the federal voting rights act of 1965 is

1:38:50to ensure that underrepresented populations have the ability to elect representatives of their choice and while it's the districts can't be racially gerrymandered for instance i believe in there are attorneys who can speak far more intelligently about this but having a district that um looks has

1:39:14looks like a christmas tree um and with ornaments dropping off of it would be something in order to capture a specific community would be something that would be considered racially gerrymandered however if you were to put for instance there's a city or neighborhoods that

1:39:32happen to have large percentages of of a certain population in them that's different than trying to reach out and cherry-pick small you know cul-de-sacs and small areas in order to create this district is my understanding um so it does it seems to be contradictory but

1:39:51the attorneys in democracy pretty confident that it's not so weird but a goal of this should hopefully be to have a more diverse trustee board is that correct that is correct okay thank you okay great let's go to public comment there are none okay good well thank you

1:40:10mr walton it's great seeing you again and uh i attended the breakfast the other day and it was a very successful congratulations and uh we look forward to having you here again thank you again thank you have a good night okay next is a presentation by east bay municipal utility district

1:40:29on water system review and we have a representative to east bay mud board andy katz here good evening good evening greetings and thank you for inviting uh me to present uh on behalf of east bay municipal utility district i'm andy katz i represent ward 4 which includes

1:41:00el cerrito kensington and our surrounding cities of berkeley albany emeryville and the northern portion of oakland so east bay mud's mission as you know is to manage the natural resources that we're the stewards of we provide reliable high quality water and wastewater services

1:41:20at fair and reasonable prices for the people of the east bay and we protect and preserve the environment for future generations we have a proud history of serving what's now 1.4 million customers uh drinking water all day every day for 95 years looking forward to the next uh 100 and beyond

1:41:40here in the east bay so let's see testing this uh so allow me to give you a little background on our uh water system east bay mud serves more than 1.4 million people uh it's 325 square mile area in parts of alameda and contra costa counties and most east bay mud water

1:42:03begins a snow melt in let's see we have a graphic that is in this slide let me try clicking no we have a wonderful map of uh the watershed that is hiding is hiding uh so i i will describe to you just uh where uh where our water comes from so it begins as a snow melt in the

1:42:31mccollumy river in the western sierra that water is stored at party reservoir and before it goes 90 miles westward uh into the east bays reservoirs mostly gravity fed so uh so it goes from alpine county at the border between amador and calaveras counties uh where uh the party

1:42:53reservoir and comanche reservoirs are and uh but after pardee it goes uh 90 miles out west uh down the mountains uh across the delta to walnut creek and our our distribution system includes five local reservoirs six water treatment plants 122 different pressure

1:43:15zones uh 164 reservoir tanks 135 pumping plants and over 4 200 miles of pipeline and in el cerrito there are four reservoirs four pumping plants 89 miles of pipe that run through eight different pressure zones question where where are the four reservoirs uh so i was just uh touring uh at one today so

1:43:45uh which type of facility were you were you the four reservoirs in el cerrito i didn't know there were any oh oh unless you mean like near harding school uh so there there are different kinds of reservoirs some will be open cut and uh and and literally are are dams that are

1:44:04regulated by the state division of safety of dams and we've had to make sure are seismically retrofitted uh and we are we also have steel steel tanks uh and we are transitioning over time we're looking to transition those those dams and open open cut reservoirs into tanks

1:44:21so uh what i'd love to do is get back to you with uh the map of all four i was at at the uh facility that's up by the cemetery uh today uh the board had a special workshop and retreat touring a lot of the facilities that are under under construction or planned for major projects in the future

1:44:41so i'll get back to you with a map of the facilities in el cerrito and share that with the council so our strategic plan includes goals for long-term water supply water quality and environmental protection long-term infrastructure investment financial stability quality

1:45:01customer and community services and focus on workforce planning and development so uh these are all the goals that we many public agencies share with us so uh you can relate to the challenges that we have and uh uh the the work that we do in in uh providing this these services to you so

1:45:21uh here's a a a glance at our water supply it goes up and down year to year uh the majority of years that i've served on the board in the last 12 years have been in drought of some sort and the most severe drought uh sequence that we that that's occurred in recent memory

1:45:38uh happened not too long ago between 2012 and 2015 and so we saw our water supply plummet and but we bounced right back so we do not know what what comes uh in the year ahead but we have a a a a planning approach to being able to be prepared for at least a three to four year

1:45:58drought sequence that's modeled based on historic rainfall in the past so right now our we just began a new water year that we count beginning october 1st and that end of september storage for uh 2018 was greater than the predicted 630 000 acre feet and by reference and a

1:46:22acre foot is literally an acre uh one foot deep it's about the size of a football field and uh the some statistics about our storage the total system at the end of the year was 84 full and our east bay reservoirs were 78 full we have enough local storage to be able

1:46:44to get through six months of of storage uh sustainable locally in the event that our aqueducts become unavailable due to an emergency so uh so our local storage is important and that and that those facilities are 78 percent full and uh the mccoy watershed precipitation

1:47:06um so far has just been uh 0.13 inches and that as a percent of average is 10 uh so that's just really um from you know the october first to the present uh at every board meeting i get very detailed presentations about how do we rank in terms of uh percent compared to

1:47:27an average year and uh a lot of statistical analysis about the likelihood of being in a drought um a based on the current day of the year compared to our historic uh precipitation so to protect a long-term water supply we work to protect our current entitlements to

1:47:47water rights in the sierras and in the bay delta process we plan for uncertainty that ranges from drought climate change or regulatory uncertainty we look at customer conservation levels and we we look to maximize the effectiveness of our conservation dollars that we invest

1:48:06we have a robust water recycling program and we're planning for expanding that program regional partnerships to diversif diversify supplies and improve reliability we're talking with contra costa water district about how do we exchange supply back and forth to make

1:48:23sure that we're resilient across contra costa county and uh sustainable groundwater management too so we we now have a partnership with the central valley project the federal government uh and uh through the the the reservoirs that the department of the interior operates uh we're able to draw

1:48:41water into the freeport regional water project off of the sacramento river uh so that that's an example of of some of these uh projects i'm very excited about uh what we are calling the dream project and uh it comes out of uh the san joaquin valley interests uh having a

1:48:58project that they called more which was representative of unsustainable use literally that they were interested in uh plugging into our reservoirs and just drawing out of our reservoirs without any water rights attached to them uh and and for decades we had tough discussions with san

1:49:19joaquin valley interests around uh their land subsidence you know their their land users were continuing to draw so much water out that the land has subsided about 70 feet compared to where it was decades ago and that that creates enormous infrastructure challenges for san

1:49:37joaquin county as well as just over drafted water storage once that groundwater is compacted we will never get that storage back so just in time we have been able to come up with a memorandum of understanding with most of the san joaquin county water interests and we we have a a plan

