City manager are we ready to get the show on the road no no I figured you'd
hot step it I believe so yes good evening and welcome we're going to call
the meeting to order to tonight's regular meeting of the
Arundah City Council we'll begin with the roll call city clerk would you please
It is called the roll. Okay Councilmember Hoxie here, well Connie. Here, Riley. Iverson
here, note for the record that Vice Mayor G is absent and has an excused absence is
evening. Thank you. And next we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance if you'll all please
stand. I believe 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.
That brings us to the adoption of the agenda.
I have one proposed change,
and that would be to bring city manager
and council member reports.
I believe we were doing them after items
for the good of the city and before public forum,
if I remember correctly.
If, please let me know if you guys support that,
or if you are not liking that temporary change.
Shoulder shrugging, thumbs up.
So with that, I would propose we adopt the agenda
with the change that between items D and E,
we add our reports.
Do I have a second?
Second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Thank you.
Oh wait, do you need?
Oh, right, because there's nobody distance.
Right.
Okay, with that, we have one item
for the good of the city tonight,
and that is recognition that February
is Black History Month.
It is a tradition to sort of pause
and acknowledge the significance
of that month long holiday,
and especially I like to compliment the horrendous schools,
both the K-8 and the high schools,
do a really good job of weaving it into the curriculum
in a very broad way, and I always appreciate that.
Are there any comments that anybody wanted to make?
Okay, great.
With that, we will move on to public forum.
The public forum is an opportunity
for members of the public to speak on any item
within the jurisdiction of the city council
that's not on the agenda.
Additionally, if you'd like to address the council
on an item that's listed on the agenda,
but you will not be here when we address that item,
you're welcome to come and speak at the public forum.
With that, we'll ask each speaker
to limit their comments to three minutes.
I have one speaker card, and that's Priscilla Rich,
if you're here, thank you.
So, these are eight copies.
All right, yeah, thank you Mayor Iverson
and the full council for this,
or the almost full council,
for this opportunity to speak tonight.
I'm Priscilla Rich, resident of Danville
and CEO of a 501c3 nonprofit,
Transition Express Incorporated, based in Danville.
I'm here tonight due to former Mayor Malcolney
being interested in my non-profit's new feature
length film, Our Town, making impact for a livable planet.
She and I cross paths at a Mark DeSonia event
here in Arinda this past December.
This film was a four-county project last year
involving high school students from San Francisco,
Sonoma, Napa, and Contra Costa counties
with environmental science teachers,
a Sierra Club chapter leader, and a vice mayor.
Very proud to say we had quite a team involved.
Showing the film would start a great conversation
here in Arinda on building better resiliency
and priming for a renewable energy future.
I suggest having the film shown in this auditorium
where I understand that tables could be put
on the stage area, I understand,
from a library, and I spoke too about this,
to accommodate about 150 attendees.
After the film's showing, I can offer a Q&A with myself
and a high school team member from NAPA who's involved.
Following that, I suggest a breakout discussion
among the tables on how to create a Team 100 here in Arinda.
Just a suggestion.
My plan is having venue settings like this
for showing outside of California starting next fall,
and you're helping me with this process.
I'm glad to be able to present this to all of you at once
and look forward to hopefully planning this showing
with whomever you choose to work with me on it.
Thank you very much.
Did anyone have questions or comments?
No, just to remind that because something's on public forum,
we can't actually respond.
This hasn't been an agendized item tonight,
but I would love to follow up with you individually.
Wonderful, okay.
Thank you for hearing me out
and look forward to hearing from someone.
Thank you and thank you for coming to Arenda tonight
to share this.
Yeah, okay.
Thank you.
Is there anybody else tonight
who would like to speak on public forum?
Seeing none, we will move to the consent calendar.
Are there any proposed changes
to the consent calendar tonight?
Seeing none, I would move that we adopt the consent calendar.
do we have a second weren't you gonna do oh my god I'm so bad at that yes I
need to I might need to start typing that in when we're doing this do we have
City Councilmember reports I do please go ahead and leave us anybody else just
want to report that at recycle smarts retreat last week we went over all the
that are going to take effect next year,
and we'll be hearing more and more about what changes
are going to happen in our everyday recycling trash lives.
But I thought I'd give you a couple highlights.
In terms of recycling plastics,
they're going to limit the number to just number one,
number two, and number five.
Right now it's one through seven,
and that's all based on market, you know,
You know, the actual market, there's no market for the other plastics right now.
They're going to give us new extra pickups.
You can get four yard trimming pickups, four extra yard recyclables for a total of eight
extras.
So if you're trimming and pruning, you are going to have an opportunity to get those
free pickups.
There's going to be an extra reuse cleanup day, in addition to the scheduled ones.
There's two scheduled ones you could call and say,
you know, I got a lot of trash, please come pick it up.
They're extending the list of all the things
that you can bring out on reuse and cleanup days,
including furniture, appliances, TVs, mattresses,
box springs, all these things that weren't allowed before
and they're increasing the weight
to 200 pounds per item, eight feet.
And that's just a few of the highlights.
but next year come like end of February,
this will all come into play
and hopefully we'll hear about it many times and learn it.
One question is how will they be
doing consumer education about that?
Will it must be the mailings and kind of newspaper stuff?
I don't know, of course it'll be that
and I don't know if it'll go beyond that in person
and whatnot, but we'll do our part.
Are there any other council member reports?
So because Darlene is out of town,
I attended the LFFA and LFPM meetings on her behalf,
and they were relatively perfunctory,
but I wanted to mention that at the LFFA meeting this year,
year after year, the rate for the fees that we collect
is actually going down because they measure September
over September and the construction costs
during that period actually went down by 1.6%.
So the development fee, the impact fee
will actually go down this coming year,
which I thought was very interesting.
So I wanted to share that.
Good news, Axel.
I attended the Cal Cities Conference in Sacramento
and also policy committee
for our East Bay Division of Cal Cities.
And there was a, you know, it's always,
some of the presentations are those that we've seen before,
you know, but what was one of the things that was striking
is there was a lot of discussion, of course,
on the budget, the state budget,
and you know and also anticipated legislation and I'll make sure that I have our city send
those slides and materials to our city clerk so you can all look at them as as you'd like but
in terms of a highlights I mean while there's always a difference with between the governor's
estimates and the legislative analyst office estimates which tend to be a little more
you know theoretically a little more accurate right the governor's budget tends to be
I can think less conservative in terms of predicting what a deficit will be but you know
then we're looking at huge numbers in terms of a deficit and the LAO's office prediction was
something like 20 million for each of the next three years right and that might be overstating
it compared to what the governor's budget was but in any case and you know cities are being asked to
do more with less and that was really clear in terms of some of the budget priorities um and of
course Cal Cities is going to advocate um and continue to try to bring greater resources to
our local jurisdictions but just something to think about. Okay thank you I had um one thing to
share and that's that I did a ribbon cutting at the Orinda Care Center last week um and I really
wanted to help them spread the word it's an existing facility but they're sort of doing a
a reboot in terms of reintroducing themselves to the community, sort of new management,
a lot of new personnel, and a facility upgrade, but they really want to sort of help get the word
out that for long-term care as well as for recovery from surgical skilled nursing, they
really want to be here for a Brenda residence and so to help spread that word that they're here for
people to be close to home when they have those needs. And with that, are there any
if you have a speaker. I'm
sorry. Any other councilmember
reports? I'll ask the city
manager, uh, public comment
allowed on the council member
reports. No, it is not. Well
is it item on the agenda? So if
we have a speaker, I'm sorry in
that case. Yes, I'm sorry.
For the record. My name is Nick
something about a $20 million budget deficit.
And I'm wondering if you meant to say 20 billion.
I did.
If I said 20 million, I miss both.
Wouldn't that be lovely, right?
I just wanted you to know I was paying attention.
And I have a question.
You're welcome.
I have a question for Council Member Hoxie.
When you, in terms of the,
what you referred to as the development impact fees
that were discussed at the meeting of the thing
with the four initials.
That's only a transportation impact fee, correct?
Yes, that's-
Has nothing to do with the drainage impact fee,
the parks impact fee.
No.
The public safety impact fee
that I asked you folks to consider,
but you refuse to consider or any other impact fee
other than transportation.
Correct, just transportation.
Thank you for the clarifications.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
And may or may offer procedural clarification because we don't
typically get a public comment on council member reports.
My recommendation would be that you.
Take those comments as you do for any other item.
So let the speaker have their full three minutes.
And then when they're finished speaking.
Then respond as opposed to a dialogue because.
That's.
That's helpful. Some more like we would do with public forum.
silence during the public forum.
But the reason that there usually
aren't public comments on these reports
is that when they're at the end of the agenda,
by that time, everyone has gone home.
Thank you.
My point in making that comment is
that we don't want to take any of the three
minutes of the public's time.
So they get their full three minutes to speak.
Then they conclude their comments.
And then that way, we make sure nobody loses their time.
And then if we have questions for the speaker,
or we would like to respond briefly,
Is it a brief response as not a lot of substance
when we're responding to report questions?
That was fine.
I just wanted to make sure we keep being consistent
on our timelines.
Appreciate that.
Perish the thought that council member Malcani
had not been given a chance to correct her error.
It's at a certain point substance
is more important than foreign, thank you.
Thank you.
And I apologize to the city clerk that I did put the public form out of order from what I said I went from how we adopted the agenda so hopefully you can just reflect that in a minute.
With that, we do have the consent calendar there are no proposed changes on the city colleague.
on that. Honorable Mayor members of the City Council, I'll keep it relatively brief. Later
this week, East Bay Mudd will be working finally on their paving project on Camino Sabrante.
We'll be working with them to ensure that they have temporary detours in place to get
the paving work done. Just received notification that the board is holding a workshop called
the Alternative Services Workshop on February 12th. I believe at that workshop they're going
to paint the picture of what BART service might look like if there isn't something on
the ballot to help fund them over the long term.
And another note, I received information from council or Vice Mayor G that the RFP for the
regional emergency evacuation planning effort has been put out, the RFP has been put out.
So that's good news.
progress there. Just a reminder to the public, two items, we're gonna be
hosting evacuation modeling training on February 18th and February 24th. February
18th will be in the afternoon and February 24th will be in the evening
both on Zoom. And just a reminder that the city is still accepting applications
for the 2026 Commission and Committee recruitment. So if you're interested in
serving please turn in an application to the city clerk's office. Thank you. I had
one question city manager. That BART alternatives I couldn't tell if that was really aimed more at the
city manager that sort of city staff to hear that or were they sort of expecting
regular elected officials to be attending? The notice I got was sent out to the elected
official and to the city manager advising them that that's workshop is taking place which
presumably they want to make sure we're aware that they're going to be discussing
potentially closing BART stations. Thank you. Was there going to be a public comment on?
If I may your honor. You may. Thank you. Nick Warren off. I'd like to supplement what the
city manager said and what the mayor Iverson said. BART announced some time ago that it might be
closing as many as nine stations but the public announcement never identified the stations. I did
a Public Records Act request and I got the list of the nine stations. Arinda is not, as of the
preparation of this list, Arinda was not one of the nine but both Rockridge and Lafayette were
And I think I just want to start folks thinking about the implications of that for the BART
parking lot because common sense would indicate to me that people from those two stations are
going to be converging on BART and unlike Rock Ridge and more or less unlike Lafayette there's no
big residential neighborhood around there for people to park where you could put up a four hour
limit or two hour limit. So I think it has serious implications for those who are thinking about it.
If we have to add a lot of housing in the seventh cycle and there's been a lot of talk about doing
it at BART. So I think as part of the bigger picture it's something worth keeping in mind.
And the other aspect of the BART parking lot that another aspect that has not really been looked at is that it is my understanding that both the emergency services team was that the emergency services team is the current emergency plan calls for the BART lots to be a staging area.
And so if those disappeared, where would this staging area be?
And the Contra Costa transit, CCTA Contra Costa Transit
Association, their master plan for helping arendans
evacuate is to stage buses at the arenda park parking lot.
Thank you.
Great, were there any more comments or questions?
Okay, with the help of my friends,
are we ready for the consent calendar?
With no changes to the consent calendar,
I would move that we adopt, do I have a second?
Second.
All in favor?
Aye.
With that, we have adopted the items on the consent calendar
and I believe that takes us to G1,
which is a public hearing,
introducing the zoning map amendment to ordinance 2601
and draft general plan map amendment resolution 126,
draft plan Arinda revised finally IR
and CEQA consistency resolution 226 regarding amendments
to the general planning and zoning for 23 Alta Linda Road.
And it looks like we've got a staff report ready to go.
Yeah, we do.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Thank you, Mayor Iverson, council members,
thank you for being here.
Thank you, staff, and thank you to the public
who are attending this tonight.
This is the 23 Alta Linda Road general plan
City of verinda. Tonight we're
going to have a quick
presentation. Um do a summary
background of the request.
