City Council Regular - November 2, 2026

Transcript

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veterans we're ready to call this meeting to order and welcome everybody

tonight to tonight's regular November 2nd meeting of the city council we'll

start with the roll call although clerk popular if you're busy I can also just

announce that we're here it's sure it's up to you mayor all members are present

except for Vice Mayor Gee who is out tonight.

We will start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

If you'll please stand.

I pledge allegiance to the flag

of the United States of America

and to the Republic for which it stands,

one nation, under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

We did have a closed session tonight

and there are no reportable items.

We'll begin by adopting the agenda.

I'm not aware of any changes.

City manager.

I'm sorry, I'm eating my Halloween candy.

No changes to the agenda.

Great.

So I move we adopt, do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

And we'll go to E1, items for the good of the city.

Introducing our visitor Tabor student, Radim Bodzimac,

and I'm probably mispronouncing that.

Good evening, Ms. Mayer and council members.

This is always the most fun time

that I get to address you

because I'm going to introduce our sister city,

Tabor, visiting student for 2627.

His name is Raghim Hanatsik

and he'll repeat it after me,

and you'll get it the right way.

It's just wonderful to have these kids come here

and grow up while we're watching them,

and they have such a good experience

that they have a whole club of them back in Tabar,

and they meet every September

when they have the festival in Tabar.

All the kids try and get there.

And if there's someone from Miranda, they have a gathering.

And it's just become wonderful.

For more than a quarter of a century, we've been doing this.

And we always get a host family in Arinda

that the student lives with.

And amazingly enough, tonight, the original host family

person is here.

Hethi, she had our first things.

And unbeknownst to me, she's here, I assume,

for another subject.

But I'm delighted that she's here.

Don't get to see her very often.

but our host families have been just wonderful.

And so if you're familiar with the program

and think that you might host one of these students

who are outstanding, please contact me at any time.

But right now I'm introducing you to Radeem.

Okay, so hello.

My name is Radim Pozimak,

and I'm deeply honored to stand before you today

as the visiting student from Tabo Czech Republic,

chosen by the earned Tabo sister city foundation

for this year.

First, first I would, okay.

First, I would like to thank you.

Thank everyone who is part of this amazing organization

and special thank you to Bobby Landers

who is the head of this organization.

You have given me a life-changing opportunity and experience that feels almost impossible to get elsewhere.

And yet here I'm standing in front of you.

I want to share how incredible of time I'm having so far.

And that is mostly thanks to the Winterfall community built around this program.

I've met incredible and kind people, and everyone makes me feel so welcome.

The biggest difference, and one of my favorite things about staying here, is the school.

and to be more specific the school spirit. Everyone is so proud to represent Maryamoni High

School and that feels so amazing. From my perspective Orna is a truly wonderful place

to spend time in. I haven't got the chance to experience the Wilder Fields with the soccer

club I joined and I have to say that background and the fields themselves are incredible and I

I just love being there.

So thank you once again for a bit of training.

And I'm sorry Cara, I didn't mention you.

Cara Hoxie has host family, two of our students,

and we are so grateful.

And then she's out recruiting for us.

So that's good.

Thank you all.

Thank you for what you do

to support the Sister City program.

And I think we have to thank this year's host family,

Emily and Perrin and Lauren for hosting Radim.

It's hard to find such wonderful host families.

And they're doing an amazing job this year.

So we want to thank them.

They've taken on a huge schedule with Radim back and forth

to soccer and football.

And he's so involved in so many things.

And they've made that possible for him.

And I am very, very grateful to you

for making all of this happen.

It really is a pleasure in Orinda

to be able to host these students.

They're hand-picked.

It is a stiff competition to be selected to come to Orinda

and we get amazing students

and it really creates an international sort of love,

relationship between Tabor and the students in Tabor

and Orinda and the families that host the students.

And my children have traveled internationally

with their students that we've hosted

and they've met other students.

And it's just tremendous experience for everybody.

And I highly recommend if anyone is watching

and wants to become a host family

that they seriously consider doing so.

It's a wonderful experience for the family

and for the host students.

So thank you and thank you, Emily and Perrin.

I would agree.

And I'd ask if anybody else from the audience

or from the council has anything to say.

No, you're sort of both.

And if not, we were hoping we could get a photo with you,

Just as our own souvenir while you're here.

We're so proud of you.

Thank you.

Our next item on the agenda, Veterans Day

is a national holiday.

We've never done a city council agenda item,

but I'm from a military family, both sides of my family's

military all the way up.

And for as much as we acknowledge

all sorts of other groups, we've never

taken a moment to acknowledge Orinda's veterans.

And it's, you know, we'll see you guys at the 4th of July

or at the occasional event.

So I was just excited to just one time

have some of our veterans come up and let us acknowledge you

and thank you for your service and the tremendous

contribution that you and all of our veterans

make to our country and to being role models

also in the community.

So I'll just read a few words.

There's one for each of you, but I'll do just tell you

what it says and then I'll just read the names.

In honor of your dedicated service and sacrifice

in the armed forces of the United States,

the city of Arenda extends its deepest gratitude

for your courage, commitment, and unwavering devotion

to protecting our nation and preserving our freedoms.

Your contributions reflect the highest values of duty,

honor, and patriotism,

and our community is profoundly grateful for your service.

Our veterans here tonight are Brent Austin,

Bart Bates, Henry Gonzalez Jr., Michael Kirby, Terry Murphy,

Arlene Thomas, Ronald Wecht, and Bill Norman.

Thank you all.

We'll get off of you for whatever seconds.

We must be a full out interview.

Get any friends, family?

Let's go to the other one.

To be the simulation crew.

That's what I see.

Do some clear art.

I'm just going to rest.

I'm sorry.

I'm taking some of this.

I'm going to turn it over.

I'm going to say yeah.

Absolutely not.

Maybe it should be that one, maybe it should be that one.

I don't know.

I'm sorry.

I'm taking some of this.

I'm going to turn it over.

Yeah.

I'm going to turn it over.

Okay.

One, two, three.

Thank you so much. Thank you all.

And that was a real treat. Thank you all for coming mayor. Can I oh and I should first

ask if there's any different the public who would like to speak and then we'll we'll have

council member words anyone from the public all right seeing none maybe okay does anybody

want to say anything council member I just wanted to thank you mayor for initiating this

And I think, I hope it's a new tradition that stays.

I think it's a lovely gesture.

And, you know, our service members have given so much

to our country and to us and allow our way of life to be.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Great, I would also mention my nephew

is in his first year of active duty.

So I'm excited to continue the tradition

and Carson, wherever you are, good luck.

And with that, we're going to go on to item E3, recognizing the Arinda Garden Club for

the Crossroads Plaza Project.

I'm not sure who's presenting on this.

Mayor and members of the Council, I can do that.

I just wanted to put on the agenda, later on your consent calendar, you'll have the

acceptance of the Crossroads Plaza Project, and we are so grateful for the role that the

Arinda Garden Club helped in helping us through the process, not just the contribution that

they made to help support the project, but through the process, all the work with the

team and the staff, and we wanted to make sure we gave them proper recognition, both

for the contribution of the funds, as well as for their just generous with their time

and effort in helping us create what has become a very attractive corner now in Arinda, as

you enter into the theater district and when you exit the freeway, and so we just wanted

to spend just a minute to congratulate them and all the work and thank them again for

their financial contributions.

I would second that. One time I drove by about a month ago and saw a family doing like a

Christmas card photo shoot in front of that gardening and I just thought we have arrived.

The certificate just says that the certificate is proudly presented to the Arid and Garden

Club for providing extensive consulting for the landscaping design, grant funds and assistance

plant procurement during construction of the Crossroads Plaza project. Would you

like to come receive it and then we'll see if you guys want to say a few words.

Thank you so much. Nice to see you. The Irina Garden Club is an all-volunteer organization that

that is dedicated to conservation, education,

and beautification of Arinda.

And we are a nonprofit organization

that is based here solely in Arinda and for Arinda.

And so we are so happy to have contributed to this project

through generous donations by some of our members

and through some fundraising that we did.

and we'd like to acknowledge a couple of people

that are not here tonight,

but Sue Anderson Burger and Lisa Hallahan,

who are members of our garden club,

really helped out with the helping

of the placing of the plants

and choosing the plants and everything.

So they did a really amazing job.

So we want to say thank you to them and to all of you.

And we hope to keep partnering with you

in the future on more projects.

So bring them our way.

Hopefully we can help.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

This is lovely, thanks.

Thank you.

Would anybody from the council like to say anything?

I'd just like to add my thanks to the Garden Club

and their support of beautifying Arinda.

It really makes a difference in our community

and we really appreciate it.

Thank you.

And I wanna also congratulate you in our near 90th year.

The Arinda Garden Club stands out

among many, many organizations in Arinda

for supporting the city's projects.

And we all thank you and understand how much effort

and work it is behind the scenes to build that fund for us.

So thank you very much.

And I'll just chime in that you have huge fans

amongst all of us and our city manager, I believe,

our staff.

And ever since council member Riley's first assumed office,

She's always introduced, at least to me,

the benefits of the Arinda Garden Club

and has been a huge cheerleader for you all.

So, and I'm so grateful for that.

Thank you.

I would agree, you're a tremendous partner

and thank you very much.

If there's nothing else on item E3,

I'm gonna keep this moving along with item F, public forum.

Public forum is an opportunity for people

who wanna speak on any item

that is not on tonight's agenda,

or if you'd like to speak on an item

is on the agenda later and you won't be able to stay for that item. We cannot comment on items

because they are not agendized, but I have one speaker card and anybody else who'd like to speak,

please either raise your hand on Zoom or come on up. Shaheen Tans, please come on up.

Hi, good evening. I'm going to talk about the leaf blowers,

item K2, but it's right at the end of the agenda, so I wanted to go home.

I'll touch upon four topics, noise, cost, regional air pollution and climate.

I actually did send a more detailed email in earlier which has more details but I'll go over

it again. Noise, this is a no-brainer, electric ones are quieter. Actually the Lafayette initiative

started because a few children were inconvenienced by noise when they had COVID lockdown. However,

However, I do my own gardening.

And I look at the neighbors, gardeners.

And I see that the leaf blowers account for the noise

about a quarter of the time.

The rest of the time, it's hedge trimmers,

weed trimmers, other gas-powered implements.

Item two, cost.

These battery charges last about an hour

of electric leaf blower.

So a professional gardener going house to house

will have to buy about two to four extra ones.

and they come at a cost.

They could be high theft items.

Sometimes the contractors get their stuff stolen

from their trucks when they're not around.

So I'd have staff talk to some of the Lafayette people

and see if that's been an issue, cost and theft.

Item three is regional air pollution.

And I'm talking about ozone, poisonous pollutant.

Two-stroke engines and leaf blowers

put out a lot of volatile organic compounds, which

precursors to making ozone. And I actually wrote a report to the California Energy Commission

in 2008 about this. So eliminating gas powered leaf blowers would have a benefit, but take

into consideration that they only contribute about a quarter of the gardening emissions.

And then when you throw in the fact that every cold automobile started every morning also

produces VOCs for the first five or ten minutes of driving. The contribution from leaf blowers

might not be that much. But I don't know the fraction. It could be significant, but I don't

really know the number. Finally, climate. I just mentioned this because somebody when

this becomes a topic is going to say it's good for the climate. And I did a quick calculation

And I estimate that the reduction of CO2 emissions

by banning gas-powered leaf blowers

will likely reduce an orindar household's emissions

by about one part in 1,000.

And that's a really tiny amount.

Not much.

Not a justification for a ban.

The numbers I used are in my written email.

And that's all the time I have.