1:49:56to be able to inject groundwater during wet years and to be able to pull it out during dry years so i'm very excited that we've been able to have that breakthrough agreement and we're proceeding uh with the infrastructure plans to make that a reality uh so to ensure long-term

1:50:14infrastructure investment we continue to rehabilitate major facilities such as reservoirs and pumping plants move forward with aqueduct relining as we see sea level rise becoming a reality for the delta we know that our aqueducts which cross the delta were not designed

1:50:30to be inundated with salt water and they they were designed to occasionally have splashes of fresh water they were not designed to have sea level rise uh with uh intrusion of salt water so we have to reline those aqueducts and and start thinking seriously about whether

1:50:48our aqueducts can can be sustainable above ground and at what what the costs would be to move those aqueducts underground so we're considering a lot of different initiatives to make sure that our infrastructure is safe and secure for future generations and uh the the

1:51:05current initiative that is um driving a lot of our budget is the uh rebuild of our pipeline system four thousand two hundred miles of pipeline for a system that was built uh almost a hundred years ago and much of this uh pipe technology was uh most of our our pipes are cast iron and they're

1:51:24breaking now um a lot of our pipes that were uh from an era of uh pvc and certain kinds of plastic that that broke um much sooner than they were marketed to that were installed several decades ago a lot of our system is breaking right now and we need to be repairing it

1:51:43promptly to make sure that we protect neighborhoods from property damage ensure that we prevent water loss that's unnecessary and make sure that we have a infrastructure that's working uh so some of the work underway here and this is uh council member abelson may

1:51:59answer some of your your questions um so uh nearby we have um the cebrante water treatment plant upgrade uh it's a 17 million dollar project uh many of you may remember that we we did have some moments during the drought where uh we had the unprecedented event of um of

1:52:17some some unusual tastes that were had no water uh quality concerns uh but but it had an aesthetic impact so uh the the water tasted and smelled a little bit earthy um for a few weeks more so about a week at a time we found that this was because of organic material

1:52:38in the water that because of the drought because of that organic material um being um really because our reservoir levels were so low uh our our water draws were coming at the level of algae and uh we we had to relocate our water draw to be away from the algae but we can foresee a

1:53:00time when we may not be able to avoid it we can foresee that with droughts and climate change becoming more severe that we may have to be sharing a lower level of the reservoir uh with where we're drawing the water from so to be able to improve that taste and odor

1:53:16control we want to be able to treat the the water with with ozone equipment and that will be able to address those taste issues that occurred yes it's an expensive project and and so your your feedback about you know uh uh is the risk of having those taste and odor issues worth this investment um

1:53:33that that's that's a helpful dialogue to hear about uh but we have heard that um that we we want to make sure that we have state of the art water treatment equipment we really did hear from a lot of customers that that it was a problem for them and and they we want to make sure that people can

1:53:47trust the tap water and even though it doesn't present a public health issue it does present a perception issue and we want people to reliably turn on the tap and trust that the water is safe to drink and not resort to bottled water so a little bit more on pipeline rebuild

1:54:07we're investing millions in pipeline replacement so right now when i first joined the board we we were only replacing about 10 miles of pipe per year and in this upcoming budget cycle we are moving that up to about 17 miles of pipe per year and we have a goal of getting up to 40

1:54:23miles of pipe per year uh pretty soon even at 40 miles we would not be at the proper rate for a 100 year replacement so we we want to accelerate this as soon as we can but each crew that we bring on requires training we need to make sure that uh that crews are brought on in a

1:54:41way where we're able to support their development in uh being able to be good stewards of the neighborhood and take care of neighborhoods and leave leave them the way they found them or better when a main break repair is is occurring we we need to make sure that we have

1:54:58quality uh workshop when it when we do deploy a crew so uh so we can't uh uh it's a good idea to make sure that we do this gradually so that we have some business continuity uh in the agency um but these are our goals to make uh make sure that as we move ahead to the next

1:55:16decade that we're uh on track to replace our infrastructure earthquake preparedness is is a critical uh thing that we we look at we uh we imagine that we will have an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude or greater on the hayward fault and so we we are prepared and we've invested over 300 million over

1:55:37the last two decades to strengthen our large pipes and facilities so uh from the uh the major retrofit that happened through the caldecott tunnel to make sure that that major pipeline was prepared for a 7.0 and and lots of drills our staff have regular drills to make sure that

1:55:55we're able to report uh to duty and get uh people back into service as soon as possible uh that said we do need to make sure that our customers are aware that uh that we could face outages up to seven days we we really encourage everybody to have up to one gallon per

1:56:13person per day and our customer surveys are indicate that we're not ready as a community so i i would urge you as city leaders to in in your outreach about disaster preparedness to include water uh in an emergency supply in your communications about uh disaster so that

1:56:32one person one gallon per person per day uh we we think that in a typical disaster recovery it may only be as as soon as uh three to five days but to be really prepared uh the the ideally prepared household should be ready for up to seven days before everyone is

1:56:50disconnected everyone is reconnected uh and and the system has been disinfected so what it takes to keep us delivering that water we have 2 000 employees a 2 billion dollar two-year budget and that covers our water system and our wastewater system both operating capital

1:57:11and debt service we aim to be financially responsible and have been seriously exploring moving away from debt service capital and moving to pay as you go capital to avoid a loss of money through through unnecessary interest costs and we we think that especially as

1:57:31interest uh starts to rise that that might be a trend that we that would make more sense so lately we have not been moving in that trend because we we've seen uh borrowing be very inexpensive and we have a triple a bond rating so we're able to borrow very inexpensively

1:57:47but that may change given the fed's recent decisions so we we do take a hard look at what's the most financially responsible way to finance this infrastructure and those are some overviews of our biennial budget and the splits between water wastewater capital operations and debt

1:58:09within our budget and you know just by example for uh in a you know the statistic i have in front of me is an average household uh using 375 gallons per day that doesn't really represent i think el cerrito customer use but that would only be less than um eight dollars per month for uh for

1:58:28water uh for uh the recent rate increase that occurred so we recently did raise rates by uh nine percent uh and and nine and a quarter percent in fiscal years seventeen and eighteen and we're starting a new budget and rate cycle in fiscal year twenty um so uh part of the the

1:58:48uh the factors that the driver rate structure is that we have uh fixed costs up driving our budget but variable revenues so uh even when we have uh the need to encourage conservation we still have the same 4 200 miles of pipe the same water treatment plants the same uh

1:59:08pumping plants uh so uh this this does lead to a big debate on the board uh where i as a as a representative of communities that i feel uh conserve uh to to our greatest uh uh abilities uh need rate structures that uh still represent the the conservation that that

