Special City Council Meeting and Regular City Council Meeting November 20, 2018

0:00:28good evening sherry if i recall roll call please council member abelson here councilmember fideli here councilmember lyman president mayor pro tem pardo akamoto president mayor quinto here let's uh stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag or observation of

0:00:53the moment of silence with council member gregory i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening we had a commission interviews

0:01:24the last hour and we will continue to make our interviews and we should get more people into our boards and commissions probably in the next few weeks let's start with uh council staff communications we'll start over here um council member for delhi welcome everyone it's it seems like it's

0:01:53been a long time since we've been here we had an election so that was interesting and i have more than i usually have so but it's really good stuff so so i want to first congratulate janet abelson and gabriel our mayor for being re-elected somehow i knew they would

0:02:12okay the way things were [Music] and i want to thank the the citizens of el cerrito for the measure v that passed um i posted my views and acknowledgments on facebook but i'm pleased with the vote because it means it will be able to contribute and enhance our quality of life here in el

0:02:36cerrito and with few people being impacted by the new taxes as as few as possible i had a meeting last week with the financial advisory board and we had a discussion on the oversight of the money that will be coming into our city the tracking of it and i think we're

0:02:53gonna try and our goal will be to be transparent as possible as to how we spend that in the future so so thank you very much one of the things i think we should think about spending it on and it certainly has gone up to the top of my list is fire fire prevention

0:03:10it's been a tough time for all of us in this city in our state and our nation and every probably like the rest of you waking up every day and the disaster still goes on and the news never gets better so we really have an asset here with measure v and the monies that we can

0:03:26spend to make a year-long prevention program in our hills our natural uh natural uh hillside areas it's really critical and the air is finally beginning to lift a little bit today so we know what life is like again but we can't forget what's happened we have some extra resources so

0:03:46thank you again um uh the human relations commission um is planning on doing a incredible 30th anniversary martin luther king march coming up and the plans are happening now people are getting involved there's information on our website for the third decade really the first in

0:04:09the bay area of the martin luther king march and it's pretty famous and i hear it's going to be some new orleans themes going on and people are encouraged to contribute so i encourage people to go to the el cerrito website and see what's happening there i want to congratulate

0:04:29people our our city staff and the city for our el cerrito lead rating that we just got only 75 cities have attained this and we should be proud of those efforts and our city staff and all of us for moving us toward that it's pretty incredible achievement an achievement i'm hoping that we can

0:04:52move on more quickly which is also involved with environmental issues is our plastic straws issue and i wanted to take this moment since we get to speak of pushing a little harder here in the city to get that resolution before us so that we can work with our environmental quality

0:05:10commission to get something done i think we're falling a little behind richmond has a good food ware ordinance a good model that we can use and the city of fremont has passed an or past resolution which speaks to their intentions so they can reach out to the community

0:05:27so that we can talk to our retailers our food service folks and i would like to just ask city staff if hopefully early in the new year we can get a draft resolution coming to us so we can look at it work with the environmental quality committee because they're planning a big effort

0:05:46next year and maybe in july to have a plastic free el cerrito so it's something that i think we should be working on and finally along with the mayor and janet abelson i went to the saint peter's 65th anniversary of the church in el cerrito here 65 years of serving spiritually our community and it

0:06:06was quite a sermon it was an incredible sermon and it made me feel good so thank you very much councilmember abelson okay um i don't think i really have much to add because i think can i do it all for you you did kind of do it all that's okay when re-elections progress

0:06:27there's been a lot going on um one thing that i've been thinking about and doing some about is trying to get some things going to be better prepared on the issue of what to do when things happen such as the terrible smoke that we've been having and i've been talking to john joy about

0:06:51it and we're going to be [Music] convening some people not this not so much an el cerrito thing but a a broader thing because what what i see out there is people either don't know what mass to get for example or they can't get it anyway and that's a very scary thing when um

0:07:18when you can't see more than 20 feet say so we're going to be working on some things and i'll let you know as things progress what we're doing so and my boards and commissions have all been cancelled this month this month i was able to go and to the environmental quality committee and they

0:07:49are working on their action plan and they are definitely looking at how we will deal with plastics in the city of el cerrito and i'm looking forward to the work that they'll be presenting us just as council member fidelity is and then i just wanted to echo council member fidelity and that

0:08:09thank you very much the citizens and residents of el cerrito for voting yes on measure v and i promise to be responsive and responsible with the money that will come from that and we are very interested and i mean there's not anybody here that hasn't been thinking about fire lately

0:08:31and we want to respond to you and and do what we can to make us prepared and a safe city and make sure that everything that we do is very thoughtful and and we want to work together so i just wanted to make sure that that's my intention and as the next year comes up that's what i

0:08:56really want to work on thank you and i'll build on my uh fellow council members remarks first of all it's the week of thanksgiving and we should all be grateful that reign is coming tonight um we should be grateful as council member fidelity pointed out that 11 400 or more people voted in our

0:09:17election of 16 000 so over a 70 percent participation rate in our election here in el cerrito we should be grateful that we're in a community where people actually stand up and voice their their issues and and vote paradise shows us a few things interface with natural areas

0:09:41the need for reserves and how fragile we all are including a community measure v revenues can go towards making el cerrito more resilient and compassionate um in my opinion i'm going to go a little bit further than my council members so that's why i said i was going

0:10:00to build on them i think it's premature to make any mid-year budget changes except for and i think they all said it except for some dealing with some of the fire hazards in our hillside natural area i was out there a couple of weeks ago i want to really thank the public works

0:10:18and the fire department for what you've been doing in the hillside natural area uh it's making a difference uh and we should continue to look at ways to do that so i would be interested in in when we get a mid-year budget to hear how we can potentially use some of our funds

0:10:39in the short term to continue that work however in my opinion the initial revenues over the next five six months should really be going towards our reserves and that's a big lesson that we're learning from paradise five months is almost a million dollars we have a

0:11:01presentation from our auditors tonight and i'll be curious to see what their presentation is but a million dollars towards our reserves would take our reserves from three percent of the general fund to six percent and uh it was a mention about the financial advisory board

0:11:19that our current reserve policy is to target for 15 and try and be at 10 and we're not there so i i'm strongly recommending that we not rush to spend these these revenues but let them accumulate and build the financial reserves and financial resiliency that we need to weather the

0:11:39type of tragedy that paradise is going through but equally important we need to take the time to decide how to wisely use these revenues we need to gather community endpoint input so that how we use it is something that we all support we plan to use the revenues to fully staff our police

0:12:10department build financial reserves maintain existing buildings possibly go towards a library and affordable housing as i said earlier certainly we want to work on the hillside natural area the list of possible uses exceeds the revenue stream and i would like to use

0:12:32i'd like us to conduct working sessions to openly discuss the city's priorities so as as we move into next year i would grateful be grateful if we could have one of our study sessions to talk about the city's priorities to the real estate community that's out there

0:12:52i want to make sure you know that we are doing a lot of planning on how to implement the collection of this we want it to be smooth with a lot of information community communicated to the real estate community so staff is working through details and i would be grateful for you guys to

0:13:11reach out to staff and hopefully we'll have informational flyers and handouts and updates on our website soon including how the rebate will work uh because that certainly is something that we want to encourage it's there for both sellers and buyers to take advantage of and if you're a seller over

0:13:30the next month now is the time to actually be working on uh your your rebate uh accumulating your rebate and making sure that it's applicable towards your sale for the timing this goes again to the the real estate community uh many bureaucratic things need to occur in order for the tax to be start

0:13:50being collected the exact timing is not known we need things like the certification of the election we need to actually file our charter with the state and the county who actually is collecting it needs to be given instructions so we don't know the exact date but most

0:14:11likely it'll start sometime between december 14th and january 10th so that that's sort of the best we can do at this time predicting when this tax will go into a place so i want to thank all the voters who voted i want to thank the voters that voted yes what we are looking at is

0:14:32a measure v revenue of about fifty thousand dollars a week and that's going to make a big difference both in our police department staffing it up the three or four mis vacant positions that we have but it's also going to make a difference in all our lives as we develop the priorities

0:14:47on how we want to spend it so thank you council member lineman thank you so much as mayor val cerrito i would like to say thank you to uh and congratulations to uh my partner here councilmember abelson she and i uh won our re-election and we're grateful to the voters here in el cerrito

0:15:10know that the voters in el cerrito has always made uh they vote in huge huge numbers and i'm proud to say that many of you delivered and we were able to get more people voting in this off year than at any other time it's been quite a while but know that el cerrito has always had

0:15:32a presence regionally when they vote and the voters had spoken especially here in el cerrito and gratitude to all of you who voted and so i echo what my council members have mentioned here uh regarding measure v and regarding uh many of the things that we all need to work on together so

0:15:57know that with the letters that you have sent to me personally regarding the the many things that all of your concerns and many of you here are uh are here because of that i want to say thank you for being here this evening so um also i wanted to mention uh uh some of the things that i

0:16:19have done between the last council meeting and today i was able to attend the eden housing anniversary of 50 years and i attended that with staff here and and know that it started at a a ihop on nissan boulevard 50 years ago so they served uh pancakes to the guests

0:16:40there so uh and eden housing plays an important role of what we're doing here for affordable housing and um yeah next door uh we'll have a beautiful uh grand opening in the next few months and uh also i attended uh i was a guest by the mayor of san francisco to attend

0:17:01filipino history month it was a beautiful ceremony and i was invited by mayor breed to attend that uh with the other filipino-american electeds and that was a very nice event so i thank the the mayor of san francisco for inviting us i also attended the league of cities

0:17:20meeting in orenda on the 25th as well as the mayor's conference in orenda i attended uh the council of industries luncheon uh last week and last night i attended the league of uh the east bay division league where i'm aboard i'm on the board of directors of the east bay division where

0:17:48we had a planning session and again on sunday i was able to join my colleagues here for the 65th anniversary of the cme methodist episcopal church let's go to oral communications to the public all persons wishing to speak should sign up with the city clerk remarks are

0:18:11typically limited to three minutes per person i may reduce the time limit per speaker depending on the number of speakers please state your name and city of residence for the record comments regarding non-agenda presentation and consent calendar items will be heard first

0:18:28comments 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 item either individuals wishing to comment on any closed session scheduled after the regular meeting may

0:18:44do so during this public comment period uh sherry how many do we have we have about 18 uh for just this part of the agenda okay let's reduce that to uh two and a half minutes per person uh um unfortunately my timer won't let me do two and a half minutes and a half

0:19:03unless i count by hand okay let's um let's do two minutes per person then okay uh the first three speakers are cordell hindler alan moskowitz and al miller good evening good evening uh mayor quinto um thank you for the story so i'm cody hindler resident of richmond

0:19:23so i have some christmas gifts to share with you all you are coarsely invited to attend a performance of ripcord it's one it's a wonderful show i didn't bring the flyers with me tonight darn so but it's a it's really a funny performance so you should come see it

0:19:38it's only at 30 at the door so but if you get the youth rate it's only 15. so that's one and then number two is i'm i'm putting together um an agenda an item for you to present to you at a some city uh council meeting um next so because i've been doing my research on

0:19:55other cities around us they do have a travel policy and i said that's not a bad idea i think that el cerrito should be on the same page because richmond has a tribal policy san pablo has one but but not el cerrito so i'm putting it as an item to be put on the agenda for next time and then lastly is

0:20:14um hopefully if you recall a few months ago when we had the the people came here to talk to you about the the rising cause of pensions so i'm thinking that this is something that this is going to relate to when we get to the agenda items so that's that's it i'm going to give my

0:20:27time to allen good evening hi my name is alan moskowitz and i'm the owner of a property at 6317 fairmount unfortunately it's adjacent to the pick and pack liquor store which is kind of the blight of the neighborhood and um so daily up when i come to work i have to pick up trash

0:20:55that is it comes from people that whatever customers there um people urinate on my property i've had to clean up vomit defecation human defecation um anyway i'm just tired of it and there used to be a trash can what i'd like to see is that the city require that customers be able to use their

0:21:21bathroom and if they don't want to do that then maybe they could put a porta potty out there or something because it's uh it's not just a nuisance it's a health hazard um and you know i pick up broken glass liquor containers tobacco you know cigarette packs cigarette butts you name it

0:21:45but anyway there used to be a trash can on the fairmont side a city trash can although it got moved over to san pablo avenue maybe you could add an additional one or require pick and pack to have their own trash can out there because there's a lot of trash coming from them every day i might

0:22:05i literally do it every every morning so anyway so that's so i'd like to see the city do more to require them to do more or something something be done all right thank you thank you good evening mayor kentucky council members and staff i'm here tonight as excuse me as a homebound

0:22:29uh volunteer for the contra costa county library system i just want to inform people about it a short statement is it's meals on wheels with books book library patrons that for whatever the reason have mobility problems or can't get to the library to pick up or

0:22:49return their books they can sign up at the library and have the books the dvds the library materials that they want put on hold then they're told that the material is available the patrons then call the bookmobile i'm sorry the homeward bound volunteers like me and we go to the

0:23:12library we get their materials we deliver them to their homes sometimes we chat a while whatever and then we take the materials that they're done with bring them back to the library it works out well right now unfortunately in the city the size of el cerrito i'm the only

0:23:31homebound volunteer at the el cerrito library i have four customers and that's about all i can handle so i'm recruiting both people to take part in the program and people to serve as the volunteers in it i've never had a close relationship with people that i didn't know until i

0:23:53started this that have been so grateful for the little time it takes me to get books from the library to their home and then their material back to the library it's a great program thank you thank you the next three speakers gary prost followed by kathy fleming and michael

0:24:13fisher good evening hi i'm gary prost i live on contra costa up here in el cerrito last time i spoke was in late september to warn that the diablos were coming and they did i asked you to do something about the fire pit on the hillside and you did and i thank you for that

0:24:36but one of the learnings or among the learnings from the camp fire is that anything less than the smooth flow of traffic evacuating people is going to cause a loss of life and things that impede the smooth flow of traffic are burning vegetation parked cars abandoned cars

0:25:02traffic signals and stop signs downed power lines in denver and other cities i've lived in we have snow evacuation routes but as far as i know we don't have any emergency fire evacuation routes and i think we should they should be posted clearly so everybody knows how to get out of a

0:25:24neighborhood if there's a fire coming and those fire evacuation roads should only have parking on one side of the street because we have narrow streets and if there's a red flag warning there shouldn't be any parking on the street allowed i mean they do that in other

0:25:41places like los angeles that i'm aware of um the other thing is vegetation overhanging or right up against the road uh sue duncan here is i think is submitting some photos to you showing examples but in order to avoid this driving through a fire tunnel effect we need to cut back or at least maintain

0:26:08vegetation that's crowding the roads um and if at all possible power lines should be buried because they're going to fall on the road or the falling power lines or snapping limbs are going to down a power line and we've seen that this has been the cause of some of these

0:26:29fires i would encourage building codes to be toughened to fire resistant construction materials and finally my last point airaid sirens should be brought into use to warn people of fires if they happen especially at night and if it's hot and air conditioning units are running or if

0:26:50it's cold and heater units furnaces are running people aren't going to hear that there's a fire out there unless there's something like a an air raid siren to warn them thank you good evening good evening council my name is kathy fleming i'm a resident of el cerrito and

0:27:15i'm here to talk to you tonight about the recent passage of measure fee and it's a great great opportunity for us to generate much needed resources what brings me here tonight is that i am concerned about the oversight and accountability of the funds and i want to encourage us to track uh

0:27:35these the revenues and expenditures separately from the general fund um because i feel like we have a great opportunity to in to instill some trust with the citizens of el cerrito and to have the funds co-mingled with the general fund and not to be able to specifically see

0:27:53what's being budgeted and funded with these res these revenues i think i think that would be a problem i also think that you know the ballot was passed not overwhelmingly which means that we did not have overwhelming support for this measure so i think this is also an

0:28:11opportunity to build uh trust with the citizens also if we're able to report out annually on how the funds are budgeted and expended we can also be more flexible with revenues each year and be more responsive to city needs so um and uh we can have a more responsive

0:28:35governance over the funds so that's my general sentiment is please let's track these funds separately thank you thank you after michael fisher jeff nolly robin mitchell and howdy gowdy good evening good evening mayor and members of the council my name is michael fisher i live in el

0:28:59cerrito and i have the privilege to be your library commissioner council member for delhi i was at the library today there is information about plastic straws at the checkout desk you might be happy to know that on there our library was closed starting on thursday of last week due to smoke

0:29:24and because of the age of the library its windows windows do not close in an airtight manner and since the entrance is not a modern airlock type system every time someone would enter or leave the library they bring in more smoky air the bad air inside the library made it

0:29:47not usable as a refuge that we expect our libraries to be the air also caused some librarians to go home sick resulting in not enough employees to allow the library to stay open even if it were otherwise desirable the condition of the library also contributed a year ago to the inability

0:30:13to use the library during the summer previous's extraordinary heat wave and could not be a cooling refuge a new library i'm sure i don't need to remind you would have an appropriate hvac system that would permit the library to be a clean air refuge and a workable environment during smoky

0:30:40times and a cooling refuge during times of heat this is in addition to it being a refuge of other sorts so important to our civilization thank you thank you can i can i make a point of no interest just a statement i was at the library today at 10 o'clock when it's supposed to open

0:31:04and it wasn't open so i sat there and waited about 20 minutes and nobody came there was no signage on the door so i assumed it was closed because of the air issues but i'm just saying it would have been nice to have had some signage on the door saying why it was

0:31:19closed today never mind good evening hello i'm jeff nall i live on pomona avenue at cross street stockton and i'm here to talk about to encourage the city to continue to encourage the city to consider rent stabilization my girlfriend and i we moved to el cerrito 25 years ago

0:31:55because it's we wanted to live in a diverse place that had people of all economic situations and there are there is a wonderful range of people that live in el cerrito we got married we had blessed with two daughters who've grown up they're young women now and it's been

0:32:13a really wonderful place for them to spend their childhood they're very open to people of different places different types uh and um it's much different than the place i grew up in and i'm i was excited to find a place like this for them um so i do want landlords to have a

0:32:39reasonable return on their investments at the same time giving tenants of peace of mind a budget for reasonable increases i'd also like to point out that rent stabilization can boost the rental uh the local economy by allowing renters to have more disposable cash

0:33:02i don't consider housing just any consumer good it's a necessity of life and like air and water it can be regulated like any other public good thank you i'm robin mitchell i live in el cerrito and i'm also talking about housing affordability and i wanted to read a couple paragraphs from the