I do use a gas-powered leaf blower for about an hour

a year.

I climb up on my gutters and blow the leaves out.

That's pretty much all I do with it.

Much to the consternation of my wife.

Thank you for taking the time to come tonight.

Appreciate it.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak

for public forum?

No one online?

No one's on the line, but you did get a,

in your correspondence packet,

a written correspondence from Mr. Warren Off.

And I'll note that for the record.

Great, with that, we'll move on to item.

I was just gonna, just for the record,

I just want to know, we also got some late correspondence

that I think came in after 3 PM for non-agendized items.

So I assume that that's relating to public forum.

Yes, you did get one at 3.30.

Okay, thank you.

There's one at 6.51 as well.

Okay, are we good?

Okay, no.

And is there anybody, I guess I should ask

there anybody who'd like to speak from the public on public forum items I know

we can't comment. With that we'll go to councilmember reports. I think we'll

start this way. Okay well well Vice Mayor Gee has been out of town I've had

the opportunity to attend some meetings that she normally would have attended

including the planning meeting for the CCTA and their regular board meeting and

And I learned a few interesting things at that meeting.

One is that there is a plan that will begin in April of 2027 to start rehabilitating the

three bores of the Caldecott Tunnel that are older, bores one, two, and three.

And they're planning to do those bores.

Each one will take three to six months, and they'll have to shut the bore completely during

that construction.

So we will be down to three bores at a time with two in the commute direction and one

in the alternative direction for a total of almost two years.

And that's supposed to begin in April of 2027.

And that will have a big impact on Arinda, as we know, because people will cut through

Arinda to avoid going through the tunnel.

And so I think we need to get the word out to people that this is going to start happening

and to start thinking about their commute and hopefully take part because it's going

to be a mess. So I wanted to let the community know that that is happening and our city manager

will have more information. CCTA Caltrans will be providing more information on those

closures and exactly when they're going to begin and exactly how they're going to conduct

them. But I wanted to make sure to share that information with everybody. And then today

I met with Sean Barry from the Contra Costa Council on Aging.

Orinda currently does not have a representative on the Contra Costa Council of Aging.

And we were talking about my concerns about isolated seniors in their homes and evacuation.

And what could the Council on Aging do to help at least get seniors aware of community

warn system and Nixle alerts and having evacuation plans and go bags and lists of their medication

if someone has to come and help them evacuate so they can take them with them and other

items like that, because I'm still very concerned that we have a lot of seniors living in our

community who don't really have good plans for evacuation if their family members can't

get to them because we have counter flow or they have their own families to evacuate or

whatever the situation is, if their neighbors don't remember them, what will happen to them?

So I think it's an ongoing conversation we need to have and we need to find all the resources

we can to figure out how to start better addressing, I think, the problem that hasn't been addressed.

So we did not come up with solutions, but I raised the issue and he said he was going

to have me come and speak to one of their committees that does planning to raise that

concern with them.

So I'll let you know if there's any follow-up to that.

Just a quick question on that.

Did we have somebody who's a representative and we just have an unfilled vacancy or is

that something that we have not been, uh, it just kind of wasn't on our list to fill?

I don't know.

I think we had a person, I think Candace, someone resigned.

Yeah, resigned.

Candace Evans was our person and she resigned.

So I do think we should hopefully have it on our list to fill.

So mayor, we'll go ahead and we'll Joelle and I'll take a look, but I don't know if

one of the bodies for appointment or if it's a community appointment. We appointed one when we

were first elected. I don't have the history on it, so I just need to get some of the history.

So I believe the person who retired was an incumbent when she retired, so

maybe in February that'll come back on our list. But it's not just an issue for Orinda, obviously

the problem of seniors aging in their homes unable to drive all over Contra Costa County,

but uh it doesn't seem like it's being addressed in any sort of uh cohesive way and so I just want

to make sure that we continue to think through solutions for the seniors in our community.

I really appreciate you doing that meeting. Councillor Malcomi. I'm sorry was there anything

Anything else?

Councilmember Hoxie?

Okay.

I wanted to report on a really lovely opportunity.

I had to spend time with a mayor from Ukraine, from central Ukraine, and I'm still going

to botch the name, but we had a visit on Friday, October 23rd, and I want to thank Cole for

with all these arrangements and it was with me. So we were visited by Mayor Andre Kolomitskov of the

Hrujovica community and I apologize to anyone Ukrainian because I've bought that I know but

he and his wife were visiting. They're from central Ukraine and it was really, you know,

So, it's interesting, it reminded me of sort of visiting

Tabor last year when there were a lot of local electeds

from their other sister cities there.

And I remember talking to someone about,

everywhere we went, there were all these conversations

about infrastructure, right?

Roads and drains is sort of what every city,

anywhere in the world, every community needs.

But this was, it was really interesting to hear

about the structure of their government and community.

and I wanted to share a couple things.

One is that they called it a community.

So he was mayor of this region.

And the population wasn't that much larger than Arinda,

but the region was like 200 miles, right?

And so it was really large and it was in central Ukraine.

And then on one hand we were talking about infrastructure

and on the other hand we were talking about

how they have just, life under war is normalized

and they would do things like sometimes be,

like you showed us a video of a drone, right?

And just sometimes they would spend the night

in a bomb shelter and then they would get up and go to work

because that's just sort of what they had to do, right?

And told us quite a few stories that just both

gave us an appreciation for the circumstances

they're surviving under and also personally gave us

a huge amount of gratitude for everything that is happening here.

And this sort of came to us through one of our residents,

Anil Canelo, who

is also has spent 30 years of his life as a city manager

and so reached out to to Linda.

And it was just a great opportunity.

And then once he got here after he was here,

said they we learned that he really wanted to visit a

water treatment plant because he's very interested in water and infrastructure. So we contacted East

Bay Mudd, their public affairs representative, and they made an arrangement. And we were able

to visit the water treatment plant out here in Arinda at four o'clock that afternoon after having

lunch. And it was, you know, it was really incredible. And also the, and, and the general

manager of East Bay Mudd came himself as well as a lot of their staff. And so that was really

appreciated. Anyway, but, and he brought us, he brought the City of Arinda, a, you know, some

things that I just wanted to share. There was, there's a packet that has information on their

community. If anyone wants to look at that, I'm gonna leave all this at City Hall. There's some

chocolates. This is awesome. Also there. And, and I thought this was really sweet. It was sort of

their little doll. So which which is going to be all given to City Hall. So thank you.

That is really an awesome thing to hear about that meeting and sort of how it turned into a

tour of the whole thing. Would you like to talk about weathered? I don't know if the

city manager was going to or I'll talk about it if you're not.

The only thing I will say is something that I know the city manager has already communicated

about it, which is that, you know, huge, huge, huge thanks to our own staff, Mickey Cronin,

and to Paula Rheinman for pulling off just an incredible showing and to, you know, Paula

saw this film in Sacramento and thought it would be a good idea.

And she reached out to our city manager, who Paula, as Paula tells the story, most city

managers would go, Oh, another thing for me to do in my busy life. And ours didn't. She said,

great idea. And it was a huge success story. So I think thanks go to, you know, Paula Rheinman,

Mickey Cronin for just incredible hours put into it and to our city manager, Linda Smith,

for having the vision that this would be a good thing for Brenda.

It's well, thank you. And thank you for recognizing Mickey and Paula. And I'm sure

you all probably have the same sentiment, we sold 474 tickets.

474? That's amazing. And it really is a masterclass. I mean, I've been telling

everybody I've seen since then that in one hour it is as good, just a 101 on everything about

how fire spreads and when it becomes a firestorm and the conditions and the vegetation and the

insurance and the fire hydrants. I mean, it's fabulous. But it was a really successful event.

So thank you. I was going to thank all those people, so thank you as well.

And thank you Councilmember Mulconney for moderating.

Can I chime in on that? It's great. We get a great turnout, but the goal is, you know,

change behavior, and we didn't have this intention, but my husband said after seeing that and having

that experience, like we've got to do this, you know, we've got to finish this. So today was the day

we cleared out all the plants within the zone zero, replanted them with two helpers as well

as Vens. So anyway, if there are more people like, you know, that react like we did, it would be very

much more successful. And then also that same night my neighbor came up to me and said,

we've got to get an ambassador over to all our houses and help us figure out what to do. So again,

I mean, everyone was fired up. I pardon the pun, but it just came out.

For what it's worth, the next morning I made my husband promise that we would get somebody

to check all of our events and see if they were compliant. So it's that good that people who have

been for four years talking about fire, sort of went, oh my God, let's make sure we've done the

big three. I mean, it was, it's really important. So anything else? Can I mention the Vista Verde

groundbreaking? Oh my gosh, yeah. That we all had the pleasure of attending. And that's very

exciting to see that project underway. And again, it's going to provide affordable housing to

to seniors in our community and that's a great thing.

So very happy that's moving forward

and that they invited us and Janet did a wonderful job

representing the city at that groundbreaking.

So thank you, Janet.

And we had a huge turnout.

It was huge.

All the partners for the last 10 years,

all the lawyers, all the anybody ever touched,

Victoria Smith and her organization were there

and they were honored and called out

It was very, very solidifying and very, very powerful and exciting.

Council member Riley made a really, really good speech, so thank you for that. It was really

very heartwarming to hear about and very passionate about the need for senior housing

and how wonderful it is, the project. I wanted to tell you about Recycle Smart.

We're getting ready March 1 to with a new contract and the message at our last board meeting was

they figured out what households are going to be told they have a new day. If you were always on

Monday you you might be told you're on Tuesdays starting March 1. They haven't told us what the

what households they are, but we've got a list of only, in Arendelle, we're only going to have

870 households affected. But in Danville, it's something like 11,000, so we are like getting

really, we're going to have a minor, minor, minor impact. And those people will be notified multiple

ways in February by postcards, phone calls. They are going to be so sick of being told what their

new day is. So it's a great communication plan. Also starting March 1, they are going

to be front and center and telling us what's recyclable and that's numbers 1, 2, and 5.

And the Republic Services has until June 2028 to put on new stickers on our blue cans that

say what is recyclable, the paper, the cardboard and the one, two, three, one,

two, five plastics. Then do you want to talk about Taurus's? Taurus had her

retirement party or event on Sunday at the Founders Auditorium. Again, a hundred

people were there to honor her. There were two films, Genuine Goodness did the

food. So there's a nice buffet. Our mayor did a great presentation and I said something but I

almost broke down in tears so I don't think there was much value to that but maybe it was memorable.

It was awesome. Anyway, it was a very very positive experience and I'm sure Taurus was just

feeling so, so, so remembered and loved and valued. You just, you cannot believe the praise.

It was like she walks on water. It is. And she is so cool. You're expecting somebody fragile from

the way everyone's talking about her. And she's casting off the walker going, this is gone in a

week. She gave her own. But it was great. And I would add that yesterday was Taurus-Yakir day in

in Arenda and it's the second time we've had Toris Yeager

Day in Arenda, which says a lot.

Anything else from your list?

I just have one more fun announcement.

I forgot a couple of things if you want to.

Let me do mine really quick because it's

the Miramati water polo team is number one

for the women's team and number two

for the men's team in the United States.

That was as of like a week or two ago.

So I'm so proud of our Miramati sports

and apparently the new lights at the pool

that Lord knows if you're a Miramati parent

you've been hearing about.

Apparently they are so bright, it is like daylight,

and they have no light pollution.

They're apparently the very best technology.

People are so excited,

and the pool dedication is this Friday the 6th.

I was just gonna bring up that I went to,

it's been three weeks or something,

so I forgot about all this stuff,

but I went to a two-day celebration of the valley

at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek,

and ran into quite a few Orinda residents there.