Clearly articulate the general
plan and zoning amendments
request. Talk about public
correspondence on this topic.
Um also reiterate the
recommendations of the Planning
Commission and discuss the
Landress analysis, which is the
analysis, which is the fire evacuation software, and then discuss next steps.
Just a quick refresh on the hearing process, it's multi-step. The item has been called
by the presiding officer, and there are some procedural elements in terms of this being
a public hearing and clarification of ex parte rules. The staff summarizing the issues before
the council that does this presentation. I just want to briefly stop. Is there anything we need to
do before we launch into the presentation? Right, so typically on this screen we quickly
review the whole list so that council and the public knows what's coming. This is by now a
familiar hearing process. We followed the same process when you were considering the Chevron
rezones that were before you recently. So Mayor, would you like to review them or would you like
I don't know what.
Would you like me to do that?
To go over them verbally.
To run through.
Yes. Would you please do them?
And then can we do the ex parte?
Before we resume the staff.
Yes. Thank you.
That's my recommendation. Okay.
So we've completed one.
We are now working on two.
I will now review the ex parte rules.
If you would each.
communications that you'd like to put on the record, that would be the time if, for example,
you had a meeting with the applicant.
You need not repeat information that's already in the written record, right, that might be
attached to the staff report.
You can simply say, I had a meeting with the applicant, they reviewed with me the materials
that are in the packet.
But if there's something additional that you learned, that would be the time to indicate.
Okay.
You will under number four will come back to that you'll do the disclosures, then we'll
have the staff report that's number five questions from Council, then the applicant, who's here
this evening will be given up to 15 minutes to make their presentation, they can reserve
time for rebuttal, then have questions of the applicant, then everybody else who's here
this evening who would like to speak will each be given three minutes. Then the applicant will
give an opportunity to rebut if they've saved time for that. And then after the public testimony,
it'll be before the council for deliberation. All right, so now back up to number four.
And I guess we'll go in this direction. Any expertise to disclose?
Yes, I had a meeting with the applicant, and I do not believe that they shared any information
with me that's not included in the record. I met with the applicant via Zoom a long
time ago. It was several months ago, probably mid-25, I believe, and it was an introduction
to who they were and shared a very high level some of the information that was in the packet.
Thank you. My experience is the same as Councilman Maleconny's. I met with the applicant
seems like a long time ago, many months ago, and got a overview of everything and nothing
particular beyond the package. And I had the same timing and about the same format of discussion
many months ago. And so with that, we'll turn it back to the staff report to please present.
Okay, thank you. So just a quick summary of this project. This was a request for a change to the
general plan and the zoning for the site 23 Altarinda Road, pictured on the right. 23 Altarinda
Road is approximately 0.60 acre site and it's located on the north side of the street.
So it's in a location in Arinda that's part of a regional cluster of highest opportunity
areas within the county, and there are lots of public amenities and transportation resources
near the center of this community. And the site was included as part of the plan of Rinda EIR. It
was fully evaluated under the certified revised final EIR, which was approved March 18th, 2025.
Just a little background on the site itself. It's in the East Bay. It's on the north side of State
route 24. It's approximately three quarters of the way up the hill from Camino Pablo,
and it's less than one half mile from the Arrinda Bart station.
It is today an existing two-story office building, an associated surface parking lot.
It's currently designated as business and professional office in the general plan and
zoned as DO downtown office. So this site was part of the plan Arrinda certified revised final EIR.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
The EIR included 2,000, well, it's I'm sorry, it considered development of 2,383 new residential units across multiple sites in the downtown area.
It did include 23 alternative road.
It also included potential future development applications, things like the state density bonus law.
I did want to show the council members those sites, nine, Altarinda 15, as well as Camino Pablo Davis, Semre, Erinda Way.
These were previously downtown office. They are now downtown general.
Twenty-three Altarinda is making this request to change its designation in a similar fashion from business professional office to the proposed downtown general.
So, again, this designation was analyzed under the EIR. It was found that no environmental
effects, it has no environmental effects that have not already been fully examined. So,
as part of the request to change the zoning designation, an evaluation of consistency
is undertaken. Again, the revised final EIR in March. The applicant request came to the
city in August of 2025. The evaluation of consistency was developed after that and completed
in November 2025 and a companion to the resolution, the findings of fact and the statement of
consideration was completed in November 2025 and then updated for this presentation January
2026.
So the CEQA determination was that no further evaluation of environmental impacts is required
for the proposed general plan and zoning amendments.
The project in this case, this is the request by the applicant.
No subsequent or supplemental EIR or negative declaration is necessary due to this review
in the initial plan of end of EIR. The consistency analysis completed is the appropriate level
of environmental analysis. So that is the summary of the CEQA determination. And as
noted, the findings of fact and statement of overriding considerations is included with
one of the attachments and has a summary of findings, which are not only fiscal findings
but also findings around the policy agendas of housing creation and long term objectives.
The applicant and this particular request is for a general plan amendment. If approved,
23 Altarinda would be designated under the following land use classification,
downtown general. This designation, it reflects uses and development currently allowed,
but it would additionally allow the mixed use and multifamily residential development on the site.
This is the attachment in the packet of materials. This is the general plan map. 23 Altarinda is
identified with the circle, and you can also see the recently rezoned other sites that it is near.
this request is also a zoning amendment change.
So again, if approved, this zoning would change
to DG downtown general and the DG district,
it allows the multifamily residential development use
and it also sets a minimum and maximum density.
So minimum density of 20 units per acre
and a maximum density of 25 units per acre.
and this also is the map showing the area
and showing how the zoning map amendment would apply.
The planning commission,
these items went to the planning commission in advance
and they recommended approval,
but it is now being brought to the city council
for their deliberation or y'all's deliberation.
So public correspondence, I just want to review briefly.
We have gotten some public correspondence.
We did send out a project referral form.
We initially received the request
for the amendments change and some project plans.
And then that was withdrawn.
So under consideration right now is
the change to the zoning and the general plan designation.
that change in the applicant's request initiated a second project referral form and another
several weeks of review. That review was a two-week period and it was extended a week to get MOFD's
comments. And the agencies responded to the current general plan amendment and zoning amendment,
although because of the initial proposal many of the comments, and you'll see this as I summarize
them, were very standard project requirements that any development project moving forward would need
to follow. So we did receive comments from Caltrans for several agencies, Caltrans, East Bay MUD,
PG&E, BART, and MOFD. And then we also receive public correspondence. So the public correspondence
from the Arinda Woods Homeowners Association, Nick Warnoff, Sandra Wells on behalf of Neil
and Janie Wells, Brian Griggs, the applicant, Michelle Jacobson, and then comment letters
that took a position either for or against the project itself. So the agency comments just
Just to summarize, most comments focused on standard project conditions for a proposed
development project. That is a typical way that agencies are engaged. And so they have
standards that they require for any project which they often send to the municipality.
And given the change in the request from the applicant, any proposed development will have
to address topics, any and all of these topics recommended by the public agencies, but they're
requesting an amendment at this time. Public comments, because of the initial release
of this proposed development project, it was withdrawn, but we did want to note that initial
comments from the from the Arinda Homeowners Association did oppose the height, the massing,
the setback, the lot coverage, the number of stories and the potential impact to traffic
and views. The app the applicant has changed their request since that time. However, there
are still public comments in opposition to the proposed redesignation because it's unnecessary
that we do. Um you know,
necessary to meet state
mandated housing capacity
targets. The rezoning has has
met that target. And then also
concerns about evacuation in
the event of wildfire. Um we
also heard early in the process
about concerns about the daily
business flows, traffic and
parking on alter in the road,
So, um, you know, some good
So considering this, this item to Planning Commission, their recommendation was to adopt the resolution indicated here. It was noted there was an error and so there was an amending of the one of the findings.
to adopt a resolution and to adopt an ordinance. So they they voted in favor
of moving forward with this item. Given the conversation around evacuation and
the conversation globally that Arinda has been having about evacuation as well
as a new software product that they that the city has profiled and actually has
Arinda has up scenarios up on Arinda Ready web interface for the general
public at this time. We did some more targeted looks at evacuation scenarios considering
this particular development and then considering a zone evacuation as well as an area evacuation.
And we did three tests. This is a summary chart for that. So I'm just going to walk
through this and try and explain what the software product, which is called Ladras,
it can help the city understand about potential projects coming forward. So three scenarios.
Scenarios are always done comparing the current state to a scenario state. So the zone evacuation,
and then there's a zone evacuation with 23 Altarinda. So we're comparing these two cases.
What's it like today? What's it like with the change? And we looked at the total clearance
times. This means the time it takes for everybody to leave the designated area that needs to
be evacuated. And you can see one hour 26, one hour 24, one hour 28, one hour 27 minutes.
Those minutes are all hours and minutes are all quite similar. And that each one of them
represents a run. So four runs have been done, two of each kind, two showing the existing
conditions too of the scenario conditions. And the model itself works with AI and it
simulates population dynamics, the dynamics of evacuation. And so there is no single number
it keeps doing. It's an active model. And so you do multiple runs in order to get a
sense of what is the time duration that it's going to take to really evacuate an area.
And so that's the approximate duration column, is to say, it's approximately one hour and
a half to do this zone evacuation, just about 3,000 people I will show you graphically after
this, I'm just doing the summary table.
But the second three lines are about the actual evacuation of the entirety of North Arinda,
we got that question in public comment about, well, what happens when everybody has to leave?
You know, what does it mean when is at the current state today? What does it mean if 23
Alterinda becomes a housing site? What does it mean if the all the housing element sites are
built as anticipated? So setting up those future scenarios. And what you do see is that because
it's a much larger area. It does take two hours and a quarter. Again, you can see these multiple
runs that are happening in terms of the total clearance time. But you can also see that there's
much greater variability is that you could maybe take two and a half hours to clear today. And then
with 23 Altarinda, you could take less than that. You could take one hour and 58 minutes.
or the opposite could happen. Today you could leave and it could take one hour and 50 minutes
to get everyone cleared. But with 23 Altarenda it might be two hours and 14 minutes. And so there's
a variability associated with this. But I think it really gives us some good idea of like, well,
how much time does it take? And it's really helpful for understanding of what it takes to evacuate
zone or an area and how people are looking into that. So this is just sort
of some of the background data, the total clearance time, the trip time, the
passenger cars, showing the baseline as it is today on the left, showing the
change as it is on the right, and there's a lot of data that goes into these
models, so this is really not it's not particularly legible but it's meant to
show you there's a lot of data that goes into generating this and that's why it
it has this dynamic quality to it.
And as I mentioned, that first question
was if a fire starts north of 24 and it travels up the hill,
given a wind direction that's consistent with winter,
given it's a red flag day, a certain wind speed,
it's low humidity.
So these are some very standardized assumptions
used across.
And just to show that this is where those numbers get
generated, that one hour and 26 minutes for everyone
to leave, but 34 minutes for an individual to leave.
So it's dynamic, thinking about people get alerted.
They get 60 minutes to think about how are they going to leave?
What are they going to bring with them?
And then it shows that not everyone
leaves at the same time, that people leave in sequence.
And that begins to dynamically show that there'll be bunches
and there'll be best times.
And at the beginning of an alert, the earlier you leave,
the lowest your trip time is.
So it's also a way to encourage you
when you hear an alert to go at that time.
So again, we looked at all of North Arinda as well
and said, let's look at North Arinda as it is today.
let's look at it with 23 Altarinda.
Again, different geography.
So in this case, the fire is in the Breonnais area,
and it's coming towards North Arinda.
North Arinda is told to evacuate.
The time is longer, 2 and 1.25.
The shorter time is 1 hour and 50 minutes.
And that's for everyone to leave.
For an individual trip time, it's shorter,
but it's still significant.
It's still an hour and 18 minutes,
an hour and 14 minutes, depending on the condition.
And here you begin to see with this larger area,
more people leaving.
It's even better to leave early
because those trip times are much shorter
at that beginning of that.
And the trip times get larger.
And you can see the majority of people,
lower graphs, the majority of people are leaving towards that center of that time zone.
So these are outputs that the software generates, just to kind of explain how it's modeling.
And then we wanted to really look at the housing element component. There's been discussion
about yes, this is significantly more unit, maybe 700 units. How does that affect things?