0:33:41resolution that the human relations commission put together that they wanted to have on this agenda but for whatever reason it couldn't be on your agenda this time hopefully it'll be on the agenda in december but i just wanted to read you so they did a lot of really good research and i

0:33:55just wanted to point it out so they say the majority of el cerrito renters spend more than 35 percent of their household income on rent and research has found that those who spend more than 35 of their household income on rent are twice as likely to be hospitalized for hypertension and twice

0:34:12as likely to be hospitalized for mental illness and are three times as likely to develop mental health issues research has also found that children of housing insecure families have lower parental involvement in school have lower rates of attentiveness in school

0:34:27have lower rates of homework completion are more likely to engage in adolescent substance abuse are more likely to experience teen pregnancy and are 50 percent more likely not to graduate from high school research research has also found that one of the most effective ways to

0:34:41increase public health is to increase housing quality and decrease housing and security because of how directly housing and security has been found to impact physical and mental health and i know you're going to talk about housing at the december meeting i know the staff is

0:34:55recommending non-binding mediation which i don't think is going to be effective at all i think there's lots of research that shows that that hasn't been effective in other communities i really think that especially because the housing shortage is going to become

0:35:10even more acute because of the fires in the north that we need to have a moratorium on rent increases at the same time that we're being fair to landlords as the previous speaker said and we need to also add just cause eviction to that so hopefully when you discuss this in december

0:35:28um you can think about that thank you thank you after howdy gowdy it's nick galora paul duncan and scott perry good evening uh good evening council members my name is howdy gaudi i live in el cerrito so as robin mentioned the human relations commission passed a very thoughtful resolution

0:35:51that i hope you will take to heart it urged council to establish a temporary anti-gouging moratorium on rents as well as just cause eviction protection to create a safe space to have that more deep conversation about tenant protections and and rent stabilization

0:36:13opportunities because i think what's being proposed as non-binding mediation um is is not going to be sufficient to address this problem in a in a meaningful way um as was said you know far too many people are paying more than 50 of their income on rent and that's just really

0:36:34unacceptable um and as it's been alluded to many times tonight you know we're experiencing these tragic fires just the past year you know 23 000 housing units have been lost that's more than double the city of el cerrito so that's going to impact our housing situation but i think it's also

0:36:57reflected important to reflect on you know there's been tragic loss of life there's people whose lives have been changed by these fires but there are people's lives changing in our own community because they're being displaced by excessively high rents and they don't get fema help they don't

0:37:17get insurance they don't get the empathy frankly that's being offered to the people who have had these tragedies and the tragedies in our own community are just as real but they're hidden and they're discredited and all i hear is oh we have to accept these market rents and that's just absurd

0:37:39that's not you know something that we should accept so thank you thank you hi my name is uh nick galoro and i live in el cerrito on lexington avenue okay i'm going to start this off with a quote from alexander ocasio-cortez at age 29 she is the youngest woman ever

0:38:08elected to congress we launched this campaign because in the absence of anyone giving a clear voice on the moral issues of our time then it is up to us to voice them and when no one stands talks about them we have the duty to stand up for what is right and i think that's what we need to do i

0:38:26think in dealing with the fire issues that's standing up for what's right because you know people's homes can burn down and terrible tragedies can happen um i've stood up tried to stand up for what's right in my life uh um where i i in the 1970s i got arrested during an anti-apartheid protest i also

0:38:46sat in for two weeks in san francisco's old federal building for disabled rights my recent issues in the last three decades or so have been largely health care for all and right to housing and tenants rights i've worked with a couple of tenants rights organizations

0:39:04we need to support the human uh relations commission read the resolution it's the right thing to do tenants i work with tenants i can tell you that i get calls from tenants they don't even know who their landlord is they work with a property manager they the landlord may live outside the

0:39:21country who knows where they are um we have to sometimes see if we can find them sometimes we can't sometimes we can't people are getting you know exorbitant rent increases um they know they don't know what to do and in fact in the long run they can delay the process but in in the end um

0:39:38they really know have they don't have any rights unless there's some kind of cap on rent gouging and also some kind of just cause eviction ordinance that sort of thing so the resolution asks for a moratorium on rent increases that cap the level that's an anti-gouging ordinance

0:39:58it asks for um [Music] the evictions you know make sure that evictions uh occur for just cause and it's also asking for uh some reimbursement for relocation expenses particularly when you're that's a building is being demolished thank you thank you after paul duncan or whether

0:40:25you have to paul duncan it's scott perry and susan duncan good evening i'm paul duncan i live on king drive in el cerrito i was encouraged to hear all of you to speak that fire safety is a paramount in your concerns i mean it's in the news it goes without saying that we're all

0:40:45horrified watching the news pictures of the people in paradise and the people that died most i mean all death is horrible but the the ones that really stuck to me were the people that died in their cars trying to escape and i can only imagine that that was because uh the roads were blocked

0:41:05i mean these people were in operable cars and they died in their cars so uh to piggyback on what gary proust said i think we have to be uh even more vigilant now to imagine the previously unimaginable things about the el cerrito hills on fire and clear these escape routes and make sure that people

0:41:30have the ability to escape i'm just afraid that the death toll and in paradise is going to be into the high hundreds by the time all of that gets down it's it's just horrifying so it sounds like you're on the right track so thank you thank you i'm scott perry lifelong resident of el

0:41:58cerrito i too am encouraged by the comments by council and people uh regarding hillside nature area and the fire hazard i'm speaking to you tonight about the ongoing fire hazard and hillside nature area in support of my neighbors concerns and to reiterate my own concerns with

0:42:18hillside nature area also my sympathies and condolences go to the people of paradise california in short there's a serious problem and an effective solution the problem is vegetation which has been growing unabated for years the solution is unanimous it is to reduce and eliminate the vegetation

0:42:39for whatever reason that allowed the vegetation to grow unabated the solution is the same however the path to the solution it is the same the shortest path is the most efficient we have made our collective concerns known to the council and many city managers it appears as nothing is being done and

0:43:01we've had six five to six red flag warnings each of these warnings feels like a state of emergency in my own home if you leave your house you don't know if there it will be there to return there is a problem there is a solution additionally in hillside nature area

0:43:21there are water outlets small hydrants along the fire roads these are supplied and controlled by large valves at the entrance at king court yearly they are repainted red i had assumed that these this implied some maintenance i found that four of the first five hydrants were a non non-operational

0:43:41most had rocks jammed inside locks on the caps were painted shut or the caps wouldn't open fully i would like to know what the council plans are and why it takes so long the processes and procedures are detailed in the lsa report your delays in implementing the solution puts all of el

0:44:01cerrito at a catastrophic risk thank you after susan duncan it's robert howe marlene george and helen dickey good evening susan duncan i'm the resident of el cerrito here we are again another unimaginable tragedy um still continuing while unfolding also as everybody's already said measure v

0:44:34passed and yes you guys say you're going to take care of the fire problem so i've changed my speech i will say that it would be nice to have a library a new library but it also be nice not to have it burned down it would be also nice to have the whole el cerrito burned to the

0:44:51bay it's not just the hills it's the whole city as we've seen time and time again with santa rosa paradise malibu it's the whole city it's just not the hills um so that being said i think it's time to review and strengthen the codes for keeping the safe the streets safe as paul and gary

0:45:14have said from overhanging and side clogging truck vegetation to review and strengthen the codes and enforce them for overgrowth on private property junipers eucalyptus pampers grass and just general overgrown jungles it's time to clear up the city um so please

0:45:38take this to heart and get busy before we become on the list with santa rosa napa reading malibu khan khao magelia and paradise thank you thank you hi my name is robert howe i've lived in el cerrito my whole life i talked before about fire danger in the arlington

0:46:08park area camp herms area tonight i want to ask about how we go about approaching the boy scout camp um or any private tree that we do not own or the city does not own is it up to the neighborhood is it up to individuals i know as a property owner on thors bay road

0:46:33that i get a letter from the city every year to clear my property and i do every year because i have a wild area because it's very steep so i do not have it landscaped or planted plus i couldn't afford the water to water an acre so my question is if if i as a a homeowner live next to camp

0:46:58herms do i approach camp turns on my own or does the city approach them or do we do it together as a neighborhood or as a whole of the whole community because i love the trees and all the things my issue is eucalyptus trees so because they're just a bombshell waiting

0:47:19to go if they burn i'm not a against trees by any mean i love them all but eucalyptus is my only issue so i'd like to know if i could contact el cerrito fire department and and talk with them and approach because i don't want to offend anybody at the boy scouts

0:47:38because i was a boy scout myself and i've lived there my whole life so i just want to make sure i do it properly and without offending anyone thank you thank you so it's marlene george followed by helen dickey and jeff levin uh good evening my name is marlene george

0:48:01and i'm also encouraged to hear that the council members are concerned about the fire risk in el cerrito especially in the el cerrito hill area i think that the paradise fire was a game changer for all of us and no matter and measure v now gives us the opportunity

0:48:21to do something about the problem the risk in el cerrito um no matter what the priorities were of this council before the paradise fire i think that fire abatement reducing the risk of fire in el cerrito should be at the top of the list i do not agree that we should put money in reserves

0:48:45in the event that there is a paradise like fire in el cerrito i don't know if that's what was said but i don't agree with that i think that we need to put enough money into preventing the fire so that a paradise does not happen in el cerrito yesterday my husband and i drove through

0:49:03el cerrito to try to find an evacuation route for us that if there is a fire how are we going to safely get out and frankly i was really horrified what we found the problem is not just the hillside area the hillside area is one area of concern but if you look at all

0:49:20the major arteries that leave exit el cerrito there are large trees that that line both sides of the trees if those trees catch on fire they're going to fall on the road and they're going to obstruct any vehicle trying to escape just like these gentlemen refer to

0:49:38i think we need to have a a broader vision for the landscape of el cerrito as we move forward governor brown i think it was about a week ago gave a press conference and he said that we need to rethink the way we live and the way we plan our communities and i think that that is an

0:49:58area where we should start we need to re-imagine el cerrito we have forest-like trees in el cerrito and is that really appropriate for us to have a hundred to 120 feet trees in el cerrito i think that i'm not giving you an answer i just think we need to look at

0:50:14that i grew up in el cerrito i went to madera and believe me those trees were not that high then and el cerrito was beautiful so i think that we need to broaden our vision it should not just be the problem is not just the hillside area it is the entire community we need

0:50:30to be able to reduce the risk of fire and if there is a fire we need to get out safely thank you thank you good evening good evening my name is helen dickey i live in el cerrito i'm here to add my voice to the issue of a rent cap and just cause eviction the fires are part of it

0:51:04but more and more i hear the stories of people who simply can't make the rent anymore and they're moving away and we're losing a lot of good people so please consider this seriously thank you thank you good evening my name is jeff levin resident of el cerrito and policy

0:51:32director with east bay housing organizations two weeks ago the human relations commission did pass a resolution both expressing concerns about uh the tenant protection measures that are going forward to council and calling on the city council to adopt a temporary

0:51:50cap on rent increases coupled with just cause while the city takes a much closer look at all of its policy options for protecting tenants who are at risk of displacement we're strongly in agreement with that um we have real concerns about going forward with a policy

0:52:09for which we have not seen any evidence that it will actually work and so we don't want understand why we would go down a path to implement policies that we have not actually had a look at to see if they will work and what we recommend instead is exactly what the

0:52:25human relations commission has suggested and what many other cities grappling with this issue have done we adopt a temporary cap on rent increases this is not a freeze on rents it says owners can raise rents by some amount cities have done three percent five percent six percent you know that

0:52:43would be something for us to choose but they have put a cap on rent increases and just caused protections to just push the pause button and let us maintain the status quo while we look at a full array of options because i don't think that all of the available options

0:53:01for protecting our tenants have really been looked at and we do have a number of other ideas that we have not yet had a discussion about we'd like to do that but we'd like to do that without putting tenants at risk for several more months while we come to some conclusion

0:53:17around that and so we would really urge you to do that the county of los angeles for the unincorporated county has just adopted exactly this course a six-month moratorium with just cause um pending the board coming to some resolution this is not pending an election this is just a six-month freeze

0:53:40while their legislative body deliberates thank you thank you and the last speaker is sherry dropner hi good evening my name is sherry drover i live in el cerrito i want to echo what jeff just said to all of you and to say it's really disappointing that you don't have the

0:54:03resolution before you tonight if you had had that resolution you might have been able to you know direct yours direct the city staff to bring you back more information or specific language so that come december when you're thinking about how you want to deal with tenant

0:54:21protections you'll be able to have that option about the rent cap and just cause for eviction along with the other options now what will happen is if you're looking at that in december this is this whole other part of it is delayed and while we're talking about

0:54:40other kinds of programs it's very possible that landlords might decide to raise rents to move along with evictions and other things that will create greater displacement and not protect renters so i think it's very unfortunate and if there's some way to remedy that situation so that you have

0:55:00that information so that the idea of the rent cap and does cause for eviction can be part of that discussion in december and and part of the action that would i think it would make more sense thank you thank you okay let's move on to adoption of the consent calendar

0:55:23eight minutes from october 16th we have b proclamation for the golden gate frontier history region c the schools and local communities funding act d review body for tda article 3 pedestrian and bike bicycle funding e grant needs to allow lot line adjustments for

0:55:47mayfair project so moved second okay i would like to pull two things it's uh i i believe that is the minutes part of that there was just one addition to the minutes i wanted to make okay so so are you making a substitute motion uh yes and that would be to approve which which

0:56:13pieces but a and b i'll second the substitute motion okay okay the substitute motion is in place of the substitute motion is in place of the of the motion to pass everything the substitute motion is just passing uh c up through the last one which is what e okay e d e

0:56:35okay good um and do i have a second on that yeah i seconded it okay all in favor aye aye okay do you want to go yeah i um on the minutes i just had a um an addition where um councilmember lyman on page three is talking about puc issues um concerning um energy issues uh we we talk about rci i

0:57:05mean p c i a and i think if we could just we have the abbreviation but i think for the first time we should say the power charge indifference adjustment before that so that people know what we're talking about and then secondly on the proclamation about the golden gate frontier history

0:57:23region i was a little confused by it i don't know quite um where is there someone that can talk to it just a little bit or um anything about that where because i we have i'm not quite sure what it's proclaiming uh who established the golden gate frontier history region

0:57:46we have the department of education established the framework for the around the horn maritime route and president polk for instruction in eighth grade but there's no information on this we might have a speaker regarding that yes sir great thank you very much good afternoon uh ricardo gaudino

0:58:15i'm the education director for golden state history curriculum task force thank you and i'm the researcher that saw the conclusion that uh other parts of the nation have a regional identity that's easily accessible that is a local key to open up to the national north american

0:58:44perspective but that we in california in our region have not had an identity of seeing the interrelationship between our systemic development in the bay region there's been just a lot of hearsay of repeating what somebody else said without looking at the aspect of

0:59:14westward expansion and what those systems and patterns are for analysis and that's why we spent 20 years to bring forward to the state board of education that california youth need to be guaranteed access to basic knowledge of the relationship between transportation systems and

0:59:39settlement which was passed in the 2016 round so now that the students can and the community awareness now this initiative here is a community awareness initiative so the components of the writing state facts that have been adopted so there's no activism here there's no promoting it's already

1:00:14adopted and law it's fact so there's no anniversary associated with this it's not 10 years of studying this or [Music] you're asking the department of education to further we're not asking anything okay that's what i was yeah there's no request from them at all

1:00:32okay uh their concern uh and what they've said as a priority is ela education and uh english language okay where our concern is basic knowledge of economic geography on the item of knowing the founding of your town just basic knowledge about the systems that you have in terms of

1:00:58geography human settlement that relate to tell the story of your town so the el cerrito benefit is that we are moving the whole bay area as a region now the region for the golden gate frontier starts with pretty much the wheat economy or wild oats so it starts in

1:01:24woodland and goes all the way to san juan batista doesn't go across the salinas river i mean you could with monterey but right about there at the salinas river would be the end of it where you know the spanish and then the mexican uh army was stationed at san juan

1:01:43batista okay with uh uh with castro and then castro plays a big role on the frontier as to whether the region is going to be part of the united states or it's going to be part of england you know as a toss-up okay so basically what we're doing here is giving a regional identity and when you

1:02:06say we that's what i'm going to do northern state history can you give me two sentences about what that is golden state history golden state history we've been uh doing research to develop an understanding of the history of our home for the last uh 20 years you're

1:02:24associated with the university or school system no no we're independent scholars no uh the the the scholarship that we have while we did i did an internship at the bancroft does stand on the science of identifying what are the influences that have used the resources

1:02:50and in your particular resolution what might be confusing to you is that in the writing the mayor chose a different angle than what we provided as a template that is being the clarification that fremont named the golden gate you look at that right there you can sit here and think about

1:03:17fremont sitting at alvarado's adobe and looking out and he sees the golden gate i mean that's fantastic uh the sun the whole thing is right there take out the bridge and you got the golden gate so the issue at hand is our people need to have a guarantee of access to a basic story this is our

1:03:41problem and everybody in this room probably doesn't know who named america and there's some other very basic questions how did the golden gate get its name so thank you very much i appreciate i'm a history major i just didn't get where this was focusing so well let me

1:03:59fully complete that see the the yeah we have a time issue here let's just i'll make my concluding statement okay the physical science of this particular landmark opens up to guarantee the teaching or the learning of how the bay area was formed with its waterways

1:04:20that's why it's an innovation yeah no my question is what what population you're saying are historic populations of the san francisco bay area how far back are you going because i don't see any mention of the alone here and i'm just trying to figure out what what

1:04:34what do you mean by our historic populations we need a couple more pages if we start detailing out everybody to make it happen so we just took everybody and said historic populations for everyone but it's not intended to exclude any any particular part it is totally inclusive because if

1:04:53you look at the relationship of human use of the land that is a story that goes for yep so i mean in the economy of trying to think about your time and everybody else's time we give a picture that we have a regional story and this is energizing teachers because we're

1:05:13providing them a tool for local engagement that opens up to the north american story great thank you very good thank you okay do i hear a motion it was no there's been no motion on this one i'll make a motion to adopt items 4a which is the minutes and 4b which is a proclamation for

1:05:37golden gate frontier history program okay a second do we have a second second okay we have a motion by abelson a second by mayor cortez all in favor all right ocean carries let's move on to presentation we have a presentation by joe grieves who represents the alameda