And it was just, they had a comic show the night before,

which was really funny.

It was a ticketed event.

And then they had like, you know, food trucks

and there was someone there with Henna

and they had a bunch of performances

and like this really cool group from Rossmoor

did a fashion show, which is really fun.

I happened to be there when Mayor

from Walnut Creek, Kevin Wilk was giving a speech

and they made him also do an impromptu dance performance,

a Bollywood dance performance, so that was really funny.

I got to videotape it.

And then, but it was a great festival

and that made me, reminded me of something

that I've been wanting to bring up for a while

as matters initiated, so I thought I would do it here,

which is to have a, is that okay to do it now?

It is, okay, which is to have a policy

of allowing for cultural displays,

which is something that I know some groups do,

and Lafayette has one, I believe,

and Moraga has one, and I think Walnut Creek,

and a lot of most Contra Costa cities have one.

So I'd like us to explore that,

which will allow for things like menorah lightings,

Cultural displays.

Real quickly, the procedure with that,

I'm happy to second that.

Do we have anyone, votes in favor?

Aye.

Great, so we'd like to make that a matter initiated

to please come back.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Did you say there were more than one thing?

Or is that it?

Okay.

Anything else on council member reports?

That was a lot.

I'm sorry.

We had about three weeks of content.

I know.

I just wanted to mention that there was a chamber chat

with the local FART representative, Matt,

whose last name, Brynn, thank you.

Last name, I'm forgetting.

And that was great.

It was attended by probably 10 to 15 chamber members.

And I thought people appreciated it

and thought it was useful.

So just a shout out to the chamber

for organizing that.

And I guess I assume city manager Smith is gonna say this,

but tomorrow is election day.

So for those of you who haven't voted,

We hope you do.

Mayor, members of the council,

for the city manager's report,

just on that theme about voting,

we have drop, we can drop your ballots off at City Hall.

We have secure, we have a secure ballot drop off,

and we're encouraging folks to make sure

that they turn those ballots in before,

what time tomorrow night, eight o'clock?

Eight o'clock. Eight o'clock.

All right.

So we look forward, everybody should vote this election,

if you're able to.

We have upcoming on December 4th is Winterfest,

and there's lots of fun activities

that are gonna happen during Winterfest,

so we encourage the community to come out and enjoy that.

And I believe they are soliciting entries

for the Gingerbread House Contest.

So if you are talented and you can build a Gingerbread House,

I'm sure there's lots of people

that would love to take a look at it.

Youth camps are starting for over Thanksgiving break,

and they will be running from November 23rd to November 25th.

So we'd love to see as many students enrolled

in that program as we can.

And you already talked about weather and safe at scale,

so I don't need to talk about that.

And I don't have any other meetings

that I need to report out on at this point.

Just share one more thing from our county registrar

because for our mayor's conference,

I'm the liaison to their community outreach group.

And for anyone who is voting at this point,

county registrar was saying please return your ballot to a polling booth or to the drop box which

is right by city hall because one one change that the county registrar was made aware of

is that the postal service may postmark a ballot when they process it not necessarily when it's

placed in the mailbox so at this point put them in the drop box or put them in a polling but return

turn them to public.

Thank you.

Anything else City Manager?

That concludes my report.

Great.

Thank you all.

I know that was a lot but we will move on to the consent calendar.

I only had one item to pull and that is the preliminary budget.

The preliminary quarterly financial report item I-8 just for a quick comment.

for a presentation.

Does anybody else want to pull anything for discussion or otherwise?

Mayor, I need to make one comment on my item I-9, which is that pursuant to the government

code, we need to, prior to taking final action on this item, the HR manager was going to

provide an oral report.

She is under the weather.

So Doug Alessio will provide that report to you.

And if we can take care of that report before you decide.

I see we do the report and then it can it stay on the consent calendar or can unless you want to pull it and discuss it

Got it. Let's hear the report

Thank you

Good evening mayor and members of the council. I'm Douglas. Yo your is assistant city manager

Pursuing to government code section five four nine five three section D to to ensure transparency

I will read the salary range for the city manager into the public record

The annual base salary is $308,885 effective November 2nd, 2026.

The details of which are base salary increase of roughly $28,000, a change in medical in

lieu of $23.9952 a month.

fiscal impact uh for the current fiscal year is $37,433.89 and on an annual basis is $61,367.04.

Thank you. Are there any questions? Great. Seeing none, um I only have I8 pulled from the consent

calendar. Uh do we have a motion to approve the consent calendar? So moved. Uh do I have a second?

second all in favor I and item i-8 I just wanted to tell director Alessio how impressed I always

am with the way he presents information not only is the is the budget just looking great

but to be able to show the variance and explain why it's there and and really make it easy to

understand the makeup of our revenues our expenses our variances again I just we look at it about

once a quarter, and I can always remember where we are on the map. I can really understand it,

and I just wanted to say thank you. Any other comments, or I'll make a motion.

I agree. I agree too, but do we, with such a huge

balance, do we want to talk about doing something with that?

So Doug, do you want to... Typically, when we talk about what to do with when we have more

revenues and expenditures at the end of a year, it's usually handled after we have the audit,

is that correct? Yeah, so there'll be another time when we'll be back in front of the council

where we'll make recommendations about what to do with the remaining funds. Yes, and that'll occur

when I do the second quarter of the current fiscal year financial update and we could talk about the

fund balance and excess of required reserves then and and what you can potentially do with it

and ultimately we program that into the budget for next year typically. You've been warned.

We're spending it already. For clarity what time period is that that we're getting that report? I'm

looking in the staff report and trying to. Sure so the second quarter report is at the end of

December 31st. So usually you're talking first meeting in February. Yeah. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments or questions? I will move that we adopt item I-8, the preliminary

quarterly financial report. Second. All in favor? I. Great. And with that, we'll move right on to

policy matter K-1, the art ways of Arinda to talk about finalist proposals and process.

Members of Council, Mayor, it is a pleasure to be able to speak with you tonight about Artways

of Arrenda. This is a really exciting project which seeks to deliver on Council's strategic

priority of beautifying downtown Arrenda by installing art along the Camino Pablo Underpass

as well as the pedestrian pathway that goes over the Highway 24 westbound off-ramp into North

the council. We have brought

artists. So to give a little bit of background on what's already been done, city staff has

already engaged with Caltrans and received preliminary approval, which mean they told

us that these sites are good for this kind of a project, and they've already given us

a bit of a rundown on what the project will require, what their limits are, and having

received that preliminary approval we put together a request for proposals to gather some artist

quotes so that we could get a better understanding of what the talent out there in the broader world

would suggest for a project like this that's in accordance with the strategic priorities of the

city as well as Caltrans limits. So having received 11 proposals already for this project,

Your selection committee, which is made up of staff and a member of the art and public places committee has narrowed that list of 11 down to five.

So we've included that list in the staff report for you tonight. So you can get an understanding of what those proposals are and what they look like.

Notably, we did not ask any of the proposals to submit a art concept.

That's in alignment with the general standards

for this kind of project.

It's generally expected that we're not going to

ask for final artwork without providing compensation

to an artist, and it's also in alignment

with our understanding of the project,

which is that the goal is to find a qualified artist,

bring them in, have them engage with staff,

have them engage with the Art and Public Places Committee,

with any funding partners and with the city council

to ultimately come up with a design

that reflects the priorities of the community

and what we tell them we want.

So right now we're going to be, as I said,

asking for your thoughts on the general artistic direction

and any questions that we should ask those finalists.

Then we're going to have a follow-up interview

with G through those finalists,

ask them those questions

and then we hope to come back to the city council

and ask for your approval to execute a contract

to complete the art design

and engagement part of the project.

And then we'll go forward

and we'll do that art design

and engagement part of the project.

We are seeking your consensus

on whether or not you would like

the art and public places committee

to be a part of that engagement project.

Right now, we've structured their proposals

so that the artists would engage

with the Art and Public Places Committee two times

for revisions before hopefully coming back

to the city council with final art.

If that is an acceptable strategy

for the implementation of this project,

we would like your consensus on that.

And the reason we need to ask for that

is because it's a little bit outside the scope

of their charter.

So if you do give us consensus on that,

when we come back to you with a contract for the artist,

we'll also ask in that resolution for that direction

so we can move forward and pursue that strategy.

After we do all those sorts of things,

you know, we go back to the council, we get that art,

we're planning on working on the installation.

So again, consensus on whether or not you'd like the APPC

involved in the engagement process

and any thoughts on the artistic direction

or questions that the selection committee should ask

of the artists moving forward.

That's what we're asking for tonight.

That's the end of my presentation

and I'll turn it back over to the mayor.

Thank you.

I don't know that we have, are there any other public comm,

or any council member questions

before we see if there are public comments.

Questions?

Please, please.

Did you consider other ways

of involving art in public places?

How else could you involve them?

Sure, we could involve them

through more rounds of engagement.

We could have them come up with a concept

that they would prefer

and then try to have an artist come

and match that concept rather than picking the artist

and then having the concept developed

with the Art and Public Places Committee.

That was one alternative.

We ultimately thought it was best

to bring the most qualified artists in

with the understanding that they would be developing

that concept in alignment with the APPC

rather than doing it in the reverse.

And we thought that that would be helpful

because it would bring a little bit more process

and a little bit more order to it.

If we did it in the reverse

where we asked to come up with a concept first,

sometimes that can consume a lot of time and resources

when you have a committee

that's trying to create a concept from nothing.

And I just wanna also just note,

we have a member of the APPC represented

on the selection committee.

So why are we,

So, so where did this idea come from? Did it come from that representative on the committee that they needed more engagement with the committee? Did the liaison from the Art and Public Places feel like he needed more input from his Art and Public Places committee?

Oh, so why aren't we here tonight?

Why isn't he providing all the information that they need to give us during that process?

Why have another process separate when we have a representative?

I think I might be…

Not following me?

I think I may be a little confused by your question.

So I don't want to use names, but we have a liaison sitting on the staff committee.

That person could represent the art committee's viewpoint.

And that would be engagement itself.

Yes, and that's how we've engaged them

for the selection of the artist at this point in time.

The plan is, and we're seeking your input on the plan,

is that once the artist is selected,

that artist will then work with the full APPC

on the final design of the artwork.

Huh, it sounds like we'll have some discussion.

Questions?

I'll go up on that.

It seems like if there's a selection committee

that's sort of working with the artist

or choosing the artist, right?

Then they are in that selection process,

which is narrowing it down,

coming up with a shared vision, right?

At the point that you're selecting them.

So just to piggyback on Council Member Riley's question,

I'm not really understanding why the transition would be

to no longer work with the selection committee

and work instead with the art and public places committee

as opposed to including that one member

and continuing with the selection committee.

So what's the pro of pivoting, as opposed to not?

Is it staff resources?

Is it, I just wasn't sure.

So it's two different goals.

So when we put the RFP out to try

and select the most qualified artists,

the way that we do that through the selection process

is according to stringent criteria.

And so that is something,

staff is really good at reviewing requests for proposals,

putting them out and scoring people

according to those criteria.

And then when we're engaging the APPC in the art design,

the goal is community engagement.

And obviously APPC as members of the community

are apt to do that work more so than staff.

It's also in alignment with the requirements

of the Caltrans Transportation Art Program,

which is they want to see some form, some version

of community engagement in the design of their artwork.

And we felt like engagement with APPC

was a good way to do that.

Thank you, that helps me have a better understanding.

Any other questions?

I will ask, and again, we'll have a nice discussion.

Do we have any public comment on this?

I don't have any speaker cards.

No, Mayor.

Okay, so we'll bring it up for further discussion.

Who'd like to go first?

Anyone?

Council Member Riley.

