Walnut Creek City Council - Walnut Creek Meetings

Transcript

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Good evening everyone and welcome to the June 6th,

2023 regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

We are conducting this meeting under the current state regulations for open meetings

in which the city council and city staff are here in the city council chambers

and we will welcome public comment here in the city council chambers.

We also invite members of the public to join us through a variety of platforms

but to also make public comments through our virtual platform on Zoom

and the webinar ID for this evening is 859-7194-0701

and the passcode is 091-170.

And with that, please rise and join us

in the Pledge of Allegiance.

And to the flag of the United and to the Republic

for which it stands, one nation under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Would the city clerk please call the roll?

Council member Darling.

Here.

Council member Francois.

Here.

Council member Wilk.

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Haskew.

Here.

Mayor Silva.

Here.

We're gonna open this evening's meeting

with a proclamation.

In September 1862, President Abraham Lincoln

issued the Emancipation Proclamation,

which officially ended slavery

for more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans

in the Confederate States of America.

Unfortunately, the emancipation was tragically delayed in the deepest reaches of the Confederacy.

It was nearly three years later, on June 19th, 1865, that Union General Gordon Granger, on his

arrival in Galveston, Texas, informed the people of Texas in accordance with the Emancipation

Proclamation that slaves were free and had equal rights and property rights under the law.

Since 1865, Juneteenth has become the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States.

Also known as Juneteenth Independence Day, as Emancipation Day, as Emancipation Celebration, and as Freedom Day,

Juneteenth represents freedom and serves as a reminder that we must combat all forms of modern

day slavery, human trafficking, and racial injustice. To commemorate and recognize the

anniversary of Juneteenth, I am honored tonight as the Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek and on

behalf of all of us on the City Council to proclaim June 19th, 2023 as June 19th National

Freedom Day in Walnut Creek. Further, with this proclamation, we encourage all members

of our community to reflect on the significant role that African Americans have played in

our enduring quest for freedom and justice for all. Accepting this proclamation this

evening is Mary Taylor, who is a member of the African American and Friends Club of Rossmore.

And Mary also served on our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force, and we really appreciate

her for all the work she does for us in the community. And would you join me?

I'll be brief. Okay, okay. I know there's a two-minute limit, so I would like to thank

the Walnut Creek City Council for this proclamation. Inclusion, recognizing the rich history and

important contributions of all Americans, celebrating the humanity of all citizens only

serves to make us stronger. It takes empathy and curiosity to know others, and we encourage

all of us to practice both of these. So on behalf of the African American and Friends

Club of Walnut, Rossmoor, and I also have some other residents here with me. They don't

want to stand. But we thank you so much for all you're doing for diversity, equity, and

inclusion in our amazing community. Okay, thank you. So you still have a little a

few seconds. Could you introduce your friends? Could you do it at the mic? Can

you do it the microphone so that it gets so that those on the millions on the

television audience will enjoy it too? This is gonna be embarrassing because I

don't remember last names but we have Ray. Ray James and she's a fairly new

resident to Rosma, she's also an author of mystery novels, and then we have

Charles Etta Richardson who has been in Rosma about the same time. If I have,

she's an amazing member of our group and we appreciate her so much. And last but

not least, Annette Kazoon. And Annette has been at Rosma almost 15 years, so that

That makes her a little bit older than the rest of us, I think.

No, she moved in longer.

I truly appreciate all of their support and the work that they do in Rossmore and in Walnut

Creek.

You have been a resident for Walnut Creek for how long, Charles?

Seven years?

No, in Walnut Creek?

Ten.

Ten years.

Okay, so a total of 17 years.

Okay, so maybe she's older.

I don't know.

But thank you so very much for this honor.

Thank you.

Thank you very, very much.

Next on the agenda is our youth leadership commission.

We are so delighted you're here tonight to make some presidential service awards.

Thank you.

Hello, everybody.

My name is Prabhti Prasan, and I'm the chair of the Wanakreek Youth Commission.

Hello, my name is Julian Chu, and I'm also a member of the Youth Commission.

Oh, sorry.

This is me.

For those of you who don't know, the Wanakreek Youth Commission is a peer-selected group

of 15 civically engaged youth members within the city of Walnut Creek.

The Youth Commission's main goal is to bring students together to get involved and engaged

with local government through various projects and outreach campaigns.

Today we're presenting two Presidential Volunteer Service Awards to youth in the city who have

dedicated their time to community service.