1:06:02county medical association and his presentation will be on the opioid epidemic welcome to thank you mayor quinto honorable members of the council my name is joe grieves i'm the executive director of the alameda contra costa medical association we represent a 4 300 physicians who

1:06:32practice in the east bay we've been around since 1860 so literally since this was the wild west our organization has been present in the community and our mission is to bring doctors together to try to address problems impacting their profession and their patients and one of the areas

1:06:50we're focused on right now is addressing the opioid epidemic so i was invited to come and share a little bit about the east bay safe prescribing coalition which our organization is helping to lead so i don't know if that jives with that or i can't pull that's moving

1:07:26we had it working before this is moving but this isn't i.t is coming to the rescue thank you i can sort of wing it if you would like oh yeah we got it right there oh there we go great thank you so to begin it's important to acknowledge that we definitely have a

1:08:04problem in our community you definitely see that in the bart stations you see it on the streets you see it in the schools you see it in the newspapers every day role models that we look up to who are impacted by this issue and most importantly you see it in our families

1:08:21too many families have lost loved ones to opioids but it really is not just about overdoses from opioids for every one person who overdoses on opioids there are 659 who report using opioids for non-medical purposes 25 are seen in an emergency department for opioid related complications

1:08:46so the problem runs much deeper than just overdose deaths it's also a very complex problem that was not created in a day with a lot of different inputs so that includes the manufacture of opioids how they're manufactured there was obviously a lot of scrutiny on companies that engaged in

1:09:07some unscrupulous practices around the manufacture of opioids how those are marketed not only to providers but to patients direct to consumer advertising regulation around opioids and this is a an important one about 15 years ago there was uh then perceived a a

1:09:27a problem with the under treatment of pain and that was responded to by the medical board of california going after physicians who were alleged to be under treating pain and actually investigating them and in some cases disciplining them the legislature got involved and

1:09:42actually passed a bill requiring all physicians to go through mandatory continuing medical education on pain management and the main message there was really you should be prescribing more opioids so it is in many ways the involvement of um non-medical providers in trying to kind

1:10:04of influence how medicine is practiced that contributed to the evolution of this problem certainly prescribers including physicians have played a role in contributing to this issue as have pharmacies and then obviously once medication is in the community how we

1:10:20use it is also very important so making sure that it's used appropriately and if it is not needed entirely that it's disposed of safely and is not um you know diverted for unsafe uses and the impact is very real in terms of um you know how it impacts people's uh lived

1:10:40experience hi my name is janae i'm from oakland um so i'm just gonna share my personal experience i've been in recovery since 2006 from methamphetamine um i had surgery in 2010 they thought it had bone cancer and so they removed it and it was not cancer but i was prescribed cotton and

1:11:07narcos in big quantities i had explained to my doctor that i was in recovery and that i was an addict and still was given 90 pills in a month's supply i don't want to blame uh my doctor but i just think that there should be more awareness that um checking up on

1:11:37people's past if they do say that they're in recovery to take it very seriously so in the last 30 days um and i knew i had a problem when in the morning i would wake up and i couldn't survive without taking a pill um my pain had stopped but i had still kept taking

1:12:19the medication and i was still getting prescribed and once they cut me off i went to the emergency room so i passed out and stopped breathing and i had to get cpr and so that's when i decided that i was in trouble and needed help so i went to cdrp which is a kaiser program and got

1:12:47the help that i needed i just want to get it out there that prescription medication just because it's prescribed by a doctor does not mean that it cannot be misused i feel stronger today because i'm in recovery but i just want to get it out to the public that it is a very huge

1:13:07huge problem so thank you and it's stories like this that really led to the creation of the east bay say prescribing coalition in 2015 and what we really wanted to achieve was a balanced approach to addressing this problem as i mentioned part of the problem was

1:13:28caused by an overzealous approach to trying to treat pain more aggressively and we thought that it was very important as we try to address this problem as a community that we not overreach and unfortunately we have a lot of patients in our community such as the young lady we just heard

1:13:45from who are dependent on these drugs and simply going after prescribers trying to cut off the availability of opioids in the community is not going to help these patients because their brains are in some ways hardwired to need these drugs and if they're not getting them

1:14:04prescribed legitimately they're going to go out on the street and satisfy what their brain is telling them they need through things like heroin through things like fentanyl and that's definitely what we're seeing so we thought it was very important to strike a balance

1:14:18and ensure that patients continue to have access to appropriate pain management while we are also addressing the the overabundance of opioids in the community so we uh formed the coalition the coalition consists of the accma representing physicians and we're the

1:14:35lead organization and four other [Music] groups the hospital council representing hospitals the alameda county health alameda health consortium which represents the federally qualified health centers and then the health departments in each of the two counties those five

1:14:53organizations serve as the steering committee and we have focused on a number of things so the first thing we did was try to get all of the eds and we were successful in getting all of the eds emergency departments in both alameda and contra costa county to adopt uh

1:15:08consistent guidelines these are really intended to inform patients about what they can expect with respect to pain management when they come to an emergency department and what these effectively say is that if you come to the emergency department in acute pain you can expect to have that

1:15:24pain treated for a limited period of time until you can see your primary care provider or another provider who can manage that pain on an ongoing basis if you have chronic pain it is not appropriate to come to the emergency department and expect to be treated for

1:15:40chronic pain importantly these guidelines that are shown here on the right are the same from hospital to hospital so that a patient understands that if you go to alta bates and you see these you can also expect when you drive up the street to summit to also see these

1:15:57same guidelines and all 19 emergency departments in our community have adopted them we then move what about kaiser including kaiser okay just checking yeah there are some amtala rules around whether you can display these in an ed but they are practicing what the guidelines say and are

1:16:16generally showing them when appropriate after they get through the initial evaluation of the patient thank you we then focused on acute pain so this is basically trying to turn off the nozzle and preventing patients from becoming opioid dependent so this is promoting

1:16:33things like safer alternatives to opioids you know thinking about whether medicine is needed at all maybe there are things like physical therapy acupuncture or other things that could be safer modalities for treating pain these guidelines that you see on the right here were derived from

1:16:53emerging guidelines things from the cdc from the medical board of california and we formed committees of clinicians to basically look at all of those and distill them down into really tangible digestible actionable guidelines that providers could follow in their daily practice

1:17:13and so what we are currently focused on is really that third group which is those who are already opioid dependent who still need care and making sure that they can receive appropriate care that's not going to put them in greater danger and a big piece of this is really

1:17:28focused on medication-assisted treatment buprenorphine this is a it is an opioid but it is a safer opioid and it's recommended for patients who are opioid dependent so that they can be stable without subjecting themselves to a lot of risk so it's really considered a safer alternative

1:17:49there is quite a bit of focus right now on trying to get more physicians and other prescribers eligible to prescribe buprenorphine it actually requires a special credential so we are doing quarterly trainings for physicians in the community to get what's called an x waiver so they can

1:18:05prescribe more buprenorphine there is also a desire to establish what are known as hub and spoke models so that you have a place where you have an opioid dependent patient you can refer that patient to be induced on buprenorphine which is kind of the heavy lifting part

1:18:20of getting them transitioned off of what they may be using onto buprenorphine and then you have a network of providers who can manage that care on an ongoing basis and increasingly emergency departments are being viewed as a place where you can induce patients on buprenorphine so

1:18:34we're actively trying to get all of our emergency departments to embrace this model of inducing patients uh right there in the ed we're also focused on promoting naloxone making sure naloxone is available in the community this is a uh an overdose counter agent that you can

1:18:52give somebody when they have od'd on opioids and also making sure that it's available in all of our pharmacies pharmacies can actually dispense naloxone without a prescription but they actually have to have it on hand and be prepared to do that and then chronic pain um there is a

1:19:08shortage of chronic pain providers and not a lot of knowledge of what to do appropriately so we're really focused on trying to make sure that primary care physicians feel um like they have tools in their toolbox to manage this challenging patient population so that they're not just abandoned

1:19:27we are also focusing on always expanding our coalition so getting urgent cares on board really engaging with our pharmacies dentists other provider groups cures is a database that physicians and pharmacies can check when they are prescribing or dispensing opioids they are required as

1:19:45of october 2nd to check this database regularly so we're educating them about how to do that and then we are all about bringing people together to share best practices and you know um try to make sure that we're moving in the right direction so what are we seeing we are seeing some

1:20:02good stuff namely the rate of opioid prescriptions is falling the strength of the opioid prescriptions that are being written is falling dangerous co-prescribings of opioids and benzodiazepines is falling so those are all really good signs that this work is starting to pay off

1:20:22we're also seeing buprenorphine prescriptions increase so these are all very good things but the problem is likely to become even more visible in the near term and so what you're seeing is that while rates that would indicate new addictions are trending in the right direction

1:20:41we're continuing to see you know an increase or at least kind of all over the map when it comes to heroin overdoses or overdoses from synthetic opioids and that's again because there is not enough capacity to manage opioid dependent patients within the current infrastructure and so they are going out

1:21:00on the street and they're seeking out alternatives on their own and that's definitely not good so what can cities do awareness and engagement that's an important piece um this is happening everywhere there really is no community that is immune from this um so it you know it's definitely

1:21:22important to raise awareness there is a prescription drug abuse awareness month which is in march so doing things like you know passing resolutions or using this city resources to try to raise awareness about this issue is definitely a great thing for cities to do

1:21:37and then we need more treatment resources we need more places where patients who are dependent on opioids can go and get help so if there are opportunities to create those resources here embrace them do not shy away from them safe disposal is a hugely important

1:21:53piece of this in contra costa county there is an ordinance that has been passed by the board of supervisors there is a program called the meds project that will actually pay for prescription drug disposal bins and put them in pharmacies they will manage that whole process but pharmacies have to ask

1:22:12for them so if you have pharmacies in el cerrito that don't have disposal bins pressure them to get disposal bins that is hugely important the way that kids in particular get into this is by going into the medicine cabinet when their parents haven't used all of the vicodin

1:22:30that was prescribed when a tooth was extracted and they start dabbling so there has to be safe places to throw these drugs away when they're not being used compassion is very important this is an illness this is not the result of anybody's fault these are dangerous drugs they have been

1:22:49prescribed in good faith this problem has been created by no one action and it's going to take a compassionate collaborative approach to really address it and then lastly i can't help but point out that it's important that we also think about equity this is not the first public health

1:23:07emergency that we've had that's drug related in this country we have had others and we have not seen this kind of a community-wide response to them and i think it's important to point out that the people who are dying from opioids are white they tend to be relatively better off

1:23:27and we didn't see this kind of a response when we had a crack epidemic in the 80s so obviously you can't go backwards but you can go forwards and it's important to remember that this is the right approach when we have these public health emergencies even if it's

1:23:41not just white people who are being impacted so with that i want to thank you again for the invitation and happy to answer any questions but i know you have a big agenda so any questions yeah i want to thank you very much for coming tonight i mean certainly uh if

1:23:55you listen to the radio if you pick up our western city uh magazine the opioid crisis is is front and center in many many communities and although i'm not aware of it in el cerrito i'm sure it's here el cerritos is certainly not immune to this um you did answer one of my questions is

1:24:17what can el cerrito do and i and i wrote down awareness engagement uh treatment resources um but i wanted to find out about and you may not be able to answer this i'm the naloxone no locks you sound you say it please no oxone naloxone naloxone sounds like something that is

1:24:36over the counter and i know certainly heard stories of first responders carrying it so that they can treat uh people i so i just wanted to highlight that that is something obviously we should be making more readily available available to our first responders but i also wanted to highlight the fact

1:24:55that we do have disposal facilities i believe our police officer our police station should have one in the lobby that's run by recycle more are you shaking your head back there chief we may not because we have it at the recycling center um so they are the the recycling center we do

1:25:13have a disposal facility i i have been um using it uh so i have some senior relatives that uh for whatever reason have a plethora of uh out-of-date prescriptions that we can use and it's not just naloxone it's not just the opioids it's it's all of them so we do have a

1:25:34good disposal facility in el cerrito that hopefully everybody is aware of and that is one of the things that awareness and march we can certainly focus on so thank you yeah sure if i could just make a couple comments number one naloxone is not over the counter it is prescription

1:25:48but pharmacists can dispense it without a physician writing a prescription oh interesting okay i just want to make that point and the second is that it is very important that these disposable disposal bins be located in pharmacies that's where patients go when they're

1:26:03thinking about their medications you know having them go to police stations or to a recycling center while it's certainly better than nothing is not really making it as convenient as we can and the pharmaceutical industry is actually paying the cost of that meds

1:26:18project so there is no cost to have those bins you just literally need the pharmacy to ask for it and and the pharmaceutical manufacturers will pay the cost thank you and i think the chief is going to come up and talk about our first responders that's why i'm reading your mind

1:26:34thank you councilmember lyman i'm paul keith your chief of police um i just wanted to also add that your first responders in el cerrito carry naloxone and are trained to dispense it in the case of opioid overdoses and that's both the police and fire department that's all i had great thank you thank

1:26:51you i just wanted to thank you thank you very much for what you said about the compassion aspect growing up both of my parents were addicted to opioids and eventually my my stepfather died from an opioid overdose so i just want you know everyone out there to know that

1:27:18when you treat it like a crime that no one gets help so i just wanted to say that thank you i'm sorry sorry for your loss okay our council member fedele uh yeah those thank you thank you again for coming those graphs you showed us for the usage going down that's just in the east bay your

1:27:41progress here we're talking about is that are those national this is just contra costa county contra costa county so we're kind of a model in this county are people noticing what we do here on this front we are going to be publishing a uh uh op-ed in the east bay times next week

1:27:58touting some of this so we're we are always trying to let people know i i think this is not unique to contra costa there's definitely a lot of you know activities going on nationwide um and this should be expected i mean if you think about you're turning off the

1:28:14nozzle of new addictions this is kind of what you would see and so then the flip side is what about those who are already dependent and that's definitely the most challenging piece that i don't think anybody has quite figured out yeah thank you thank you very much okay well joe graves thank

1:28:29you for being here at uh el cerrito city council and uh uh you're welcome to give us updates and and come out here once again great thank you thank you appreciate it okay next we'll do a presentation by badawi and associates good evening honorable mayor and council

1:28:50members mark rosaya finance director before mr badabi steps up here and makes his presentation i thought i'll share some prepared remarks to set the context for his presentation also give eric some time to get the powerpoint presentation up and running as you know last year

1:29:13we changed directors we had maize and associates who were auditors for us for the last six years and we brought in mr baraby and associates as our new auditors for fiscal 1617 which ended june 30th of last year which is 18 months ago due to commitments that he had prior

1:29:31commitment commitments he had the audit began in february of this year and ended somewhere in august with a kafir being issued at that point in time and in it and this is the kafir that he's going to present tonight the 1617 cafe for the time ended june 30th of 2017.

1:29:52uh back in may and june of this year when we went through the biennial budget process mr badavi came before you and took questions on fund balance and various other things on adjustments that were made for unbalance and at that time i did make a comment that i would bring

1:30:09him back in november to make a full presentation on the kafir and that's why he's here today to make a full presentation on the cafe mr badavi will confirm that he has issued an unmodified opinion which essentially means no findings in addition to his presentation on the

1:30:27financial statements he will present a summary of the pension status for the city the general fund reserve and other additional information and required communications that's essentially the scope of his presentation tonight i might mention that in the two years that i've been here

1:30:48i've seen management letter recommendations of 15 recommendations back two years ago dropped to about about just four in this last audit that we've just concluded so in other words we made progress and that supports the unmodified opinion that he presents for his

1:31:04uh audit i would also like to mention that members of the fab are here tonight to share with you their thoughts on the financial policy that they've been working on for the last six months and the centerpiece of that financial policy modification that they bring

1:31:24forth has to do with a reserve balance or a fund balance specifically dedicated to emergency and disaster recovery so that's something that the fab has uh brought forth with their financial policy recommendations which will bring back to council either as you know in terms of cash flow itself

1:31:52november december is typically the tightest period for the city it has always been that we thought for the last six or seven years and this year is no different but that being said we have cash to see us through till the next property tax tranche comes across at the end of december so at the end of

1:32:07november expect to have cash about two million dollars which will see us through till we get the next property tax crash and we've got a tran of six million dollars that makes this possible and we've done this trend since 2012 and i expect us to continue to do that trend in spite of

1:32:22the fact that we have measure b that has happened in our favor at this point in terms of measure v there's lots being said and i recognize the importance of fire prevention mitigation and all the efforts to prevent that type of a disaster taking place but i also fully

1:32:44echo the comments made by council member lyman that we need to move on this with great care we need to keep this in the bank for as long as we can have a process in place and get that one going before we start spending any of this i might mention just for the benefit of

1:33:02those of us who are in the audience here we have a very specific line item in the budget for transfer taxes so the receipts of transfer taxes will be trapped will be tracked by that line item and the fab will be in a position to look at that line item and say okay

1:33:16this amount is actually coming as transfer taxes over the next 18 months also given the fact that we are in the process of sorting out the receipt of transfer taxes which could potentially start from january the first i would urge you to consider seriously to not touch that for the biennial

1:33:34budget cycle that runs through june 30th 2020 as you know we had a two-year budget cycle and the budget cycle began on july 1 this year you would have finished six months of that which is 25 of that which leaves you with 75 percent of 18 months of it left to run and we

1:33:50would just start collecting our transfer taxes hopefully in january so keeping that in mind and if you keep that in the bank as i might put it i would say let's season that get the process going get all priorities identified the cost estimated and then proceed with how that needs to be spent

1:34:08i also recognize councilman lyman's comments regarding the media budget modification and the need to bring forth something that might take the fire mitigation issues into consideration as well the fab is here to pretty much echo the sentiments that i just stated here

1:34:26but i'd leave them to make their comments at the end of this presentation uh mr badabi will also touch on the unfunded liability the pension unfunded liability which as you know is something that increases annually and it increases by approximately five to six million dollars for the city

1:34:48and he has actually in his presentation he will share with you the impact of the discount rate not being where it should be suppose the discount rate drops to 6.25 versus seven point two five what's the impact of the city what happens if the discount rate goes up to eight point two

1:35:04seven point two five to eight point two five what's the so based on easy analysis it appears that the unfunded piece could be anywhere between 37 and 77 million dollars depending on where the discount rate falls as of june 30th 2017 the unfunded piece was just around

1:35:2150 million dollars and we would add another six million to it annually as time progresses so we need to address that as well and the city needs to at some point recognize that there is a pers commitment that needs to be taken care of as well so there are lots of

1:35:36priorities out there that need to be accommodated and we recognize that and i fully endorse the comments made by council member greg lyman in terms of creating a process for this and making sure that we collect this set it aside keep track of it have the fab look it over

1:35:52and see exactly how much came in and then decide exactly how we wish to spend that but i also recognize the importance of taking care of the hillside nature area fire prevention measures in terms of a purse update back in february of 2017 we brought nha uh advisors to come and talk to us about

1:36:15pers and the five-year spending plan that pers has each of each of the cities put together for the next uh through 2023 and one of the things that they pointed out at their presentation was that we were on the hook for approximately six million dollars over that five-year

1:36:32stretch which began in 2018.