I mean, any thoughts?

I have thoughts, but go ahead.

I'll just jump in on this point, which is I think that engaging the whole Arts

and Public Places committee is good. It should be part of the process, but it shouldn't be the

whole process of engaging with the... Because we have the grant funding and we have the...

I do think that whatever you've done to get to these five selections has been a good thing.

I think they're all attractive. It's hard to sort of give feedback for me personally in terms of

which ones. So I would hope that there's some continued involvement and engagement by staff

and it isn't sort of like handed over. I guess I'll just quickly turn in that

that answer was very helpful about the Caltrans requirement for public engagement because I

actually feel like a great big survey would be a mess and a procedural drag and so that was an

informative piece of the puzzle for me. Councilmember Hoxie? I guess that I have a couple questions

actually that have come to me now but one is about maintaining any of these artworks like if

there are a lot of cars and things going through over time they'll be exhaust and things that will

gather on the walls. Is there like a process of the city being responsible for maintaining

the artwork after it's installed or artists come back and how does that work?

So the artwork is required to be built for a lifespan of at least 20 years.

The artwork will be the property of Caltrans, so ultimately their responsibility to maintain it,

although we can definitely explore what a long-term maintenance agreement would be.

Certainly understand that our standards would likely be higher than Caltrans and the priority

as well. But it shouldn't be an issue, hopefully, you know, unless someone you get the vandalism

and things like that, which can happen. They're designed for 20 year lifespan, at least.

Are there certain, I understand there's certain paints that can be used that make it harder

for people to vandalize artwork.

I assume that the artists know about those materials.

It's part of the requirements.

So Caltrans says that you have to use anti-graffiti paint and all those materials, and all of

the proposals submitted knowing that it was included in the request for proposals.

And then will the city have to wash them?

I mean, is there some sort of cleaning or something that would be done on a annual or

some schedule?

It's a good question.

And we could definitely explore again, what that maintenance schedule would look like

in collaboration with the artist.

Okay.

I mean, I liked the five that were presented.

I personally had a favorite, I don't know for at the point of talking about our, our

favorites or not. But I also kind of had a question because you've you said our artistic

direction is welcome and questions for the artists are welcome but the staff reports seem to imply

that we should not be you know picking a favorite or advocating for one. Can you give us some fairly

specific guidance about what input would be helpful tonight? Yeah I think one of the things that when

we met as the selection committee that we talked about and one of the reasons I told Cole we're

We're coming back to the council first

before we continue on in this processes.

I mean, basically what we saw with the artists' proposals

was some submitted art, some didn't,

and we didn't want to get too bogged down in that,

but what we really were trying to understand

is what sort of category of art are you interested in?

Because there was a discussion at the selection committee

about whether or not it should be focused on nature,

or should it be place-making type of art

because of its proximity to the theater district

and the village district,

should there be something more to identify

that you're in a special district or a special area.

And then there was some discussion

about historical type of art and whether or not,

and we didn't really see any proposals for that.

And then we saw proposals for more like pop art,

something that's more eye-catching,

but maybe not in keeping with maybe

sort of the traditional artist approach to things

that you might expect in orrinda, right?

You might want something a little more tame.

So we just wanted to know if you were interested

in something out a little wild.

Are you interested in something that's more reflective

of the semi-rural nature of orrinda, more nature-based?

Are you interested in some placemaking as well?

There's at least one of the artists sort of combine

the two ideas of having some symbolism for placemaking,

but also with some nature.

So, I mean, there's definitely variations here,

but we just wanted to make sure, as a selection committee,

because the selection committee had,

we had, there were some with bold ideas,

and there were some that thought,

well, maybe we should be more muted.

And so we wanted to hear from the council

what direction you'd like to go,

because that will help inform some of the conversations

with the artists as we move forward.

And again, yes, some have presented some concepts

as part of their proposals,

just so you can get a sense of where their thinking is.

And so you can respond to that.

You can have thoughts around what you've seen,

and we'll take all that feedback back

and try to figure out who we should be working with.

I want to go back to the issue of involvement and engagement.

If we give direction tonight, or hopefully we

give some direction tonight on the focus of the style of art,

would that carry forward when it gets to the engagement process?

we would deliver that as a package that you would be saying we picked artist

number two because this is the direction of the council.

So I just don't want to get into that, um, you know,

difficult if they're given,

it just, I want to make sure that they're following this direction in that,

not starting all over or coming up with a new, um, you know,

feeling and stuff because I just,

I don't want to offend or hurt or disrupt this process.

I want it to go smoothly.

I want there, I mean, everyone who talks about art

has personal feelings and sensitivities and gets offended.

And so you just, I feel like it's delicate

and we have to be clear and yeah, you know what I mean?

You want them to give you input, but then I don't want them.

Yes, so council's direction tonight will help us focus

our conversations as a selection committee,

but then also when an artist is selected,

we'll be able to stay in our engagement with APPC

and any other funding partners that we may engage with,

that this is the general direction that council has selected

or told us that they would prefer to see.

So that'll help us to focus the conversations.

And ultimately city council is going to review

and approve the final artwork

before we submit to Caltrans.

So we'll be working with all of our partners in APPC

to make sure that a piece of art comes back

that is in alignment with your direction.

Thank you.

But I just want to,

when you say a final piece of art will come back to you,

that was the point about hurt feelings is,

there's an implicit expectation of a rubber stamp

when it's kind of fully baked before it gets to us.

And so that's where I think we're struggling

and you can kind of hear that with

how to not just add five individuals' opinions

to a process that I thought was very well thought through

in the staff report.

But we're very nervous about seeing something

that is fully baked the next time we see it.

And so I don't know if maybe a subcommittee,

some sort of like, you know, I mean,

Council Member Riley is our liaison

to the Art and Public Places Committee,

but if we could have a second council member

so that we've got a little bit more procedural involvement.

Maybe that creates a bridge.

I'm just trying to think creatively about how to keep,

because I really liked the fact that the art would

be getting done next summer.

And I don't want to slow it down.

But I think there is a little nervousness about whose

imprint is felt.

I'm wondering if we should maybe give feedback

and sort of to the extent we can on what we like and then come back to this discussion.

That's a great idea. And also, I mean, at this point, would a council member,

I'm kind of looking at council member Riley, if she's interested, who's our liaison,

be involved in that process? And maybe that's enough representation to sort of

take us through. I don't know if we need a second, but...

Well, I honestly feel a lot better. My question was answered. I feel like I can

trust this process, or we should all trust this process, is to solve your delivery of the way you

communicate your expectations from the input. So if we all are clear on that, I feel like we're

going to be successful. And also if you put a good timeline on it, you know, it's not a protracted

six-month period of discussing possible ways to paint the painting, you know. So I'm feeling okay.

And maybe we revisit this midway or something so that we don't let it go on for 10 years.

So we had another check-in with them in this process, right?

We had this meeting and then were we gonna check in

with them again at?

The next check-in that we had planned with council

was for contract approval.

Which would be in the next couple of months.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we'll probably schedule those finalist interviews

in the next couple of weeks, hope to conduct them.

And then we hope to make a selection

and come back with an approval in one to two months.

And would there be a design concept at that time

or would that just be a contract?

That would just be the contract.

And under that contract is when the design would take place.

So then any more bites at the Apple

before the proposed final design?

Yeah, we can give you more bites at the Apple

if you would like.

You could get the first look at a design before a PPC.

There's also other ways we could do it.

could form a subcommittee of the City Council to work on this in collaboration with a couple

members from APPC. We can get creative about the process in a few different ways.

Yes, I want to avoid the us and them, maybe a little more integration and then a microsmoothie.

Yeah, and it was also non-linear because I think linear slows it down and I really like the spirit

of that comment. I want to make one quick comment because I think Council Member Mulkin made a good

point about let's talk a little bit more about substance and see if that clarifies process.

There was one thing, though, that I was concerned about, and that was that the selection said

there was a 25% weighting on compliance with the RFP.

The RFP had a list of nature, culture, history, and something else, maybe placemaking, and

I just wanted to make sure that that wasn't an and.

So if somebody didn't have a history checkbox,

that that was going to affect their score.

If they went all nature or all culture,

the scoring system sounded fairly rigorous.

Can you clarify that?

Yeah, we tried to include a lot of things

in there so that we could welcome

a variety of different artists while also steering them

in the right direction.

That's the approach we took.

And I think based on all of the proposals we got,

did end up with a wide variety of different types of art. Yeah. Let me clear it. But someone's not

going to get dinged on their score if they're, say, all nature, no history. Correct. The scoring's

complete at this point, right? Because it was internally scored by this. No, there's no more

scoring. That answers the question. Thank you. Would like to talk about what they like. Sure.

there was one artist that wrote in their description of this, the actual surfaces that

they were painting on that they were trying to integrate the independent wall surfaces into one

sort of mural that I think in their words, if I could read better tonight, rather than painting

two independent pictures onto the infrastructure, they proposed to develop

one visual system choreographed across two sites

and multiple speeds of experience.

And I like that.

I liked that it was all sort of integrated

at the different levels of the different surfaces,

wall surfaces.

And I liked the picture that they used in their materials

that sort of had some motion to it almost.

Oh, a rendered motion?

Yeah.

I felt like the graphic design there,

the sort of resounding of the arena theater

plus the nature it created place

and created sort of integrated system in that space.

And I liked that instead of having disparate things

on different walls or whatever.

So that was something that spoke to me

because I thought that the concept

of using those different walls and sort of integrating them

into one overall experience was really nice.

And that would be great for that space.

So I'm done.

I think that the goal should be that this reflects

the semi-rural character of Arinda,

that it shows natural beauty, landscapes, trees,

rolling hills, something on the realistic side,

something that is not abstract,

something that's not bold, that's not pop art.

It's something that stands the test of time.

It's reflecting what we perceive this to be.

We keep saying it semi-rural,

when in fact, I don't know, maybe it is on the outskirts,

but we're still not a big urban center.

We are surrounded by open space.

And I'd like it to be like our new Crossroads Plaza,

a welcoming feeling that you get. It's saying, not only does it say welcome, but you feel welcome

and you feel a sense of pride. And it's also like the Crossroads Plaza in that it's just

something you see out of the side of your eye. I mean, you're just glancing, you're just passing

through. It's not like you're going to sit there and stare at it and take in every element. It's

just a drive-by kind of experience. But you come away feeling really really good.

I picture like rolling hills looking down at San Pablo or rolling hills and a creek and a

coyote is just coming over the creek bank or something and the deer in the water or eating

nearby. I don't know. I mean, maybe that won't work, but my feeling is that you lean towards

native plants, natural feeling, natural landscapes.

I'll just chime in. You phrased that exquisitely as to like what I was reacting to. The word

timeless, semi-rural, you know, I work in Oakland and murals are a big part of that sort of,

of it's an urban environment hallmark and so when we think about what we're

doing with art ways of Arinda, I'm like I'm not trying to do that same thing to

me this was a freeway beautification project and therefore it's not about

making an artistic statement of who Arinda is, it's beautifying a freeway and

that's why some of the you talk about the rolling hills something that you can

easily your brain can just capture as you're driving by I mean that's that to

me felt like what we're trying to accomplish. It's not trying to create a marketing piece

for the city. And by the way, I thought all five finalists are fabulous. I'd be thrilled

with any of them. But I agree that that concept of trying to get semi-rural, rolling hills,

beauty, that felt more authentic and it felt more timeless. So everything you said, I would

totally agree.

The only thing I forgot to say is like native plants like poppies in the fields and poppies

That's the part of the Native Plains.

Please no raccoons or mangy coyotes.

Cause if you're being really authentic,

that's what we're really doing.

So anybody else?