One thing you do note, I wish this were a little bit more legible, but one thing you
you do note is that the passenger cars, it is higher than the 23 Altarinda, which is
a single development. This is multiple developments. And same conditions of everyone north of
Atlanta is leaving. We have a fire in the Brionas area. But the thing that you notice
is there is not a substantial difference. And this is, I think, the dynamic nature of
evacuation is that multiple paths are found. People are
getting there. But I think there is a reality to understanding
that it still does take two hours, two hours and a quarter
to get everybody out. So a fast moving fire, it's really
important to grab your stuff and go. And to understand that it
will take this much time to respond in this way to get
everyone to a safe, safe location. So again, the same
graphs about about leave early, the trip times are lowest when
if you do that. So that's just to give you a sense of like
really trying to trying to kind of get some information, some
education around how does an evacuation occur? How can we
help everyone to understand this? How can we prepare and
plan. And interestingly, that there are there's a difference
between a small area having to be evacuated versus a large
area to being evacuated. There's a difference in the
variability. The time differences was not they were
not substantial. And so it's it was more what was much more
noticeable was the variability around that. So just to give a
window and then there's many more scenarios to play with on
public website. So I just want to also just put in a plug to to go to to ERINDA ready,
check out the scenarios, take a look at that. So to bring us back to 23 Alterinda and the
request that is before you, the applicant has requested a general plan and rezoning
designation change. So if this change to allowing for residential use
And the density targets that were sent, if that is approved, these are the following
actions.
Waving the full reading and introducing the ordinance that was provided, 2601.
And then directing staff to bring back for adoption resolution 0126.
And then also to bring back for adoption resolution 0226.
So that's just to reaffirm the action.
And then what happens next if found positive, the rezoning change happens within the 30
days after adoption.
So that's a quick summary of the request.
Thank you very much.
Before you go, I'll ask if there are any questions for staff.
Yeah, please.
Okay.
I, yeah, I have, I have some questions in general, some of them go to the presentation,
Thank you. It was very, very thorough and really helpful. The information from Landris,
I think was really important. We got some public comment and I did want to make sure
I had questions about some of the items raised therein. And so I don't know if some of these
are for you or for our city manager. One of sort of the general, this was raised by one
of the public comments for me. What we're being asked to look at today is the
general plan amendment and rezone and there is not sometimes when these
matters come to us they come with a fit when I use the word project I'm using it
lightly because I think there's there's I want to clarify sort of that what is
being brought to us today is sufficient for the request and that there isn't an
additional we don't have to we don't you know the rezoning itself is enough
we don't have to have a more developed understanding of what the project at
this at 20 throughout horrendous would look like is that correct or can you
explain that how that works somebody sure I mean I can give an outline
overview of that it is at the applicant's discretion they would need a
rezoning they would need a general plan change and they would bring a project eventually is the
assumption for getting those changes. They don't have to do it together and so and in terms of
really reviewing just the change in designation there was a finding of consistency with the plan
EIR and it being already evaluated.
And as we're referring to the EIR, we're referring to the final revised EIR, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
That was noted in all the correspondence, but I just want to be clear on that.
Yeah.
Um, I have more, but I don't want to hog if others have...
Okay.
So also in terms of the, you know, there were some questions raised. Again, this is from the public comment and I want to thank everyone who did comment quite a few.
Yeah, I think that's a great question.
I think we have quite a few.
There was some discussion about sort of the.
Suggesting that the housing element is all about Rina or my takeaway
from one of the public comments was that the housing element was all
about Rina allocations. Right.
And, you know, I know when we, we looked at the housing element.
There was.
There was a purpose behind it and sort of there were goals and policies behind it and I'm hoping that you can remind us of of what those are, because I think it is important to in other words, how does the, how does housing element its goals and policies, how does that go beyond
Um. I don't know. Yeah. I mean,
the housing element is part of
the general plan. I think it is
important to associate it as it
is one of the state mandated
elements of the general plan,
so it's it's a creature of the
general plan on that. It does
have a state mandated arena
allocation, which has, um, a
capacity need as well as a need
But the housing element itself is a larger policy document.
It talks about just about these questions around, you know, providing for the population
that lives in the state, and that this is a social societal benefit, and that they're
trying to locate this in resource-rich areas with transit and services, and they're trying
to really provide for the broad spectrum of the community. That's why affordability is emphasized.
So there's a much broader housing consideration associated with the housing element. But there
are some nuts and bolts around the arena numbers and how those decisions get made at the state
level. I don't know if anyone wants to add to that. No, I think you did a pretty good job. I
mean, if you read the introduction to the housing element, the purpose of the housing element is
broader than simply abiding by the RENA allocation that has been assigned to the city.
Thank you.
Can you help us understand if these additional units, if we rezone and at some point additional
housing is built in an area that has not been identified as part of our housing element,
is that count towards the number of units or is that on top of or can you talk about the buffer
and how what the impact of those units are on the city's obligation to create room for the housing
the Rina number? Yeah I can give a general sketch and then invite folks to add to it is that
that there you know there is a capacity set it has been successfully rezoned so that is wonderful
The, the other part of that though is realizing units. And those sites are targeted and they were targeted through these initial conversations about the probability potentially but we all know economy economics change rapidly.
And so whether those sites will come to the, you know, to the numbers that were assigned. That only time will tell on that.
And there has been an initial application
for a housing site that did not include housing.
And so the buffer that was there at one time
has been reduced, and there are dangers
with hitting a no net loss situation
if you're not producing the units.
So it's not only about capacity,
but it's also about realizing those units.
And then there's a timeframe, 2023 to 2031.
So that's an important component of it.
Did I answer your question fully?
Yeah, I think I also wanted to just simply add that HCD,
when they're evaluating progress towards the goals
of the housing element, RINA numbers.
RINA sites are one way.
Production numbers is also a category
in which they evaluate how well.
So production does not always equate to RINA sites.
So they're always looking for housing production
in addition to what is potentially happening
with the sites that were designated for the RINA numbers.
Though as everyone knows,
we settled a lawsuit in this past year.
As part of that lawsuit,
we were able to finally come up with the final EIR.
One of the comments that we received seemed to indicate
that that would somehow limit the amount of housing
that could be built in Orinda.
And I'm wondering if someone could speak to the judgment
from the lawsuit and its impact on housing in Orinda.
I think that's probably a question for me.
I think I would start by saying that indeed,
we faced a CEQA challenge to the Plan Orinda EIR.
And we're ordered by the court to go make some amendments
to our CEQA document, our EIR, and we made those changes.
And the court then discharged the writ,
basically explained that we had complied.
So at this time, the litigation is complete.
We are not under any remaining orders of the court
to do anything or make any changes.
The Finally IR is final.
And so I think that helps answer your question,
but we're not, we haven't been ordered by the court
to do or not do anything with respect to housing.
Okay.
There's been talk about the buffer of the renin numbers
would this potential change in zoning help with that buffer?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So as I think we've discussed,
we had planned for quite a substantial buffer
and that was in part relying on the Caltrans gateway site.
But when HCD certified the housing element,
they did not permit us to count those units,
which basically brought our buffer down
to very close to zero.
This puts us in a situation where there's the potential
for a no net loss problem, which would be
if an application comes in for one of the housing element
sites that doesn't match up with what we were expecting
that site to be and counting on that site to be,
we could end up needing to find another site.
Okay. The 23 Alto render road, I think, as everybody understands was not a housing element site. But if we have a no net loss issue, it could potentially help us solve that problem. Now, there's a lot of ifs and speculators. I'm not saying we're in a no net loss situation, we are not, but there is with so little buffer, which is where we are, there is the potential for that. And so I think to your point, yes.
And to the city manager's point, yes, production is helpful to bridge a gap like that.
And was there a reason Altarinda wasn't included in the original downtown of Indus?
Now that I cannot speak to.
I can't speak.
I think it was, you know, it was a snapshot in time, right?
There was outreach to property owners and this property owner wasn't in the picture at that point.
And so I don't think they're on the list.
but times change and they have now requested to be general plan and zoned for housing.
Are there any other questions? Yeah. One thing that did happen in the revised final EIR is the,
you know, all the additional wildfire related mitigation measures. That's one of the things
So that's it, but I think it's
really good to know what are the
things included, right?
And I did want to sort of my
understanding and observation is
that the city actually has moved
forward on a lot of those, and
so I don't know if this is a
question for our planning staff
or our city manager, but I was
hoping that we could just take a
minute and go through some of
these mitigation measures
to understand that we actually are making progress on these. So at the risk of taking a few more
minutes to do this, I do want to go through them and what I'm looking at, and I don't know if I'm
looking at the right spot in the packet, but it was packet page, starts on page 98, which is the,
it's in the page 35 of the sort of attachment, which is I think the.
It's attached to item G1 if you want to get it from what it's attached to.
You know, and so I know generally, right, there's, if you could just speak,
if staff could just speak a little bit to some of these mitigation measures because there are
things we've we've done we've we've we have we see we have the Ladras wildfire modeling software
right and I know we just got some federal funding to work on expanding Moraga Way and so if you
could just sort of highlight again for sure I can tell you that it's very close to my heart I'm
spending a lot of time on these wildfire mitigation measures. Specifically, the first sort of set of
the measures deal with transparency, tracking, and planning. And so obviously, we are in the
midst of updating our emergency operations plan, including our wildfire evacuation annex.
We are tracking all of our efforts pursuant to the wildfire mitigation measures and reporting
on those. As part of a safety element, we've included the wildfire mitigation measures as
part of our reporting. The SSTOC is receiving regular updates on that. We actually went through
and tried to figure out the best way to deliver that information because there's such a volume
of information to share. So I think two meetings ago, we ended up finding a good sort of cadence
for how to do that. So we did that and we will continue to do that. Those measures will
then be presented to the City Council on a regular basis as well. We have pursued the
grant funding, particularly for the Moraga Way Widening and have received the grant funding
from the federal program and working with the town of Moraga to receive that. You have
been getting those updates from us on the wildfire improvement measures. We will continue
to do that I believe in the springtime and you'll see it again. And I believe as part
of the La Marinda Finance and Fee Authority, wildfire capacity needs for the roadways are
being evaluated as part of the fee update. And we have monthly coordination calls with
M-O-F-D where we specifically have topics on there that are addressed in the wildfire mitigation
measures. And we've made some adjustments to our staffing to address wildfire planning and emergency
planning. And we are working on currently on additional ways to enhance our education. A
render ready is one of the efforts to do that. And then the wildfire evacuation plan is measure 13,
which we are working on currently with the consultant who is developing our emergency
operations plan. And then of course 14 being the use of emerging technology,
the LADRS program in order to help with modeling and public education as it relates to the time it
could potentially take to evacuate large-scale evacuations. We put 130 evacuation scenarios
in the system. The last 30 plus of those are just zone based evacuations. They don't really
tie back to any wildfire. The other ones are tied to wildfire spread. There's some limitations
on the technology relative to wildfire spread. It does not model ember casting and potentially
structure to structure fires, but the detail on the vegetation mapping is highly precise
down to the five-meter level. That was a recent addition because of the mapping efforts that have
been going on here locally. So we're pretty confident in that level of vegetation mapping
that's feeding the system. So we continue to work and evolve that. And of course, making sure that
we have public education on the use of this tool. This is the first widespread public modeling
that are not looking at how to
provide this information and as a
useful tool to the public in
their own emergency preparedness
planning.
Thank you.
I think that's because thank you
for that explanation because I
think that a lot of us at the
council level, we do get these
regular updates.
We, you know, but it's important
But it's important for this is a public hearing is important for the public to hear it as well.
Any further questions at this point with that. We will turn it over to the applicant to do their presentation.
You get up please let us know how much 15 minutes you'd like to reserve for rebuttals.
in the end? Can I tell you how much in the end? Okay, perfect. I'll use what's ever's left then.
Oh, time it now, but I don't know how. I've written some words. I may only be five or six
minutes. Thank you. I've written a word just to try and keep my thoughts on track, so I hope you
don't mind me primarily reading. I've tried to reread it three or four times. I forgot a lot of
it. Mayor Iverson and the members of the City Council, my name is Brian Griggs, and I am the
the owner and applicant for the rezoning of 23 Altarinda Road. I have read the thorough
staff report prepared by the city planning staff and have also read the public correspondence
from Nick Warrenoff and the Orindans for safe emergency evacuation. I wanted to start by
acknowledging legitimate concerns of both Mr. Warrenoff and OC about fire evacuation.
I respect their efforts to represent the citizens of Orinda against what could be a catastrophic
event in the case of a major wildfire and the resolution eventually reached to the city
to allow the housing element to be finalized seems like a good solution for all concerned.
I had the opportunity last week to speak in length with Mr. Warren off and his conviction
unwavering concerns about a wildfire. And I very much respect his passion about what
could be a catastrophic event. The loss of 31 lives in pal, in the palisades and eaten
fires with 44 people who died in a nap of fires and the 25 people who lost their lives
in the Oakland Hills fires are all significant.
I know several people who lost their homes,
including my sister-in-law in Altadena,
where I grew up in Pasadena,
and friends in the Oakland Hills.
Wildfire danger is real
and becoming even more so with climate change.
Mr. Warnock's comments that you cannot put a price
in the value of a human life are true,
and I respect his passion and legitimate concerns,
as well as those of OC,
about what would happen in a wildfire evacuation.
Respectfully, however, I do not believe decisions
can solely be based out of fear
without considering the important needs
to provide new housing in order to address
the ever-growing population which needs housing.