1:59:26we uh have have been uh deserving rewarding that we deserve to be rewarded for uh so our board will be uh considering our rate revisions uh over the the coming years uh so in about two or three years we'll be doing a cost of service study to look at whether rate reform makes

1:59:45sense and i will continue to push for reducing the fixed charge which represents about uh 28 percent of our of our bill i think that we should be reducing the fixed charge and increasing the variable portion of our charge and i believe that that's in the uh the best

2:00:02interests of the majority of of our customers to have a price incentive to conserve and to help help customers that are struggling to afford uh all of their bills uh have a choice about uh whether uh they could they want to avoid um revenue that that they may not

2:00:18necessarily be causing um so this is a comparison of very uh average size bills um so for el cerrito customers that average bill is actually uh lower much lower but this is how we compare to our comparison agencies uh for for water costs we always strive to be below the median to

2:00:39show that we're delivering affordable water service to everyone here and these are some examples about where each rate dollar goes and the majority or close to majority you can see is infrastructure improvements and supplemental water supply uh and uh and and the water service so uh so that's

2:00:59that's a breakdown about how our budget is organized uh and uh we've been expanding outreach for our customer assistance program we offer a 50 percent discount for low-income customers qual the definition is the same as pg e's care program roughly 214 percent of the

2:01:21federal poverty line and so qualifying customers can get uh their basic indoor usage uh discounted by about fifty percent and uh the wastewater bill also uh is discounted by 35 percent so uh those those charges are are available through or typical for reduction through that program and uh it

2:01:44it does not i i believe in el cerrito because your uh your utility tax is based on a percentage of the bill um that that would be proportionate um but i'm i'm not sure of that um but uh we don't we don't control that tax that's something that we include on the bill at

2:02:00the request of the city um but but on our bill we do offer that discount and we use our our communities property taxes that that are collected um from east bay mud to be able to offer that program um for for support for low-income customers uh what i find though is that many customers whether it

2:02:20be social services uh mental health issues just financial distress there's a booming economy for some but not for everyone and many people end up in arrears on their budget before they find out about cap before they can get enrolled we're having a discussion internally about whether it's it's

2:02:39legally or technologically feasible to uh and and a good budget decision and i'm supportive of this to extend a qualification of cap retroactively if the customer can show that they qualify just recently i took a call from a woman with many kids in her household and

2:02:58she the water had already been turned off for for months and uh the family was bathing with bottled water and uh that this was brought on by by uh some some personal and medical issues of the customer and the head of household that really by the time they even found out

2:03:16that there was a customer assistance program the water bill was already thousands of dollars so i think it's important that we help people find out about this program as soon as possible so if if there is an outreach arm of the city that helps connect people to social services to

2:03:31public benefits that we promote uh the existence of this program and uh when the board is prepared in our next budget cycle uh in january uh for uh consideration of how to improve this program i would welcome a support letter from the city about extending this program uh

2:03:49qualifications to be retroactive because i think that's a way that we can prevent water shutoffs and financial distress um so that people can find out about how to get involved in this important program that's intended for for qualifying customers um so uh people can get applications uh very

2:04:08easily just by calling our main customer service line that's one eight six six four zero ebmud so uh just by calling that number or by uh uh uh going to our website at ebmud.com uh customers can get access to that application and get enrolled and uh once once the the application's submitted uh

2:04:33they they can qualify um and if they already have qualifications under pg e's care program will automatically qualify them so um that's a little bit about uh cap and how we try to make our water service more affordable for everybody to to be able to afford this

2:04:51essential service so water conservation is also a major priority we had amazing activities during the drought we we replaced um just just in in the last fiscal year we replaced 330 000 square feet of lawn that's on top of a million square feet of lawn during the

2:05:09drought so we our customers have really been responding to increased rebates that we've been offering you know it's not as funny to say cash for grass anymore but uh but that that is kind of what we what we offer and uh you know we have a lot of different rebates uh and

2:05:26water saving devices uh that uh uh that add up and they they're meant to encourage customers to uh rip out their lawns get rid of the water water wasting appliances and get the latest and greatest technologies so lots of devices distributed we always give out free washers and for

2:05:45our free faucet washers and we'll also do home uh home audits for free we we support uh california youth energy services that that does these home energy audits uh that also covers water too so uh and we also are expanding water waste reports where customers can get

2:06:05compared to their neighbors we find that just by learning about what are your neighbors doing that that actually changes um everyone's awareness about how to conserve water um so i'm very proud of el cerrito i don't have the number in front of me but i know i i want to get

2:06:21back to you about just how good el cerrito has been doing because i know that uh here el cerrito residents really did respond when we asked for help in the drought and i want to thank thank you as council members and the the community for uh doing your part to step

2:06:37up and help us save water during that difficult time during the drought so what's next for east bay mud uh our water supply outlook is uh certainly sufficient to meet demand for the coming year and uh we we don't know what lies ahead but we know that we're prepared

2:06:54our water sales have stabilized and our pipeline replacements are increasing from 10 to 15 miles a year and we're moving towards 20 in 2021. uh so the upgrade of cibrante and orinda treatment plants with ozone to address operational changes in source water is something that we're doing

2:07:14we're looking at uh adding uv treatment to the orinda treatment plant uh so that we are able to be fully protected from the risk of cryptosporidium uh our water is always safe to drink but we and we we've actually never had cryptosporidium sampled out of party reservoir but we

2:07:31want to be extra prepared um for pathogens and and to make sure that we have the latest technologies enabled at our our treatment plants so that we always have clean and reliable water and we we want to make sure that we have diverse water supply options but from my perspective that that should

2:07:48never come at the expense of environmental protection we had a long uh debate in this community and i brought it to the state legislature to protect party reservoir excuse me to protect the mccollumy river from uh the the threat of potential flooding from a project that would have raised party

2:08:07reservoir and i'm very excited that this year the governor signed legislation that was in a trailer bill that expanded the wild and scenic rivers program to 17 miles of the mokoume river that begins above party reservoir um all the way up uh the the upper mccollumy

2:08:24river so uh the mccoy the macomb river is officially a wild scenic river and it's protected for future generations uh the the board uh has a uh annual uh river rafting uh experience that we do every year if you're interested in participating in in that um uh and and how to uh engage in

2:08:45in this river that that's our um heritage and uh and part of part of the resources that we we're the stewards of i encourage you to check out um the the beauty of the mokoume river because now it's going to be protected for future generations um so we also are continuing work on the customer

2:09:03assistance program so uh that's our presentation i uh we're we're getting the word out a lot more uh with our we're on social media and twitter if you have any uh questions for me personally you can also reach me by email at andyandy.catskatzbeammud.com so thank