Yeah, I'll chime in.

I have, I'm going from what's in the packet.

I'll tell you what I liked.

I liked what you referenced,

what council member Hoxie referenced,

which I think is in the packet page 377 in attachment E,

Which, and then, and I liked it because it was a little catchy to me.

And it's incorporated the word, Arinda, and it was catchy, and it was a little bolder.

And I also liked, on page 335, I was just going and finding the pages, I think it was all stats.

And I, you know, that vision, which did include the coyote, I think.

but did it I thought in a way that there were the mushrooms and I like both of those because I

thought they had the right balance between like boldness but still very Orinda and I don't know

how to that's not the best way to say it but it's sort of boldness but not you know I actually did

like the when I first looked at the color club murals attached one which is attachment d

Hayley Bass and Color Club murals. When I first looked at it, I was like, oh no, too much pop art.

But then I was like, God, this is kind of cute because the colors used and it was so warm and

welcoming. But I felt like that was maybe a little too much pop art for Brenda, but I liked it. I don't

know. So my two faves were, but then I also loved, I mean, I loved the, it wasn't on the table. It was

just an example of his other work, or their other work, but the Sacramento mural I thought was just

great. And I was like, that is so cool if it had incorporated in each letter. I was like,

we get that with the theater and Native plants. But that's not semi-rural, that's bold,

because it was a black background. And part of it is I've walked that underpass a decent amount

because I do take part. And sometimes when I take part, I walk over here for a meeting. And

I want something that people are going to come over and be like, this is cool. I want to take

a picture in front of this. So I'm not saying we have to turn into Santa Monica, but with Insta,

where these places, but something that maybe has inviting softer colors, but like has a little pop

and a little fun and not boring is sort of, and that's what I felt those two both had. But I don't

know. That's a little different from, I don't know, maybe what. I like having the orinda as part of

the mural. A little bit of placemaking, I guess is what you call it, I think is nice,

you know, to call out our city. But ultimately I have such, this is like design, like I have

such a hard time providing input on these, you know, pieces of art because everyone views

art differently, and everyone, different art appeals to everyone differently. And so I don't

know, I don't know how you make these determinations. But I would say the thing that really struck me

was just the incorporation of those different surfaces and the way they tied that particular

artist tied them together. I thought if you were driving, it would kind of create this sense of

hills and movement that I really like the idea of. I'm not sure if they're the right colors. I'm not

sure if it's the right style, but I would ask that whatever artist we try to do that, to try to

sort of bring the different surfaces, I don't think we want something totally different on one wall

than something totally different on the other wall. I think we all agree with that. A united piece

feels good and not so muted that it's just like, make it like it's covered with ivy. Like, I think

think we want it to be beautiful and a statement, not sure, I mean again, and I'm not sure you're

asking us to design from the bench, but, and Ketsma, I didn't mean to cut you off.

If I could, I just wanted to note like, for example, and the one that you have all pointed

to on page 377 of the packet, Arinda in motion, it's, we're not going to be able to put art

over those sort of vertical lines.

The textured pieces, yeah.

But the way in which this was designed, they just sort of disappear.

There are other artists that would then try to use them as frames for different types of images.

So, I mean, I think good direction for us is if you do want a more immersive sort of linear

experience, then we can give that really good feedback to give to an artist as opposed to

creating different pictures, basically, along the wall. So I think that's really good feedback.

I heard there's, I think you guys should explore the realistic versus abstract, because I think

those that have commented on this, this is slightly more abstract. And I think council member

Riley was maybe picturing something that was more realistic. Is there, is there, you know, can you

find some common ground there so we can at least give some direction on the style of art so that

they know which direction to go. And then I think I think I've heard consensus about Orinda as a

sign somehow depicted in there so that. Well, I don't know though. Do we, I mean,

I like that. I like I heard I saw nodding heads. So I just nodding heads on that.

I just want to add that the one that says Orinda in Motion is the only one I believe that attempted

to do a drawing for us. And so I was influenced by that. I liked it better than the other stuff.

So I don't know how fair that is to choose that design.

Well, we did have a couple of other sort of concept proposals that were very nature-oriented

with the animals. Yeah, there was another one in there that was- Is that rough collective?

Yeah, rough-edge collective. It was less abstract. This really is persuasive when we-

There were, you know, two other- Three don't. Two other examples, I think.

I'll just chime in with one. I thought the first one, which I think is Rock Collective, did a

really good job of having both natural scenes, but also very strong color palette.

So it was a strong color palette without being pop.

And so I think that's why that was one of the ones I saw.

I also reacted very well to that Arinda in motion,

because there was something about the vision

of the Rolling Hills and what it did that I thought

worked really well.

But to give you the general feedback of we want abstract,

it doesn't feel right either, because I

thought Rock Collective did some really good conceptual design.

And so realistic versus abstract,

I'm less comfortable with because the two

that I liked the best differed on that.

It was more not pop.

And I don't think InstafotoOps is what we're going for

because it's a freeway underpass.

I want it to work as a freeway beautification so that,

I mean, I love a huge color palette there.

I think we can do something that people talk about

they remember when they think of a render they think of that color palette, but I'm

not sure I want the level of detail and action in the scene that would say take a picture

here so much as like I thought the number one and number four had big scale, and again

we're just getting consensus, but to me that was very appealing was the big scale not the

small scale.

Okay, I think I like that too.

See this is what I'm saying when you look at it and talk about it.

That's what I'm saying there's three pictures, right?

There's page 305, which was the first one.

Then there's the one, the person that did the Sacramento mural, which is on page 335.

And then there's the last, the.

And then I'll remind you also.

In motion, which was on page three.

The reason we're talking about this is not to rank them, but to figure out what process

is going to be the right process.

And by the way, I will say I'm thrilled with the five finalists that you guys picked.

I mean, it gave me a lot of confidence in delegating, which as you can see, we're not

big delegators up here. But I thought it was a really fabulous presentation tonight.

Can I just, I haven't heard about any humans in the pictures, can we avoid placing humans

in the picture? Because we'd be great. I think that's one thing we have consensus

that we don't want is a large mural of your city council. And I think in general, you're

seen a preference for plants, flowers, nature, and a slight amount of some animals, not raccoons

and coyotes, small amounts of placemaking, but a lot more nature. So some placemaking, some nature.

Yeah, with the I defer. I mean, this is just, I like, I do like all three of those. So just

To appeal to me more than the other but they're all great

So in the interest of moving this along because we still have some leaf blowers to talk about

How do y'all feel about process about this? I mean, I guess the question is Cole

Can you quickly remind us because we're way down the rabbit hole?

Give us a recap of the process from here as it is imagined in this staff report

Yes

So the proposed process is that after tonight we go the selection committee has finalist interviews

We come back to the City Council with a contract for the final artist who is selected at that time,

after which we would then work with the artist, staff would, to come up with their first concept.

We would bring that to APPC for a rounder review, and then they would potentially go back to APPC one more time

for another rounder review before coming back to the City Council with a review,

which we would hope would be the final,

but we can always have council give them direction

and they can come back with another look at it.

And then we would submit to Caltrans for approval

and the design may have to change

based on Caltrans directions

since they ultimately have to accept it.

But if there were substantive changes,

then we would come back to council again.

And then once the design is accepted by Caltrans,

we would move to the installation phase.

I just want to point out too,

we're not opposed to an ad hoc of the council

and being involved.

If you want to appoint two members like you sort of did

to help move the Crossroads Plaza along

the sign selection process,

I mean, it's related to you,

but if you want to establish one

and then we can decide how and when to engage.

If we were to do that,

could those two individuals join the existing process

the APPC, so that they were just two more seats at that table, or would that need to

be a separate set of meetings?

OSO?

So typically we discourage the liaisons from sitting at the table with the committees that

they chair, or excuse me, that they liaise with, because what you're looking for is a

recommendation.

what the council would like is more of a, um, it wouldn't be the APPC. It would be a group consisting

of APPC members and two, three, four, five council members, right? You could create that

Brown Act under the Brown Act. I think that sounds pretty good. Just so that at that,

that middle touch point, when it's still in concept, we can have a few representatives

weighing in before, because then I think from concept to sort of proposed final,

there's going to be more buy-in. Interesting as to whether that could be like the full council,

like a joint meeting, or if it's more like a two-person subcommittee. What do people think?

I like the idea of having at least one council member be involved in those meetings, but

I'm comfortable with it being just one council member or two if anyone is willing to do that.

I mean, I can give opinions on what I like, but ultimately, I'm going to defer to the

process and whatever's selected by those who are doing that work.

And I think all of these, I mean, getting to this point is fabulous.

These are all, you know, these are great choices and I'd be thrilled with any of those selections

and don't feel like I need to provide a whole nut.

I don't feel like the need to provide micro level input anymore unless it's offensive

or like you know or I think it will be to some you know I'm not going to chime in in

terms of I feel like we've got staff representation we had our liaison to the APPC I also would

be comfortable with kind of the selection committee plus one and I don't think we're

get into weird Brown Act territory. Again, because it's not so much like guiding a budget

or a judicial process. I mean, it's an art selection process. So I would be comfortable

with that direction as well.

I also want to say I don't know if she's willing to do it, but if our council member Riley

is willing to participate, you have excellent taste, but artistically and I'd be thrilled.

I feel, I feel like we have a consensus. I don't feel like I have direction from them

this point. So maybe it'll evolve at our next talk. So I'm happy to go alone or have

someone come with me. Yeah, I mean, I would, I think we would welcome the participation

of one of the council members to join us as part of the process. There's an APPC representative

there as well. And so you could hear directly from them if, you know, Richard as Weston

as our representative, if he's wants to tell you that their APPC wants to be more involved,

You can relay that message back or the two of you can work that out on the level of involvement

and give us that feedback on how you want them to be involved or not be involved as

the process moves forward.

As is with art, it always is hard to start and you got to start moving along and it becomes

clear and clear as you start to see things, right?

You have opinions once you start looking at things.

So I think we're just at the beginning stages,

but we would welcome the participation

of Council Member Riley as part of the selection process.

Yeah, and I think what you're not hearing

is a history tableau, a big celebration of people.

I think sort of nature, placemaking, authentic,

semi-rural, more colors of that pop-up, immersive, something

that's like immersive, one piece.

Yeah, I feel like there's some good consensus.

I think what appeals to everybody?

Yeah.

And I want it to be happy and welcoming,

a good feeling, a good feeling.

And it's not like we're trying to make

a big strong urban message.

It's like, let's just celebrate where we are

and how lovely this is.

We agree.

I think for tonight, have we accomplished

what you were looking for?

Is there any questions?

Yeah, I have enough.

So the direction is to include council member Riley

in the selection committee process,

and then we'll come back to council with a recommendation

for which artist to select and have that contract approved.

And then it sounds like council may want to change

the proposed art development process as well

and may want more involvement in the conceptual design

once the artist is selected.

And frankly, council member Riley might say

she wants to agendize it to have it come back on an agenda for some directional feedback.

I think like with the infrastructure subcommittee a couple of times they said time to come back

and get some direction. And so you might have a feeling as you go through the process whether

you feel that you've got a charter or whether you feel you would like to get a check in.

We'll design it so that the next time we come back for you to approve the artist,

you can give further detail on exactly the process to design the art at that time and

how much involvement to have.

And then before we finish this item, did anybody have any specific questions?

I did not have any questions that they wanted to add to the selection committee's interviews.

I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

they listen to direction, you know, how they are to work with as an artist so that we're not hiring an artist that doesn't actually follow through with the contract or, or, you know, doesn't actually follow the direction we're asking them to follow.

So like you would do a reference check on a new employee of some sort.

We will most certainly check in with the references of the finally selected artists.