1:36:35so that's six million dollars contribution to purse between 2018 july 1 through the middle of 2023 i'm going to have per nha come back with a revised estimate of that once they have their reports prepared for it and have you have you have it have them present to council

1:36:53uh hopefully sometime in the early part of next year but that's something else that needs to be kept in mind but we think when we come up with processes for spending funds and retaining funds mr badawi will point out to you that we are in almost a dire situation as it

1:37:10comes to fund balance and while staff doesn't completely agree with how he deals with some of these uh due to and do from issues we recognize the significance of his comments and that being said there are some of these issues that are legacy issues that go back four five

1:37:31years capital project funds and so on and so forth and here is an opportunity for us to clean up this balance sheet and take care of it once and for all and i would suggest again i would urge you to consider leaving as much of it as possible in the bank from january 1

1:37:47through july 30th of 2020 as part of our measure we funds towards the city's reserves with that being said i'd like to now invite mr baraj to make his presentation and take questions after that thank you good evening good evening mr members of the council and members of the audience

1:38:14my name is ahmed badawi and i'll be presenting to you the results of the 2017 audit uh it sounds like we're very late on that audit we're actually caught up with a 2018.

1:38:26when we first got engaged by the city of el cerrito we informed them that it was late in the process to go out to bid and we did not have availability and we agreed with the city that the audit will start late 2018 seems to be on track so i'm going to be presenting i'm going

1:38:45to cover today i'm going to let you know who the engagement team was what were the deliverables and the scope of our audit sorry areas we emphasized on the type of audit opinion we issued and summarize for you some of the numbers in your financial statements provide you some of the required

1:39:02communication that we have to provide to the governing body give you an update of the new accounting standards and see if you have any questions for me in terms of the engagement team this was the composition of the our engagement team i was the engagement partner we

1:39:16always have a quality control reviewer in the background the role is to review my work making sure that i adhere to professional standards we had a manager on the engagement we had a senior and we had two professional staff we also had an i.t specialist assigned

1:39:33to assist us in understanding the city's computer system in terms of our deliverables we were mainly engaged to provide an opinion on the city's basic financial statements that's really the the large report that include all city funds and all city assets uh we because the city is subject to

1:39:50what we call government auditing standards we were also responsible for issuing an opinion on our consideration of the city's internal control over financial reporting we performed and agreed upon procedures on the appropriation limit schedule we have also performed and agreed upon procedures on

1:40:08the master installment sale agreement we audited the single employer pension plan that the city have the public financing authority and then finally the communication with the governing body which is what i'm doing today in terms of areas we emphasized on during our audit process revenues is

1:40:27always an area of a higher risk so we perform a variety of procedures including communicating directly with third parties such as the county the state and confirming the revenues that were submitted to the city pension is an area that is highly complex in terms of the

1:40:46accounting and also the dollar amount is very significant so we spend a lot of time auditing that area and communicating with calpers and the auditors of calpers in terms of the auditor's report that we issued so like mark said we have issued an unmodified opinion

1:41:05what that means is that we agree with the numbers that the city reported on its financial statements the audit opinion state that it was conduct the audit was conducted and quotas was generally accepted auditing standards but we have also added a paragraph to the standard opinion to emphasize a

1:41:21matter which is our concern about the city's financial condition and its ability to continue as a going concern i will share with you in the next few slides what is the basis behind this concern and how we we came up to that conclusion but other than that an unmodified

1:41:41opinion means that the financial statements are fairly stated that all estimates are reasonable all accounting as principles have been consistently applied and all disclosures are properly reflected in the financial statements on this slide is just a summary of the

1:41:57city's cash and i'm sorry the city's assets over the last three years and you can see that the two largest assets are usually cash on investments and capital assets i have to say that in the city of el cerrito that doesn't seem to be the case where you can see that the cash flow

1:42:17investment is actually less than some of the receivable balances that you have and that's normally not what we see in cities where cash investments and capital assets are the two largest assets by far on this slide is the composition of the city's liabilities and obviously

1:42:37the largest liability is the pension liability it went up by almost nine million dollars uh since last year and that was mainly it really had nothing to do with the city this has to do with calpers and their investment performance compared to what they assumed uh so we we've seen this increase across

1:42:56the board other than that there was really no major fluctuations in in other accounts on this slide is the composition of the city's equity and that's taken your assets minus your liabilities and the equity is divided into multiple categories the first one which is usually the largest one

1:43:16is not really something that you can spend it is the money that you invested in your streets and roads and infrastructure and is not really in a spendable form then you have these restricted categories and those categories have legal restrictions on them so you can

1:43:32only use them for the specified purpose and the unrestricted amount is the amount that is under your control and there is a deficit 45 million however the deficit is something that we have seen in a lot of organizations this is the result of reporting your unfunded

1:43:48pension liability on your balance sheet something that he didn't use to do two three years ago so so that's explaining what the deficit is you can see here this is the results of the city's operation over the last three years this is taking the overall city operation not

1:44:08just the general fund and there was a significant drop in 2017 many reasons increase in expenditures decrease in some grant revenues a variety of reasons that that caused that drop we always compare what we call the net cost of service to tax revenue the net cost of service is looking at how much

1:44:35city departments cost to run and we subtract from that any revenues that those departments are able to bring on their own such as grants or fees or anything like that and the idea is to see how dependent are as a city on tax revenues and whether the tax base is sufficient to cover that

1:44:53you can see that in fiscal year 17 the net cost of service was 28 million dollar tax revenues were only 26 million dollar so there was a deficit here of 2 million and definitely we like to see that tax revenues are higher than the net cost of service focusing just on your general fund which

1:45:14is obviously the fund that measured the city's liquidity uh you will see that your unrestricted fund balance the fund balance that is under your control that have no legal restriction and it's also in a spendable form or will become spendable within few months or so

1:45:32as of 2017 there was a deficit 186 thousand i know that you see a big swing here but i will explain in the next slide why such a big swing exists uh this 186 000 is is really based on assumptions that certain money that was lent to other funds will be collected

1:46:00we have significant doubts that those money will be collected so on this slide i wanted to show you that the general fund is owed money by these funds and normally when the general fund lend money is supposed to be very short term meaning that a grant money would spend

1:46:22some money and a grant fund will spend some money and then they're waiting on the reimbursement so the general fund will just advance them for a month or two until they get reimbursed those types of borrowings been outstanding for years and there are no repayments and we don't

1:46:38see what what is the source of repayment in the future if we were to basically consider those not to be available then your the reality is that your available fund balance in the general fund is a deficit 1.85 million that's really probably the more accurate picture of your of your general fund

1:47:06i have agreed with the city management the city management did not want us to move those amounts into the non-spendable category of fund balance and i agreed to leave them until june until we finished the 2018 audit and see if those were paid back or not we're currently doing the 2018 audit and

1:47:27only a small repayment was made maybe 300 000 on all of them so at this point in fiscal year 18 we're going to be recommending that those borrowings be moved into the non-spendable portion of fund balance which really going to make your fund balance a deficit anywhere between 1.5

1:47:47and 2 million dollars so i heard a lot about the new measures that were passed and i'm sure that that's going to help a lot but that's going to need to be covered first since the way i see it is that i heard about the trend note the way i see it is that the trend note

1:48:06is almost being used as a payday loan where if it doesn't if for some reason this trend note is not approved for the city the city will be immediately in that deficit two million dollar uh position uh in the general fund so again that's the main reason why we felt

1:48:30that there were concerns about the city's financial condition and how fund balance was reported in the past but we feel that and the accounting rules basically say that any borrowing that is not expected to be paid within a short period of time definitely less than one year it cannot be part of

1:48:49available fund balance in the general fund because it is really not available so you can't consider it when you budget and when you plan on spending because this money is just not available and may not be available anytime soon if at all if these funds are able to pay

1:49:04back the general funds focusing on your pension this was your con the city's contributions to calpers over the last three years so you can see the trajectory that it is on the is going up every year and we expect that it will continue to go up if we were to look at your pension

1:49:27liability this is the your safety plan and you can see as of the most recent actuarial evaluation that calpers provided the city had about 80 million dollar invested it was calpers for the safety plan had about 118 million in liability outstanding and that leaves you is about

1:49:46close to 38 million in unfunded liability if we look at the miscellaneous plan again about 32 million invested in assets with calpers about 49 million in liability so about 17 million in unfunded liability uh mark has mentioned that this liability is an estimate and one of the

1:50:09the most significant factors in developing that estimate is what we call the discount rate so currently the numbers were calculated based on a discount rate of 7.65 percent so accounting rules require us to disclose to you that if that if this number changed even slightly your

1:50:28liability is going to change significantly so if this number goes up to 8.65 your liability goes down to 36 million this number goes down to 6.65 your liability go up to 77 million well let me tell you since we are reporting on historical information well we know that

1:50:48the the discount rate have gone down it is now for for fiscal year 18 we're going to be using 7.15 and then for fiscal year 19 we're expecting even a lower rate so probably the 77 million is a more uh accurate estimate giving the direction that we're seeing calpers

1:51:11going with the discount rate also the city offer retiree medical benefits so this was the cost over the last three years and this is the funded status of that benefit plan so the city have no asset invested to pay for that plan in the future so you're on a pay-as-you-go

1:51:35basis as the benefits become due the city is making those payments that liability based on the most recent actuarial report was about 5.6 million again this is one of those liabilities that we see the medical rates going up so this liability is also usually going up in most places that we

1:51:59see you will also see this liability on your balance sheet as a fiscal year 18 to comply with a new accounting standard so that's going to increase the deficit that the city have so that's it for the for the numbers in terms of the required communications we had some audit findings that we

1:52:22wanted to communicate the city had to restate its previously issued financial statements because there were some errors in some of the financial statements that were issued in the past those errors were material and it reflects that the city's control did not detect those errors timely and therefore

1:52:40the financials were issued with those errors in them also the financial closing and reporting process was a material weakness the city took a long time in closing the books and getting ready for the audit however we have seen significant improvement in fiscal year

1:52:5618 like i said we we are currently performing the audit and we feel that the the closing process have significantly improved uh ability to continue as a going concern i have already discussed that and the inner fund borrowings again inner fund borrowings should happen only

1:53:17for short period of time it needs to be repaid within a few months any borrowings that happen between funds that will not be repaid within a year it needs to be approved by council that there is a repayment plan of how long it will take to repay those funds are we going to be charging interest are

1:53:38we going to be doing this but funds should not be lending each other and those money be remain outstanding for years without counsel actually approving and a repayment plan for those there were no compliance findings that we we discovered however i do want to say

1:53:58that if for whatever reason this trend note is not renewed that may that means that the general fund is automatically in a in a deficit situation which would make us ask the questions where did the money come from to cover for those expenses uh that usually mean that maybe restricted

1:54:18resources were uh unintentionally tapped into to cover for that deficit so in terms of required communications uh on the left side this is our response those are our responsibility as your independent auditor of course these are summarized we are mainly responsible for giving an opinion

1:54:40on your financial statements for evaluating the city's internal control over financial reporting for evaluating the tone at the top and making sure management do care about transparency in financial reporting and about sending the right message to the rest of the

1:54:54organization about transparency we're responsible to evaluate the city's compliance with laws and regulations ensure that the financial statements are transparent and to communicate with the governing body management is responsible for the financial statements even though we

1:55:12certify them our audit is on a test basis it does not look at every single transaction so it only provides reasonable assurance not absolute assurance and it does not relieve management from its responsibility for the completeness and accuracy of those statements

1:55:26management is also responsible for establishing and maintaining internal controls for making financial records available to us during the audit process for establishing controls to prevent and detect fraud and inform us of all known and suspected fraud to comply with laws and regulations and

1:55:42take corrective action on audit findings in terms of independence we are obviously called the independent auditors so we have to remain independent from the city and this is solely our responsibility i'm not going to bother you with all the procedures that we go through

1:56:00to evaluate our independence but obviously we have determined that we were independent from the city during this audit process our audit was delayed pending acquiring information noted for needed for opeb we were waiting on some actuarial information and some additional

1:56:18information that caused some delays in the audit those are some of the accounting standards that the city have looked at during the the fiscal year to determine whether they were applicable or not and that's pretty much all i have so i want to say thank you for the opportunity i am

1:56:36happy to answer any questions that you have thank you for your independent uh look at this and we very much appreciate you giving us these sobering facts thank you let's start with questions uh red lyman good evening thank you very much for coming tonight and and giving

1:56:57us this presentation um one of the things on that last slide that i'm certainly interested in is no fraud you didn't detect any fraud in in the process as matter of fact if i heard you correctly we've we've implemented internal controls and strengthen our internal

1:57:14controls over previous findings that is correct we have not become aware of any fraud we cannot make a statement that that to say that we are 100 sure fraud does not exist but we have not become aware of any right and and then you said it a couple times that it's an

1:57:34unmodified opinion which is obviously a good thing also but you did stress you know the ongoing concern you did stress that quite a bit and that had to do primarily with the way funds are transferring money between each other is that is that the way the one way to

1:57:53characterize it well normally when we look at the general fund we look at the assets minus liabilities of the general fund and that tells us what's available to be spent so when we look at some of those assets we see that those assets represent receivables from other funds basically

1:58:11the general fund has given the capital project fund a million dollars it had given the recycled the recycling fund about 450 000 it has given the housing fund about 250 000 and then when we when we look at these funds that borrowed the money we don't really see any source of revenue that

1:58:33can be used to repay those the general fund back and those borrowings like i said it's they're supposed to happen they're not supposed to happen for no reason uh oftentimes we see capital project funds borrowing from the general fund because they have a grant that is

1:58:51funding a project so they spend the money first and then they wait to get reimbursed so the general fund advance the money and then when they get reimbursed they pay back the general fund this normally happened within a month or two three months not three years

1:59:08so so basically some of the assets that are reported on the general fund as liquid assets that are available for spending we don't really think the liquid they are money that was given to other funds that we don't know for sure if they would have the ability to pay it back

1:59:27when you were here in earlier this year there was a a difference in the fund balance because of the timing of when you did the uh the analysis um can you walk us through that that balance problem that you you uncovered before that we focused on only one area i didn't

1:59:51see the to the extent the problem was so there was in addition to those funds that i mentioned at borrowed money there's also the former redevelopment agency have also borrowed money from the general fund and when i came here i basically said that this this money is not available

2:00:09for spending the redevelopment agency is paying it in at a very slow pace and we we asked the city to remove that amount from the available fund balance for spending and moving it into non-spendable but then after i had the discussion with you when we looked into more detail we found that

2:00:28there are many other funds that also borrowed money from the general fund and also cannot pay back so we have allowed the city the opportunity and the benefit of the doubt that we did not ask for those amounts to be moved into an unspendable and we said we'll wait

2:00:46until fiscal year 18 and see was the money paid back or not and if it hasn't been paid back then we'll obviously have to move it into an unspendable category we're currently doing the audit and like i mentioned out of the 1.8 or 1.9 million only about 300 000 were paid back

2:01:08currently as of the end of fiscal year 18 the general fund had a 2.7 million assets on its balance sheet that represent money owed from other funds so it really would depend on the ability of these other funds to pay back the general fund and how fast can they pay

2:01:26them but we have money in the bank i mean we're not we're not we're not we're fund balance poor but not cash poor i mean it really depends on how you look at this the money in the bank is money from all funds so this can be money from gas tax it can be money from grants

2:01:48it can be money from a variety of things and not because you have five million dollars in the bank that does not mean that you can use them because oftentimes they have legal restrictions on them that they can be used only for a specific purpose the way we see cities

2:02:07plan is that for those types of situations is that they try to build fund balance and they designate those parts of fund balance into emergency into [Music] economic uncertainty so they have certain amounts set aside for each type of those potential emergencies

2:02:27in the general fund the other money is for other purposes should only be used for other purposes great thank you okay we are part-time i think that mayor lymon honed in on the things i was interested in i think i was mainly interested in the change between our report that we had in june was it

2:02:54june um and now and how come this was not brought up before but it sounds like you have discovered this i came in june based on the request of the city we were not done with the audit at that time and normally we do not communicate any information about the audit

2:03:15until we're done we we have i have come here based on a specific request from city management to explain why we're making that adjustment so at this point at that time the audit was still open and we were still looking at things so i just came to satisfy management requests

2:03:35to explain that specific adjustments okay thank you okay janet wilson i it seems to me that what you're saying among other things uh supports council member lyman's uh comment that we need to uh use major v funds to pay back the money that you've been talking about

2:04:02would you agree with that again i yes i would agree with that but i i'm not i just report the facts i don't recommend to management what needs to be done i also have not read the measure so i don't know what kind of restrictions are on the use of the of the funds so

2:04:26it will be hard for me to say but yes if if if i'm in this situation i'll i'll have to cover the deficit in the in the general fund first before i do anything else thank you okay council member for delhi yeah so just following on this again so your discussion on the borrowing of funds

2:04:45that's a normal procedure isn't it for localities to do if there's no way to find a way to fund it you go to your general fund to cover that amount uh so again if uh the borrowing the short-term borrowing right happen on a regular basis and this is normally due to timing differences

2:05:08however when there are decisions that a certain project has no funding and we're going to be funding it by the general fund this is a decision that normally is made by council and it is done either by transferring the money to that fund and not expecting to get it back

2:05:26or if you're expecting to get it back then there will be a repayment schedule of how you're going to get it back and accounting rules basically say that if there is if if the fund who borrowed the money doesn't seem to have ability to pay it back then those borrowings have to be

2:05:43written off and what that means is that the general fund basically write it off as bad that uh there's either the expectation that you're going to pay this back or your or you write it off write it off yes but that some some cities do that some cities do that but those long-term

2:06:02borrowings because they are not going to be available in the general fund to cover your annual spending so they have to be reported in the fund balance in a category that is called non-spendable because it may take 10 years to pay it back and the general fund focus on what's

2:06:19available today to pay for current expenses so i'm hearing something different than maybe what council member abelson just said that we're all talking about and some others maybe our fab folks about putting money into our reserve fund or assisting other priorities you're

2:06:40saying we need to pay for these borrowings first or that it's up to the council to make that decision that's up to the council to make that decision all i'm saying is that uh if this money is uh because reserve is different than us paying back the things that were

2:06:58borrowed correct what reserve is separately reserved funds for something in the future that we may spend it on well the thing is that i'm not sure how you can have reserves when when you're already in a deficit like the deficit has to be covered first trust from from an accounting

2:07:16perspective what i'm saying is that the general fund have more liabilities than assets uh in in reality unless unless those funds are able to pay back the general fund the general fund have more liabilities than assets by about two million dollars so eventually those liabilities will need

2:07:36to be paid back and the only the way to do it is for the general fund to get reimbursed if you decide that we're not going to reimburse the general fund then you write off those receivables from other funds and that will show that the general fund have a deficit fund balance having a

2:07:55deficit fund balance means that again your assets are not sufficient to pay for your liabilities so i'm not sure if you can be establishing reserves it's the same way like when when you have negative cash in your bank account but you're still trying to set reserves

2:08:13on the site um you're gonna have to cover your negative at some point okay um my last question is on can you go to slide 12 and i was a little confused about what that was and uh the drop from 2016 down to 2017.