2:09:26you for having me to present this information and update about emma to you thank you um yeah i've got andy uh mr katz thank you very much for coming tonight and taking the time to present to us on all these programs um i do have a couple of el cerrito related questions and then at

2:09:46least one that you may not be prepared to answer which is uh the east bay mud's position on the bay delta plan um i know a couple years ago you came before us and we had presentations about some large projects pipeline replacement projects in el cerrito and there's at least one street that we

2:10:07have uh you know for those that have been tracking us we actually scored second or third in pavement quality within the bay area and there's one street that is bringing us down and that's the street we're not repaving because in theory two or three years ago you were going to come through

2:10:25with a pipe so when are you coming through with that pipe so we can actually start to begin to get a better pavement score what street is that richmond richmond okay thank you for uh letting me know i know that uh el cerrito has prided itself in quality pavement and and i i

2:10:44really admire it's not the only street i mean you guys going to come through a couple other streets small streets but that's the big one that we've been holding off on i mean pretty pretty substantially so and i i think el cerrito has a model program for how to

2:10:56help coordinate work in the streets because we we do have uh some difficulty working with public works departments on coordination it's a shame when we waste public resources and one agency comes in and does a lot of work just before or after another agency does so we need to make sure that we're

2:11:13not pulling your patients uh too much with with the quality of that street and likewise we have a limited budget in what we're able to advance we we've graded all of our water mains a through f and we we generally are are going f uh up up through a uh to make sure that

2:11:33we're we're taking care of the water mains that are breaking or about to break a little bit of the area surrounding it to make sure that we have a cost-effective job um so i i will ask my staff to look at richmond street and to make sure that that we're yeah just just

2:11:48so we have an understanding so we can tell the public because i'm as mr fedele threw his hands up yeah i stole his question a lot of stuff that we can do on richmond i keep hearing we're waiting for you guys to do it great yeah i will i will get back to you with an update about uh where where that

2:12:07is in our planning yeah and i know uh the california quote the california equality the california sequest california environmental quality act um is something you needed to perform to bring that project forward in the play from the planning phases however it's probably been a decade

2:12:27since you brought that sql document forward and and in that time we've changed some of our land use and we have land use planning that's going to add something to the order of 1500 units or about what is that 20 about 2 000 to 2100 new users and just curious if before you bring

2:12:51that pipe in and realize it's too small if there's an opportunity for you to plan ahead for some of the population changes that we're now experiencing in el cerrito that may not have been on the horizon when you did your environmental review document probably saying oh we're just going to

2:13:11replace in kind and it's not going to promote growth because i know promoting growth is a an environmental quality act issue we've already done the promote growth action and now is potentially an opportunity for you guys before you come in with a pipe that's undersized

2:13:28to potentially consider what our new demand is so i'm just curious if that's something that can be taken into consideration before you come need to tear up our street twice in a decade as opposed to just once in a lifetime i'll make a note of that thank you um and then i did allude to the the

2:13:47maybe it's a softball for you but i know for many agencies in the bay area the bay delta plan is not a softball i was just curious you you didn't mention it and and you may not want to talk about it tonight because we are running on short on time but uh i just wanted i

2:14:03can't go without at least asking what east bay uh mud's plan is around the bay delta plan sure so uh the the bay delta plan is a a complex proceeding and and and includes um multiple different uh interconnected proceedings that that the state is engaged in i think it is important because the

2:14:24state may be taking action that would curtail uh the the water rights of urban agencies and uh could be reallocating uh some of those rights to uh make sure that there's water flows for the environment but also could be uh providing water flows that would benefit exporter uses um and

2:14:44exporters are primarily agricultural users so i think it's important to be aware of this and i thank you for the question espen mud's staff are engaged in settlement discussions with the state water resources control board to engage in the proceeding and protect

2:15:03east bay mud's water rights so we we also have been considering how can east bay mud be a leader to make sure that as we have a plan that would affect uh what what all of uh the the similarly situated users do uh and that that could come as part of a negotiation with

2:15:21other interests that have that have different types of perspectives about water use are we a leader in if if we're going to provide more water flow for the environment is that coming as something as proportionate to other stakeholders or is that something that's

2:15:36uh just something that is being um uh you know given at the expense of um uh you know no no uh proportionate action from uh from exporters or other interests and you know i i i i would refer you to an interesting article in the san francisco chronicle about san

2:15:54francisco public utilities commission's position which has been very defensive of of san francisco's position um you know my my personal view i can't i can't reveal what what happens in our board's closed sessions but but my personal view is that we uh east bay mud

2:16:10should be representing our our residents by being environmental leaders and pushing for uh benefit to the environment uh and and by uh get trying to leverage even though we're only one one percent of the contribution of water to the delta uh by trying to leverage

2:16:25our role as a leading public agency um to benefit the environment and uh have proportionate contributions from the exporters indeed in the article you're referencing was just this last weekend but i do want to make it drive this point home to our residents what you're basically trying

2:16:42to to do is balance the environment which el cerrito is very sensitive to and very supportive of with reliability and water quality and you had a long portion of your presentation about the taste and odor and aesthetics of water and so that's part of what we would be faced with more

2:17:02of is having those types of issues if we if our water sources weren't as closely guarded as your as your agency is trying to guard so i want to thank you for trying to balance between our users and the environment um and protecting our water source quality reliability issues so thank you thank

2:17:23you for recognizing that um hi mr katz um thank you for your presentation and um i'm very interested in the support letter that you requested and i'd be happy to help you with that so could you please send us some more information hi yes i'd be glad to do that uh likely

2:17:42around the uh november late november time frame uh if if that is around the time frame to weigh in for a january workshop okay thank you okay councilmember abelson yes um first of all i'd like to thank you for coming and i think you've given us a lot of really interesting and useful

2:18:00information and i appreciate that you are are here in person to do that um and you're i don't see anybody in the background telling you that what to say so thank you for doing that and uh thank you for doing it on a consistent basis too and i think it's really helpful to us i was wondering if you

2:18:23could describe to me a little bit something that when i hear about water quality and i hear about chemicals being put in water to make it taste better then i start wondering if those chemicals aren't in fact inducing things into the water that are not healthy for

2:18:46us could you speak a little bit to that uh so i'm i'm a lawyer not a chemist so i i i'll have to get back to you on on the uh complete explanation you know for example of ozone treatment um but it it's my understanding is is that it it's basically like providing a high dose of

2:19:08of air uh if you know through the water to to help um some of the chemicals that create uh odor and taste issues uh dissipate and and uh leave their attachment to the water molecule um so i'm glad to get you a more detailed and accurate explanation of that example um but we we do find

2:19:29that uh the the addition of chlorine in and ammonia to create chloramine is essential for uh ensuring that public health and safety is is protected we want to be resilient to being able to drink water without the risk of incurring pathogens or or viruses or bacteria when we when we drink water so