Thank you and in the spirit of moving along, wait, mike's off, we're good on that item.

We are.

Great, we're going to move to K2, which is a discussion of gas powered leaf blower use

in Orinda.

I know there's, we're going to go right from big fun murals to noise ordinances that people

disagree about.

Yes, yes.

Good evening Mayor Iverson and council members.

as was just mentioned. We are discussing the gas leaf blowers. Sorry. I have it. Okay.

All right. So summary, the City Council will discuss the pros and cons associated with

the implementation of a gas power leaf blower ban. Currently the noise ordinance 17.39,

We limit noise for leaf blowers by time of day and hours.

So 1739.4 yard maintenance, it is unlawful to use power equipment for yard maintenance

except as set forth in the following sections, weekdays, Monday through Friday between the

hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, Saturdays and Sundays between the

hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. except the use of chainsaws, wood chippers, or gas-powered

leaf blowers is prohibited on Sundays. Holidays, on the following holidays, the use of power

equipment for yard maintenance is prohibited. Then we list our holidays, New Year's Day,

Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. And this rule supersedes

sub-sections A and B, so basically if it's a holiday, the weekday hours and

the Saturday weekend hours would not apply. The other part of the code that's

existing right now is 1739.5. That's the golf course maintenance, so

maintenance of the Arinda Country Club. Golf course shall occur in the following

times. Lawnmowers may be operated daily between 5.30 and 5 p.m. except as

prohibited in subsection 6, excuse me, C. Leaf blowers except as provided in

subsection C. Leaf blowers may be operated between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday

through Saturday and on the holidays and leaf blowers may not be operated on

Sundays. The subsection C is the men and women's invitational, during the men's

invitational and the women's invitational events,

law mowers and leaf blowers are permitted.

I can't see this angle,

are permitted from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. to 9.30.

So currently, that is how we are regulating leaf blowers.

Assembly Bill 1346 was effective on January 1, 2024.

This is where California has banned or prohibited the manufacturing and cells of gasoline powered

leaf blowers. The implementation of this bill is intended to support a phase-out of all gas-powered

small off-road engines, Acronym Soar. So staff looked at, or I should say had conversations with

a couple of other jurisdictions. So there's eight listed here. We interacted mostly with Lafayette,

Palo Alto, and Walnut Creek, mainly because Walnut Creek is the most recent jurisdiction

2026 to implement a leaf, a gas powered leaf blower ban. Palo Alto, which we had to double

check, we were seeing the numbers correctly, have been implementing a leaf blower ban since 2002.

so that one of the oldest and then we also looked at Lafayette at 2024.

But we looked at each of these jurisdictions, but mainly we're going to focus on the ones here

that have an explicit ban for Contra Costa County. City of Lafayette, we've had several

conversations with staff there. They are looking at 1,223 code enforcement cases since the

initiation of the ban in 2024. They average 50 complaints per month, although recently I was

told 100 per month, but I looked at their numbers and I'm going to average 50 complaints per month.

And this is just strictly leaf blowers. So, incredibly, the challenge for this jurisdiction

and the others that I'm going to talk about is evidence of of non-compliance. No staff available

to investigate claims made on evenings and weekends requires the complainant to provide

an affidavit of witness. Property owners are denying such use of equipment. City of Walnut

Creed, most recently, April 2026, over 750 code enforcement cases since that initiation.

They are averaging 125 complaints per month. When the ban was first initiated, they had

221 complaints from the first initiation after April 2026. Again,

incredibly challenging to enforce. They have issued to date no citations. The difference

also with City of Walnut Creek is they have a sustainability department and so all of their

leaf blower complaints go to their sustainability staff and the staff does not submit it directly

to code enforcement until they receive a second complaint. Then they move it over into code

enforcement, and again they have an issue no citations. City of Palo Alto, again I

mentioned this one because it's one of the older longest history in the band

for this gas leaf blower since 2002, again incredibly challenging to enforce.

They have implemented and hired a dedicated code enforcement officer to

specifically work on cases related to gas-powered leaf blowers and still find

enforcement particularly difficult. This gentleman has been working with Palo Alto

for five years and his first three years he indicated they issued no citations.

What they have now done is looked at defines and in 2023 have increased

defines. However, Palo Alto is now at a point in 2025 where they are

receiving the complaints they're creating a heat map and wherever there's the most number of

complaints they're being proactive in going to that area of of the city. So I checked on town

of Danville I wanted staff to look at that and so town of Danville did hold a study session and

discussed their noise ordinance, but decided that the enforcement was too difficult and they have

not moved forward with a ban. Pros and cons, potential benefits of the ban. It reduces localized

exhaust emissions. This is a greenhouse gas mission. Someone earlier, I believe, was mentioning

it public forum. The main two things that the Bay Area Air Quality Management District looks at

is reactive organic gases. Basically nitrogen oxide particular matter and there's certain

microns of particulate matter that they focus on. So it's PM2.5 and PM10. So the other benefit

is reducing noise associated with gas power equipment, reducing the direct exhaust exposure

of landscaping workers, exposure to landscape workers, encouraging adoption of electric

Alternatives provides an enforceable local prohibition rather than relying solely on the

state equipment standards and may improve neighborhood quality of life. The potential

disadvantages is enforcement requires additional staff time and resources. Violations may be

difficult to document or verify. Equipment replacement imposes costs on residents and

commercial landscapers. Battery charging, runtime and equipment costs may represent

operational challenges will increase complaint volumes and resident expectations that cannot

be met. Could increase landscaping costs and require adjustments to service practices.

Staff's feedback enforcement is incredible and difficult. Could not be done at the staff

level in Arrinda due to small staff and small operating budget. With AB 1346 in place there

will likely be a large scale phasing out of gas powered leaf blowers in California over

the next few years, staff does not recommend implementation of the van. Education can be

an option to promote use of electric leaf blowers and that concludes my presentation

to you. Are there questions for the speaker? For the cities that, okay, so in the staff

report there were a bunch of a bunch of cities listed and the presentation focused on three

of them are the other or any of the other cities and I'm looking at package page 415

because some of them are larger right jurisdictions are I'm just curious are any of them

doing enforcement on any because it seems like unless you had a photo and an affidavit from

witness, you couldn't do it anyway. Like, how would you prove that someone used an athlete photo?

Exactly. And that's what the City of Lafayette has...

Is requiring now.

Yeah, requiring it, yes.

But I'm just... So I have a series of... So, Berkeley,

Fairfax, Oakland, Sanderfel, are any of them doing enforcement? Do we know?

Fairfax is the only additional one I did look into myself, and they are doing enforcement.

But as again the consistent answer across the board is it's difficult because people the residents

are denying it or pushing back they're no one's working when these uh uh leaf floors are the gas

operated leaf floors are operating. So for any of these cities that aren't doing enforcement do we

have any data about whether or not having the ban because of the sort of prohibitive effect you know

You have a law in the book, sometimes it's enforced, sometimes it's not.

So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is in places like Lafayette and Walnut Creek

and Palo Alto and really, I guess maybe all of these places, right?

With basically no enforcement or limited enforcement, are they still though seeing a reduction in

the use of gas leaf blowers?

Do we know?

That's a great question.

I didn't ask about the data of that.

I think everyone's focused on they can't keep up.

They can't enforce it.

And I think Palo Alto probably comes to close in putting together a heat map to sort of

document.

Yeah.

We're not.

I mean, this is questions, not discussion, but we're not going to be putting together

a heat map with the resources we have.

I'm just curious about okay, sorry, I don't want to hog on the question.

One question I have is people bring up the noise issue, but an electric leaf blower isn't

silent, so I don't have a personal understanding of the difference between the noise an electric

leaf blower makes compared to a gas leaf blower. Do you have any...

Much quieter. ...way to explain that to me?

It is much quieter. However, the research that I'm looking at and reviewing is showing

that electric leaf blower can be above. At least right now, Arinda's decibel is 60. 60

decibels our measurement, and from the data that I'm looking at currently, I don't see either of

them less than that 60 or equal to that 60. I'm seeing 70 and 77 in the data that I'm looking at.

So even the electric one?

Even electrical.

Okay, thank you.

That's my priority. Did you have a question?

Was there any information about using solar-powered?

good correction battery whatever the belief blowers great question no i didn't see a lot about the

different types of technology in terms of electric solar i think folks are are jurisdictions and

mostly just focused on how do i respond to the gas and and um we've received a um

public comment from somebody who listed a lot more cities yes actually there are a lot more

cities nearby. But even nearby, we have a lot more. And I noticed Piedmont was on the list,

and I would be curious about their experience. I think they're more comparable.

I did not look into Walnut Creek. Yeah, I looked in Walnut Creek.

I mean, I think Piedmont is more similar to us than Walnut Creek is.

I did not look at Piedmont. I know you didn't, but I was just pointing out...

All right. Yeah, yeah. I had a few questions as well. Please chime in if you guys have more.

On the last page of the staff report, you mentioned an incentive program by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Can you tell us more about that?

Yeah, there is incentives as part of having AB 1346 come about, and it sort of gives grants to workers that want to sort of switch out—not sort of—they do want to switch out their gas-powered leaf blower for something that's electric.

The incentives I believe go from somewhere, oh, I have the numbers here.

Sentence goes from between $700 to $15,000 per piece of equipment.

And this is offered by back, or excuse me, the Bay Area Air District Management District

offers these grants for replacing these gas-powered equipment.

So it looks like 1400 for the leaf blower, specifically.

Yeah.

And that same primarily at people

who are commercial providers, not individual homeowners.

Correct.

Do we have any sense as to what, if we

were to try to encourage that here,

is that grant program active in La Miranda,

or is it a little bit further afield?

The program that the Air District offers.

And I'm going to look at and confirm.

And my understanding is that Arenda residents would not qualify.

What about Arenda residents' commercial vendors?

And now I would have to look in that portion at this point.

I guess if we're thinking about carrots rather than sticks.

Because I was thinking, well, we'll talk about that in the discussion.

Two other questions.

The one or two commenters mentioned the commercial use of an electric leaf blower is complicated

because the charge time, you know, you'd need multiple batteries.

Can you talk a little bit about the commercial usefulness of the electric leaf blowers, what

the constraints are?

Battery life, life of the battery, charging time, so it will take them longer to say finish

a larger job because of the life of the battery, the operation time.

That's what they're getting at on that.

What is a typical battery time?

I don't know that.

I read an hour.

One of our commenters said now I just didn't know if because that's a really big factor

if we're going to say that they are functionally equivalent someone's home use I think they

are for a commercial vendor that sounds like they're not and I just that would be an interesting

fact to know okay and my other my last question was do you know why walnut creek the staff

report said that they were intentional about making their ordinance apply to the homeowner

and not the person using the gas leaf blower if it was a vendor, why is it that they structured

theirs that way?

Steve di Buono Creek stated that they structured their ordinance after Lafayette and listening

to Lafayette, they wanted to ensure that their ordinance said that the violations go to the

property owners and not the workers.

Why?

My guess is because Lafayette is having difficulty issuing the courtesy notices and having the

workers pay.

So they thought it would be more enforceable, you think, was the rationale.

I do believe that, yes.

Thank you. Other questions?

Do you know if the electric leaf blowers are as strong as the battery-operated one?

Do they come in like different strengths so that you can get the same job done?

It is different strengths and personally,

I have an electric one and I get frustrated because I feel mine isn't strong enough.

So there are different strengths and different life operating time for those batteries.

And so my guess is the commercial, you know, use of it is they feel that there's not enough power or there's not a lot enough longevity in the battery life.

Right. Thank you.

I just clicked on the link in our program packet.