The President's Volunteer Service Award, also known as the PBSA, is a national volunteer

award program that encourages people to live a life of service, offering presidential gratitude

national recognition. PBSA recognizes, celebrates, and inspires volunteerism,

service, and citizenship in the community. Recognizing that our youth make a

significant contribution to our city, our schools, and our community is very

important to us and the Youth Leadership Commission along with the City Council

are very pleased to bring these prestigious awards to two recipients

this evening. So I'm going to present the first recipient is firstly we have

Sydney Young who is an incoming senior at Northgate High School. Sydney

She volunteers at John Muir Medical Health Center as a ship supervisor and acts as a

liaison between students and volunteers and other health care professionals while also

catering to the needs of patients and staff in various departments.

She volunteers three hours a week to help hospital staff and patients with tasks including

lab work, patient transport, and volunteer dispatch.

She also volunteers at Project Light and works monthly with the local church to give out

food, clothing, and essentials to the unhoused population.

aims to connect the unhoused community

by providing necessities to the community.

Congratulations, Sydney.

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for this award.

And I'm really glad that I'm able to help my community

in a number of different ways, whether it's

in the hospital or at a church helping

the homeless or the unhoused population.

So yes, thank you.

I really appreciate it.

Congratulations, Sydney.

OK, next we have Ivy Landlot, who

is an incoming senior at Los Lomas High School.

She volunteers at the Oakland Zoo as a teen wild guide

and as a junior counselor at a children's summer camp

called Adventure Day Camp.

At the Oakland Zoo, she works with other volunteers her age

to set up learning stations

at various animal and reptile exhibits.

At those stations, they play educational games

with the children and answer questions about animals.

She has been volunteering at the Oakland Zoo

for almost two years and plans to continue

until she graduates high school.

She has been accepted to be a lead teen wild guide

for her last year.

As a junior counselor at Adventure Day Camp,

She works with children ages four to nine,

doing fun activities such as kayaking and rock climbing.

She has volunteered at this summer camp

for almost three years

and plans to be a counselor this summer.

Unfortunately, Ivy could not be here with us this evening,

but we thank her for her service

to our community regardless.

Again, we'd like to congratulate

all the recipients for this award.

Engaged and passionate youth like yourselves

are the key players in making actionable

and equitable change in our world.

All of us on the Youth Commission

are strong proponents of that,

so we'd like to thank you again.

With that, it would be great if we could do a quick photo op.

Yeah.

It turns you back.

I'll stand.

Should we stand on that side?

OK.

Jeez.

Oops.

Tonight, we are receiving an update presentation

from MCE, previously known as Marin Clean Energy.

And I think it's Kira Donato, the community development

director, who is with us.

Hi, good evening.

And thank you, Mayor Silva and members of the City Council

and staff for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Chiara Donato.

I'm one of the-

Excuse me, we need you to stand directly

in front of that little microphone

and you can even raise it up a little bit.

Yes, thank you.

Okay. Is this better?

Okay, perfect.

Well, thank you again and good evening to Mayor Silva,

members of the City Council and staff

for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name's Chiara Donato.

I am one of the newest members at MC

and I serve as a community development manager here,

and my primary role will be to serve as a liaison to staff,

public officials, specifically in Contra Costa County.

I'm really glad to be here tonight

and share some updates from NC's engagement efforts

in Walnut Creek, especially as City Council

is in the process of updating the Sustainability Action Plan.

And I'd like to discuss some potential partnership

opportunities to help the city meet their goals

in reducing energy-related

greenhouse gas emissions. Just as a quick refresher, MC is a community choice

aggregation program and what we do is we enable cities and counties to

purchase clean, renewable electricity on behalf of their residents, businesses and

municipal facilities. The City of Walnut Creek is a member of MCU's Joint Powers

Authority and we've been providing electric generation services and

customer programs to the community here since 2016. Okay and then tell you a

little bit about how electric service works at MCE. Essentially what we do at

MCE is that we buy and we build clean energy for our communities. We serve 37

jurisdictions in four counties across the Bay Area including 15 communities

here in Contra Costa County. This slide illustrates how that process works. As

you'll see on the left side, MCE takes over PG&E's role of electric

generation for customers supplying energy from clean renewable source power

sources like solar and wind. Then PG&E will continue to deliver the

electricity from the grid into customers homes and businesses, maintain

infrastructure, continue to address service outages, and send monthly energy

bills, which will now include MC's generation service. The end result for you

will be that you have a choice where your energy comes from and the ability

to access more renewable generation services. There are several state agencies

that MC reports to and is regulated by the same ones that PG&E is, for example like CPUC and the