2:19:50that's why we we treat our water with disinfectant and and we also have been proud to have consistently been below all federal and state requirements for uh for water quality for really the entire time that i've served on the board of directors we have we have always had clean reliable water that

2:20:13meets all state and federal standards and that is as healthy and safe to drink so um uh able to answer any other questions and and we'll get you more information about the ozone treatment that's proposed thank you thanks member fidelity yes andy thank you again for

2:20:29coming you come on a regular basis and uh we appreciate that you're it's important to us um since council member lyman uh asked the important question on the richmond street upgrade um that is important to us it's the center parallel street in our city to san pablo avenue i just have one small

2:20:52question the dream program you were talking about does that stand for something what does dream mean uh dream it yes most most um projects that have like all capital acronyms it means something and uh you know i i i i didn't come up with the acronyms so i don't know what there is an acronym

2:21:12there is an acronym for it so i can explain what the program does it doesn't really explain what the program does i think i think that there was an interest in having a um a celebration to what was uh really about a three decade long um you know bewilderment about why can we not um uh

2:21:31help each other so we we were finally and i think that that really the the the acronym um it probably me that the word of the acronym probably means more than the actual words that are the component of it um but it's because if from an from an engineering perspective

2:21:48it it's better described as conjunctive use or groundwater uh storage um so those words are not in the letters of dream um but this this concept of doing a joint use project in the northern san joaquin valley has been a dream of of many of us at east bay mud for a long

2:22:08time and so to have that breakthrough really has been a dream thank you andy katz i have one question um does east bay mud have a recommendation on prop 3 east bay mud as a board convened and decided to take no position on proposition 3. in the past we have supported all bonds that

2:22:31have come to us that would invest water so by not taking a position on prop 3 it is a departure from how we've treated previous water bonds where we've we've historically just simply supported the water bond but here our staff analysis provided some questions about whether there's

2:22:49accountability that the legislature will not have any ability to modify the the allocations that the voters would be committing itself to these would be general obligation bonds that will be be required by order of the voters to be sold regardless of the status of the

2:23:08budget regardless of changing priorities so those were some things that we found were interesting we also noticed that many of these projects are not necessarily going to benefit east bay mud customers they may be good projects the environmental restoration projects i

2:23:24would say are good projects the uh the improvement of environmental quality for customers in the central valley who don't have access to potable water those are good projects it would be great if the legislature could consider how to make the right projects that the state as a

2:23:40whole can benefit from having those projects be paid for through a future geo bond that the legislature would have continuing appropriative uh oversight of uh and then for the projects that would be primarily benefiting the exporters that those that would be pumping water

2:23:57out of the delta or would be building a a conveyance around the delta that that would cause the need for mitigations like those environmental restoration projects we need to figure out which projects should be paid for by those exporters as opposed to general obligation bonds that

2:24:14the state's taxpayers necessarily wouldn't be the best ones to subsidize so while the agency hasn't taken a stance i hope those are some helpful educational points about what prop 3 does definitely thank you also um i know you've talked about vegetation management in the past

2:24:34i know uh you're working with east bay parks as well uh on that and do we have anything that we need to be mindful of here in el cerrito with working with east bay mud and and the areas that you control here uh generally we uh we don't have a lot of our our properties are are not necessarily the

2:24:54ones that are the ones of most concern for fire protection uh but we we do uh in el cerrito i mean uh but across the district and our land holdings we are are very careful uh to manage our land for fire protection and prevention and uh we have a different approach than uh what the parks district

2:25:14and the university and the city of oakland are doing because we're managing watershed lands uh we we have never attempted to have more widespread application of pesticides and herbicides uh we we know that that uh that those chemicals drain into a a watershed that you know that the

2:25:34wildlife uh lives and exists in that eventually does drain into drinking water so we want to make sure that for for areas that are our drinking water that we're not applying pesticides and herbicides so so for that reason we don't we don't have use of pesticides and herbicides in

2:25:53watershed land we we have limited ipm in areas that do not drain into drinking water but within areas that do drain into drinking water we do not use pesticides and herbicides and we manually remove eucalyptus by hand on horseback it does cost more but it's also worth protecting our

2:26:14health and safety especially as we see the human health costs of some of these powerful herbicides i appreciate that i don't believe we have do we have open uh anyone for public government okay well thank you and and i know uh you know you've been with us for many many years as our uh uh

2:26:32representation for representative for east bay mud and i look forward to working with you another four years so uh thank you thank you happy to uh represent el cerrito uh for the last 12 years and happy to be back anytime thanks okay next a presentation by contra costa county animal services

2:26:53animal services update sure you've been you've been waiting uh very patiently thank you for uh yeah so i'll go as quick as possible here um mayor kendo members of the council thank you for allowing me the time tonight to come and provide you an update on the animal

2:27:18services department moving right into it contract animal services provides animal services for 18 of the 19 cities in contra costa county the only city we don't provide animal services for is the city of antioch they operate their own animal services agency which is operated as a subset of their

2:27:38police department however for the unincorporated county and the other 18 cities we are the animal services provider our department consists of six divisions uh our field services those are our officers in the field what makes them unique from a lot of uh makes us unique from a lot of other

2:27:54animal services agencies in the state is that we are law enforcement agencies stand alone other counties will contract with a humane society or another organization do certain aspects of it some may be an aspect of the agriculture department or the sheriff's department or a local city

2:28:12police department we are our own entity our officers are quasi law enforcement they have powers of arrest which allows them to do things like help your city staff your fire your police your code enforcement go into areas where there may be a dangerous or aggressive animal um so that we can so

2:28:30that you're we would go in there and subdue the animals so that your team can do their job our shelter operations um those are the people who take care of the care of the animals the feeding the watering the cleaning of the kennels so on and so forth our medical services

2:28:44division um they provide the care and the treatment of the animals the spay and neuter surgeries and our low-cost vaccination clinic and our low-cost public spay and neuter clinic our clerical division that's the first line uh that you're going to encounter when

2:28:58you either come into one of our offices in martinez or panel or if you call us on the phones the clerks are the the people you're going to first speak with there are customer service division as we like to call it um our volunteers know uh animal services agency can

2:29:14operate effectively without a strong contingent of volunteers we're very proud to have a core volunteer of about over 250 volunteers who give their time and their talent each week and then there's our administration uh our director our deputy director or administrative service officer uh

2:29:32communications director um and uh our personnel team so what i'm really here to talk about are the specific services provided to the city of el cerrito um for the calendar year 2017 and 2017 our most active activity in el cerrito was stray animal impounds we did 365 of those we

2:29:53did another 131 deceased animal impounds we did 90 noise animal and inhumane ordinance investigations and 12 animal rescues and four local agency assists i believe all those were with your police department and the majority of those were serving warrants important to note that per our contract