2:08:36i mean what the whole thing is i didn't understand so so uh this is just really looking at not just one fund but looking at all city funds and looking at revenues minus expenses all city funds yes looking at revenues minus expenses so you can see that in 2017 expenses

2:08:57exceeded revenues by about 1.4 million dollars there were several reasons for that in the prior year the city had some capital grants that were much less in 2017 also there was increase in in pension costs the senior center issue i'm sorry senior center issue some

2:09:18monies that we had to use uh let me see i had it written down here uh possibly i uh there's also 500 000 in um over time for firefighters uh there there was basically there was an increase in insurance premiums uh so it's a variety of factors there's really no one reason that contribute to

2:09:40that thank you okay any other questions um you said i don't know what slide direction it is but the integrated waste management fund owes 300 000 that's it there 449 as of 2017.

2:10:02i believe this amount is less by maybe 80 000 as of 6 30 18.

2:10:10great thank you be useful for our next agenda item so do other councils um in other cities typically approve these transfers definitely uh transfers between funds are normally should be budgeted for it should be part of the budget process borrowing between funds if it's a

2:10:37short-term borrowing just to cover expenses and be paid within two three months it does not need council approval management do that all the time because you pull your cash of all all funds together but any borrowings that takes more than a year to pay back or the intention was to pay back over time

2:10:56this normally requires council approval and requires to have a repayment plan in in place and we as auditors were required to make sure that the repayment plan is being followed and if we feel that yeah there is a repayment plan but no payments are being are being made then we will be

2:11:12coming back and asking the city to write off those those borrowings and all of these things listed have been outstanding for more than a year yes for about like maybe three years or so i mean the amount fluctuates i think 2018 maybe the first year that we see these amounts go down

2:11:34uh they've been going up every year but like i said i believe as of 6 30 18 they went down by about 300 thousand thank you okay well janet okay thank you for your presentation and sobering facts and appreciate your opinion on this so thank you very much thank you

2:12:03speakers speakers public speakers uh yes we have open comment now um how many speakers do we have on this map um we have two members of the fab and another speaker so we have three speakers okay the first one is dick patterson followed by marlene keller and then

2:12:23cordell hindler sure let's let's let cordell go first go ahead so i was the one that signed up first so i want to put that on record so i think this presentation was very helpful because it's like it shows what um how much money is in um in in the city and i was like because

2:12:48when i was looking at this presentation it says hmm i never knew um there was there was all that money um coming in or going out whichever is more convenient so i i think this presentation was very helpful and because it really it counts on the the um the pension the rising cost of

2:13:05pensions and it's like wow i never knew this is very helpful so i find that presentation very helpful so now dick it's your turn thank you good evening good evening my name is dick patterson i'm a long-term resident of el cerrito and i'm also a member of the financial

2:13:25advisory board and i currently serve as the chair of that board the themes we've heard tonight i think of them in two ways one is risk we live in california we have earthquakes we have wildfires and we've seen them with disastrous consequences certainly in the last year i'm also reminded that

2:13:48about a hundred years ago a fire started in wildcat canyon and the wind strong winds blew it over to north berkeley and destroyed about 600 homes and of course wildcat canyon is the eastern border of our city so we've heard a great deal about risk and the concerns about risk and the fab has

2:14:11had these same concerns for the several years that i've been on that board and when i think of risk i also think of financial stability and so we've heard a lot about that in the report from mr balawi and when i think about risk there's two sides to it there's the

2:14:29mitigation which costs money and that we have to do but there's also how do we prepare for those extreme stresses on our ability to manage the risks when they do occur even though we hope that they will not and the fab has tackled that issue we've worked with scott hanlon

2:14:54as well as with mr rossia and we have given it a great deal of thought what we have come up with is what we call an emergency disaster and recovery fund and that's not intended to be mitigation it's intended to be there for when these extreme events may happen when these events may happen they might

2:15:20they may put stresses on our expenses we may have to have a lot of expenses we didn't plan for or they could interrupt our revenue stream we have a bank line of credit but during a major financial crisis about 10 years ago we saw banks fail so we have to be thinking in terms of

2:15:42how do we manage these extreme risks how do we prepare for them and how do we do that financially so we have recommended and are recommending and i believe mr russia said he would bring that to you in january or february we have proposed that the emergency disaster and recovery fund

2:16:03have sufficient cash this is cash it's not a it's not an accounting sheet balance that may or may not be cash it's real cash in a real bank account we think that about three months of salaries should be held as cash in this account it's about six million dollars

2:16:22and with the recent passing of the uh major v with the money that it may we expect it to bring in we would hope and i would certainly pile on to councilman lymon's suggestion and i think mr fedele also concurred with that which is that we need to be thinking about these reserves

2:16:45and i heard somebody tonight say well maybe we shouldn't put money into reserves that we should use it for mitigation but we have to do both because we have to be prepared for if the risk occurs where do we get the cash to meet those emergencies so i hope that when this comes to you in

2:17:04january or february that you will give it some very serious consideration thank you thank you sir mayor quinto council members um city management and staff uh i'm marlene keller a resident of al cerrito and i'm speaking to you tonight as a member of the city's financial

2:17:26advisory board let me also say i'm a former auditor for the state of california and it is my professional opinion that the smartest thing a government entity can do is to change its external auditor it's very vital that entities do this so that with a new auditor with fresh eyes

2:17:50that auditor can look at city finances so that said what dick was saying just a minute ago i agree with completely um we are saying what several of you on the council have said that nothing really is better than financial stability and financial resilience that's vital to a community for for

2:18:14people's day-to-day lives and stability what the fab is asking you to do is to look at review and approve we hope the fab's revision to the city's comprehensive financial policy this revision includes the creation of a separate as a speaker kathy fleming was saying it's

2:18:37a separate emergency and disaster recovery fund this would provide this fund with vital urgently needed cash reserves and we urge you to grow this fund prudently to about six million dollars again it's the judgment of government financial officers that every city

2:18:58municipality needs about three months of cash and this would meet necessary general fund costs some we can't even imagine some would be worsened by a disaster however members of fab do recognize that there may be urgent vital public safety concerns such as fire prevention

2:19:23that requires some expenditure of some of this kind of fund before even a mid-year budget adjustment can occur and this is because if you don't as you know prevent a disaster like a mega fire you don't have assets property assets on the balance sheet and you don't have revenue sources

2:19:46homes and businesses and of course you may have destroyed the framework of a city as a community and that has always a downstream price people won't move back insurance won't cover but what we're asking of very importantly is first of all the engagement with the city we're

2:20:11looking forward to it that's why you have us as a an experienced financial advisory board uh between us we must have collectively over a hundred years of audit and financial budget experience so the first thing we want to see us members of fab is that the incoming city manager

2:20:33come to attend a fab meeting at her earliest possible opportunity to discuss our role in the independent oversight of this separate fund second we look forward to your developing a smart and thoughtful budget process and a prioritized plan before fund expenses start occurring

2:20:55annually and lastly we expect that this plan well of course as you said as council members said involve a transparent review of the fund's actual annual revenue and expenses um i i personally was very um happy to see your engagement on uh this issue most people don't regard

2:21:19financial matters as very compelling but they are the lifeblood of the trust between voters and elected officials and i commend your desire your comments about working sessions as you have done before to discuss the city's priorities and how those fall into line with the money that's

2:21:39available thank you thank you mayor if i may yes um just to be clear miss keller's comments aren't that the current auditor should be replaced it is that the prior auditor was replaced within the last year or so so i just wanted to make sure that the member of the public that responded to

2:22:00that your comment understood the context of which you made it exactly so and if i may add when i was a g i was a gao a trained auditor external auditor um the first thing i put on my worksheet my work papers was how long had that external auditor been auditing that

2:22:19governmental entity and if it was a long time i thought i would probably have a lot of findings thank you okay sherry is it that's that's it for speakers okay great thank you very much okay next we will have a public hearing on appeal of conditional use permit 1827

2:22:48arlington boulevard we're going to conduct a public hearing and upon conclusion consider adopting a resolution denying the appeal and upholding the planning commission's approval of a conditional use permit to allow an exception to the main building envelope to allow a height increase for

2:23:04an additional for an addition to the third floor of an existing house at 1827 arlington boulevard and that is application pl 17-0154 so item 6a is appeal of conditional use permit 1827 arlington boulevard we have shawn moss here good evening sean good evening mayor

2:23:34quinto uh council members shawn moss senior planner and acting planning manager um so yes before you tonight is an appeal of a conditional use permit at 1827 arlington um i'm going to try to keep the um presentation fairly uh brief i think that the um kind of the essence of the

2:23:58uh of the use permit um is uh somewhat narrow so i'm gonna kind of keep i'm gonna try to keep the presentation to that um essence of the use permit i i realized though that the um especially the uh require permitted three-dimensional building envelope can get a little

2:24:16complicated so i'm happy to dive into anything more if anybody has specific questions um so this is a little context um for the site um you will see the um oh my my mouse arrow doesn't show up there i guess um so you can see this is the project site it's located at 1827 arlington boulevard

2:24:43um this the site is oriented north south so this particular section of arlington runs east-west just as it's oriented there in the in the photo oh thank you um so i can use the laser pointer here so this is the project site um the uh this terrain slopes downhill this

2:25:09direction to the south pretty steeply the subject lot has a slope of about 28 percent the surrounding neighborhood contains primarily single-family homes one and two story although this area is in the rs5 zoning district which has a minimum lot size of 5 000 square feet most of the lots in

2:25:32this area are larger than that so the subject lot is about 7 700 square feet and you can see i'm just looking at this at this exhibit that most of the surrounding lots are of a similar size so as i said this area is in the rs5 zoning district um which is pretty common in el cerrito

2:25:56it's our largest uh i think it's our largest zoning district city-wide but it's definitely our largest residential zoning district um so the setback requirements that are in this district the development standards are pretty standard for um this type of single-family residential development

2:26:16and the height limit is established by this figure in the zoning ordinance and the applicable um section is this bottom one here which hopefully you can kind of read but if you can't i will um i will explain it so um the because the slope is is 28 um which falls between the range of 10

2:26:41and 40 percent uh the that second that bottom row there is used um the way that this height envelope is calculated is you'll see here it starts here on the sides so the property lines are located here and here um so the this envelope is calculated at this at the required setbacks

2:27:06it projects upward to a height to an initial height of 20 feet at the setbacks and then it angles in at 45 degrees on both sides until it reaches a height of 30 feet the 30 feet is what's called the the base height so that's the that is basically the maximum height that is

2:27:27permitted by right the zoning ordinance allows an additional 5 foot height increase to 35 feet so that is actually what's shown here the upper the upper line here so that is the subject of this conditional use permit tonight so this is the existing house you can

2:27:52see it both as drawn on the plans in the upper image and a photograph on the lower image i've tried to kind of scale them so that they correspond to each other what you will see here is the existing house has a two car garage the existing entrance to the house is

2:28:13here there is an upper storey with two bedrooms and a bathroom and there this is the the main living area here there's also a lower level um which you can you'll be able to see better from the the rear elevation that i'll show you in a moment um that is accessed uh only from the

2:28:33exterior via stairs uh that come down on the side of the house here uh and come back come down to a lower deck that's on the back side of the house where there's a an exterior door that accesses that lower that lower portion so this is the proposed project this is

2:28:59the the front elevation again um so you can see here this is the existing garage door this is that existing upper story that's located here what the applicant is proposing to do they're proposing a fairly significant remodel reconfiguration of the main level the entrance

2:29:21the front entrance would be relocated over here the staircase that accesses the upper level which is currently located on the back side of the house would be relocated on the front here and that would be kind of accentuated as a as an architectural feature here on the front

2:29:38and then this would be the uh expansion of the upper story the the um this would be in addition this portion here so you can see here um that that that envelope that i showed you uh diagrammatically is shown here um to see um but it projects upwards at the setbacks and then angles

2:30:02here at 45 degrees until it reaches a maximum height here of 30 feet and as you can see it follows the terrain so the the train here here is even with the driveway and then it drops off here and slopes down and so that envelope up here does the same thing it follows that

2:30:22drops down um and then follows follows this over as well um so you can see here this is the difference this is the extra five foot difference so the use permit that is requested uh doesn't it seeks that extra five feet on the on the rear you can see here on the front it's

2:30:43clearly not needed because this this portion of the lot is higher and so this is actually the the height limit the by right height limit here so this is the rear uh elevation of the proposal um you can see so you you can see uh faintly it's hard to see but this is the um

2:31:08this is the permitted building envelope here uh it slopes up at 45 degrees here and then it comes across through here so this is the existing second story here this is the proposed expansion i'm sorry existing upper story this is the proposed expansion of that upper

2:31:30story um and this is where the additional height is is sought is right here um so you can see if i go back to the front elevation as i said there's ample ample allowance for the the height here because this portion of the the lot is higher if we go back to this rear elevation you

2:31:55can see this is the upper height limit so between that the the front elevation and the rear elevation the the upper height limit slopes down um severely enough to get us from way up there to right here so when i go to the next slide you can see so this slide illustrates

2:32:16the portion of the house that exceeds the permitted envelope it's really just right here that we're talking about so the reason i brought that up with the the slope um of the the envelope and those two elevations is because you can you can kind of clearly see that here so it's

2:32:34it's sloping down from the front here pretty steeply and it clips the back corner of the proposed edition here so this is this is the shadow diagram for the project i bring this up because the um one of the required findings relates to shadows views and solar access and

2:33:02privacy um so i've um provided here the uh shadow diagram that the applicant has prepared these shadows are on the equinoxes the spring and autumn equinoxes which are kind of the medium length shadows right the the longest shadows of the year would be on the winter solstice the shortest shadows

2:33:26of the year would be on the summer solstice and the two equinoxes would be in between those extremes um so uh this the top image shows the existing shadow this is the existing second upper story of the house casts a shadow this direction um and uh it does cast a shadow across

2:33:49the the property line here onto the neighboring property currently um there is this tiny little triangle here of um area where the sun is is peeking through so that there's not a shadow cast there currently if you look at the the proposal with the addition you'll see

2:34:08that tiny little triangle is missing um it's unclear uh looking at these two how much of that additional shadow is actually caused by the um by the area that is encroaching outside of the permitted envelope and that which again is just this just this kind of corner in the rear um but given that the

2:34:32that the impact is so minimal um really just this this area this tiny little area has the additional impact um staff uh feels that the find that the required findings can be made um with regard to privacy um if i go back a couple of slides um you will see that so the the the

2:34:55potential for privacy impacts which you can see here primarily exists uh to this property to the side because that that's where the massing of the the proposed edition is is focused is on that side of the house but you will also see if i go back a couple more uh that in order to clear the the

2:35:16required daylight plane here as it's sloping up at 45 degrees the addition has been stepped back so this is the the required side yard setback um that's and this is where the existing the wall of the existing house is they've stepped the addition back from there quite a bit um in order to comply

2:35:37with this uh sloping daylight plane envelope here so that really limits the any privacy impacts to the to the adjacent um [Music] to the adjacent property and then with regard to views you'll see here so the scope of the use permit that is before you tonight is

2:36:01as i said really just this exception so it's this small portion here on the back of the house that is exceeding the permitted uh envelope the permitted building envelope so given the small scope of this the project would not have any addition and and its location on the back side of

2:36:25the house the proposed project does not have any additional view impacts um beyond what would be permitted by wright um so you know you can see if if this portion of the of the house was eliminated here um the house would you know the house could still be just as tall from the

2:36:45front um and have the same exact massing on the front and that's really where the the view where the view corridor exists is from the uphill properties on the other side looking over the property down the hill so this permitted uh this envelope is um is consistent um across this zoning

2:37:08district well really all of the residential zoning districts the single-family residential zoning districts it's obviously going to apply a little bit differently to different properties because it is so dependent on the the existing terrain and the existing slope

2:37:22um and um you know so i realized that it that it can get a little complicated as i said i'm happy to to answer any questions that you might have so i'll just conclude by saying that the the planning commission considered this use permit at their meeting and they also determined that the the

2:37:46findings could be made um and they did approve the use permit unanimously um and then we've received an appeal um from a neighbor um a neighbor of the project and so that's why we're we're here tonight um but that concludes my presentation and i can answer any questions you might have

2:38:04let's let's bring it back here to the council uh who would like to start paul fideli um which side is the neighbor that's complaining the appeal they're uh i believe across arlington on the uphill side are we going to hear from them or the appeals so the appellant the appellant as well as the

2:38:25applicant for the project will both be given time tonight um for presentations afterwards myself with my further questions thanks okay councilmember abelson i'll do the same time the same councilmember lyman will i will withhold my questions until later i've got questions that i think might

2:38:46get answered during uh presentations from both the um appellant and the applicant okay i will do the same so i will open now this uh public hearing so i like to hear from the appellant good evening my name is leslie levy i'm the attorney for russ malbooby who is

2:39:32the owner of the property that's across the arlington on the uphill side and his uh obviously his concern is the view blockage by the addition of the or the expansion of the building on the third level because that will cut into significantly cut into his view that

2:39:53he's had for many years and the reason for the appeal is that it's clear to us that the uh the planning commission is basing the approval on a a premise that appears to be false it doesn't appear that the third floor ever had a permit granted for it in fact there is no permit in the records

2:40:18and that's the the basis for their allowing it to be expanded and then the height limit is the is the cup part of it is really uh a request to extend an already illegal existing structure and so uh if a bit of history to give you an idea we did we did uh submit to you

2:40:41a written statement um i was trying to keep it concise uh so originally it was a one-story 1170 square foot building 24 feet high with the unfinished lower basement noted but not included in that square footage if you figure that square footage from the lower level which has

2:41:01been improved and has been made into an illegal accessory unit then you get a 1600 and some odd square 1642 square feet and that's in accordance with the contra costa county tax assessors uh records so the extra or the addition on the top and it is clearly an addition that wasn't there

2:41:27originally adds another 700 and some excuse me uh it's i don't actually have the exact square footage but that that part on the top is is added was added after it was built the house was built in 1954 and then it was sell sold to the coats family and they bought it in 57 and had owned

2:41:52it until it was sold to the current owner in 2016.