Wildfire concerns should not create a moratorium on sites
which are appropriate for redevelopment to housing.
My partners and I have balanced the need for housing
with respect for the communities we live in.
We have one project completing construction in Lafayette,
which provide 20 new homes downtown.
We are starting construction within 60 days
on a new 90-unit housing project in Lafayette,
and we have approved project of 99 units in Danville,
which we plan to build starting in 2027.
I've lived in Lafayette for 44 years
and raised my children in Lafayette and Aranda,
where I've been an active member
at Aranda Country Club for over 30 years.
I consider Aranda and Lafayette
to be very similar communities
with the same advantages and challenges for growth.
I'm very confident that 23Alta Aranda is a perfect site
for a new housing development,
given its location under utilized use.
In the applicant statement I provided,
I included an approximate analysis
the fiscal and economic benefits of the potential future development site. This analysis was
based on prior projects, which I have worked on in several jurisdictions within the Bay Area.
But to be clear, the analysis I provided on 23 Altimeter property is only conjecture,
should the rezoning be approved by the City Council and should a future residential project
be proposed, financed, and ultimately constructed. The Council's decision as to,
as that with multiple other jurisdictions where I have received approvals to potentially develop
new projects is not an assurance that a new project will indeed be built, nor will the economic
benefits actually materialize from any actions by the Council tonight. 23 Altarenda is unique.
It is an underutilized medical office building which has reached the end of its current use.
The location, as I presented in my applicant's statement, respects the concerns about wildfire
evacuation, and my proposed rezoning considers the current used versus the proposed use, which
which according to the analysis provided by the transportation firm W-Trans produces
number of vehicular trips during the peak hours when wildlife evacuation conserved at
a maximum. In addition, as the applicant statement highlighted, the location provides two exit
routes in the unlikely case of a wildfire evacuation. By supporting the rezoning tonight,
the City Council will not be approving a future residential development project at 23 Altarinda.
council will not be quote unquote paving the way for future sites previously identified within the
downtown precise plan area to be rezoned and the city council will not be making findings based on
the assurance that the fiscal and economic benefits of the proposed development will occur for sure.
This is not guaranteed by any means that we'll be applying for a new project. It will only give
us the opportunity to apply for a new project. We believe the council will be reaffirming its
prior decision that the prior rezoning was previously analyzed by the revised final EIR
for planet Rinda which was certified by your council in March of 2025.
The request before you tonight is limited.
You are not being asked to approve a housing project.
You are being asked to consider whether rezoning the specific site is appropriate based on
its location, its history of environmental review, and its potential for future reuse
may be better aligned with the community needs than its current use.
If I had owned the property during the city's consideration of the opportunity sites for
the housing element, I am confident the site would have been included as it does not face
the same development challenges as many of the sites which were ultimately included.
The key element to development potential is unlikely, and it is unlikely that the majority
of the downtown sites which had been included in the housing element will be constructed
given the PG&E main distribution lines and other challenges of development.
By approving the rezoning tonight, the City Council will not be setting the precedent
for other properties.
You will not be reopening the downtown precise plan.
You would not be committing the city to a particular development on our property.
You would simply be recognizing that 23 Altarinda Road, given its location, its current under
utilization and prior environmental review is appropriate for residential rezoning and
keeping this option available is a reasonable and responsible planning decision.
The city of Arinda has commitments under the requirements of state housing laws and by
by approving the rezoning request,
the opportunity to present a future housing project
would be the outcome.
I appreciate the council's thoughtfulness deliberations,
the community's engagement and their seriousness
of which the render approach is both safety and housing.
Thank you for consideration.
Thank you.
Before you go, I would ask if,
are there any questions for the applicant at this point?
Okay, great.
We'll do public comment
and then we'll have you back for rebuttal.
I do have one speaker card from Nick Warnoff
and if anybody else would like to speak,
please come up to the podium after.
Before my time starts,
I would ask that the clerk hand to each of you
a single page that I have given to her,
which is page 28 from the staff presentation.
I provided a copy to staff
and I provided a copy to the applicant.
Staff, for the benefit of the public
the audience could we show that page on the screen. So this is all heating into my time here.
I don't think the clock has started yet. It's running right here. Oh sorry we won't use your
time for this. So can I go back to three minutes? Thank you. Sherry's working on it. And I will step
beside so number 28 28 there you go that one one more technology I'm trying
there you go hopefully that'll stop thank you thank you and now city clerk
please start the clock when you're ready thank you
Arida is the community that is most at risk from wildfire in the state of
California. In 2019, a report was prepared for the state legislature that identified
Arinda plus Maraga and Pacific Palisades as the two areas in the entire state at the highest risk.
The tragic fire in Pacific Palisades a little over a year ago means that we are now, unfortunately,
number one. The environmental impact report determined that the existing
evacuation constraints today before any housing is added are already a serious problem
and that there would be a significant and unavoidable impact on evacuation if housing
is added. Unavoidable means notwithstanding mitigation. The supplemental evacuation
analysis and the PREIA concluded that evacuation would measurably worsen but
look at this page 28 because this is really critical okay missing from this
slide on the bottom line there it's North Orinda evacuation with housing
element sites including 23 Alltorinda Road I confirmed that with Miss
Mr. Thompson before the meeting started tonight.
So if you look at the bottom two lines there,
adding 23 out there in the road
could add as much as 24 to 33 minutes of evacuation time,
which although Ms. Thompson described it as not substantial,
I think it's very substantial,
sitting in your car for another half hour
with the fire approaching you.
We've already complied with the housing mandate
by rezoning for 700 to 1,000 units.
And I submit that in the interest of life safety,
the council should draw the line at the housing element,
which is the line it drew last March.
Finally, some of you may remember Dr. Ruth participating
in the ad saying, where's the beef?
Ms. Thompson did not say one word
about the statement of overriding considerations
that she is asking you to sign.
She did not cite a single piece of evidence
in support of it.
Without any evidence, you cannot sign a statement
of overriding consideration. I say to you, what is the value of human life? Thank you.
Thank you. We did receive four written public comments. Is there anybody else tonight who
would like to come and speak? And seeing no one but the applicant back to for any rebuttal
time city clerk, how much time is remaining? You have up to nine minutes if you'd like.
And then we will also ask if there are any further questions.
Thank you.
I will reiterate that Mr. Warrenoff's concerns are valid.
And I don't think at the end of the day the project we are proposing at 23 Alterrinda
is going to break the bank either way.
I think many of the sites you have already adopted in the housing element will not be
developed.
I think if you look at the feasibility of them, they are probably very unlikely due
of the city. Um, you know,
that's part of that. Um,
obviously, it's not due to a
variety of reasons, both
physical tenants. Um
opportunities. As far as the
difference in the math up here.
I mean, one to me reads no
housing element. One reads with
housing element. I'll leave it
to staff to try and sort that
one out. Um, but at the end of
the day, I think 23 out there
and is a perfect site for
housing in the city. I think
it'll give us momentum. Um, I
Obviously, we're below or into woods, but the topography makes sense.
So we do go multiple stories, ultimately with development, which we'll decide.
But I do hope that you give us the opportunity to make that first step by rezoning tonight.
Thank you.
You have questions?
Before you go, I'd ask, are there any questions for the applicant?
Seeing none, I believe we'll now close the hearing and bring it back up for discussion
and deliberation.
Would anyone like to lead us off?
make any cold call.
I'll do defer otherwise I'll go okay go ahead. I mean first of all I want to I want to thank
staff and the members of the public for all the all the detailed thorough public comment
which I found to be really helpful. I you know just to address one thing that just was
raised because I think it is important to recognize and discuss the public
comment that we've received. I read that you know the statement of overriding
considerations is in our packet and we've all read it and I at least you
know read my even though we're using electronically my packets printed out
because I go old-school and need to read paper and spent a good part of Sunday
do this. So, you know, and found it to be really detailed and helpful. Personally, and it did
satisfy me I found it to be compelling. That's one of the reasons I was asking about the purpose
behind the housing element because that, you know, and wanted to clarify that that spoke to it.
You know, I found the information that was given to us during this public hearing tonight was
detailed and helpful and I think responsive to the public comment I found
the information particularly you know all of it was important to me in my
determination but I did find the information from I'm very glad we have
the Ladris wildfire tool I'm very very happy we have that I think it it adds to
transparency I think it's helpful to have data you know into the and you know
for really the reasons that have been brought up in this hearing and also the
statement of overriding considerations what we're being asked tonight this is
an introduction of an ordinance to rezone one site and I I fully support it
for all the reasons sort of stated so council member Hoxie um it's a very small
small site. It's 0.6 acres. I don't know why that small site wasn't included as a potential
housing site when the housing element was first adopted, but it's also very close to
other housing, Orinda Woods, the Orinda Grove. And because of its size, it's not going to
add a significant number of additional cars. I mean, evacuation modeling is so dependent
on how many cars families take, how many people are trying to leave at once, whether people leave
early or wait to the last darn minute and gather their stuff and they're in a big traffic jam. And
there are just so many variables, but this small size of a development potential doesn't seem like
the sort of thing that would be detrimental to an entire community. To me it feels like the sort
of development we should encourage because we need to encourage some development and this project
is sounds like it will be in a location where there are already other homes. It's not going to
really changed the look and feel of Arinda in a material way. It hopefully will improve
Arinda and I feel like it's a good step forward and it also will help with providing a buffer
because we don't know what will be built or not built on the sites that have been identified.
And so I feel like this is a relatively easy site to rezone and I think we should move forward with
with it. Thank you. Council Member Reil. I agree. I think this is a good opportunity
to rezone this one property. I like the fact where it's located is just sort of an extension
of the residential area in the Linda Woods and across the street. I agree with that in
terms of visually, in terms of just sort of accepting it emotionally. It seems like that
number of people in the building in the medical office buildings is greater than the number of
people that would be in the building at the time of evacuation. Number of cars would be less.
So I feel like even though there I don't think it's going to have a great impact on the traffic
during an evacuation. I agree with you but I mean what do we know but that's what seems to me to
make sense. So I would approve it. I have very little to add, I think you all articulated
really good rationale. I would just remind ourselves in the public that this is everything
that the state laws have been aiming at to facilitate easier entitlement. So it's within
a half mile apart. One of the comments in the initial review was that this should have been
zoned to 75 units an acre and they were disappointed that it wasn't more dense,
it's walkable, it's an infill project, we should do this and so I really agree
with what sounds like the consensus and so I would ask if we have a motion.
There's a recommendation on the agenda to sort of tell us what we are being
asked to do tonight. If somebody would like to make a motion following those
three items. I'm happy to do it if no one has a hand to give. I'm happy to move that we take the
following actions as recommended on the agenda. I will ask our city attorney if we need to
or city manager if we need to restate them or can I just say for... I'm satisfied if it's you're
moving the staff recommendation as drafted on the agenda. Yes for item G1 the recommendations that
that are on the.
Which I will shorthand for the public
as a waiving the full reading
and introducing the ordinance that would amend the zoning
and then directing staff to bring the two resolutions back
together with the ordinance
when it's brought to you for adoption.
The two resolutions are amending the general plan
and making the CEQA overrides and findings.
That's the motion that I intended, thank you.
Thank you, do we have a second?
I'll second.
Great, all in favor?
The motion passes unanimously, and that takes us to item H1, the SSTOC annual report for
fiscal year 2024-25, and it looks like we've got Judd Hammond here to present.
I think I'm going to move this down a little bit, that's better.
They could very tall people ahead of me.
All right.
The Supplemental Sales Tax Oversight Commission.
And I hope everybody's read the entire report.
It's so much shorter than last year's.
Okay, so I've got this little guy here.
All right, so I wanna start with the financial overview.
The revenue collected by Measure R
in the fiscal year 2024, 2025,
that is ending June 30th of 2025,
was up a little bit from the prior year
at a little over 3.9, almost $4 million in revenue.
The expenditures were up significantly.
We'll get on to the details on that.
Expenditures were almost $3.5 million,
which means of course that the fund balance increased
through this year relative to last year.
We spent about a million dollars a little over
on wildfire risk reduction and emergency preparedness.
And I think we had a nice demonstration
of some of the progress that was made as a result of that.
We also spent $2.4 million,
almost 69% of the expenditures
on major storm drain repairs.
and we'll get into that a little bit later too.
Fund balance is now about 6.8 million,
up reasonably significantly from the prior year,
and the really excellent news,
Baddawi and Associates, the auditors,
issued a clean opinion on the financial statements.
I want to talk a little bit about this chart.
There's the old saying that a picture sets a thousand words,
and this chart really says a lot.
So you can see, let me see, I have a little pointer here.
People in the audience can see this,
but you won't be able to see it, council members,
but I think you can figure out what I'm looking at.
The bar for 2324, just over $6 million.
The bar for 2425, up somewhat from that.
2526, it starts going down, however.