California Energy Commission, but what makes a community choice program like MC different is that

we are governed by a local board of directors. Each city, town, or county that MC serves will then

appoint an elected official to represent their community and our board meets monthly at public

meetings to determine policy rate, programs, and administrative decisions for MC. A familiar face

that we have here is Councilmember Cindy Darling. Thank you Councilmember Darling for your climate

leadership and for serving on our board of directors. Additional Contra Costa elected

officials include Board Chair Scales Preston from Pittsburgh and Councilmember Quinto from El Cerrito.

And just to share a little bit of our community focus or how we interact with the city of Walnut

Creek. Over 33,000 customers are served by NCE here and that's almost a 90%

participation rate, one of our highest in our member service areas. Over 29,000

metric tons of CO2 have already been reduced using our services and municipal

accounts in the city opted up to our Deep Green program since 2018. Deep Green

is our program that's 100% renewable energy. And about 5% of the customers in

Walnut Creek also participate themselves in the deep cream program.

Okay, so now that you know a little bit about the customers we're serving in

Walnut Creek, here are how residents have been using some of our programs as well.

And considering, again, that the city council is reviewing the sustainability

action plan, here are some things the city's already doing to meet those goals.

Over $63,000 in electric vehicle rebates have been dispersed.

24 EV charging ports have been installed throughout the city using our rebate

program.

In addition to our programs,

we also like to get out in the community.

And here are some of the events we do.

We sponsor the state of the city,

also sponsoring Sustainable Wanna Creek Sustainability Week,

and we are members of Wanna Creek's Chamber of Commerce.

There are a number of rebates and sentences

and resources available to the city

that can help your community achieve its sustainability goals

and we're definitely interested

in helping you receive that benefit.

I also wanna invite the city council

to use MCU as a resource for more opportunities

for community engagement or partnership

with any community-based organizations that you may know of.

And I also wanna mention that one of the programs we have

is the Strategic Energy Management Program.

We've recently been in talks with some staff at the city

about engaging the Wanna Creek Library there.

We set our rates for electricity generation

typically about once a year.

All those rates are reviewed by MCU's board of directors

and approved in a voting meeting.

Again, this is a choice where the public

is able to speak to, unlike PG&E.

And we know energy costs have been historically high

over the past several months, especially where we live,

considering the weather.

I think it's an important benefit of MCE's model

is that we help ensure stable, locally controlled rates.

In addition to MCE's local rate setting,

all MCE customers are eligible for a number

statewide bill-saving opportunities one of which is the CARE program or the

California Alternative Rates for Energy program. 10% of residential customers in

Wanna Creek are already enrolled in the CARE program, which gives income qualified

customers a 35% monthly discount on their electricity bill. Wanna Creek

customers may also have noticed recently a $90 bill credit issued from the CPUC

to help alleviate their high bills.

And last but not least, just a reminder,

when you use energy, it's just as

important how much energy you use.

An easy way for customers to lower bills

is to be mindful of the 4 to 9 PM window, when energy on the grid

is the most expensive.

By running your appliances either before 4 PM or after 9 PM,

like your dishwasher or other large electrics,

or pre-cooling your house in the morning,

customers can save a significant amount

on their monthly bills.

This slide will demonstrate

a couple of our renewable energy projects

throughout the four counties that we serve,

but building on the theme of local decision-making,

I wanted to highlight some of the local renewable energy

projects specific to Contra Costa County.

At MC, we prioritize locally generated renewable energy.

As such, all projects over one megawatt

within MC's four counties are built with union labor

and require prevailing wage.

Several of the local projects near Walnut Creek

that MC contracts directly with to serve our customers

include two solar projects in Richmond, one in Oakley,

and two in unincorporated Byron.

We're always interested in identifying partnerships

for new local renewable resources

to best serve our customers.

And your dollars at work.

So one of the main priorities as an agency

is reinvesting back into our own member communities

through the various customer programs,

some of which are highlighted here.

We've distributed over $2.4 million

in energy efficient rebates to date.

We offer rebates and incentives

to help our member communities

meet their vehicle electrification goals,

like the installation

of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Additionally, we now offer a rebate towards the purchase

release of an electric vehicle at the point of sale, hopefully reducing that upfront cost

burden.