I mean, our packet for the Bay Area Air Quality District and it under the guidelines for eligibility, it it just says must live in the district.

So, commercial operators, lawn and garden equipment, including, but not limited to,

governmental agencies, public schools, private businesses that provide commercial landscaping

and gardening services that must have their primary administrative office or headquarters

located within the air district's jurisdiction. So, just to answer that question.

Great. Thank you.

And then, but I had another question, which is anecdotally what I've sort of heard is

what people have done, at least just in Lafayette, is individual homeowners are purchasing the

electric leaf blower and leaving it there if they have someone else come on their property

to do the work.

there's, you know, a couple batteries, it's a leaf blower. And,

you know, that is how I've heard they're doing it. But do we

know like, is there any data as to whether or not when these

or, I guess, I'm curious to know if these ordinances have had an

impact, given that there's, well, I'm curious to know

whether there's any enforcement in other places, and then

whether or not these ordinances, you know, in all these other

places listed in the public comment we got, right? And assuming not, a lot of cities

have implemented these bans and no one seems to really be enforcing them that we've heard

of. Maybe they are and we just don't know about it yet and we have to do more research

on that. But assuming not, is it working? And why is it working? Like are people buying

electrically flowers and then leaving them there, our commercial gardening, landscaping

services, transitioning, is that happening at scale at all or is it not? So without enforcement,

when you have the rule, is there compliance or not? And I feel like that's a piece of

data we don't have, right? I don't know if we can get it either. I don't know if that

data exists, but

We can do more inquiry. So we limited our inquiry based on the request from the council, which was the Contra Costa County city. So if we want to expand that inquiry to other agencies outside of Contra Costa County, we can we can do the inquiry and report back if we find out anything more that's substantial or helpful for the discussion.

I'm now getting into discussion and wearing questions, but I'll, I'll leave it at that.

We don't have, we don't have a ton of public comments. So we'll do questions. We'll get right back to it. Other questions.

Ok, we will take public comment, I have one speaker card from Charlotte Smith, if you'll

please come on up, we'll ask you to limit comments to three minutes and then I'll ask

our city clerk, do we have any other speaker cards?

No, Mayor.

Ok, great, if anybody else would like to speak, I don't see a lot of people, but you're welcome

to come up.

Thank you so much, I'm Dr. Charlotte Smith, I'm going to read my statement that I submitted

at 255 this afternoon.

I am Dr. Charlotte Smith.

I'm faculty member of UC Berkeley School of Public Health,

Division of Environmental Health Sciences,

and a 28 year resident of Berkeley.

So in your deliberations regarding the pros and cons

of the gas-leaf blower ban for the city of Orinda,

I am requesting that you consider the findings of a study

from the Harvard School of Public Health,

which is stated in part,

adverse health effects from sound include auditory effects

such as hearing loss and tinnitus, tinnitus,

and non-auditory effects

such as reduced cognitive performance and mental health,

sleep disruption, ischemic heart disease,

myocardial infarction and hypertension.

Low frequency sound components are considered

to have a more severe adverse health effects compared

to higher frequency components.

Adverse effects from sources of sound

with low frequency components may

occur at levels below 30 decibels.

The study from Harvard concluded,

the results of this study indicate

that landscape maintenance sound produced by gas leaf blowers

may travel over long distances in a community at levels

known to increase the risk of adverse health effects.

Vulnerable populations, including workers, children,

the elderly, the sick, those who work from home,

and those who work overnight shifts,

A-weighted decibel metrics do not adequately characterize

the ghastly flow or sound and its potential impact

on a community.

Because of the prevalent use of this type of equipment,

is important for health professionals and policy makers

to understand the impact of this type of sound

they have on surrounding communities.

So that was my statement.

I've included this study.

I'm happy to answer any questions about this study.

It is a peer reviewed journal,

Journal of Environmental and Toxicological Studies,

but I know it could be a bit dense

and I'm happy to, as you read through

or the city manager reads through,

if you have any questions about the article

or adverse health effects associated with noise.

And in conclusion, I would just like to request

that you consider the health effects

and the issues separate from enforcement, okay?

And Latika, you're asking exactly the right question,

even though enforcement maybe certainly is an issue.

I mean, that's clearly demonstrated in the inquiry

with the other communities.

That's a separate issue from what can policy makers do?

You can finish that thought, please.

Thank you.

What can policy makers do to encourage adoption

of health-promoting activities in a community?

So you can almost think of it like speed limits, right?

I mean, there's enforcement issues with speed limits,

but speed limits do, or even seat belts,

think about seat belts.

Certainly enforcement is difficult with seat belts,

but the use of seat belts improve

the health of community members.

And I think that's the imperative of policymakers.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Were there any questions for the speaker?

OK.

Please.

Just, Professor, can I ask, are you aware of any studies

or anyone who could provide resources on that question though,

in terms of the deterrent effect of a policy or a law that maybe has very limited or no enforcement.

I don't have the data-

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I just-

The only thing I can tell you anecdotally is that at Oakwood Gym where I belong,

when my buddy's over there, who's a teacher at,

in Lafayette at Aquilani's told me

that they've switched over, and she said,

so they've done it because of the ban, right?

That's commercial vendor that's, you know,

taking care of the maintenance.

So they've done it, and I think that's probably

what you would see, but we, you know,

that kind of data you could obtain,

it's more of an incentive when there's a law,

even like, again, think about seat belts, you know,

that people, when it was required, started using them,

even though no one really knew and police forces weren't,

you know, catching, you know,

you would see the signs, click it or tick it,

but there wasn't any real enforcement,

but people just did it.

It becomes the norm.

So that's incremental for adoption

on public health practices, like smoking, right?

Do we ever see anybody smoking any, you know, rarely?

I can tell you in Berkeley, almost never, right?

And these things become sort of adopted.

So the faster that policymakers can institute

and something that's beneficial to the health of communities,

the faster it happens.

When you wait for other governmental agencies

to implement, it's just slower.

So then improvements in health take longer.

So it's sort of that question.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

Here's a, I gave you an electronic version of the article, and here's a hard copy.

You're welcome to leave that with the city clerk.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks for letting me speak.

I appreciate it.

Are there any other public comments, city clerk?

No, mayor.

All right.

That will bring it back up for discussion and deliberation.

Direction.

I'm concerned about a few things.

One is the impact it will have is largely on small providers of landscape services to

our homes that are not large commercial operations, but one or two guys with a pickup truck that

go from house to house and do gardening, and maybe five, maybe 10 houses in a day.

And if I buy them an electric blower to use at my house, is it going to be charged and

ready for them? Is it going to be in a locked place or somewhere they can get to? And then

when they leave my house and go to the next house, is that going to be available to them

there? Because the burden on them to purchase kind of equipment and at the level that it's

powerful enough and can stay charged enough to get through their day, I think would be an

extraordinary cost for many of those small gardeners to handle. But I also am concerned

about the health impacts of them using that equipment all day, and I'm just wondering

if there's some way to create an incentive for ARINDA homeowners to purchase that kind

of equipment for the people who work in their homes without creating the burden of trying

to have the enforcement and the complaints that inevitably an ordinance would bring.

I do think there's a real health issue, it's intuitive, the sound, the gas smell, the whole

experience for the gardeners who are working with that equipment all day is concerning, and

so it's a balance. I think we have to think about it as sort of a balance of the practical aspects

of figuring out solutions that would possibly work without creating an inordinate burden for the

city of Orinda. That's how I'm thinking about it. Anyone else? I'll chime in. I like sort of

the Lafayette model because I think it's doable for what can be done here. There are similar

jurisdiction, they're a similar size. They're bigger. But, you know, realistically, we don't

have the resources to enforce, right? And practically, I don't know what sort of enforcement

you can get. Again, enforcement would, by tying enforcement in some way, sort of how Lafayette

It sounds like how I understand they have, right?

To requiring pictures and an affidavit of a witness,

you're effectively saying, look, we're gonna do our best,

but we can't really enforce it.

But I think that's okay.

Cause I think having the policy, right?

And I think our public speaker

for sort of articulating this in a way,

which is by having the policy there, right?

and considering the policy based on

the health and environmental needs of the population,

you are now establishing a new cultural norm, right?

And it's only after all these neighboring cities

passed these ordinances that I went out

and got an electric leaf blower

for folks to use in our house, right?

And so because that was now, in my view, the cultural norm.

We didn't have it in Orinda,

but I had enough awareness of it

that this was a good thing, right?

So, you know, and, you know, and from my experience,

they're like, it's not nothing,

but it's not $1,500 to get a non-commercial.

Like the residential ones I think are like three, 400,

some are even cheaper, but,

and you do need a couple battery packs

just for your single house, but,

but there is a benefit to the person using it, right?

And so, you know, a huge health benefit, I think.

And so, you know, I think we could go two ways tonight.

On one hand, I think that even recognizing, right,

and even communicating to the public

that our resources to enforce this

without an additional grant and additional staff folks

are really limited.

just having the ban in place and phasing it in

over a reasonable time, whatever,

but having the ban in place would have a deterrent effect.

I think that having policies and laws,

most of the people in Arenda do try to follow the law.

It's not like we have a ton of renegades here.

So I think it would work.

On the other hand, I would love to know

if there's any doubt of how other jurisdictions have fared.

And I'm also surprised,

we got a lot of written public comment,

but I'm surprised at how little we got based on,

I've gotten individually more public comment

over the last year than comments tonight.

And I don't know if it's because it's a Monday night,

tomorrow's the election, people are just,

their heads, you know, so even though we did

our regular notice procedures,

I wonder if we've really heard from everyone

who has something to say.

So I guess, you know,

I would either be willing to go forward with it

or to get a little more information, but I think,

yeah, that's what I think.

Can I jump in with one comment?

I'd like to distinguish, because I agree with so many,

we've had a ground swell of letters over the years

about this issue, and they're all on the one side

of the issue saying, get rid of these things,

they're a nuisance, they're loud, they're horrible.

The difference between this and things like seatbelt laws

and banning smoking is that you don't have neighbors

ratting out neighbors.

And there is dynamic to noise ordinance enforcement

that creates neighbor bad behavior and feuds.

And I bet every one of us

knows somebody who's wanted to talk to us

about some neighbor who's standing at their fence

with some decibel measurer about some activity.

It's their pickleball, it's their air conditioner,

It's their leaf blower, but neighbors using the city

as a vehicle to fight with each other

is a horrible thing to do to people.

And when you think about the statistics

of all of those complaints that are not being enforced,

those are neighbors that are now mad at each other.

And so to me, that is the number one thing

that I'm struggling with,

because I would love to see these things get,

I'd like to see the behavior change as soon as possible

to healthier, quieter products.

And I love the incentives, I love the education.

I really don't wanna create something

that has neighbors tattling on each other to us.

I don't think that's a good Orinda culture.

And I'm sorry, I kind of jumped in front of you there.

Perfectly, all right.

I just wanted to mention that because we're last in line

in our neighboring cities,

My gardener, who's just a one man shop,

already has bought one because he works in Lafayette.

And so I just wonder, you know,

I was concerned about how this would affect him as well.

And then all of a sudden he had one.

And so the burden on them might not be as great as we think

because lots of times gardeners work in multiple places,

most multiple cities.

I also wanted to mention that the one public comment

shared that all his equipment was in his house,

all the outdoor gardening equipment

was charged by his solar panels.

So that might be interesting piece to add

to this discussion.

I totally agree with you about the neighbors

calling out their neighbors.

I don't like that, it sounds ugly.

And I still want to believe that I I'm not going to I don't want you to say I'm naive, but I still want to believe that we are a community of good citizens, and that we're going to try to follow this law, and that I do think the data out there is that that we've

made positive advancement, even though the enforcement is unruly, it seems unruly.