And the reason for that is that we have some very
substantial storm drain projects planned for the next year.
But then it goes up to over $7 million,
and then up to almost $10 million, up to almost $12 million.
And finally, by 2930, it's going up to over $13 million,
which is excellent.
I mean, I think that's great.
There's no question that having reserves
is prudent and previous presentations and reports,
we have strongly recommended that we maintain a reserve
for unknown, unforeseeable things.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of things that are foreseeable
and the possibility of the failure of a major storm drain
across one of our roads is high on that list.
So it's a really great thing for us to have reserves.
So this is excellent news.
There we go.
Whoops.
Double click.
Too much time on a computer, I think.
All right.
Accomplishments.
And I want to point out, I'm going
to go through a number of these accomplishments.
There's no way I'm going to touch on all of them.
But I just want to talk about some of them.
And we're reporting, I'm reporting for SSTOC.
But it's not our work that I'm reporting on.
We didn't do much of anything.
We made a few recommendations.
The city council's wisdom in directing our city manager,
the city manager's management of city staff.
It's the city staff that did the vast majority
of this heavy work.
And of course, the general residents of Orinda,
who on the one hand allowed us to pass Measure R,
providing the city with the funds to do this work.
And when we talk about wildfire risk reduction,
There's an awful lot of fuel mitigation going on.
And we need to talk about that some more.
So during the chipper program, this
continues to be very popular, very effective.
It's a rather inexpensive approach
to help people remove fools from their properties.
It's really difficult if you just have a modest pile of stuff
that you've pulled out of your yard to get rid of that.
And the city has put together a program that takes care of that.
The one problem was that it became so popular
that at times during this past summer,
people have had to wake a few weeks
before they can have somebody come and pick that up.
So in the next fiscal year, we won't go into the details,
but there's a new contract in place
that I think is gonna work a little more efficiently
and give us more flexibility
so that we can actually have more than one
or in the chipper at a time in certain weeks if we need it.
Fire fuels reduction incentive program.
City Council increased the limit, excuse me a minute,
to $1,000 this past year.
And what we see is that significantly increased
not only the participation in the program,
but also the amount of fuels that individual property owners
removed from their property as a result.
So this is definitely a step in the right direction.
But I think we still need to go further,
that we can increase that limit so that we can include,
can remove even greater fuels on an individual house.
City property parcels have been maintained
to meet all of the MOFD and city requirements.
And we've even generated a five foot non-combustible zone
around the city hall and they were in the community center.
This is the infamous zone zero.
You guys have probably heard a fair amount about this
and there's pushback and there's enthusiasm
for it. It's not clear where the state is going to land on this. We'll have to go forward.
It is abundantly clear though that we do need to reduce exactly to how far maybe it's debatable,
but we need to reduce the fuels very closest to the house because they're the greatest
risk to the house. The Rindefar Savvy plant guide was updated again this year. If you
haven't gone till you go look at that, you should. It is really terrific. It gives a
lot of interesting uniform guidance to people so that they can make better
choices on plants that they put around their house. City continues to support
volunteer organizations that work on reducing fuels. They support the Moraga
Arinda Firewise Network meetings and MOFN, Moraga Arinda, Moraga
Arinda Firewise Network is expanding rapidly getting more and more homes in
that are involved in this process, and that's great.
The city has assisted FireSafe Moraga Arrinda
on getting $100,000 grant to help remove fuels.
That's moving forward.
And the city is evaluating a proposal
from FireSafe Moraga Arrinda to leverage city funds further.
It follows a model similar
to what's being done in that grant.
Make sure I go on the rights direction here.
Emergency preparedness, you heard some really good stuff
about that today that's a little farther down this list.
The updated Arrinda Evacuation Guide
and Wildfire Prevention and Emergency Preparedness
Resources Tri-Fold, that was distributed by mail
that's available on the city website.
ArrindaReady.com, this was only just getting started
at the end of this previous fiscal year.
It's moving forward further now.
I don't know if you had looked at that website.
If you haven't, you should.
There's a lot of really useful stuff.
I think that's gonna be really helpful.
Risk management and evacuation modeling,
you've heard a lot about that.
It only was just barely getting started also
at the end of June.
We'll hear more about it in next year.
Regional funding for emergency preparedness.
This is key.
Supported the Contra Costa County
Transportation Authorities grant
to get a grant from Caltrans
on a countywide emergency plan.
That's in process.
Educational programs and outreach.
This is interesting stuff.
There's a lot of material going out in the outlook,
in the tri-agency meetings that we had,
safety fair, education nights with the schools,
the city staff are working with the Rinda students
and Girl Scout troops on wildfire education.
It's all good stuff.
The red flag day parking restrictions.
That's key.
Moving on.
I'm sorry, I wanted to go back before I finish here.
We've done a lot, but we need to do a lot more.
And we need to start thinking further things that we can do.
We need to understand why it is that so many people aren't
doing as much as they need to do.
A lot of people are doing a lot, but many are not.
With my other hat that I wear now and then,
I'm working with the fire district
as a wildfire safety ambassador.
The last year I went to 45, almost 50 homes
to do assessments.
And it's really interesting talking to these people.
Many of them have a feel for what to do,
but not quite enough knowledge.
The outreach is helping them and we need to continue that.
The Firewise Networks are helping them.
We need to continue that but they also often point out homes next to them or down the block
or across the street where the people just haven't done anything and we don't understand
why we have suggested and I'm going to suggest again that we were seriously consider looking
at a questionnaire to get a better understanding of why it is that some people either don't
know enough or don't want to or don't feel that they have the resources or kind of want
to but not sure how to get started. I think we need to work a little harder on trying
to understand why it is that there are people around who are still just really not doing
much of anything.
Roads and storm drains, we spent in the 24, 25, the city as a whole spent $5 million on
pavement and storm drain maintenance and sand repairs. About half of that, just under half,
came from Measure R. And the list there is the storm drain works that was done, the biggest
one being the sand playability creek culvert repair, just a little over $2 million. Imagine
what would happen if that culvert were to collapse. Talk about a mess. So this is protecting
our resources, protecting the investment that we've been made over many years. And our road
repairs and in storm drain repairs, we still have a lot more to do. Some of that will be
coming from Measure R. Others will be coming from the other sources. And I think that when
we think about spending Measure R money on roads and storm drains, we need to keep in
mind that there are several other sources that are providing funds to do this as well.
they're not enough.
So we still will need to be using money
from Measure R for roads and storm drains.
That's gonna continue.
Conclusions, Measure R revenue, 24-25
was almost $4 million.
The ending fund balance is now about $6.8 million.
Projections indicate the fund balance
will be still going up, which is great.
We have accomplished a lot,
but we absolutely have to do more.
And the excellent news is that it appears
that we really do have sufficient funds
to pursue more aggressive means
to reduce our critical wildfire risk
while continuing to protect our investments
in roads and storm drains over the next years.
Bad news, we've got a lot to do.
Good news, we have the resources to do it.
Any questions?
No, go ahead.
I feel like I keep jumping in tonight.
Okay, thank you for a very thorough report.
I did read it all, the length was so much shorter
than last year, I was almost disappointed,
but not quite disappointed, because it was,
but thank you.
And, you know, I know the SSTS puts a lot of work
into this, I want to acknowledge your work,
Commissioner Hammond, and also I see
Commissioner Latimer in the room.
You know, in terms of some of the incentives
program. I guess I was interested in hearing a little more. I mean, it's in the report, but
just to have the dialogue or hear from you of the SSTOC's recommendations on expanding the program
when it seemed like the average... I had two questions about expanding the amount of the
incentive program. One is that it seemed like the average reimbursement was under a thousand.
On the other hand, it did look like there were, based on the information, it looked like 73 out
of 107 applications requested a thousand. So, you know, potentially those folks, which are a large
amount of those who made a request could request more. I really like FISMO's model
of having neighborhoods come together. And I was wondering if in doing this report in the SSTOC,
there was any discussion about the point that it would seem to me that increasing the individual
incentive program would almost draw folks to that so that in other words don't we want
to incentivize neighborhoods to work together as communities through the grant where the
FISMO grant is five or more neighbors coming together, 10,000, right? So it would seem
that we want to incentivize those group projects because when we're talking about fire prevention
what we're really one of the things we're trying to encourage is neighborhoods working
together and I was a little concerned that by increasing the individual incentive so
that it was higher than what you could get by working in other ways do we want folks
to be able to get alone what they less than what they I mean more than what they would
get if they work together. So I don't know if that came up, but the SSTS.
I understand. I don't see them as being in conflict at all. And I like the idea, and
I think your point was that in the FISMO model, the maximum that an individual, well, it would
be like you said $10,000 for five or so houses. So on the average, each of the houses would
be able to get up to $2,000. That's still not a lot. It's still not a lot. So having
having a group model that allows the average of the homeowners within the group to get
more than they could get if they went by themselves, I like that idea. What I'd really like to
see is both because there's plenty of individual houses that just don't have any neighbors
written nearby that are cooperative uh and to tell them jeez i'm sorry you can't do anything
because you don't you know you're you're sort of by yourself out there i don't like that
having both available i think would be ideal and i'm fismo has a few contract requests proposals out
for additional funding from additional sources maybe they'll they'll get them maybe they won't
Um, they have requested the similar model to be funded by the city and I don't want to
Step into that one because it's not my place to tell you right now how to how to deal with that one
I think it's a basically you know, as i've already said, I think it's a basically good idea
But uh, I I really don't see a conflict
Hi
Thank you for coming tonight and for the information you're sharing
One of the things that I worry about in our community is that we have a lot of elderly residents
You're asking the question why people might not be interested in applying and I wonder if we're
taking any steps to help our older residents understand the process, figure out how to apply
for the money, figure out how much it's going to cost, how to get contractors. Part of the why is
that they need a lot more help in accomplishing some of this work than some of our younger
homeowners who might be able to do some of the work themselves or have more resources.
I wondered if you thought about that at all. I think you're absolutely right. What's tricky
is figuring out who those homeowners are. And one of the mechanisms that is helpful
for identifying that is actually the Firewise neighborhoods. And I think maybe the city
staff could when they're talking to the firewise neighborhoods try to push this
to them saying you know do you have individuals within your firewise network
that may have this these kinds of issues they might be more able to identify the
homeowners and help introduce the homeowners to the possibility of getting
for the city. Um we're
providing some help from the
city or from far safe
Muraga or Rinda. Um there is
also, uh, far safe. Moraga
Rinda has a think it's a 50
40 50. I think it's $40,000
grant from the county for in
need households. Um so that's
that's there. Supplementing
that with something from the
you can suggest to the city manager or you can suggest that that's SS DOC
recommended to the city manager to look into something like that I think would
be a really good idea one of the things that that I'm glad I haven't heard back
from you but I want to touch on it anyway is the concern would that if the
city is to provide funds to an individual property owner to help them reduce wildfire
risk on their property. That there is the risk that this is the expenditure of public
funds for private good. And I think it is so clear that the risk of wildfire on an individual
property in Orinda. And we've seen this public in Palisades. We've seen it in so many other
wildfires that turn into urban configurations. A wildfire on one individual's property is
an enormous risk to every neighboring property. So spending city money to reduce the wildfire
that the amount of fuel that is
in the air fuels on one property
is an enormous public benefit.
And I'm glad I haven't heard to
pull back on that one, but I
just wanted to touch on it
anyway.
Thank you. No, I'm good.
By the way, we've got our myself.
No, anything please.
Yeah.
Back to the.
Senior.
Educating the seniors.
town and I mean I've attended there well I know my mom participated as a you know
passenger and then I went to various year-end kind of celebrations and there
are a lot of people who go there and that'd be a great educational venue I
would say think to take advantage of I hadn't thought of that that's a really
interesting idea huh and if that doesn't show up in an SSTOC think can you help
to remember. So that'd be cooperative or you can? I've mentioned it. Okay, having an elderly parent.
I am sorry, Rachelle Latimer, part of the SSTIC. I would say that having had an elderly parent,
I am very aware of those issues and how over time their ability to use technology may decline.
And so there is great need that we aren't necessarily reaching them through our
communication avenues. And so I have suggested seniors about town and other things. And I would
just add that I expect later this year, we will be coming back to you with more about incentive
grants collectively, just to address that in a different meeting, because we see that as a
collective conversation. Okay, and again, I'm talking about education. But yes, education,
We definitely have raised it in numerous settings that we have encouraged the city to consider
like how can we do better outreach with our seniors. And then the next step is really staying
with them to get the contractor to figure out the cost to you know figure out all the different
players. You just can't do it if you're 85, 95. Any assistance, volunteers helping you drive,
volunteers helping you manage these major projects, if you're alone.