2:41:56mrs coates has informed mr mulbuby that the um that the house when they purchased it in 1957 had that third floor edition and that she and her husband had attempted to do exactly what the applicant is trying to do now which is to expand it and it was rejected by the city um

2:42:20and they didn't allow the permit and then in 19 the only thing that happened between 1957 and 1970 according to the building records was there was nothing nothing in the records between those years a deck was added in 1970 and the that was a permit for the lower level uh to

2:42:40be built out or to be improved so essentially what we're starting with is what the planning commission is calling um an existing upper story which does not conform with the required main building envelope envelope and this is a legal non-conforming structure in this

2:42:57respect they're basing that on their assumption that it must have been permitted they did say that initially the planner had said at the hearing that the permit must have been lost or was lost and now the story has changed and it is that a lot of these building records are not complete

2:43:18and um they even said that the permit history for the property is inconsistent and incomplete but they don't explain in what respect it's inconsistent and incomplete uh so it looks like pure speculation on the part of the staff to get this uh third floor sanctioned and in fact what really

2:43:37should be happening is that the applicant should be required to remove the third floor because as the staff said that the the homes on the downhill side of arlington boulevard generally have a one-story appearance from the street and uh there's in the history of the

2:43:55city there's not been any third stories added and so to call it a two-story now is is disingenuous because it really is three stories um and so uh they this planner has said that the location and size of the proposed edition is consistent with the uh neighborhood and so forth but it but

2:44:15it really isn't because uh the third floor um is out of sync with everything as it is um and so they they were trying to parse uh uh the what was listed as five rooms on the on the original permit and so forth and the original height was 24 feet and it's correct that the height

2:44:36was 24 feet but that included the mid level which is the lowest level you see from the street and the the downstairs level that's 24 feet high with that third floor it's 30 feet high and in fact they use the word seem to clearly indicate that this is the case but it seeming to clearly indicate is

2:44:59not uh or seeming to be is not a clear indication that the statement is based on fact because it isn't based on fact there's nothing that says it was permitted um and uh they they're finding also that quote the proposal when viewed in its entirety represents a superior design solution

2:45:18and will not cause a significant adverse impact on residences directly across the street with respect to blue view blockages uh also not well taken because uh my client will lose the remaining view that they have of albany emeryville el cerrito the surface of the bay

2:45:39and so forth and that's a significant loss of value it seems to me that if a tree cannot be planted and allowed to grow above into a view then a house shouldn't be allowed to be built into a view by the same token uh and so the staff said that they were unable to determine the impact to the

2:46:01adjacent adjacent property across the street since the house sits considerably above the street but they didn't try to even go look my client invited them to look and they nobody took him up on his invitation and so he submitted photographs showing exactly how his view

2:46:18is blocked from there i think that the staff may have assumed that because his house is much higher his view wouldn't be blocked but that's not the case his view really is blocked and they are also saying that the proposed project represents a significant aesthetic upgrade to the house making it

2:46:37an attractive amenity but the expansion of the already illegal third floor represents a significant increase in the value but it doesn't necessarily to the to the owner but it doesn't necessarily improve it aesthetically because the building envelope will be even more

2:46:54massive and boxy as it appears from the street there's plenty of room there's a big lot on the at the rear of the structure to add on and our position is that um the planning commission really did ignore my client's comments and gave him very little time to speak and uh it seems to us that that

2:47:16this uh existing structure ought to disqualify the the structure from being the basis for creating further illegal structures um and the city has a policy of protecting the amenities of the homes on its hillside uh with which are quoting the the the rule in harmony with

2:47:36each other and in order to allow one property owner to expand etc but uh the decision that the planning commission made um is essentially allowing one home or homeowner to increase his value at the expense of a homeowner that's already there and really based on an

2:47:53illegal permit or a false premise and so we again request that the applicant be ordered to remove the third floor edition or replan so that it doesn't create a further blocky blocky frontage on the arlington thank you if there are any questions i can answer or possibly my client okay

2:48:18let's go let's take this back to the council paul fideli so a few random questions here um so the present occupant of the home to be remodeled was not the owners who did not get permits is that correct an answer someone will come up and answer what are you supposed to go to

2:48:53just point of clarification are you closing the public comment period and asking questions are we going to finish taking public comment before you get to your questions okay yeah so we we have to hear to the other side right yeah the the homeowner and any other public comments but prior to

2:49:09taking questions okay sorry there was nothing no that's okay just making sure okay it's okay yeah i mean you can ask questions of the appellant if you like um yes to clarify anything but in terms of council discussion we should wait until we've closed the public comment

2:49:35hearing okay so let's uh close the public comment no that's not no no no no no the exact opposite of what i just said but but i do have questions for the you know put the gavel down please put the gavel down if the council has questions of the appellant they may

2:49:50ask them at this time and then we'll continue on with the public comment period yeah once that's closed then you can have discussion so then why don't i continue do you have questions for miss levy that's you don't ask questions of mr moss ask miss questions okay

2:50:06yes so your final statement was that you're asking that the they remove the present third story of the house yes if which one looks at this if one looks at this in a strictly um legal way yes that's an that's an illegal non-conforming use it's not permitted um so

2:50:28the consequence of that normally would be uh to mitigate that by removing it um but he's asking the applicant is asking to actually enlarge it make it even bigger on the third floor and was that proposal before the planning commission to remove that existing third floor no the the well the

2:50:50the the uh in your appeal to them was that in there yes it's in here yes okay um i think that's all for you thank you i have a question um were there ever any additions made to uh the appellant's house additions to the appellant's house yes i don't know some patio conversion but there is no outside

2:51:20edition okay and um is the view of oakland that will be blocked the only view that the opponent has on the property when you say only view there's only the westerly view of the of the uh amenities or the ones that are highlighted when views come into play the surface of the bay

2:51:43uh cities down below obviously the golden gate bridge and so forth are those so their view right now is partially sort of blocked by that box that sticks up um but but the proposal is to enlarge that even and make and cut out the rest of it which does have some twinkling

2:52:06lights at nighttime from the city cities below and so forth so it'd just be a further blockage of of an already existing view right but do they have a view of san francisco do they have a view of the golden gate bridge the golden gate i'm not sure yes yes basically the way the living room

2:52:32if you look at the picture i presented on planning commission i submit bunch of picture and the picture is from living room and family room if you sit on on the living room and i took bunch of picture and you see basically the house across the street on the left

2:52:54side you see basically block half of the view and i mark it kind of circle if the new plan build then i have zero view if i sit on living room okay what if you're on the second story of your house are you still able to see the view from the second story of your house if i

2:53:11go on the second story yes there is some some view but the question is living room kitchen family room everything in downstair i know all of the bedroom is upstairs i know really the view doesn't matter up it's there because you go to sleep at night okay thank you

2:53:34okay in that regard i i believe that when the view ordinance with respect to trees is uh is in place the um the same thing applies it's from the main living area is what they're looking at uh that's the that's the view source of the view or the point of the view that is uh considered to be the

2:53:56most important not bedrooms necessarily right but i do notice there is a deck upstairs but they they don't use their deck very often i'm sorry a deck it looks like there's a deck on yeah okay anything else yeah i've got questions for you don't go away okay um would you

2:54:22be in a factual basis would you agree that the front of the house as proposed or even existing is within the base right uh no not i'm not arguing with you whether it's illegal or a illegal i'm not even i'm not even saying if it's not let's assume it's not there today

2:54:43but the applicant came in and wanted to build something on the front of their house would you agree that the projected front is inside the base right envelope no because the base right envelope includes that upper portion and then they just extrapolate over uh mr moss could you come up and please uh

2:55:05click back your presentation to the uh maybe i misunderstood your question no i don't think i think you're misrepresenting what you're what what you're doing so i i'd like to make sure that we you and i have the exact same understanding this one right here um mr moss if you could please outline

2:55:24the base right uh outline yeah so it starts here angles up here to this line drops down here angles back and then goes here the front of the the front of the proposed house which would you agree is inside the base right envelope this levy not if it's based upon the

2:55:50existing third floor assume the part assume the parcel is vacant and somebody is coming in to build a new house on this parcel that's my premise to you is this new house this brand new house with its front looking like this is it within the base right envelope i i can't answer that that's sort of

2:56:14technical questions that's fine let me ask you this question it is it possible for a neighbor to buy the development rights of an of a parcel could could your client pay for the applicant to not build the edition and and basically write in a deed restriction that they would not seek a a

2:56:40development is that something that you that in property law that you're obviously practicing is that something that you didn't 40 years of practicing real property law i've never heard of such a transaction uh but that's essentially what you're trying to get for your client is that

2:56:59you're trying to so we're not going to be winners tonight right we're going to make somebody unhappy one of our neighbors because we all live in el cerrito either your client is going to extract their right over the current property owner and and essentially take away what

2:57:15i see as a right for them to build a house that's inside the building envelope and and they're going to get value or we we deny the appeal and they build something and your client loses value so so there's value on both sides so so what i'm trying to figure out is

2:57:34have did you counsel your client about basically buying their view no i did not but but you agree that it's conceptually possible for essentially the downhill people to put a deed restriction that that eliminates their ability to expand of course that kind of thing could be

2:57:54done um the the point though is that i i would i don't know the basis for determining the built right the building envelope and and i don't know the technical basis i assumed that it was based on the fact that there's already existing a structure and as the uh as as the

2:58:16planner found the existing upper story does not conform with the required main building envelope it does not require does not conform in the back uh obviously i've spent a lot of time with with the the drawings and there is uh two slides back if you could the back

2:58:33the back of the house no sorry the other direction this one can you highlight the area of the non-conforming on the upper right hand side yeah so it's again it's the back of the it cuts the house correct so there's the non-conforming portion the non-conforming portion is not visible to

2:58:50your client i just want to make sure that you and i are on the same page so do do you understand what i'm trying to say again i'm saying that okay thank you i have no further questions thank you anybody else okay jenny nelson no okay paul fidelit okay mayor i'd like to do not pick the gavel

2:59:15up we still have people to talk i'd like to extend the meeting till 11.

2:59:21we have a motion by lyman and second by abelson to extend to 11 o'clock all in favor hi hi okay motion carries okay so next we will go to uh the applicant the applicant is allowed up to 15 minutes for rebuttal good evening good evening i think you're right yeah

3:00:07yep kind of file is it it's um it's something from google docs but i can just you can open it in pdf form sorry i'm very nervous my name is megan carter i'm the architect for the proposed project and actually i think sean really explained the the issues of of the building

3:00:50envelope and the height restrictions et cetera so i'm really just going to talk just briefly to the reasons behind adding this this addition so if i can figure out how to scroll through here let's see yeah it's not maybe just oh i think you sent it in powerpoint didn't you there yes there

3:01:22you go thank you yeah okay so i'm gonna actually skip past this because uh sean already talked to it so this is the rendering of our proposed design and shawn's also kind of explained that as well so i'm actually going to just skip past a bunch of these slides um so these are

3:01:48really just describing the envelope the blue is the base the the orange is is up to 35 feet um i'm pointing out allowed architectural projections such as eaves and parapets and so that's the back side so it's pointing to that existing portion to remain that's outside of the 45 degree incline plane

3:02:12and then this is pointing to the addition the r addition uh that extends beyond uh the 30-foot envelope and that's the portion that requires the conditional use permit so once we this is the the orange is showing um that maximum of 35 feet and so once if we get a conditional use permit for

3:02:40that then then that piece of the project uh can can move forward um so let's see so these are uh plans um so existing oh thank you that i can see there you've you've highlighted the one of the cards yeah so i tried to highlight that um uh so the existing third floor has two

3:03:10bedrooms and one bathroom my clients would like to they have a growing family and and they would like to continue expanding their family and so they would like to add a third bedroom and a second bathroom to this floor and so this this is the floor plan that is optimal for them basically they're

3:03:34adding a master suite and the portion in question is that highlighted red portion it's approximately two feet three by uh eight feet 11.

3:03:48so can you sorry yes this is in response to one of my questions so i'll let me help the rest of the council and the public understand the question i asked was where would the walls need to be moved to to comply with the by right envelope and the walls would need to be moved to be

3:04:12inside or outside whichever way you want to look like to describe it the red area in order to be tolerated by right so they would have to move it on our screens you can see it if you have the pointer you could show it to the public that'd be great what do you mean by red

3:04:31it's it's visible but it's it's very faint that's why i'm asking uh miss carter to point it out the lower left-hand corner that portion right there so i've i've shown you the dimensions too i know people can't read that but it's two feet three by eight feet 11.

3:04:53so um okay so that's that's basically the area that we're asking for the conditional use permit for [Music] and so just to explain a little bit further [Music] so the main floor the existing is on on the right the proposes on the left it's a fairly small footprint and so

3:05:18there's really no room for an another bedroom without expanding the envelope further back it has the two-car garage that's required by a planning code um and then basically just a kitchen dining living entry and an office space and the office is actually quite narrow so it's i think it's about

3:05:42seven or eight feet and then down below that is the first floor and it's actually not connected to the rest of the residents and so although it could be a location for bedrooms with small children it doesn't seem practical to have bedrooms two floors below other bedrooms

3:06:10and it also would add costs to add uh the stair that was not part of their their scope for this project so um that's pretty much it i think sean has really described he talked about the shadow study and the building envelope questions and also sorry so i think sean can also probably uh

3:06:44talk to you more about the permit history um so so hopefully he can speak to that um and in in our response letter we did include an image one of the appellant's photos i think i think it's page 12.

3:07:08it's that nighttime view and we've highlighted where so that's in our letter our response letter and i don't have have that in my slides but um we've we've included the outline of the building so yes we're blocking a portion of his view but it appears that the bridge

3:07:29is still visible so and um a portion of the view is actually being blocked by uh my client's tree so i believe that that can also be discussed okay questions from the council um councilmember evelson i don't know if this is can i ask about the tree here is that allowed

3:07:59okay um the question i had is the um i have a i think i have a pretty good uh remembrance of the the difference between the rights uh if for if you have a building in the rights if you have a tree and a lot of those things [Music] partially because i once was on the

3:08:25planning commission but partially because i also did an addition so i've been been there mine conformed so i didn't require any conditional use permit but the um what i'm wondering in this case um so you're saying the tree blocks the view not the ha what the proposal is

3:08:53there is some blockage i mean that's but i mean you're saying that there would be a tree also blocks the view and um uh my clients uh could trim the trees so that that would allow for uh more views okay that's what i was wondering yes that was my i believe that's the question in that

3:09:14case um can i ask a question question of sean at this point should i step back yeah yeah or just i think so as my if memory serves me there's nothing about how many stories you can have that's right the issue is height or correct that's correct yeah the height as as um permitted by the the envelope

3:09:40that i discussed in detail right but it's it's um so the um issue about um permitting councilmember wilson we should probably wait for staff comments until we've heard the rest of public testimony i'm sorry okay i i think that was my only if you have any further questions to the applicant

3:10:03you can ask those at this time and then we should continue with the public hearing i've covered um okay does anybody i guess just to be to be fair what what what view does the applicant have from their existing and and new edition um i mean they have vistas of the city

3:10:32if there's nothing in front of them there is a property in front of them but it has not been developed and their lot is at a 28 slope even if that lot below was developed at the planning codes rules i don't believe that their current views would be blocked okay thank you

3:10:57yeah okay miss carter you should never let an engineer review your plans um there's quite a few deficiencies in here okay you have a notation that you're going to remove the flu but you have no indication of where it's going to go and so before i start remove reducing the size of your master bedroom

3:11:17i need to know if the flu is also going to reduce the size of the master bedroom it will not reduce the size of the master bedroom i believe the one you're talking about is on the other side of the building it's external it's on i tell you where you have a notation that you say on one

3:11:33of the elevations you say you're going to be removed and yet you don't show where it's going to go flues do require i'm looking at a31 elevation existing west elevation so that's actually on the existing uh correct where will it where will the flu go and go inside the closet uh of

3:11:55uh let's see bedroom three um so it'll take approximately one foot six to two feet out of that closet will probably shift the wall there and so rather than five foot closets in both of those bedrooms perhaps we'll end up with four foot closets okay and and is that true of the

3:12:18plumbing chases as well you've moved all the plumbing in the house so where will the plumbing chases go are we going to end up with a situation where the garage is unusable because you have uh a plumbing fixture that comes across at five foot eleven i hope not um

3:12:37and again the reason i'm asking is because these all require square footage when they perforate one floor to another right and if i'm going to reduce the size of your master bedroom i need to know that i'm still leaving you with a livable space on the on that third floor

3:12:53so i i do think that we can use that chase in the closet so potentially that bedroom gets a smaller closet or perhaps the bedroom bedroom two that's slightly larger than bedroom one gets an armoire instead of a closet so that the entire closet can go to bedroom three um but i

3:13:17believe that there's room between those two bedrooms and the closets there to put in adequate chases okay um can you please actually yes can you go to the slide where you showed the red area which would make your project conform yes and why not make it conforming so i i did

3:13:42come up with some alternate uh plan options okay that's that's good to know that it's possible that that makes our that might make our decision easier right right because in essence uh you have the capacity to change this to a conforming application and render this hearing moot is that correct

3:14:03i don't know if that's legal anymore because we're here yeah it is possible so if if you if you deny this conditional use permit then we would go back to the drawing board devise a plan that that did not incorporate that corner of the building and then we would submit

3:14:25again to planning um i wouldn't i would not necessarily go that far i would i'd rather have a condition that you you know make it conform so that we don't necessarily delay your project any further um talk to me about the kitchenette what is the plan for the kitchenette