Customers can now receive up to $3,500 directly from participating dealerships.

If there are any dealerships here in Monnet Creek that would be interested in this program,

we welcome any suggestions.

Last but not least, we are always looking to identify new ways to make our communities

more resilient.

Previously, we were able to distribute over 200 batteries in partnership with the Center

of Independent Living to folks that needed backup batteries during some of the worst

outages in recent memory.

And finally, the power of MCE.

The power of MCE is that it's a model that works.

Since 2010, we have eliminated over 700,000 metric tons of carbon emission or equivalent

emissions produced from consuming 1.6 million barrels of crude oil. We've been

able to invest $214 million dollars directly back into our communities

through innovative programs and we've supported over 2.8 million labor hours

to buy and build cleaner energy to serve our communities. Thank you everyone. This

concludes my presentation. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all

tonight and I'm happy to answer any questions the council may have and I'd

also like to welcome my colleagues Sebastian Kahn as well for any questions.

Thank you very much. Questions? I'll start with our representative to the

board. I just wanted to say thank you for coming tonight. I think you did a great

job. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Renato. So thank you and thank you to all of the

members of the MCE staff and your very large board of directors who were not

all photographed there right because I counted this correct it says 33 members

of the board that's a large board meeting to run so thank you and thank

you for being here this evening thank you it's now time for item two of our

agenda which is the consent calendar we have a whopping 16 items on the consent

calendar tonight does any council member wish to pull an item on consent and I

will pull item to see any other items to be pulled from the consent calendar

anything on from staff that needs to be pulled which items do you wish to speak

to Jan all right so we will pull those two items as well actually we'll take

your comments right now good evening thank you for buying the pride flag and

for supporting Pride Month. I just don't have a little clarification on the these

new patrol bikes because I'm not up to speed on them. The curiosity is around

the patrol officers so you have three and one supervisor you're gonna add one

more in the fall is that person going office are going to be moved from

of another position, and if so, which one.

Do you plan on replacing the existing three bikes

in three years?

Is that six years kind of an average or typical life

expectancy for these vehicles?

And the other is, are the officers

assigned as patrol officers?

That's where they always are.

or do they sometimes, are they sometimes of a troll cars?

Anyway, I'm just curious about that and about the funds

that often you have funds that are put away so that when

it's time to replace them again, you have the funds there.

And I assume that didn't happen because these are new positions,

so they need another couple of bikes.

And oh, I just want to comment on happy

to have the two zero-emission motorcycles,

particularly for help with the problems we've been having

in our outdoor space with people tearing through

on their equipment.

And I was kind of curious about the maintenance, how much it

seemed like the maintenance for those big bikes

they're pretty expensive, versus the cost to buy them.

But at any rate, appreciate us taking care

of our equipment and maintenance and officers

so they can do their work, thanks.

Thank you, Jan.

And we will get the answers to your questions

before we vote, before we vote.

And I think we have some hands raised

from members of the audience.

So we'll, that are on Zoom.

We'll go ahead and bring in Scotty.

Good evening.

Are you there?

Can you guys hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

You have two minutes.

And which item are you speaking to?

Just public comment.

Oh, this is for public comment on items on the consent calendar.

Do you have an item on this consent calendar

you wish to speak to?

Otherwise, I'm going to have to ask you to go back into the queue,

and we will get to you in a few minutes.

I'll go back into the queue.

Great, thank you.

So for those of you who have raised your hands,

please identify which item on the consent calendar

you wish to speak to as you come on in or lower your hand

so we don't.

Next speaker is Jeffrey P. Good evening.

Good evening.

We can't hear you.

Your microphone is turned off.

Can you release it?

Are we able to un-mic or is it?

Right. Let's go to the next speaker and we can attempt to bring him back in.

Our next speaker is Alexander. Can you hear me?

Yes. Which item do you wish to speak to?

Is the community, they're supposed to be allowed to speak to

all of the presentations. Do you have a session for that?

Yes, it'll be under public communications which

will happen in a few minutes, so be prepared to come back.

Thank you. Okay. If there are no others then I will seek

answers to the questions that were posed about items

N and O. Good evening members of the city council Jamie Knox chief of police and I

have here lieutenant Jeff Slater who oversees our traffic bureau.