Thanks. Yeah, please. Can you talk a little more about expansion of red flag days and whether
there's sort of like been a what what has would have been the thoughts on that from the sstoc
if any have a specific area has been discussed or identified or i don't know of any other streets
that we have been considering what we've been looking at is the main evacuation routes uh and
city manager smith have have we hit all the major evacuation routes yet i think so uh in terms of
the fuel mitigation. Yeah. Red flag warnings. Red flag, no parking. I think we've held,
I think we've dealt with minor and some of the major roads, especially in the north.
Yeah. We have not established that for Moraga Way, obviously. Contraflow on Moraga Way would
be difficult if that was something that we were planning to investigate further as part of our
continuing to evaluate the contraflow issues. Okay and you corrected me thank you commissioner
Hammond I said red flag days but I meant no parking on flag days. Okay and then the last thing
was in terms of community education you know we did have some very successful events I've heard
a lot of public feedback that folks want more, but they're very time resource intensive events
for the city to put on. FISMO is in existence now and wasn't in existence, you know, a few years ago
when these community education events were initially discussed, how does the SSTOC see
FISMO as a partner in community education? Has that been discussed?
We haven't discussed it in SSTOC. I was on the board of FISMO for a while,
And that was not a subject that had come up.
And I'm not sure that FISMO is the best venue.
And I may be mistaken on this, but I
think that the Firewise networks is probably
a better mechanism for that because it
includes individuals who directly live
in the various neighborhoods.
And I think the potential for Firewise
is enormous.
And I know that some of the Firewise neighborhoods
are very active.
And I know that some of them are not so active.
And I don't have a brilliant idea right now
about how MeasureR can help with that.
Thank you.
But maybe city staff could arrange
some more events with the Firewise leaders.
There's a Firewise leaders meeting every quarter,
every three months.
It's Zoom and it's managed by Mark Evans.
And maybe staff could help put some packages together
that could help the Firewise networks
be even more active than they are.
Okay, thanks. I was just wondering if there have been discussions on it.
Great, I'll counsel for indulging.
No, I'll check. I have just a few questions. I mean, comments. I mean, first, this is always
such a treat to every year get this comprehensive look. I mean, A plus, plus, plus, plus on
all of the review about the mitigation measure implementation and the evacuation. I mean,
the number of things on which you are making, you know, you're getting down the field on
preparation, communication, evacuation, home hardening, partnerships with public
agencies, the city doing its own work. I mean it's it's amazing so just thrilling
every year to see the leaps and bounds that that this measure our money in the
SSTOC leadership group has accomplished. The other thing is the Firewise
neighborhoods you know we've talked about this every year that the that the
the ambassador role that you, Mark Evans,
the people who, you know, will go to 40 or 50 homes
and you have these long conversations
while you're walking around their yards.
I mean, there is no focus group or survey
that gets that kind of one-on-one really candid feedback.
And so I hope you realize that, you know,
the people across the street who aren't doing anything
are not gonna return your survey.
Yeah. Right?
And they're not even gonna answer yours.
So I hope you guys are finding ways to institutionalize
all of that wonderful feedback
and the things they tell you about their neighbors, right?
You kind of get a double whammy.
My only constructive feedback is there was a slide
early on that said, look at how big our balance
is gonna be underlined.
This means we can do more for fire.
That is not what that means.
That means you're gonna have a nice big reserve by 2030
that could be used for all sorts of things,
which could be not having to have a 10% sales tax forever.
When this thing runs out, wouldn't it be fabulous
if it was only a half cent sales tax instead of a full cent?
Or wouldn't it be great if we had more of an endowment
built up for roads, storm drains?
And then I would also ask,
there was no spending on roads this year,
so we didn't get a slide,
but we got an educational talk,
probably two years ago now, maybe three,
about the fiscal cliff on our road funding.
And so as I look at that reserve building up,
there was sort of a glaring omission
on the fiscal cliff on roads
that would be helpful in future sort of annual reports
to think about the three legs of the infrastructure stool
as being a little bit more balanced than 90% fire,
one slide on storm drains, nothing on roads.
And the written report was great.
It was comprehensive.
But in terms of just emphasis,
you know, there are big questions
for all three legs of your stool,
but overarching, just wonderful, wonderful year
you guys have all had.
Anything else city manager?
No, I just want to thank the SSTOC members
who worked on developing the annual report.
It is a labor to do that work
and these are volunteers as well.
So we really appreciate the level of thought and effort
that they place in putting that annual report together
every year and to the dedicated members
who show up to all these meetings
when we talk about a variety of topics.
I think coming up, the council will receive a recommendation
from the SSTOC in probably a couple months
around the FISMO Funding Request and how to handle that.
And so they'll be discussing it at their next meeting
and then subsequent to that,
hopefully we'll be bringing back a recommendation
for the council's consideration.
So they are tackling some really meaty issues right now
and how we handle engagement, education and outreach
and how we can rely more on our partners potentially
for that and so we're very grateful for that partnership that we've been able to put together
with the commission so I appreciate you being here.
Again, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
And with that we're going to move, keep it moving, to item H2, which is a, oh god, I'm
sorry.
I need like a zapper.
We have any public comment on the SSTOC annual report?
Seeing none, I thought that was the discussion.
I thought, would we like to discuss further
the SST annual report?
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Please, I'm sorry.
I thought that was a.
I thought that was comments and questions to get.
No, I just, I wanted to just take the opportunity first
of all, to really also thank staff.
And I think we've accomplished some,
I mean, the accomplishments have all been discussed
in detail, but I also really want to give a huge shout out
to staff and to our city manager for Arrenda Ready,
which is an incredible website
that everyone worked really hard on.
Thank you, analyst Mickey Cronin.
And also, you know, I think is an idea
that originated with our city manager
And it really is something that every folks have been asking
for for a long time.
But, and I do hope that we have an opportunity
to have a further discussion about sort of recommendations
coming back to us.
Cause that's what seemed to be missing a little bit
from this report was specific recommendations.
And I know some of them came up, but there's things
I think, you know, in terms of what we do going further
is it more of the same or do we look at different things, right? And maybe when the program,
in other words, when it comes back to us, I think it would be lovely if we could,
as we look at a specific recommendation, also have an opportunity to speak sort of
overall about things like ContraFlow on Moraga Way was mentioned. I think that that's a needed
action item in the future and then you know more the community education I think is key for why
I do I did wonder when we talked about surveying if you know the people that aren't doing it are
they going to respond to a survey right I mean that's that's the challenge maybe if we did it
the right way maybe not but also I do think that community education opportunities are there and
and they are really resource intensive to do,
but we've got our rotary and our Masonic Lodge
and our faith-based communities
and all our different schools.
And the senior SAT, but also senior housing,
we have a couple of places.
So we have so many places we could do more,
but I don't, and I hope it could come back at some time,
whether it's strategically a good use of city resources
for city staff to be doing that
or maybe partner with organizations like FISMO
and have them do that because they're ultimately
doing the community organizing type approach, right?
Or the Firewise Network with staff support on some of these.
So, you know, in terms of launching the community forums,
I want us to continue to approach all of this
in a way that we recognize what has been done
but also continually look to see
whether the way we've been doing it is the most efficient
and best way to do it,
or whether we should find new approaches.
So that's all I wanted to.
No, and I'd love to hear what other,
because you're right.
I mean, I had sort of thought
people were sort of giving feedback as we go,
but if there are specific feedback recommendations
now would be the time to voice them.
And then I would, I was just looking up our liaison.
Is that, you come to me, O'Connie.
if you could be the one to sort of follow up
and maybe that would be something
that is a council member report in the future
about future things that are percolating at the SSTOC
just to keep us apprised, that would be great.
So please, any other thoughts?
Just following up on the community education,
I do think we could talk about how to refine that plan.
based on our experience and all these different groups that we haven't touched
and decide strategically and prioritize maybe who we hit up, maybe hit three big organizations
a year and also do the community-wide thing, but do it differently because the
folks, the seniors certainly haven't heard it once. The seniors we're talking about who are
you know needing a ride. So anyway I don't know if that's something we do or the SSTOC does
I don't know really who's recommending that kind of thing, but I'd be happy to be part
of that dialogue.
It's important.
Well, and city manager, wasn't that somewhere in our strategic plan or strategic goals?
There was something about outreach.
Yeah.
And there is communications is key in the strategic plan.
Mickey and I have been talking about ways we can help to meet the overall objectives
of increasing our outreach, increasing the education and the engagement.
And so we're sort of working on something right now to see about whether or not we could
find ways to get more data, maybe not through a questionnaire method, maybe another methods
to get some sort of data from groups of people about what's motivating to them and what isn't.
We saw with the launch of a render ready, we saw what we feel is pretty solid engagement.
So we're starting to see maybe there's more people paying attention to that messaging
that we've got on that website. But we're just trying to figure out the best ways in
which to do it. It is not solely a city responsibility, as you know. MOFD has a responsibility to
do outreach education and engagement. And we work with our volunteer partner groups
like FISMO and the network to help with that as well and then SSTOC to give some guidance
and some direction. I did think it would be, for example, the mayor and I were talking
that the station 42 is doing a demonstration garden for planting for wildfire resistant
plantings and so it would be great to see some things like that. I know that FISMO has been
working on what is being termed like beautiful orinda, beautiful maraga orinda, ways in which
to show people that you can have beautiful spaces that are also fire safe landscaping.
And so there's a lot of things that I think over the next year will be become more in
the public domain about things that are, I think people have been wondering about for
a long time how to make it more attractive.
The plant guide is helpful, but to be able to see things with their own eyes in real
time that those are things that I think are going to be important and then having those
additional engagement tools. And we're talking about different ways in which to tackle that
this year. And with our partners.
Was there anything else?
No, I know. It sounds like Rachel might want to make.
Well, I was just going to say again, that we would the timing of things did not allow
us to bring you a whole bunch of recommendations right now. And we thought it was best to group
them together. So I think that's, again, partly why you'll see other things. We do have an ad hoc
committee that's being formed around education. So we expect there'll be a lot more coming out
this coming year. But this was just really reflective of how the Measure R money was spent
this past year. Would you mind telling the names of who's on the ad hoc committee for the grant?
to deal with the the FISMO record. Yeah and grants and the recommendations are coming
back with. Is there a working group on that? So we have had two different working groups.
So we had one that was Todd and myself and Yasmin Lee who looked at sort of our incentive
grant because that was stood up before, and then we have two others that are working on
the FISMO recommendation. We're a small committee, so all of a sudden if all of a sudden you get a
couple people on one, you're excluded from being able to work on others so that we don't have any
serial meetings going on. So it's Alex Weinstein and Brad Barber who are working on the FISMO
proposal, and we expect this next week we should have some information from them. And so then
collectively you will hear more about those grants. And then as soon as we finally, I think we are
sunsetting now our report committee so that that frees up more people to work on this education.
So I think that's where we're at right now.
Terrific.
Thank you very much.
Is there anything else on this matter?
Sorry to jump the gun, you guys.
With that, we will go to item 8-2.
Thank you so much for sticking around.
And this is something that our planning staff
is going to bring to us as a mostly an update
on legislative changes, new laws, and housing element progress.
Yes.
Yeah, this is officially an update. Christine Thompson, principal planner with Citi Verinda again.
I just wanted to note that there have been 20-25 actions. So legislatively, even though over
probably the last decade, there have been many housing laws happening through the state. There
have been a couple signature ones this year that are important and new and wanted to just take a
a moment to review. So yeah, so state housing legislation, a general review, we'll focus
a little bit on what's happened this year in 2025. And then we'll talk about the housing
element implementation actions because we are in the cycle where the spring is the update
for the annual reporting. So this is timely in terms of that cycle. So for 2025, some
really important laws were passed. They are now active. So AB 130 and SB 131, you may
have heard about them. They focus on CEQA exemptions. So they're increasing CEQA exemptions
for infill housing projects. Also SB 684, also 1123. This is focused on small subdivisions,
so how to create the opportunity for small subdivisions
and increase housing production.
SB 79, there's been a lot of discussion
about transit oriented development and up zoning,
particularly with Arinda having a BART station.
However, the Arinda is not in urban county,
so it does not apply to Arinda, SB 79,
so we'll just touch on it briefly.
So just with all of these bills,
they're long and complicated and they have many elements to them. But there are always
a couple things that are good takeaways. So the assembly bill, again, this was CEQA focused
but then had things like accelerating the permanent streamlining, adding CEQA definitions,
expanding CEQA applicability, talking about builder's remedy projects. So a lot of elements
to each of these pieces of legislation.
And this is sort of the really important takeaways for this.
This is technically the California budget trailer
bills, even though everyone is calling them AB 130, SB 131.
And so important component is it became effective June 30, 2025.
So they are effective today.
this did provide a CEQA exemption for the qualifying infill housing and infrastructure.
So there are conditions as to what kind of project can meet this, but it certainly does target
a CEQA exemption, infill housing, and existing urban places. There is also the CEQA near miss
rule so that projects that almost qualify for an exemption
can move through this process and qualify based
on the review of the specific impact.
And then there's a project size focus around builder's remedy
of 20 acres.