3:14:44so uh i believe that my client is willing to either remove the kitchenette or uh make that lower portion into an adu so that it would be in compliance do you have a sense of which well my client is here um and so perhaps because that would make it that i mean i've been advised i can't extort an adu

3:15:08from you sure but we do need affordable housing so i i it the the attorney hasn't looked forward yet to tell me i'm crossing the line but okay thank you um we'd have to talk to matt and natalia about that okay great thank you that concludes my questions no further questions okay

3:15:37thank you so we're going to call for other public testimony allowing speakers up to three minutes each okay um mateus kyle i i'm not sure i'm spelling saying that right kenya atui kim settlos settles and then um mahati farde the first couple speakers i apologize if i mispronounced

3:16:07all right good evening um i'm the owner of the house um i simply wanted to tell your name my name is matthias kyle thank you yeah i simply uh wanted to um state that i we we when we designed this uh this house remodel we were very thoughtful and careful about not to

3:16:35block anybody's views and do and the minimal design that will not interfere with anybody's either view or privacy the the neighbor that we consider that is most affected especially by because of the privacy issue is our neighbor to their to the right side and he's actually

3:16:56happy uh with our design he's not saying anything um the one reason we have because we did not uh the main reason why we did not extend towards the backside of the house is because the slope is pretty steep and it will create the same it will kind of repeat the same issue

3:17:17because we'll end up with a house that looks like a set of stairs and and it is also from a budget perspective a lot more expensive to build because we are in a landslide area and we are in a high fire hazard zone so the cost of extending out is much more than extending only 10 feet

3:17:37to the right to the existent structure that's basically the main reasoning behind it i also personally double check the dimensions of the existing square footage and it matches with the original description of the of the original building permit so it is unclear

3:18:03why that second story is not mentioned on the on the original building permit but when you add up the square footages footage of the upstairs plus the one we have downstairs it matches uh with the numbers that are on the original permanent applications and besides

3:18:22even if that was not legal i don't see any way that anybody can live in the only on the first floor of the house because almost half of it is just garage and there's no shower and there's only half bathroom and it's tiny living room that's it thank you for your time

3:18:45so kenya ali and then kim settles good evening good evening my name is support [Music] the construction that we're discussing here and i'm against the appeal because the way the appeal has been described is a little deceiving it also hasn't been established that the blockage of the view is going

3:19:24to be so impactful i believe the construction is going to actually add value to the property which in turn will add value to the neighborhood so i am very much in agreement with this construction it's going to make our city better and it's also going to continue with our

3:19:46plan of affordable housing and as a resident of el cerrito i have to support affordable housing thank you downstairs kevin saddles that person here excuse me mahathi fard and then hi good evening my name is mehdi and last name fart i'm a resident of el salvador for last 30 years

3:20:24so we have a house on a hill which has a view and by reading this proposal i'm kind of scared that one day this will happen to me and i we will lose our view um if i agree with you hundred percent if this is such a small addition and can be done without then why go through all this

3:20:51and go through this type of back and forth and and objections and contra objections why can't we stick with something that is allowed rather than getting the use permit so that's my comment to the board thank you thank you to joanie m to joni hashimi excuse me and rick kaplan

3:21:20hi my name is tatyana hashemi and i'm also a resident for more than 30 years in el cerrito and i am concerned about this conditional use permit i'm concerned about making exceptions about certain things that has been established i mean your emblem here you're showing the view

3:21:45forty something it was almost 40 years when we bought our house and that's why we invested in el cerrito invested our money now you're starting to make make exceptions for something that i just you know he the owner himself said there is an option that's more well it's more expensive and i

3:22:04understand as a young couple it's difficult but on the other hand like when somebody said one person there's one person that's going to be unhappy why if that person is a little bit more frugal and takes his time and does something that is maybe more expansive even for himself instead of making his

3:22:25upstair neighbor unhappy then everybody can be happy so i really recommend that you uh honor this appeal and do not make exceptions like that uh that are i wasn't very clear about how much it seems like the designer the people are not very clear what is clear is they have another

3:22:46option they have so much land that they could use for the addition that they need and i think they should go back to the drawing board and make that addition and i think you should deny this appeal at this point with so much unclarity thank you thank you the last speaker is rick kaplan

3:23:11and that person's not here either we have a speaker though sorry i wasn't there because i arrived later but i am the other owner of this property and i would like to be heard if that's possible my name is natalia carney so i should say i'm the co-owner um thank you by the way uh there are a

3:23:32few items that i would like to mention and the first one is um right now our property it looks uh awkward it's not looking pretty it just looks like somebody cut this property in a very awful way and there are lots of problems with this property but the main thing is when we

3:23:56first thought about buying it we were aware of the fact that it looked that way and we did our research with the city of el cerrito and they did agree that there was possibility for also expanding and improving the the property so um it sounds to me like i'm hearing so many

3:24:19things like i have to cut one floor of my property off because they believe is not supposed to be there this is sort of he says she said nothing is real but i never heard of such a thing of somebody asking someone to take a piece of your property off because you disagree with it

3:24:46it sounds a little too much to bear with however i am a mother i have one son and i would like to have another one and unfortunately the way the property is set up right now is not allowing me to have both children on the same level i will have to have one son on a

3:25:07second floor and the second son or daughter in the basement so i can't do that unfortunately that's one thing and the other thing is like my husband said thinking that this property wasn't built this way is assuming that there was a kitchen a two-car garage and a living room there was no full

3:25:33bathroom no bedrooms in this house when we are measuring the height of this property we were measuring from the street up the basement was an addition that was on later on that was an existence that wasn't counted for when the property was first built and my neighbor across the street must be a

3:25:55very nice person but he trespassed on my property three times it is becoming a little bit of a harassment issue and i realized that we're asking for an exemption and yes we could very much make it fit into the envelope and call it the day but unfortunately now the house will again

3:26:14be awkward we won't have the space work working efficiently for us within the house that's why we're doing this bothering so many people and trying to explain that we have an architect who has spent so much time and dedication in trying to show that if we were to be approved for the

3:26:34exemption that we are applying for now the house will be harmonious it will be beautiful and it will be for the best of the community thank you can you please fill out a slip after you speak after you speak yes yeah and please state your name my name is francesca green i live on harvard

3:27:10street which is above it so when you look at the houses where their house on that side of the street all those houses are single story so if they put in another portion of it the exception was made to put in that single story but that's thrown the whole look of that street off

3:27:30so if you make the exception for them every other house on that side is then going to want the exception theoretically so then you're going to block every view of everyone behind they knew what the house looked like when they bought it if they wanted to expand and i get it you want to expand

3:27:47your family then expand to the back but you're going to break the uniformity of what the neighborhood looks and the only one that's going to benefit is them because they'll have a full panoramic view with nobody blocking them i don't see how it's going to be affordable housing because if they ever

3:28:05decide to sell it and they get the addition it's going to be more expensive not affordable so that's all i wanted to say thank you okay so we're going to have additional speakers if you don't mind just let you know let the council know that the new owner bought this property is a

3:28:30general contractor he knew exactly what he was doing when i talked to previous owner who lived 60 years on that property she told me that the new buyer which mr kell came to the santa open house twice they know exactly what they are looking for so they were knowledgeable of everything

3:28:53so and his general contractor he can really build it from the back of the property because he's a general contractor his cause is much much cheaper but they decided they're going a different route that's all i wanted to let you know thank you okay thank you okay we're going to bring it back to the

3:29:12council to for additional questions of staff the applicant and appellant let's start with council member greg lyman ms carter the existing foundation is suitable to take this additional load uh honestly we haven't gotten to structural or geotech at this point um so we

3:29:37there's going to be some retrofitting to the existing foundation that's that's just when you're adding that third story to that portion of the house there will be some retrofitting and and the cost of that foundation retrofitting couldn't be used for new foundation further down the hill

3:29:59it's possible yes and and i just want to reaffirm it's possible for us to have a project that's inside the building envelope yes great thank you okay um i think that's i think i've exhausted my questions thank you i have no further questions councilman wilson i have no

3:30:24questions councilmember fidelli i had a couple questions for city staff sean i was wondering just how the city deals with when a property is going to be renovated and construction is going to possibly happen to it if permits on the existing property were not met

3:30:48um so we're saying there's something in your question there's some permitting that didn't happen on this house and once a new owner comes in to deal with uh refastening and changing the house does the city care that there were not permits do you just move on and say

3:31:10let's start from this is the new beginning of where this house exists no so um you know an owner at any a property owner at any given time is responsible to make you know is responsible for permits on the property so it starts new again with the new owner any being responsible yeah and any

3:31:30current owner is is responsible for that so if if if we are aware that there is un that there's unpermitted work that's been done on a property um then it you know then it is the current owner's responsibility to either you know remove that work or get it permitted

3:31:47so there could be retroactive charges on this house for permits not having been paid in the past so the so as i discussed in the staff report the um the permit history is uh is a little bit murky um it's it's not unusual for older permit histories like this to be to be

3:32:07incomplete and have inconsistencies there are we we have the um the county worksheet from the original building permit which has some some information filled out on it it's it's difficult to reconcile that information with what exists on the property that's kind of my question is what does the

3:32:30city then proceed with so at some point at some point the building official has to make a determination about what is and isn't permitted so i have i have reviewed this project with the building official and he did not see a reason to to believe that this uh upper story was

3:32:51was unpermitted given given that the the only bedrooms in the existing house are on the upper story the only full bathroom is on the upper story um it's difficult to see you know if you if you look at the main level of the house it's difficult to see where that

3:33:07ever would have accommodated uh bedrooms um so you know it leads us to believe that that's a judgment call that happens with the city my last question is in a in a case where a view is so important um i think someone said the city didn't go up to look at were invited to come up

3:33:27and look at the view is there a reason why the city doesn't go up and check it out and say this is a major takeaway so that that offer was extended um after the planning commission uh after the planning commission approved the use permit um so once when staff when we did

3:33:46an investigation of the site and the surrounding area in writing the use permit for i'm sorry in writing the staff report for the the planning commission um we looked at views from the public right-of-way which is what we had access to you know obviously we can't trespass

3:34:05on onto private property um and so that that's why in the staff report it was written that it was difficult to assess the view because the house was quite a bit above the street and so without trespassing on the property it was hard to ascertain exactly what the view was

3:34:21from that property but we did the best we could and and looked at the view from this you know from the public sidewalk the owner of the property said they invited the city up there so that was done after the after the staff report was written um and then subsequently

3:34:37in in the appeal documentation that they've submitted to you they've submitted a variety of photographs so we you know we felt that there was sufficient information to to see the view at this point i'm just thinking as people have said in a city of views that should be a key

3:34:55component that the city makes sure of you isn't unnecessarily taken away because that is value to here so okay thank you yes go ahead councilmember abelson so what i remember from when we uh uh gave people with trees uh in some circumstances the right to a view

3:35:21um is there is and i think i know the answer but i'd like you to express it uh is does a homeowner have a right to a view so we have an ordinance that says that that trees uh should not block views and when they do there's a detailed process through which property

3:35:43owners can resolve those disputes the city doesn't get involved in that dispute resolution process but there's a detailed process that's stipulated in addition to that four structures and four additions we have this three-dimensional building envelope that i described that gets

3:35:59narrower as it gets taller so it doesn't explicitly refer to views but you know the the idea is that uh the the massing of seconds you know upper stories is limited um thereby creating more view corridors but there's no right to a view nfma for the council just just to

3:36:21clarify this point because i think it's important for um the determination here if you if you look again at the graphics that um council member lyman was pointing out and also pointed out um by staff there's a good one on a3o of your big plans if you want to look at that

3:36:37everything within that first dashed line is something that they could build as of right without a permit whatsoever from you guys the cup part is actually on the back half of that so that whole square could be filled in with a house block views all the way up to there and

3:36:57that's not something that requires a cup from the council okay uh likewise it's i mean we've said this already it's it's the height it's not the number of stories correct that's the issue correct the development standards set a height limit not a limit on the number

3:37:22of stories okay and you were going through and showing us how you calculate that on a slope right yeah if you have any more questions i can i can go into that in more detail okay i have one question um what is the city's uh position and uh views and the right of views in uh

3:37:47single-family homes so like i said there's an ordinance that says that the trees should not block views um and there's a process for resolving those disputes uh the and but in terms of structures um you'll see in the findings for this use permit it does refer to views

3:38:05because they're because they're seeking a a a height um extension of the seeking a five-foot extension of the allowed envelope so that does uh call into consideration some findings related to views but other than those specific findings um there are there are not any

3:38:25considerations uh regarding views that that you are required to take into account i have one more question yes so the other homes on the other side of the street that are according to the report people people saying in their report are mostly um single story what is the

3:38:47the envelope of those homes has there been any comparison done um as to could they all build two-story homes if they wanted to all the way down the street i can't say for certain because it's so dependent on the topography of any given lot so with without detailed topographic

3:39:06information it's it it's almost impossible to model the the permitted building envelope um so you know i can only i can only um guess that it would be similar to the you know to the subject property um but it's it's very site specific did any of just just a raise of hands did

3:39:29any of the neighbors look at any of the other properties envelopes besides this property that's in question okay and you haven't come to the mic yeah please have him come just thank you uh most of the houses on that side i would believe would have the right to grow to a second story based on the

3:39:59envelope that was described by sean um oh by the way i'm shauna hoff i also resident um so yes by granting this you you might be setting a standard that you're basically granting things in the future otherwise why would you say no to one and yes to another i don't know but um i

3:40:18would be i would believe based on the topography and the houses that are across the street now that are primarily one story they would all be able to go to two okay thank you okay any other questions here okay um i'm going to call for a motion to close the public hearing

3:40:39do i hear a motion uh i'll move that we close the public hearing second okay i have a motion by lyman and second by party okamoto all in favor aye aye okay motion carries so we're going to go through uh council deliberation next sure i'll start out i i will agree with

3:41:04the resident from harvard street that uh and an unimproved property is much more affordable than an improved property there's no question about that my comment about affordable housing had to do with the accessory dwelling unit in the detached effectively detached area

3:41:28that was described as being a rental property now which certainly doesn't sound safe given my looks at it it probably is such that uh it's not a safe uh structure at the moment if it is a rental property um so my comment has to do with essentially one of our findings

3:41:53uh in our resolution or proposed resolution is that prior to the issuance of the building permit the project shall be revised to include either removal of the unpermitted work or legalization of the unpermitted work and and my comment was around removing an option and i'm i'm probably going to

3:42:13be instructed that we can't we we can't do that but they can voluntarily agree to something similar that's correct um you can require them to come up to code by either removing the kitchenette um or by applying for the necessary permits to permit an adu but you can't mandate that

3:42:37they have an adu right um so for me uh you know i i did hear the applicant uh say that that 10 square foot area 10 16 16 square foot 17 square foot area would make their home much more efficient um so it it's interesting it's it's a two glass wall so i don't know that what

3:43:07furniture or what efficiencies they would potentially gain out of that uh glass area um so that's remember alignment i just want to say if we're approaching at 11 o'clock we do have to set our waist weights tonight so i would like to move that we extend to 11 30. okay

3:43:25i hear a uh motion by lyman second from uh abelson all in favor aye um yeah that's fine thank you i meant to do it earlier uh so i'm i'm you know our last speaker spoke about setting a precedent and uh the the unfortunate truth is that they have the right to do this

3:43:52across the front and it's only the 10 the 16 square foot area in the back that is out of non-conforming or needs a use permit a conditional use permit to to build you know that the easiest thing for us to say would be uh remove that 16 square feet and and you have a project that's that's the easiest

3:44:16thing for us to say um knowing what dimensions of rafters and things like that it it it's going to be much more aesthetic and much more of a of a structure that overall serves el cerrito to build it the way that the designer has conceptualized it and and uh so i'm torn

3:44:40between uh between having something that's within our current uh use you know base right or granting this conditional use permit i i actually haven't made up my mind i'm that's the point of the deliberations mayor potem well i do feel for the appellant [Music] i know that if i bought a house and it

3:45:09had views i would not want those views to be blocked and i do believe that this appeal has to do with blocking a view however it is already the right of the owner according to the to the envelope to block the view regardless of the decision that we make today the decision that we make today would

3:45:34uh impede the person that is trying to build to just having a normal shaped room for their child and i it would still block the it would still block the view so i believe that the the owners are within their rights and unfortunately it sounds like the whole block could build a second story

3:46:00because it's within their rights and i think the lesson for me is if i ever move up that hill i should look and see what those next door neighbors rights are before making any purchase and i just think it's an unfortunate situation okay that's remember abelson yeah i um i agree

3:46:26with um council member uh port pardue okimoto that in what she she said and i think it has to do with people's attitude towards a right to a view and um the basically what it is i think is that somebody across the street does not own a right to to the property downhill

3:47:01um or next door or whatever they didn't actually pay for it so the it has to do with something else and so i'm inclined to think that [Music] it may it makes more sense in terms of neighborhood values to allow a house to look like a normal house and to allow a family to have

3:47:42what i would call more normal space uh in rooms and um so it would so i'm i'm inclined that way okay council member for delhi yeah i think we've touched base on the difficult el cerrito issue um is uh how and when to modernize and what what happens to a view when that happens i

3:48:09think in the neighborhood and along the arlington and various offshoots there's a generation of some homes that are very small and in need of repair in need of growth to accommodate families um and my inclination is to go along with our planning commission's decision okay

3:48:30and uh looking at the matter and looking at all sides of this i i tend to agree with my uh colleagues here on the council growing up here in el cerrito i know many of my uh friends and neighbors who wanted to stay in el cerrito instead of moving to the outer suburbs were able to

3:48:51add additions to their small homes that were made post world war ii and the 1950s so i truly believe that as a homeowner you have every right to build and expand i see that the house across the street has a beautiful view on the top floor with the deck there and and that should

3:49:12be sufficient and no one has a right to make sure that everyone has a chance to have a family have a family to live in their home uh new families need more space uh so i tend to agree with my uh colleagues here so i'd like to uh uh see if i'd like to entertain a motion to uh

3:49:38on the resolution do i have a yeah i'll move the resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrillo denying an appeal and upholding the planning commission's approval of a conditional use permit to allow a height increase of the main building envelope for a

3:49:57723 square foot addition at 1827 arlington boulevard okay and i think you need to don't doesn't she need to state the findings do we not need to do that anymore we don't need to read through this finding specifically um they're in the resolution so we're adopting the