2:30:13every year the uh the way you guys pay the county for animal services is on a per capita basis and that rate is set to increase every year at the turn of the fiscal year per the consumer price index the cpi um this year the cpi was about or last year the cpi was about 2.9 percent which resulted

2:30:35in a 17 per capita rate increase which has you going from uh 5.94 cents in 2017 2018 to 6 11 cents for fiscal year 2018 2019. i would be remiss not to mention that the majority of bay area municipalities are paying uh uh approximately eleven dollars and eighty cents per capita for their animal

2:30:58services um antioch is well over eight dollars and where i live in marin county we pay about 11 and 60 cents per capita so you're getting a very good premium with a with a level of service that most other animal services agencies aren't able to provide we on an annual basis we meet with all the

2:31:17city managers and police chiefs for the cities that we contract with and we've developed a new reporting structure structure on a quarterly basis that will be provided to the city managers and the police chiefs i won't go through all of it but one of the things that i did want to share with

2:31:33you is as a law enforcement agency or any public safety agency one of the metrics you're gauged by is your response time however prior to 2018 ccas did not have a response time metric it was not something that we really tracked we didn't have priority levels or target response times identified

2:31:51captain andreatti working with her team of lieutenants this year put together uh target response time priority levels and we began implementing and tracking them in about uh mid march of this year so the period you're looking at here is uh from april 1st to september 30th

2:32:12and um as you can see you know it's still something where we're trying to wrap our heads around but when you look at the median response time for the priority ones that it's kind of where we want it to be we need to get the average down but once we do a data cleanup when you see the

2:32:30maximum response time five days 19 hours 59 minutes that's normally a data entry error and so somebody just put the wrong date or the wrong time in there and it throws off everything else i knowing the numbers and going over them with captain andready i believe we are

2:32:46well under a response time for priority ones in el cerrito of two hours which is our target response time you may ask why is your uh priority one response time two hours the reason for that being is that all of our officers are dispatched out of our martinez location we don't

2:33:02have outposts throughout the county like the sheriff's department does um all of our officers are dispatched out of one location and then uh typically they're out for most of the day in the b area we separate into four different beat areas um westby which is basically everything

2:33:19west of the i-80 corridor uh north central which is martinez concord south central san ramon la morinda area and then east county which is your oakley brentwood knights and byron all the way out to discovery bay so a couple of policy updates we did pass the noisy animal ordinance update last year

2:33:43the city of el cerritos adopted that ordinance it essentially changed the process from one that was cyclical and rarely resulted in resolution to one where now there is actually a hearing process and people are being heard and claims are being adjudicated we also passed a rooster ordinance uh

2:34:04this year i don't believe there are any parcels which within the city limits that um this applies to but uh by way of background until this year contra costa county was one of the only counties in the state of california that didn't have a rooster ordinance on the books which

2:34:19basically anybody who engaged in the activities of cockfighting knew that contra costa county was a safe haven because we had no mechanism for probable cause this ordinance gives us that and uh we began to enforce it um so our department at a glance uh our animal intake uh in 2017 was just about

2:34:4110 500 animals we were very proud to re reunite about 20 of those with their owners we did 3 500 public adoptions another 2600 adoptions of transfer partners we returned 911 cats to the field and our live release rate is among the best for municipal shelters in the

2:34:59state in the country our dog library release rate is 92 percent our dog and cat live release rate is 87 meaning that basically nine out of 10 animals that come into our shelter leave the shelter alive we did over 2000 low-cost vaccinations for residents of contra costa county

2:35:14over 5000 low-cost spay and neuter surgeries and as i mentioned we did about 571 police fire and code enforcement assists so finishing up talking about opportunities and challenges we have a great opportunity to increase the low cost spay and neuter vaccination

2:35:31programs to address pet over population in the county right now we're running the only games in town we're looking to increase that we have an environment ripe for collaboration with local animal welfare groups we have a hard working committed staff and volunteer corps and a supportive and

2:35:45engaged community our challenges include balancing the life saving with the length of staying quality of care as our live release rate continues to go up we're holding animals longer and the focus has to be on the quality of care that they're receiving in the shelter

2:35:58we need to update our processes and procedures to bring the department into the 21st century that was a big a big thought behind the new animal noise process the process was one where you called our office you had to wait to get a clerk on the phone and then we'd send out the

2:36:13first complaint and then if the problem continued you had to call us back get another one of your neighbors within 300 feet of the nuisance to call us now all that's gone the way you do it is you go to our website you fill out the first form a notice is sent you got to give

2:36:27the neighbor 15 days to fix the problem if it if it continues beyond that you go back to our website you download an affidavit you get it either notarized and sent back to us or you bring it to our panola martinez location and get it signed and witnessed and that

2:36:40automatically triggers a citation of the uh person with the noisy animal um that person with the citation has a has a form where they can appeal the citation which would trigger a hearing where both parties come forward we discuss it and we adjudicate it um that whole idea has cleared up a lot of

2:36:58space in our call center we have a service area of about 1.2 million people it's very common that you could be on hold with our department for 30 to 40 minutes on average so we want it we're trying to figure out how we move that stuff onto our website i'm promising you you're going to see

2:37:14more of that from our department we need to increase our staffing we need to decrease our volume of animals we need to address our physical facility constraints martinez is a great facility panel is i think i have a closet at home bigger than pinol so we need to address that and continuous

2:37:31population growth in the county both the two-legged and four-legged variety and five easy ways to support your local shelter you could always consider adoption as the first option ensure your pets are licensed and microchipped they have much greater percentages of being

2:37:47reunited with their owners if they become lost you could certainly volunteer at the martinez or penal shelter whatever your time or your talent we have a role for you and i'd certainly offer to the council members uh the opportunity to do a ride-along with one of our officers in

2:38:01your b area i've had a number of council members take us up on this and it's something that they really really appreciate and have all reported that it's it's not what they thought initially and sign up to take a tour of the martinez or panel shelter come learn

2:38:17about the amazing things we're doing and follow us on social media so i hope i went quick enough for you and with that i will take any questions you have okay thank you i'm gonna let mr fideli go first because i don't want to steal his question okay i was no you didn't no i always appreciate

2:38:35your questions greg um you mentioned the release rate for dogs and cats and then dogs and cats what's it dogs and cats so the the we dogs and cats are we know we keep live release rates for every animal we take in the only ones that we kind of categorize together

2:38:53are the wildlife that we bring in because they're really not our jurisdiction so we track for dogs for cats livestock rabbits so on and so forth however we know what the people really want when they're talking about live release rate dogs and cats how many are leaving alive that's why we group the