Sorry, there's a project size of 20 acres.
For the secret exemption, the builder's remedy
is capped at five acres.
And then with these facilitation of housing bills
or the California budget trailer bills,
you have to have consistency with the general plan
and the zoning to take advantage of this.
And then there also, it mandates shorter review times
around the project completeness,
the tribal consultation and notification
and the project approval.
So in general, it continues the theme
of facilitating housing,
trying to streamline housing and specifically around
utilizing CEQA exemptions.
Senate Bill SB 684, 1123, this is the small subdivision law.
And it's focused on creating less than 10 units.
It does apply to both single-family and multi-family
zones.
It limits design review and it relies on objective standards.
So some of the quick takeaways, but again,
since this was 2025, effective July 1st,
so it is effective now,
it does allow 10 or fewer parcels and residential units.
It does apply to vacant single family parcels
and some of the sizing is different for vacant parcels
up to 1.5 acres,
and the parcels must be 1,200 square feet or larger.
When a multifamily zoned parcels,
that can be for a parcel up to five acres
that is then subdivided,
and the new parcels must be 600 square feet or larger.
The average size of the homes
is capped at 1,750 net habitable square feet.
An important component,
which has actually been being deliberated
and there has been some court discussion
or decisions around the remainder parcel.
So what this means is that single-family large tracts
of land that have a single-family home on them
can create a remainder parcel so that a piece of land
does not have to be fully vacant.
It can become vacant by partitioning off
a remainder parcel.
So that's just an important component of the law
in terms of just initially everyone was looking to absolutely vacant empty parcels, but this
does change to can be a single family partitioned off and the remainder is now vacant.
And then there's also through this law the question about accessory dwelling units and
junior accessory dwelling units and whether a local agency chooses to permit those.
And then finally, the SB 1123, which is commonly it's referred to, is limited in very high
fire hazard severity zones, and that's significant for Arinda, because it would not be allowed
in those zones.
So just a quick word on SB 79, there is a, so this was, or this is a TOD in upzoning.
There are many counties, urban transit counties, San Francisco, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo,
Sacramento, for whom this is now active.
And there are also the Southern California communities.
There is a tiering structure, tier one, tier two, based on what level of transit infrastructure.
And there are different requirements for those, but we're not going to go into that level
of detail.
But it is important just to watch how other counties are handling this.
It does up zone within a half mile of any transit station.
And it will be significant in terms of creating development nearby.
And so we'll watch that one.
So that was really the 2025 kind of highlights.
trailer bills and the small subdivisions, those are active. I think we have a small subdivision
that has come forward as a project, and SB 79 is not active, but these are also in the
context of many other housing laws. And so just to note those other housing laws, we've talked
through projects about the density bonus.
We've seen it active in terms of how it helps projects
move forward and the additional density that it brings.
That is active and being used throughout the state.
But there have been other recent legislations
in the last couple of years, AB 2011, SB 6,
those are around allowing housing on things
our zoned office retailer parking, SB4 for religious sites, SB9 for duplexes and lotsplits,
SB30 for public for streamlining, so reducing the number of public hearings, and SB35 for
streamlining multifamily. So this is really going to be a reference. I'm going to go through this
very fast. These are bills that we've seen that we know that, but in terms of just understanding
how they differ a little bit. This is a density bonus law. And so you get increased height limits,
reduced parking requirements, incentives and concessions. Something like AB 2011 is different
in that it's allowing residential on formerly commercially only lands, but still streamlining,
still exempt from CEQA. Senate Bill 6, same thing in terms of allowing that housing on parcel zone
for office, retail, or parking. Again, use of objective standards to facilitate housing creation
and not allowing hotels. Senate Bill 4, this is specifically about religious lands and college
lands. So different than the previous laws. SB9, this is in terms of seeing lot splits,
seeing additional units created. SB9 is definitely active. We are getting applications, you know,
for this this method of consideration. It does, it does a ministerial limits designer
interview requires objective design standards. And then also Senate Bill 330. Again, this
is streamlining. I mentioned the number of public hearings being reduced, but it's also
about development standards, locking in fees, and preliminary applications. So some of the
foundational laws, and then Senate Bill 35 also strengthened by 423. And so that's extended
and expanded and focuses on moving multifamily forward, limits design review, and requires
objective design standards. So that's just a quick review. Those laws are really from
from 2017 to today. So the last 10 years, there's been a lot of state housing legislation.
So just a quick review of all the things that have been happening and that we're now seeing
impact how communities are developing over time. So the second half of the presentation.
Can we stop there and see if they have any questions?
Yes.
a little pause. I just also want to note that for the pieces of housing legislation
1123 being one where we're going to come back and have more conversation about that with
you, because we expect to see more than one application on SB 1123. And we expect that
to be controversial in neighborhoods. And so we want to spend more time with you on
that some meeting in March, is that correct? Is it the first meeting in March? Or is it
the next meeting? I think it's at the next meeting in March. Well, we have February meetings.
Is it the next February? No, no, because that one we're doing the study session on Ivy Drive.
That's right. Subsequent to that, we'll have a more detailed discussion with you laying
out some of the things that we have learned about 1123. And the other thing I wanted to
just simply point out on SB 9, it is probably the most effective tool that the state has
right now applicable in ARINDA. Yeah. I know we have 25 current active SB 9 projects. 25
since 2022 to the present, so 25 applications we're seeing.
So eight, almost coming in per year, except for what this year, the first one recently
came in for 2026, but eight, four, eight, I think six applications that are coming in
for SB 9.
I think one of the things that LaShawn and I have been working on is being able to visualize
for the council and for the community, the number of development applications that we're
receiving, we're working on potentially having a development projects page so that people
can easily go on there and they could see how many SB 9 applications we are dealing
with and 1123 is around the corner. We know that those transparency tools are going to
be important as the neighborhoods become more impacted by these pieces of legislation that
are going to feel the full effect in the coming years.
Yes ministerial so there's no notice that goes out to the neighbors so the development web page is to help
Get the word out. So you're not
Being surprised by construction happened to you happening next door to you and you had no idea
Until a lot of microphones turned on were like
I was just gonna fire away
My understanding is that sp9 is not limited by high severity fire zones. Is that correct?
Don't believe there's any very high fire severity zone limitations on it. There is but you can still proceed if you comply with a list of
Restrictions, okay
And SB 9 is the one I usually think of as the ADU the bill that allows the ADUs
But you've got it sort of highlighting more the lots. That's is that
Well, there are two parts to that law. One is the ability to split an existing lot and then the other one is the ability to build up to a duplex.
So you could build a single family home or you could build a duplex and of course then additionally there's the possibility of ADUs and JDUs.
Thank you.
was actually my same question, but now I have a new one, which is of these, um, of the SB9,
you mentioned 25, um, active projects director. What do you have a sense of? Are they, are
they ADUs? Are they lot splits? Is it just a mix? I'm just curious what, uh, council member
Malcani, I have the numbers, but that's okay. No, I'm just looking at my list tonight. Just
Just for a feel in terms of what- The majority are the units, SB9 units.
There's been, I mentioned 25, but I'd say probably two of them where we're drawn.
And then most of them are the units.
By the units, do you mean lots of- Sorry.
As ADUs.
ADUs.
Okay.
Just clarify.
A single unit, a single family housing unit.
I thought ADUs were a ministerial permit.
Is that an SB9?
Yes.
something bigger than a ministerial ADU. You have SB 9 units and you have SB 9
urban lot splits, and so your SB 9 units could have the ADUs attached to it. I
think that was your question. I may have missed that question. I thought you
could just do an ADU as a ministerial permit. I didn't think that was an SB 9
application, I sort of thought like you could do, I mean, an SB 9 second house on a lot that you
don't subdivide isn't just a little ADU, it could be a whole second house or it could be a duplex
instead of a single family. So I'm confused about if all ADUs are also like of your 25
SB 9s, I've got to assume there's a lot more ADUs that come through not as SB 9 permits.
I didn't tally that number so that was my next meeting to have that full I just want to give the impression that
That when you say 25 SB 9s that that's like all the 80 use and it's kind of nothing else
I thought I always thought those 25 SB 9s were bigger than
your typical
80 you ministerial
When I say SB 9, I'm talking about the lot splits and units combined. I didn't split them off just yet
So so I just I went on to the draft site that LaShawn has put together, but we have
13 are 13 are units of the eight of the SP nine projects that we've got listed on our
Draft page and eight or lot splits
so I know that it equals 21 not 25, but I just to give a sense of
more than half of them are developing units and
Slightly less than half are just simply doing a lot splits
But when you say units, are those houses or are they little ADUs?
Houses at single family residences.
They're not counting the ADUs.
That's not just ADUs.
Correct.
We had a shared understanding.
Okay.
And to be clear, it could be a duplex, but it need not.
So it could be just one home.
And hopefully people, if you have more.
was and I just have to say I'm a little bit this presentation has me feeling
like I didn't get out of it what I was hoping to get out of it that was sort of
a speed run through a bunch of laws and I'm familiar with the laws and we've
heard them three or four times over the years I was really actually hoping for
more of a deep dive in the horrendous specific view of how SB9 showed up in
arena. What were the lots? But when people split their lots, did they build
or did they sell it to a spec builder? You know, when people did two homes on
a lot, were they roughly equal sized or were they a glorified ADU? You know,
for 1123, I'd love to know how, you know, how significant that very high
fire severity limitation is in practice. Does that mean that Arendelle will get
none or does that mean there's certain neighborhoods? So I was really hoping
for you guys to show us the laws as applied and so I might ask if this could
come back in a different and I know you said we're gonna get a couple bites at
the housing apple but this felt to me like I don't I didn't understand any
more coming out of this than I had coming in.
Yeah, the only thing I will add is that this is really meant to be a preview because we're
coming around in our reporting cycle. And that's actually why there's a second part to this
presentation is to talk about implementation and sort of where we're focused on implementation
with the idea that the annual reporting will be pulling all these numbers. And so we'll be in a
better position to answer just those questions at that time, but that's only a month or two away,
so it's not too far in the future. I think what the mayor is also asking for is some quantitative
information or qualitative information, go with the quantitative information about what we're
seeing with respect to developments that are using these laws. Right, but tonight was more
that premium, that little taste, you got a taste. And that's why I said, oh, I got the numbers, but
didn't quantify everything for you just giving you an idea of that 25 but there are some 11,
23 inquiries and we do actually have an application. I appreciate that and the city manager I think
articulated perfectly my request which is I don't just want a statistical count and I know that we
do this report for HCD every year and it's very targeted to what we report and how but we as
as people who have constituents we talk to all the time,
it would be wonderful to know things like,
and again, something that just says what developments
are in process, that means we have to remember
to go and look at it, and a given neighbor
would have to know to have a problem
with something going on in their neighborhood
to go look for it.
I think that senses as elected representatives
to really understand now that there's very little
discretionary permitting, what's going on in the planning,
what do you guys see out of the neighborhoods,
what's going on ministerially, where people happy,
where people unhappy, that sort of thing.
And I don't mean to put words in anybody else's mouth,
but that's something I've been feeling the absence of
since discretionary permitting kind of got taken away
holistically from our city.
I agree and would find that really helpful as well.
Okay, with that, if you wanna get to part two,
I really appreciate that intermission.
Yeah, no, again, this is a rapid fire quick preview update.
And so just to pair it with the changing reality
around the state legislation and the effect it's having,
that's also sort of looking at the six cycle housing element
and really now that it's being,
Well, it's been certified for a bit,
but really that shift to focus on implementation.
And so just to think about, OK, well, how are we
going to implement this?
We've talked earlier this evening
about the RINA number of 1,359 units.
We've talked about how this is part of the general plan.
But I think the question about the focus
on the implementation as a section of this element.
There are six implementation major actions
that are housing related, housing production,
conservation, creating opportunities around housing,
removing constraints, ensuring it's fair housing,
and energy conservation.
So that is the way the report is structured.
So again, this is a sort of just like a primer
on implementation section.
And in the context of a known RENA number, a target to meet,
and that implementation is supposed to help that,
I did note that there was some carryover
from the fifth cycle program.
So there are some fifth cycle things
that are being tracked as well.
So there is quantitative and there
is qualitative in the annual report. This is Table D. This Table D gets tracked and
updated every year. It's a very large table. I'm just showing you a sample of it here.
That's part of what gets updated. It will have some of the talking points that will
definitely helped the council consider sort of the dynamic of the implementation activities.
And so here, I'm really just looking at major titles and the major structure of this, these
implementation chapters. The housing element itself has a lot more, you know, narrative
around these activities. But I think it's important just to do the refresh on noting
how many new housing production strategies there are, that there are two pages, I'll
show you the next in a moment, but also to note that the housing opportunity sites has
been an initiative that was successful and moved forward. So there are good progress
reports to HCD, but also a long list of things that are still targeted. So some of these
things we've talked about, no net loss, you know, earlier on the consent calendar there was making
sure that sites used in previous housing element cycles had a clear path, lot consolidation. So
these are all focused on new housing production, so about 12 initiatives. And so really trying to
work on these as best we can to forward this to keep, you know, progressing on the housing element.