3:50:18findings as they're set forth in the resolution okay i have a motion by mayor pro-tem pardo okamoto and a second by abelson all in favor aye aye aye okay motion carries unanimously there is something for the trees [Music] you would have to check the city and look at the envelope on the specific

3:51:00property okay okay we go to the next item the whole infrastructure of the city will change good maybe more taxes you can pay your debts that's good you already had made up your money okay item 6b is integrated waste management fees and espace sanitary garbage and green waste collection and

3:51:36processing rates so i'd like to make a statement on this this item involves two separate public hearings we have maria sanders here we'll present the staff report which will cover both public hearings once we have heard the staff report i will open the public hearing on the proposed integrated waste

3:51:57management fees followed by the public hearing on the proposed east bay sanitary garbage and green waste collection and processing rates members of the public will be given an opportunity to speak at each of the public hearings anyone wishing to speak should submit a speaker card to the city

3:52:13clerk at this time only remarks will be limited to three minutes per speaker let's begin with our presentation from staff maria good evening thank you thank you mayor quinto and members of the council and it's a little bit past my bedtime i imagine it might be past your bedtime as

3:52:31well so um i have about a five minute presentation and i'll try to make it really quick um i'm the operations and environmental services manager and uh tonight we'll be holding the two public hearings in order to set the rates for our solid waste and recycling services

3:52:52our division manages the city's curbside recycling programs and the city's recycling center and we also oversee the contracts that we have with east bay sanitary who's our franchise waste hauler and republic services who processes all the waste and green waste that is

3:53:11collected now um let's try this one uh so our solid waste services are funded by three different components on our residential and commercial garbage bills thank you and um they include an integrated waste management fee which funds all the recycling services provided by the city

3:53:44maria can you advance the slide one uh oh it didn't it started over at the beginning oh i see there we go thank you um and um so it's a it includes these three components include an integrated waste management fee which funds all the services provided by the city including

3:54:05the operations at the recycling center and our curbside operations a per service rate for the collection and transfer of garbage and green waste [Music] by espace sanitary and a per-ton disposal and processing rate by republic services and that funds the land filling

3:54:29the green dry and c d waste processing as well as our household hazardous waste program the rates and fees for these three components are based on the annual revenue required to run operations that provide these services each every year staff and our consultants

3:54:49review the revenue requirements submitted by uh east bay sanitary and republic to verify that they're accurate reasonable and according to the established methodologies of our agreements and as a part of our rate setting every year we also establish the fees for the iwm fund

3:55:11so tonight we are requesting adjustments to all the components of the solid waste rates and this results in an overall increase of rates of 5.77 percent and as detailed in the agenda bill and in this slide the total operational cost which is our revenue requirement is um

3:55:31actually going up slight um uh slightly less it's a 4.92 which is closer to the bay area cpi of 4.3 but once you factor in residents and businesses migrating to smaller garbage can sizes the overall rates on the actual garbage bills increase by that additional 0.85 percent

3:55:59this is a recurring factor in our annual rate setting and it's due to the fact that our rates are based on the size of the garbage can even though there's many other services that are provided in um as a part of that rate so residents um that migrate to a 20 gallon can service

3:56:18or a business that reduces its garbage by switching to more recycling service these these are all really good goals but what it does do is it also the rates that are needed to cover the fixed cost to provide these services must be spread out over a larger over a greater number of customers who

3:56:40pay less for the month so another primary driver of the increase is um the dramatic downturn in the global recycling market which has caused which was caused by some prohibitive chinese restrictions placed on the imports of recycling markets or recycling materials um this is um a

3:57:05global problem it's not just an el cerrito problem and in fact i think that we're hit less hard than many other communities but this throughout the united states and elsewhere these restrictions have resulted in relatively large increases in rates to offset the revenue that was lost from

3:57:26recycling this is also true of our rates particularly as it affects the curbside program also included in the iwm fee increase is to cover the fund balance of loans that were discussed earlier during the audit report so this is what our new rates will look like for

3:57:57the different customers served they um this equates to an increase of about two dollars and ten cents or two dollars and fifty cents per month for the majority of our customers um which are the twenty gallon and thirty five gallon garbage service and i'd like to end on a couple

3:58:18highlights um which is um after about a five month absence we now um have a new donation center operated by st vincent de paul at the recycling center so i'd like to invite folks to come to the recycling center and do their end of year donations tax deductible donations um uh

3:58:40let's see it's also results in some revenue for us and our new recycling trucks are now on the roads um and this is one of our our drivers who are quite happy with the new trucks and finally we are proud to announce that the recycling center also won an honorable mention

3:59:01from the national waste and recycling association as best recycling facility of the year it's important to note that even though we got honorable mention which you know first we were feeling a little slighted by but our competition were huge corporate state-of-the-art

3:59:18processing facilities so they're really meant for really industrial cleaning the recycling that comes out of curbside streams in very large volumes so so i think that they made an exception to give us this award based on the extensive services and the community-based services that we provide

3:59:40at the recycling center um so i'll leave it at that and i'd be happy to answer any questions okay great we will uh bring this to the council let's start uh we're here with council member lyman sure of the 450 000 loan that we're trying to repay how much of is being paid back in this particular

4:00:01year yeah uh the a part of the increase of about three percent of our increases uh towards um paying back that loan it's actually it's a timing issue though that that 450 is a snapshot exactly on july 30th 2017 and um there is a our iwm fees um and our last iwm fee for the year

4:00:26actually comes in uh september so so it is um it actually kind of some of that is a reflection of the fact that the um that those and that those fees aren't showing exactly on on that they arrived exactly on june 30th so so it's not um as large as it seems but if i'm hearing you correctly

4:00:52whatever you know whatever we the general fund lend to the iwm which may have been to purchase bins um it kind of odd that it because we did have the almost 400 000 come from recycled more at some point so i'm trying to figure out because i know my very first meeting

4:01:13back in 2000 december of 2008 was to approve eight hundred thousand dollars worth of of cans um that we purchased our gray bins i think it was right for the crib sign for the curbside so uh presumably we've been you know i have no idea what the loan was for but presumably we've been trying

4:01:34to pay off whatever the loan was and and so i'm i'm trying to try to understand will this make that loan thing go away on june 30th 2019.

4:01:46uh no um but over time over like a couple years it will as long as the rates keep going up i mean we have a tr we have erosion costs go up so there will be i think that um we have modeled in a rate we basically modeled in for the biennial budget to two years of about seven and a half

4:02:12percent this year we're putting in 12 percent mainly for [Music] the recycling revenues was a part of that seven and a half percent but then because of the fund balance stuff that's one of the reasons that it's that it's higher and it is getting us to uh no kind of negative unbalance so

4:02:37okay thank you yeah and i don't know if mark is mark here and he's still here yes oh no no i'm sorry i'm talking about mark russia he's still here too i don't know if he wants to um uh make um have any other information that he wants to add to that i will say the

4:02:53new truck was on my street this morning and i waved to the driver he was very pleased with his new truck okay um yeah i don't have any questions okay council members just a quick question the uh saint vincent de paul do they provide the same service that the prior the goodwill did

4:03:19i believe it's a more it's a more superior service it's the same amount of material there but the workers that are there are in are just much more helpful and um much more proactive so they do take the same things that they took yes yes okay thank you mm-hmm that's remember and that's good news

4:03:42that's good news to hear about that uh two quick questions this is we we set the these rates annually yes we do every year we'll come back for this um and i think we're maybe as you described it in your your paper set out kind of in a dilemma about as we go towards smaller

4:04:01garbage people are recycling more and we're not getting as much money for the recycling anymore right right because of china and other incidents that are happening to us so a good thing is that we're getting less garbage but we're not getting the bang from the recycling that we used to yes

4:04:17that's correct so is it every year we're projecting out maybe it's gonna yeah we're modeling on it i i do believe that um the little silver lining to what is happening in china is that um it really there's some soul-searching that we all have to do about our own recycling

4:04:36habits and um and and the way that we go about doing manufacturing so i know that the um that the state of california is looking at how can we become a little bit more resilient so that we're not so dependent on outside markets that will take time but they but i do believe that um

4:05:03uh in terms of the rates um we have kind of modeled in what um we believe because we are still commit we are still getting um money from our from their center um because it's all sort of source separated and uh that does um hasn't that value we're actually working harder to get more

4:05:27value out of that in order to make up the shortfalls um and i just do believe that at one point or another that the markets will begin to recover having said that we are not modeling um any more you know we're not modeling that we're going to be making more over

4:05:44time until we see that happen because we don't know when that's going to happen and last quick question the and mainly about the cost of this effort i know there's an effort to educate our businesses on organics can you update i mean that's a three or four year effort going out going forward yeah

4:06:03and it's actually right now there's um the state has a man a mandate that um mandatory commercial recycling and mandatory commercial organics recycling as of january 1st 2019 businesses and multi-families that are of a certain that generate a certain amount of waste

4:06:26have to comply so we're spending we are spending time with those businesses making sure that the comply documenting that compliance for cal recycle who's the the state entity that's mandated it and um and are in charge of regulating it and uh um also providing technical

4:06:48assistance uh on both the cost for us doing that is staff time yeah staff time yeah hang in there okay that's a number line is there any reason not to increase the fees to cover our loan faster no there isn't just other than you know the impacts on ratepayers but then we would be able to either hold

4:07:17the rate steady or even reduce the rates next year theoretically hypothetically yeah i do the rate that we set this time around gets us to a place where it's not fully paid back um but it is um it is at a rate that the next year it's never it doesn't have to be that high um in

4:07:41order because um the way that it's modeled is that it um we are now at a place where the it's fully we're not dipping into what was our fund balance um the recycling center or not the recycling center but the iwm fund had a fund balance and we were dipping into that

4:08:02but now we're at a place where that is where the fees really pay for that without dipping into a fund balance there is a fund balance yeah there is it's more than the money due the city the general fund at this point in time the it's um it's slightly negative the fund is negative yeah

4:08:28i just pulled up the budget i guess we could talk about it offline but the budget had a six hundred thousand dollar that is um assets yeah so that's the assets i'm sorry i meant to say that it's the um unrestricted fund balance is is the negative part great thank you

4:08:45and it's a small it's a relatively small negative balance do you recall what rate increase we recycle more approved last week was that five percent six seven point one seven point one right so we we are not going up as much as our regional that's what that's why i'm saying this

4:09:04there's some there's some room for us to be to to have the same parity as our neighbors um and recover this balance faster so i i don't know what numbers we have to tweak to do that but i would be i'd be inclined to be fiscally prudent and try and get us healthy as fast as possible i don't know

4:09:25if mr versailles any recommendations or if our waste hauler has any recommendations if mr fagoni has any recommendations either did you hear did you hear the assistant city manager's question her question was do if we change the rates do we have to extend the hearing

4:09:49lots of thoughts going through my head um yeah that's a potential issue in terms of changing the rates we'd have to re-notice it and also in addition we may have to revise the fee study to justify the increase in rates above what's selected if i could there's a lot of math and homework that

4:10:08needs to be done as you recall those numbers were from more than 18 months ago and there are if if it was the wish of the council we could do a mid-year adjustment to the rates we haven't done it but we could but we would want to time it properly to not be that disruptive but i i think we

4:10:28want to look at it in terms of all of the all of the issues that came up today right and where we actually are going to be and not just to take a guess tonight i withdraw my question um speakers at this time okay good so um i'm going to call a public hearing on

4:10:48the integrated waste management fees each speaker is allowed up to three minutes for remarks there well i have no cards for speakers move to close exactly okay uh so i hear a motion to close from lyman and a second from abelson all in favor aye aye ocean carries so uh council deliberation

4:11:12wants to start we have two motions tonight if i read my packet correctly i will gladly move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerritos establishing maximum allowable rates for the collection of garbage and green waste effective january 1 2019.

4:11:30okay okay um we have a motion by lyman second by abelson all in favor hi hi motion carries i'll move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito fixing and setting the integrated waste management fees me i think we're supposed to conduct a second public hearing before we do that

4:11:51as much as we'd all like to get out of here one it wasn't one joint public hearing unfortunately no okay so i'm going to open the public hearing or the east bay sanitary garbage and greenways collection and processing rates each speaker is allowed up to three minutes for remarks

4:12:09we have no cards for speakers okay i moved to close okay so i uh a motion by lyman second by uh abelson all in favor aye aye ocean carriers that's unanimous i move a resolution of the city council of the of the city of el cerrito fixing and setting the integrated waste management

4:12:26fees effective january 1 2019. second okay i have a motion by lyman second by abelson all in favor aye aye motion carries thank you okay i move extension of the meeting by five minutes to the hour of 11 35 seconds okay um go motion by lyman second by abelson all in favor aye aye

4:12:59is unanimous to continue our meeting till 11 35 11 35 okay okay i just want to let you know you have two i have two cards for public comment i don't know if they're both here okay okay so we are on seven a and seven a is adopt a resolution approving a employment agreement between the city

4:13:25and karen pinkus to be our new city manager okay one thing i have something here to read and i wanted to say as of january 2017 state law requires every legislative body of a local agency to orally report a summary of proposed action on salaries salary schedules or french benefit of

4:13:52executive level employees and summary if approved the employment agreement for the new city manager would set her base salary at nineteen thousand one hundred sixty six dollars and sixty seven cents per month and provide most of the same fringe benefits as the city management

4:14:10employees receive in additionally provides us 75 hours of administrative leave annually and payment of the premium on the surety bond that the city manager is legally required to post i guess i'll do a quick little staff report for lack of a better term since july

4:14:38mayor quinto and i have been meeting with council and the assistant city manager to discuss contract terms and uh rate and i will say that uh it was a pleasant experience uh to negotiate with karen um she drives a very hard bargain and uh i i challenged her to take that to all of

4:15:08our uh other matters that she will be representing us on so um thank you and i look forward to many years of working with you okay mayor protem well um it's getting late and i'm having less to say but i'm i'm just excited about being able to work with karen and um

4:15:34and i i i think that she's definitely going to be worth every penny that we're paying and i wanted to let everyone know that we we seriously took into consideration you know what other city managers are being paid in this area as well as making sure we came in somewhere between

4:15:54our other highest paid employee in the city and below where our exiting manager is at right now um and um it kind of makes me wish i would have gone to city planning school a little bit but you know um but i will i will do my job from from the seat and um i just really look

4:16:16forward to working with karen over the next several years thank you okay council member abelson yes hi karen i remember when karen started here and um she's come a long way and anyway i think this is a um a contract based on a good consideration i guess if you want

4:16:47to call it that and i'm ready to move forward okay congratulations karen i'm very pleased that you've moved to el cerrito and that view that we've talked about all night i think the view is going to be from that office upstairs that you're going to be spending a lot of time

4:17:04looking out that window on san pablo avenue and it's going to be great fun working with you and we've got a lot to do okay thanks okay and uh as mayor i had the um the honor uh to work with uh council member lyman on this and uh uh and to work with the city attorney and and i want to thank

4:17:26staff and the city attorney that that helped us coordinate this and uh it was a pleasure uh negotiating with uh the assistant city manager and our future city manager and when scott hannon and i and our police chief flew out to baltimore and to introduce you as a new president of the

4:17:53international city managers association i knew then that we are very lucky and very blessed to have you as our incoming city manager and i look forward to working with you uh for the next four years and uh it's it's going to be uh you know challenging at this and uh but i know

4:18:16you're the right person for the job and i want to say congratulations to you so speakers speakers yes we have two speakers yes and the first one is cordell hindler and then christian teal okay so good evening uh mayor quinto and and i know i'm gonna cut this real short

4:18:36because it's getting time late so i and we've have been in part of these um these special meetings that you all have had in recent months so i said this would be opportunity for um for for canada you know to step in uh scott's shoe i know it's gonna be some pretty big shoes to fill but i i'm sure

4:18:56she can do a a wonderful job but you need a city manager who will work with the uh not only but with the this council but departments and members of the community that because they might have some some inside you know ideas that i would like to bring forward to you that's one of them number two is

4:19:12um you got to set a vision you know as we move forward to 2019 depends on what the outcome is going to look for the new council coming in next month uh you got to like make sure that that vision is set in stone and number three you always got to have a good sense of humor because when

4:19:28you're under like you know crunch time you got to figure out that say that you got to have a good laugh you know to laugh over all your problems so i think that karen i think having karen here as your next city manager will be very helpful and so christian move to extend five minutes till 11 40

4:19:45seconds okay i have a motion to extend for five minutes from lyman and second by uh abelson all in favor aye aye motion carries good evening greetings christian elsevier resident i am welcome you to the new um post i do want to caution to the city since what we heard today about the dismal

4:20:03budget uh you know report about the audit there has been overspending including the 85 000 plus dollars that were spent on the flyers for the measure v now measure v comes into effect you won by a small margin you are going to get this revenue but you're also prone to going bankrupt as i said before

4:20:24at this very council right here there is a chance that el torito if it continues overspending which includes new incoming city manager 220 thousand dollars is about 20 000 angular more than jerry brown the california governor so i try i'm having a hard time understanding

4:20:46what actually warrants this kind of pay plus pension and um given the dismal fact that you know what what we've seen today and the numbers of what the city has and what it has spent without getting revenue in is um shocking or equally shocking is some of the city council members obvious

4:21:09ignorance about the status of the budget of the city and i thought despicable was watching scott hayne and play on his cell phone while the audit was being presented in in city hall at city council so that kind of reflects the kind of work ethic and attitude that um

4:21:29apparently has been um exhibited here and which brought the city to go and to be in such a dismal financial state so i just want to say that um i'm not happy about where the city is financially and i think the um new incoming um you know city manager is getting paid a very high rate

4:21:52and i think it's it is time to have el torito council consider cutting spending and not overspending more manners usually dictate that i conclude this by saying thank you but i can't bring myself to say thank you because i don't see any reason for that have a great night

4:22:16okay is that it sherry yes it is so we'll bring it back here to the council there's a resolution in here somewhere ready to move okay i moved the resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito approving an employment agreement with karen pinkas to serve as city manager

4:22:48okay we have a motion from pardo okimoto second from abelson all in favor aye aye aye motion carries unanimously okay and one more thing here we have a city council local and regional liaison assignments anyone care move the table okay do i hear a second on that okay okay

4:23:16um all in favor aye aye motion carries so we're gonna adjourn this regular city council meeting the next regularly scheduled council meeting tonight on this this meeting is on tuesday december 4th 2018 at 7 pm in the city council chambers you