2:39:11dogs and cats together to get that 87 percent live release rate to show us the total number of dogs and cats coming into our shelter how many of those the percentage-wise they're leaving combination of it the cat number itself is 83 and the reason for that is because

2:39:27during kitten season you get neonatal kittens coming in that if you don't have a foster um that's able to bottle feed them every two hours 24 hours a day unfortunately they have to be euthanized because those are critical care situations thank you keep up the good work thank

2:39:44you councilmemberson um i'm just thinking about that last comment so that is that to say then that a number of uh neonatal kittens is that the right word yes uh are actually euthanized a very small percentage at our shelter we we have a very robust foster core um of volunteers that that

2:40:13will be able to handle neonatal kiddos kittens however sometimes there are some that come in during kitten season which runs essentially from april to mid-september that's when cats are giving birth and the shelters are flooded with new kittens coming in which can be a good thing really

2:40:31but if they don't have a mama cat to in the shelter to to be able to nurse them um or a foster that's able to to feed them then they would necessarily be euthanized because they would not have an ability to get food and sustenance a number of those kittens because you

2:40:50know when we're euthanizing neonatal kittens most of the time it's not because we don't have a foster most of the time it's coming in they're coming in presenting with another medical condition that that is not something you would normally treat for a neonatal kidney

2:41:06okay do you work with the feral cat groups uh we have our own um uh community cap program is what we call it which consists of three different aspects one of those is a trap neuter release program where members of the community can bring trap we will provide traps to

2:41:29members of the community whereas they could ha trap community cats in their neighborhood they could bring them to us we'll do the uh surgery the spare the neuter for free and we will vaccinate that cat to you know quality public health and safety issues and then we'll give that cat back

2:41:45to the person to return to the community the other aspect is called return to field those are cats that come from a community that doesn't necessarily want them back maybe it's a strong birding community and they feel that the cats are impacting the birds so they want

2:41:59them you know they'll bring them to the shelter and have indicated that they don't want them back in those cases we work to re-home those kittens certainly if the cats or kittens are friendly we're going to adopt them out they're going to be put on a track to adoption

2:42:12however feral cats who can't we either have to relocate them or they go into the third aspect of the program which is our working cap program which we like to basically advertise as organic pest eradication if you have a barn if you have a dairy if you have a rodent problem um we have

2:42:28cats that they're not going to be the ones that snuggle up to you on the couch they'll go get you a rat i'll tell you that so we adopt those cats out to um through our working cap program uh and again it's just our commitment you know we will never be a no kill shelter we we we

2:42:46won't call ourselves no kill our statistics qualify us to call ourselves no kill we'll never do that because that's an advocacy term and we're not in the business of ad advocacy we're in the business of saving lives so instead of saying no kill we say yes to saving lives

2:43:04thank you i think councilmember greg lyman sure um thank you mr pardo for coming tonight um and you certainly touched on a few things that i'm going to follow up on um one is the six dollars and 11 cents per capita um per capita how does a how do you how do you figure that out i mean what

2:43:26how do you charge on a per capita basis well the is it per parcel or per capita no per capita okay um so that would be that's based on the department of labor statistics that come from the state um it's provided and the county also keeps those statistics so when we have to do

2:43:44that um that's how it's um put to us and we just follow those numbers we're not we're not telling you like how many people you have in your city per capita we're getting that from the authorities who have their finger on that pulse and and we write you a check on a monthly

2:43:58basis i believe it's a quarterly basis quarterly basis so it's about 150 000 from el cerrito um and yet we only have 200 calls so that's about 750 a trip true but um keep in mind there are a number of animals that come from this community that are initiated by call so we have

2:44:18officers in the field that will impound animals that are stray in the community here you know we have a traveling officer in the b area all day long that will respond to certain things such as you know uh say like i talked about earlier and assist with your police department that

2:44:37wouldn't go down as a call for service that's a different type of call so that that wouldn't reflect in that calls for service so there are a number of animals that are coming from our community and then you know there's certainly the services additionally that are not call

2:44:51based that we're providing to your community such as the low-cost vaccination clinic the low-cost spay and neuter clinic we have a good amount of people from el cerrito and west county utilizing those services good that's an excellent response to the simple math

2:45:06that i had done um we did have a vocal resident who came several times a couple years ago very upset with the panel facility which is smaller than your closet and also very upset with the fees that we're paying that should be going towards upgrading the your closet sized

2:45:24facility in panel can you please what what would you say if that president was here tonight he's not what what would you say to that resident tonight and and their their question about this facility and its inability to do the yes to live's mission well certainly um

2:45:45you know what i would say is already we have a couple of improvements planned for for the panel facility um the the footprint it's on is very small and we do not own the the lot um we lease we own the building but we lease the space so we were very limited in what we could do

2:46:03one of the things the county is doing as a whole not just with regards to animal services is looking at our our our infrastructure our facilities and developing a book on um what needs improvement and kind of triaging that i believe that the panel facility is certainly

2:46:20in that process aside from the improvements we already have planned there but the improvements that we'll we'll be doing are going to be minor they're basically adding a couple of new rooms in there pinol as a shelter is not overwhelmed and it doesn't prevent us from doing any of our

2:46:39life-saving measures there um what what it's more an ability of is being able to um have space to take the animals out and socialize them there that's what we're really lacking in pinol and also um if you've been in the area you know there's no like close by park where you

2:46:58could take the animals to socialize them or get them some running around time so that's something that we're looking at and um you know we'll continue to address but i don't believe there's an easy solution in the cards right now um final question you you discussed the noise ordinance and

2:47:15and it and the benefits potentially of how it might reduce call times because you can go online with it and that the ordinance um is is less onerous to those that have uh noise complaints i live in a essentially a amphitheater bowl and and the slightest noise echoes and

2:47:35reverberates quite well in the in the area but we're a city you said something about we adopted it and can you clarify it are you adjudicating noise issues in our city as a result of our or adopting your ordinance is that what's happening yes essentially what happens like i said um

2:47:59the way the process works is uh and if you bear with me uh if council member lyman if you call and you say hey my my neighbor has a noisy animal um we are going to take your complaint there and that or if you go assume it's the future and i go to your website so it's the future in the past

2:48:17you had to call our department you would call us up you'd say hey my neighbor has a noisy animal we would send you a letter we'd send the neighbor a letter then and we'd say you got to give them at that point it was ten days and so we we would you the 10 days would

2:48:30go by the problem would still exist you'd call us back and we'd say okay now you have to get one of your neighbors that lives within 300 feet of the noise nuisance to um call us up if that happened if you actually got somebody to call us the best that would happen is we would send an officer out

2:48:46it's a low priority call so the noise is happening at eight nine o'clock at night we're sending an officer at 11 in the morning um they're unable to verify the claims so you know it gets closed as unfounded um the problem continues to exist we continue to get calls from you your

2:49:04neighbor continues to uh call us and try to find out who's harassing him by filing these complaints because most of the time they were coming in anonymously and we knew that the one thing that wasn't happening was this the thing that should have neighbors talking to

2:49:16neighbors at the front end and trying to address the problem there so with the new process you come to our website you're going to download the you're going to fill out the form it's embedded on our website that's automatically going to trigger those notices the same

2:49:27way as if you called the first time now instead of going to find another neighbor if the problem exists beyond 15 days we increase it a little to allow for the notification via snail mail now you're going to go back to our website you're going to download the affidavit get it notarized and sent back

2:49:44to us are signed and witnessed and then um that's going to automatically trigger a citation of the person with the noisy animal they have a couple of options at that point they could um pay the fine and say okay and for the first fine it's a hundred dollars if it continues beyond

2:49:59if they're cited a second time 200 and for the third and all subsequent it's 500.