So as noted, the rezoning of the housing element, you know, a grand accomplishment in terms of
really being able to show that progress. Action two or area two is about housing conservation.
So preserving housing, rehabilitating housing, maintenance and repair. It may not get the same
press as new housing units, housing creation, but it's still a really important component of the
of the housing element.
And something that would probably be more reflected
in that table D that has the descriptive discussion
of the topics and maybe the programs that are available,
things like first-time home buyer programs.
So action three is about housing opportunities.
So everything from shared housing programs
to development disability service.
The item I wanted to talk about Action 3 about
was the fact that there are two very big initiatives that
have come before this body, the objective design standards,
and then the inclusionary housing ordinance.
So those are implementation actions,
progress is being made on those.
And so that's great to see.
there are also several other activities in this housing opportunities grouping. So just a quick
window into the inclusionary housing ordinance, the feasibility and market study, and then the
objective design standards draft, which has progressed further, and we'll come back to the
council soon. Housing constraints, this also is an implementation area and includes everything from
Um, making sure the building code is up to date, um, infrastructure availability, um, looking into the parking standards, monitoring development fees, um, to making, making sure that the constraints are helping, uh, housing move forward, um, and hitting the goals, uh, identified by the housing element.
Fair housing and energy conservation they each have only one action. So affirmatively furthering fair housing, and then promoting energy conservation. Again, this is detailed in that table D. And so there'll be there'll be some narrative around these initiatives as well.
This is, this is a preview, but I did want to note that showing progress is really important for hcd.
It's also important for all California communities because it's insufficient progress does carry
increasingly onerous State law streamlining requirements.
So if you're not creating the housing, the state will make it so that other people can
create the housing.
And local control is important and communities are struggling to find that perfect balance.
uh, or in the is currently subject to the streamline minister SP 35 approval
process for proposed developments with at least 50%. Um, so that's the current
state, um, in terms of, um, you know, a state law streamlining requirement
being available, um, due to insufficient progress. Um, if insufficient progress
for this cycle, um, for above moderate occurs, um, or Linda will be subject to
mandatory SP35 streamlining for developments with 10% affordability. So significant in terms of allowing things through that, that, you
know, you don't necessarily want to, so it's always a question of balancing that with the progress, trying to keep HCD in a place where they're
doing what they need to do, you're doing what you need to do, and the right amount of housing
is helping the community.
Can we just pause on that for a second?
That also is evaluated at the mid of the cycle, correct?
Which is next year.
So by next year, if we don't show progress, we will be subject to the 10% affordability
requirement.
So we will be subject to the 10%.
Please remind us what comes with that.
Oh, just because that was in the part one that went so fast remind us like, okay, if
our inclusionary housing ordinance says that everything has to be at least 10%, that means
that every project will have what process?
Well, first, it's important to note that it's tied with the SB 35 law, which is focused
on multifamily.
And so it's focused on streamline.
I don't know.
Is there anything you want to add?
yeah, I mean it provides for streamlined review without CEQA, without
discretionary review locally, and we haven't actually I'm sure not sure done
the analysis of all the sites in Rinda for which this might be relevant, but
it's something that we're monitoring because it's only a year out.
Mayor, can I ask a follow-up question? What is if insufficient for above
moderate, what does that look like for us in Rinda? In other words, what do what
would need to happen in Orinda to be sufficient for above moderate to show progress midway?
It would be an enormous number of units, to be honest, right? Because if you think about what
you're- That have to be approved, that have to be at what point? Sorry. Building permits.
Yeah. So just the arena numbers, the moderate is 215 units, the above moderate is 557 units.
So at mid cycle, they're looking for half of that?
that?
I can't believe so.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what you're saying is that if they deemed our currently zero, insufficient, relative
to a couple hundred, it would be by right development with at least 10% affordable,
right?
The objective design standards, no CEQA, no discretionary permit, it is just by right
development and all we have to rely on is our objective design standards. That being accurate-
I want to be clear, this is not the builder's remedy, right, where our general plan and zoning
are not relevant. It is streamlined implementation of our general plan and zoning.
Right. That was what I was not understanding. Okay. So we need to do an analysis. We haven't
yet, but we need to do analysis of what sites are zoned and what that might look like. And,
And in some communities, you've had a lot of SB35 projects, and some communities there
have been very few, because it comes with obligations especially related to skilled
and trained workforce requirements, labor requirements.
So you may get none.
We haven't had any SB35 projects yet, Nerinda, but they have come into other communities.
Well, but right now it's a 50% affordable.
Correct.
It's 10% affordable.
Is there anything other than, so 10% affordable
and skilled and trained labor?
There's a long list.
Union labor.
It's a long list.
And this might be one where you want us
to bring back more information,
but there's a long list of things that can disqualify you
from eligibility for SD35.
Wetlands, for example.
Okay.
And maybe that's something the city manager could do
is just a, you know, in your Friday letters,
maybe as something we can print out and read or something,
but it would be, I for one would like to have a sense
of what that looks like when it's 10% versus 50%.
I think 50% affordable was not a big likelihood,
but 10% feels much more likely.
So thank you.
I mean, I think currently bullet two would be
the types of projects are full affordable projects,
nonprofit housing developers,
who oftentimes use skilled labor for their projects
and are meeting those affordability requirements
could ministerially process applications
without a lot of public feedback and counsel discretion.
I just want to say that we haven't issued
zero building permits.
I believe there've been a number of sites developed,
but it is a small number compared to our-
Of multifamily?
Yeah, no, but we're talking here about market and moderate, right.
Yeah, but Mark, and many of the projects that are SP nine projects count towards our housing element. You're right. You're right. Thank you. It's not zero, but it's not hundreds I apologize for disrespecting her success rate.
Thank you.
Did your flow. That's okay. That's okay. I just wanted to leave sufficient time for that because that it's really, again, this is a preview.
And so, you know, we continue to track housing laws.
that there's the calendar year, rather,
there's been a slow down, but we're all reacting
to really fully understanding the new laws.
We are at the same time on parallel tracks,
continuing implementation.
So moving ahead some of the bigger initiatives,
making sure the smaller initiatives
are getting taken care of.
And we know we're in the annual progress reporting period.
And so we will come back with more numbers
and more qualitative information.
And I think the only other thing is that we did,
we know we have a lot of things on the list
to come back to you with.
So the full implementation is one thing,
but we'd also talked about 1123, talking about JDUs and ADUs,
and then the Mills Act study.
So these are all housing related as well.
and on the list of things we're focused on.
So I guess I'll ask if there's any public comment for this item,
and seeing none,
I'd like to ask if there's any further comments,
questions before we wrap up,
but I really appreciate knowing that we're going to get
a couple of these deeper dives.
It's really appreciated.
I don't have anything more. Thank you.
It's good primer starting point.
You do a great job all the time.
really appreciate how you share your information. Thank you. I'll just echo the thanks and also
I did also want to thank the mayor for her comment in terms of the request for information and
just to say that every time this comes back to us, I both find it helpful and want to know more. So
bear with us because on one I do find it really helpful to have this come to us and I also it
opens up so many questions.
And when it comes back, I'm also interested in sort
of learning more and hearing more about the laws so far
that have had, you know, you're the experts on this, right?
And so which laws have had the greatest impact in Orinda?
And what do we think is coming down the pike, you know?
because when we look at these laws individually,
some of them seem like really kind of scary, right,
in terms of do I, if you think about a 1.5 acre lot
effectively splitting into 11 units,
that seems like the sort of thing that,
that could be a little,
It's kind of unmanageable and unprecedented around here.
But so I guess, you know, in terms of what you think
is realistic and what you think just,
I would love to hear about that,
your predictions and your concerns
and your expertise as well.
I'll just note too that the bill period is now open
in the state of California.
So until February 20th, there'll be more bills,
I'm sure that will be tracking
and perhaps after the bill period ends,
we can come back to you and sort of share with you
what's on the docket.
I think that's everything.
Thank you again, really appreciate it.
And since we've already done our reports,
is there anything city manager left to do
other than adjourn?
Matters initiated.
Matters initiated, thank you.
I have a suggestion for matters initiated
that is because the SSTOC report was great,
but it also doesn't bring together, you know,
what MOFD is doing and what the city is doing.
And we have all these organizations
that have pots of money they're overseeing,
but we're not coordinating.
So we had a meeting, I think in October of 2024
with Arinda Moraga and MOFD,
but I really think we need another one
and we need to talk about outreach
and we need to talk about coordination of services.
You know, I know MOFD is citing a lot right now,
So are those people who are getting cited,
getting some help from some of these other organizations
so that they can actually remedy
whatever they've been cited for?
So I would like to suggest that we as a matters initiated
ask our city manager to work with the other organizations
and plan another meeting with Moraga, Arenda and the MOFD.
I would just, it's funny,
the one note I'd written for follow up
was I was going to ask our liaison to MOFD
to do the exact same thing.
And the other thing I would add to that
before we have a meeting is I would like to know more about,
I believe they're building up a big reserve as well.
At least we get letters from the public saying
that they're getting quite a big war chest.
And when we think about how we allocate measure are
among the three types of infrastructure
and what MOFD might be able to pick up more slack on
in the fire category,
I would like for a smaller group
to be able to prepare that question and answer
in a way where they can really have candid conversations.
But I think that would be perfect for the two by two
or for our liaison to maybe try to figure out
how to ask that question in a constructive way.
And I would second that matter initiated.
But the question I guess to the city manager
and city attorney is, is that a council policy
item for the council, or is that something that we would delegate to the city manager
as just a request?
I mean, if there's a consensus among the council that you want to look for another, I don't
want to call it the tri-cities meeting, because that's not what I-
Tri-agency.
Tri-agency meeting.
Yeah.
Where's the third agency?
I think that is sufficient direction to see if there is willingness to do that, and then
could report back whether or not the town of Moraga is interested as well. I'm not sure it
needs a council discussion. I'll leave it to Osa to tell me. Right. I think I would say the city
manager in her discretion can reach out to her colleagues and see if there's interest separately.
If you're not getting a positive response there, you may want a matter initiated to place it on
on a council agenda for discussion.
So I think the question for this evening is,
Councilor Hoxie would you like to place this item
on a future council meeting for discussion
or are you asking the Council?
I would say both because I would like it to be
so that the council could discuss the agenda
that the council would like for that meeting in the future
and also the same time to have the city manager reach out
and see there's interest from the other organizations.
But I feel like at the very least,
we should come up with a list of questions as a council
that we would like to have the other organizations,
particularly M-O-F-D, respond to.
All right, so I think we have clarity
on the matter initiated.
And now the question is, is there a second?
Can I just also say that we do have an upcoming two,
but we haven't met yet.
We haven't had a two-by-two meeting in a while.
We have one scheduled for March 6th or something?
Or March 12th?
Okay, so there is one soon.
So there would be an opportunity at least for Arinda
to sort of make a request with MOFD on,
to have that discussion at the two by two on March 12th.
Right, but if this, together,
if we wanted to discuss agenda items,
we should put that on our agenda first
before you're two by two is what I understand would be the appropriate process.
Yeah, I mean, there's the informal process and there's this formal process that sounds like your
recommendation that you're asking your colleagues for is both. And I think a parallel path for that
is also to discuss this at the two by two meeting just to have a more, I guess, to discuss the
I think that's a really good.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a willingness of M O F D to come to the table.
That doesn't involve the town of Maronga. Obviously the two by two.
We could, could we have a council member report.
From the two by two that.
Involve discussion.
No council member reports are informational. Okay.
I just feel like.
I personally would like to have a discussion,
I feel like our multi-agency in some regard where we have different groups of people with different
pots of money trying to solve the same problems. And I, but I would, I have already seconded that.
I think it's a great idea. We'll take the vote in a second. But I also think if there's a two
by two coming up on March 12th, certainly you could socialize it so that they could in parallel.
We won't have had a chance to bring ours back yet, but you could certainly begin the informal
scheduling and like that feels appropriate. We can approach the issue. The issue of a meeting
could be approached with a two by two if it was on the agenda. Yeah, I mean from a timing perspective
we could certainly be back to you on March 3rd with this conversation in advance of the two by two
and then perhaps that could be shared if there is a discussion at this level that could be shared at
with the two by two and receive some feedback
in that setting.
If that sounds like an appropriate step.
Okay.
That would be wonderful if we can do it
on that sort of timing.
And with that, I'd ask for a vote
if we are in favor of that matter initiated.
I.
I.
I.
And that passes unanimously as a matter initiated.
Thank you for bringing that up.
Are there any other matters initiated?
I'm sorry for skipping something else on the agenda tonight.
Alright with that I move we adjourn