I really think the thrust should be education.

I think that we've done such a great job

in educating on all our different fire prevention policies.

And we've got a grassroots group

that has helped through Firewise Community Groups

get the word out there.

I mean, maybe this has to be done,

not just top down, but again,

through the grassroots and come up.

I feel like if we learn what the seatbelt,

or many of our grandparents or whatever,

learn what the seatbelt meant.

And it was not favored and people resented it

and someone's telling them what to do

in their own automobile and all this stuff.

But we got the message.

We got the message, we got the message.

I think we have to get the message out

that this is the way we need to go.

and would change some behavior some behavior over time.

Might be a long time.

I don't know if there's a way to ramp down

the ability to call on your neighbor as you know,

like that could be a lower emphasis

as opposed to a higher emphasis on education.

It's a great point.

I am absolutely open to having the law on the books

for all the reasons that have been articulated.

I do wonder if that's why I asked the question

about the homeowner being who you enforce against,

if the primary enforcement was against

commercial leaf bloat, yard service providers,

so that we sort of know the days and times

when those services are usually provided,

normally when people are at work.

If two days a year, an enforcement effort happened

and you caught people in the act and ticketed them,

is it like littering, right?

Where it's like, you don't enforce that often,

but when you do, it's unpleasant.

But I really would like for us,

if we're going to design a law,

for it to not take it on the basis

of neighbors telling on each other.

So like Lafayette's neighbor affidavit,

I think is a terrible idea.

I think it should be the code enforcement person

catches them in the act or nothing,

because people taking pictures

and sending their drone over the fence

And like, I don't want any of it.

I don't want neighbor affidavits.

I just, but I'm open to a law.

I just want to think about a way

that we don't create a culture.

What about an education plan

and using the city's outlook and such to inform homeowners?

There already is a law, AB 1346,

where there, you cannot buy a new gas leaf blower

and they are being phased out.

who what about trying to educate homeowners first

about the health concerns and about, you know,

that these are, you know, no longer acceptable

in California and just trying to approach it that way

so that we don't encourage the complaints

and the infighting.

Think the education goes farther though

if we do have a local ordinance, right?

Because then it's like we're educating about that.

And we're educating also about the health effects.

And this is why we're asking you to do the right thing.

And this is why you should do the right thing.

And we have limited resources for enforcement.

But you never know when we're going to come around.

I mean, maybe the I see what you're

saying with the whole affidavit.

I was trying to like I was trying

to do that to set expectations, right?

And clearly, I mean, now we're talking about the concept.

I mean, I would, I guess we would say what, what is the

challenge of how do you sort of in the ordinance itself, I was

thinking of that as being a requirement so that it was setting

expectations for the public.

Like don't come calling us unless you've, you know, got some

proof, right, to start with, but then you're right.

I don't love that dynamic.

So, but there's, I feel like there's a solution for that.

Okay, there's a couple other thoughts.

For our red flag day, we give them little warnings,

right, on certain days of the year.

And then in Recycling, Recycle Smart,

they have a couple days a year where they flip the carts

and they say, oops, it's a warning.

Oops, you've got, you know, whatever,

pancake mixed in with, you know, recycle improperly.

You've done it improperly, you need to improve.

And then I think there's another tag later

where if you've done it more than once,

then they start penalizing.

You're not supposed to have your can lid up,

it's supposed to be closed so then they could penalize you.

But it's ideas, you're telling them how to behave,

you're educating them through these personal notes

at your garbage can.

And again, I would just remind you,

the staff was very clear in the staff report

about limited resources.

I love that.

I love the culture and philosophy and approach

because I think that's the right way

you change behavior without being jerks.

I do worry that staff right now

is just doing this in their seats.

When we're saying like,

hey, we're gonna catch them in the act a couple times.

So again, it's just,

I really wish we could get a law on the books.

I think it's the right,

I want to change behavior.

I mean, what if we did enforcement one day a year

and they don't know when it's gonna be?

That's what this lid thing is.

flip the lid. Like literally one times a year. But also, I do think we need to get back to it. I

don't know that enforcement is required. I think most people in a render will follow the law.

Only point is I do not want any vehicle where people tell on each other.

If enforcement involves calling and ratting out your neighbor, like I kind of want if we're going

make a law. I want it to say no neighbor on neighbor enforcement. We will go around and enforce

it ourselves. We will catch people in the act. People still post on, you know, I try to stay off

next door, but people still post on socials like, this kid was driving this. So you can't stop

that stuff. But I don't want 125 phone calls a month of people attempting to get their neighbor

busted. It is a horrible debt because those neighbors are gonna then they're gonna hate each other.

And I'm sorry to be so dug in on it. I feel like if they're out there ratting they probably also

already do hate each other. I mean I don't know that's just you can't change you can't make

someone a nice person instead of sort of a mean hater person right so but when you create a vehicle

that says like our noise ordinance is, I mean, I'm looking at the city manager here,

she gets a lot of phone calls of neighbors who use our noise because 60 decibels as one or two

speakers have pointed out is nothing, right? Even the electric leaf blowers are in excess of, you

know, and so if neighbors want to sick the enforcers on each other, I just don't want to create

vehicles for that.

Here's just a how about if we propose trying it out,

like coming up with an ordinance that sort of modeled

on Lafayette.

I don't think that's the right way to start.

I honestly think we should start with education

and trying to let people know about the problems

and see if we can get behavior to change that way

before we go down the ordinance route.

We haven't tried any education.

I don't know if people even know that there is a ban on purchasing new gas leaf blowers.

Most of our homeowners are not blowing their own leaves.

Some are, but many, many are not.

And so the burden of all of this falls to those small independent gardeners who really,

many of whom don't even speak English, they may not know.

I went and talked to my gardener and it was difficult to even communicate about what I

was asking him.

I really, I would really like to start with education of both the homeowners and any of

the local gardeners, but I don't even know how we would get to them.

The thing, yeah, no, I'm not opposed to education.

I think it's a great idea to do education, but also people haven't like, there's a lot

of people in Arinda who probably still haven't purchased an electric leaf blower for, you

know, and I think if there was an ordinance in play, they'd go out in the next weekend

or two and they'd buy it, right?

You don't even have to leave your house.

You go to Costco.

They have one.

They'll deliver it, you know.

So I think, I just think that that cultural change, we can put a ton of resources.

We'll have, I mean, where's the staff resources

to do all this education?

Like, if we, I don't know, I think that you

put along the books and you get compliance

and you get more people to comply very quickly

than you do with, to get the level of compliance

or education as you get through just having something

on the books, even if we can't enforce it.

I think if we're trying to bring about cultural change,

as one city after another has passed these laws,

people have gone out and bought electric leaf blowers, right?

And it has a domino effect.

There's just one little, could do a little,

there's a little wiggle room where you could do both

and you have all this education about a new ordinance

coming down the pipeline.

It's gonna be effective July 1, 2027,

or whatever, January 1, 20, whatever.

give time, a period of lots of education

before it becomes a new code.

And then of course you continue the education after that.

And maybe you delete the tell on your neighbor provision,

don't talk about enforcement.

And talk about good citizenship.

I don't feel ready tonight to bring something forward,

but I'm really open to the,

I mean, I really do.

All the letters we've gotten from people

have been so powerful and persuasive.

I just, it feels like it's not,

not that the need isn't right,

but the how to do it isn't right.

I just don't feel equipped to pass the right law

that we won't regret.

And I do feel like once you pass a law,

you pretty much can't undo it.

You can't say, we're taking away the ordinance.

We're gonna allow gas leaf blowers again.

that gets really weird, right?

So I kind of feel like I'd rather be slow

and go in one direction and I'm happy to be outvoted.

I just feel like I don't feel enough clarity

on the how tonight.

If I could, can I jump in really quick?

So what I've heard is that there's still some questions

that some of you may have that you want staff

to look into and we can certainly do that.

questions about sort of the efficacy of changes in these laws in terms of if we can get any

anecdotal evidence from our neighbors who have passed them, whether it's really, if we've seen

adoption, right, really, we're looking at that. We could spend some time internally talking about

the issue of enforcement and ways that we could curb enforcement in the language of the code

so that people understand that this is really about being a good neighbor and a good citizen

and not about enforcing. That's another approach. And then

generally, I think we may be referenced it. If not, I'll say

it, the noise ordinance needs an update anyway. And there, I

mean, we're dealing with mechanical equipment

complaints, we're dealing with pickleball, which is going to

come back at some point to some either the Planning Commission

or back on appeal to the City Council, right? I mean, there

are things that are still need to be addressed in the noise ordinance. So if the goal here

is that you want us to move in a direction of figuring out how to get adoption of electric

leaf blowers in this community, but you're not quite ready to pull the trigger. We also

might want to spend parallel time fixing other noise ordinance issues and maybe bring it

back as a package, but we could spend some time talking about the issue enforcement internally

about how we can propose that back to you in a way that doesn't burden staff and doesn't create

neighbor on neighbor issues, which are very common here in Arinda, based on our code enforcement

activities. So we can try and come back with a more refined approach about how we could do it.

because it sounds like there's a desire to do it, but really hesitant because of some of the issues

we might encounter along the way. At least I'm getting that from at least three folks, but I

think that's the majority at this point. Well, let me ask a question. What would the time frame be

if you expanded the work, trying to resolve some of the pickleball things or getting

Uh, you know, for the, for the, for the, um,

for the information that we, um,

that we have addressed as part of an item. Um,

At least at least the acknowledgement and the acoustical review is

being done now. So what do you think in terms of timing?

Uh,

I think the thing to focus on would be the mechanical equipment.

I think the thing to focus on would be the mechanical equipment

update.

And less on the pickle ball,

because I think that might not be a regulatory change. Okay.

units right now, we have it set at 45 decibels, and that has caused some issues between neighbors.

And I can't imagine that any neighbor in Aranda has an AC unit at 45 decibels. That would

be a very extreme example. So we can be a little bit more practical, perhaps, about

how that's drafted. And we can also look at how to deal with issues of enforcement for

those types of activities as well.

But to answer the question about timing,

I think early 2027 would be a reasonable time frame

for us to bring back the answers and a sort of array

of regulatory options you might have.

I like that a lot.

We also had questions about the kind of the battery

and how commercial providers are dealing with the battery

issues.

If you don't mind, just next time we see this,

any information you can gather about that,

as well as the Piedmont point was an interesting one.

Solar.

Oh, and solar.

It would just be helpful to fill in

some of those gaps as well.

And I'm sorry to send you back for more homework,

but this was, that was, I think the spirit

in which this was brought up is let's explore

the possibility and the ordinance and the challenges.

So we really appreciate it.

Yeah.

can I ask another I it just occurred to me I don't know from the city services if we haven't

switched from gas leaf blowers to electric um I'm I would propose that we yeah I'm sure that we

haven't okay because we certainly want to but we're talking about changing practice what we

we preach before we make this program.

And so that would be if that could be an immediate priority.

Purchasing equipment we can purchase

because we would in this new paradigm,

we would be purchasing that equipment directly.

Right.

See, we're spending that surplus already.

See how that works.

And if that's something we could act on now,

I think that would at least be one positive change.

Good point.

And then I'm hoping this will come back in early,

when you by early 27 we're talking first quarter probably.

Right?

You think, okay.

Great, so I don't think there's any action tonight

other than direction.

And so I get, I believe just matters initiated.

Does anyone have anything else for matters initiated

other than the one from earlier?

I move we adjourn.

9, 20, 30, nine.

Seconded.

All right.

we were doing so well on time.

We were doing okay.

Amazing.

But this was a-

Nobody showed up and I know.

So that's why it went.

Yeah.