2:50:05and then if they want to they can choose to appeal the citation which would trigger a hearing so we have between no less than 25 no more than 45 i believe days to set a hearing once they have sent us back that appeal letter and so in that case both parties would

2:50:23come and we'd adjudicate the hearing i'm one of the hearing officers and can tell you we've done this a few ways somewhere citations have been upheld some where they've been dismissed and somewhere we identified the person was guilty of having a noisy animal that was barking

2:50:39incessantly and or intermittently depending on what the time frame was but we were able to work out a solution collectively with both parties and not uphold the fine and say basically if you could implement this solution and the problem doesn't uh happen again for a period of six months

2:50:56then we will make this fine go away um and so and that's the idea is bringing people together um the third option they have is to just not do anything when they receive the fine in which case after 30 days it goes to collection great thank you i have just a couple questions sure

2:51:12number one do we call animal services if we see an animal hit by a car or on the side of the road who do we call it depends on the animal is generally the question if it's the side of the road generally if it's a deceased animal we'll will certainly pick it up and most

2:51:33of the time even while wildlife is not in our jurisdiction if there's a live but injured wildlife on the side of the road the department of of wildlife they have i believe one representative for a very large service area and they're probably not going to make it out so

2:51:47we'll go and assist them and get them in that case if it's an animal that is if it's a dog or cat absolutely call us i would say as a precautionary principle if you see an animal in the public right away give us a call okay so like right now it's skunk season and

2:52:06we had a situation like that recently on my street so would the wildlife office take care of that no that would be us we we will pick up the deceased uh wildlife it's and it's a tricky thing because it's not something that we're mandated to do but we've done it for so long people have

2:52:24come to expect that service so we provide it and and we re we realize it's a quality of life issue nobody wants to see the dead deer on their street for days on end or even a dead skunk so i i would recommend calling us for that and squirrels as well yeah squirrels as well

2:52:41okay el cerrito questions elsa sure sure i appreciate that so do we have any public comments there is one speaker uh cordell hendler so good evening again mayor uh council uh thank you steve for that presentation so i kind of agree with councilmember lyman said if i have one of my neighbor has

2:53:00his dog park and i said oh no i i would do exactly the same thing like he do you know fill out the um the form and i just said i'll give it back to you and then we'll just see how this lays out and i said when i saw the fonts i say 100 to 200 i say okay but subsequently i say

2:53:16500 i was like i was a 500 that's a little bit steep so i'm like but that's the way it is so uh so i just heard i just love this presentation so that's it okay anything else steve thank you for being here and thank you thank you so much appreciate it thank you okay um next we're going to do uh city

2:53:42council local and regional liaison assignments okay um i think there's only one thing i wanted you know two and i partly said i don't remember the timing of all of this but we all know i think that janet bilbus retired so she's been replaced by bridget cooney [Music]

2:54:07so if people are wondering who it is that's the person's name and i think i already mentioned the senior resource fair and then the other thing that i wanted to mention was the crime prevention committee when i attempted to attend the meeting last week i think it was

2:54:26there wasn't a quorum and the membership on that committee is excessively low and so if anyone knows of anybody that might be interested in being a member of the crime prevention committee then they should get an application and they can just also go to the meetings which are

2:54:59that's all available online on our website and it is really reaching a real severely low point for lack of a better way to say it and i'll just leave it at that thank you council member fidelity yes um the two committees the financial advisory board fab is presently working on el cerrito

2:55:23financial policies and revamping the uh the list of where we should be headed what our policy should be on investment the human relations commission is planning its mlk 30th anniversary coming up with a very exciting some differences in what we've done in the past few years

2:55:45and also discussing with staff some of the issues we heard today on rental and housing issues and draft ordinances in our commission so that's okay great council member lyman yeah i represent el cerrito at the solid waste committee recycle more and last month we continued our discussion

2:56:05on the joint powers authority agreement the city managers and i want to thank mr hannan for his efforts have continued to resolve many of the issues that the gpa has raised and it will be coming back to us probably in the december time frame um scott's not just

2:56:30do you know when it's anticipated to come back to us to the cities yeah it yeah it's not on the it's not the the next iteration of the jeep is not on the october meeting which is this coming thursday um we will be doing budget uh doing the budgets the uh preliminary budget

2:56:52hearings this thursday um but i want to at least keep you posted that that is an outstanding uh action is the jeepa that we're working on um the recyclemore uh was uh cited by the state california integrated waste management board for not doing some of the ordinances

2:57:19abu 1826 and ab-363 or something to that effect these are ordinances around businesses doing uh recycling and the primary thing that recycle more was cited for was not doing continuous outreach to the businesses to get participation from those businesses el cerrito

2:57:43in this particular case el cerrito does operate independently from recycle more and el cerrito numbers are fine and el cerrito is not in jeopardy of a finding but recycle more potentially is in jeopardy of a finding that's a 100 it's considered 120 day in enforcement letters of not 120 days

2:58:06allows them to correct within that time frame and they're proceeding with corrective action but it as a as a member of recycle more we potentially do suffer the um [Music] by association essentially and our staff is having to do more work and effort as to respond

2:58:30to the state to make sure the state knows that our numbers are fine and to demonstrate that our participation in in compliance with these laws is fine so here's a situation where recycle more is costing us staff time uh additional increased staff time to demonstrate that

2:58:48we're in compliance so that that's just by way that's to keep you informed of what recycle more is doing and how they influence our our staff's lives so thank you okay thank you um after we adjourn here we're going to continue our uh our closed session talks uh upstairs uh and

2:59:11just for the council and and with our uh city attorney sky and so our next regularly scheduled city council meeting is on tuesday november 20th 2018 at 7 pm uh right here so can i make one more comment everybody please vote on november 6th thank you oh and to that

2:59:31end they can drop off their votes here i should have said that why sherry was still here important election thank you thank you meetings adjourned