Did you have a specific question? There were about five questions. I know there's

a lot in there. While let lieutenant Slater speak to

the history of the traffic program and what the intention of the bikes are for.

So these are not patrol officers, these are traffic officers.

That's correct.

We do have a designated traffic bureau.

At one time we had, my understanding is, eight or more traffic officers.

When I took the helm as the chief of police we only had two in the unit and a supervisor.

A lot of the complaints that we get from the community are related to traffic issues.

You can, I'm sure some of you know as you drive through commute hours through the city

of Walnut Creek, it gets very congested and a lot of people complain of poor driving habits.

So our goal is to grow our program, not to what it once was, but to something that we

could sustain for years to come.

But currently we only have three motorcycles, so adding an additional three would allow

us to support a traffic bureau of five personnel, that's four officers and one

sergeant for a sustainable period. And if you wanted to speak to the the

specifics of the equipment or talk about the zero bikes. Good evening Mayor Silva

and Council. I'm Lieutenant Jeff Slater and I'm currently the fleet manager for

the police department and I oversee manage our traffic division. So the

The requests for these purchases are two-fold, item number, item letter 2N is specifically

regarding the purchase of some BMW patrol style motorcycles.

Those are our traffic division to actually go out and do traffic enforcement.

They specifically ride these motorcycles that are specifically designed to help them catch

traffic violators such as speed violators or people that ran a stop sign, ran a red

light, etc. It helps them maneuver through traffic and has all the proper

safety equipment to help them perform their duties in the best manner

possible. That is why we have the BMW set up. It happens to be the exact same

motorcycles that the the current traffic officers are using now and we

wanted to get them the same one so the unit would be uniformed and it would be

no issues when it came to training new personnel. And in terms of the terms of

just the history we've we used to have a larger traffic division I'm sure any of

you recall but as times changed over the years we've had to adapt and move to

other assignments and obviously traffic is not going away and we're bringing

this back so we can properly address these issues with our town in terms of

the zero motorcycles they are wonderful zero emission we had a pair a long time

ago that were purchased as an experiment if you will to see if they would be good

for the city and be able to expand to areas that we are not a vehicle is not

capable of getting to such as parks trails and even on dead when necessary

for like a missing person's call in the lime ridge open space we needed to have

vehicles that are available well one of those is no longer with us the battery

Every life is expired and the other one we have is near its end of expected life.

So we've had the funds available and we wanted to bring that back so we have this very important

equipment available for our staff.

That's in a nutshell the history.

Trying to keep that under the two minutes.

But I wrote down the questions best of my ability if you'd like me to try to go and

answer those.

Yes.

Seems like you hit them all, but if you missed any,

why don't you let us know?

Number one was the reassignment.

That would just be once we had the personnel available

and a motorcycle for that person to drive a ride,

then we would be reassigning that.

We're not adding an officer to our already number of staff

officers that we have on deck.

The replacement costs.

That was a question of, would it be done after three years?

No.

We have a very rigorous replacement and maintenance

program.

These are designed to be in service for six years.

If they are doing fine, then we'll save money

and we won't ask for it to be replaced

if it's in fine working order.

Number three, I believe, was what are they used for?

Well, I think I answered that.

You answered that question.

Thank you.

Number four, funds.

I said that we happen to have money after doing

a very stringent budget analysis, hence the request came up.

And then the last was the maintenance service.

We project the best that we can what

it would cost for tires, brakes, oil changes, and anything else

So what happened with a car, uh, with any vehicle and based on this best guess,

that's what we came up with that number. So we're set aside.

I believe that's more than, um,

or that's the shortest version I can give you for how we predict the maintenance.

So for the public,

the lieutenant is looking at our public works manager who runs the fleet.

So he has all the vehicles over there, including the street sweepers,

the dump trucks and all of your vehicles. So thank you.

and I believe this is generally budgeted out of the ISF funds.

That is correct.

Not necessarily. It's separate.

We allocate at every paycheck per person in the city,

the funds for future equipment costs,

whether they might be a computer or a vehicle that they're using.

So we set these funds aside over time.

Correct.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

any questions from staff or from council all right thank you very much thank you

for both for being here tonight with that I'm going to I will take a motion

for all items but to see and remember that item E and F have corrections at

the dais. Okay, I move that we accept consent calendar AB D through P and there

are corrections for E and F. We have them on our dais and so they are

included in the motion and have I gotten all my required information.

And I'll second that. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar

items A and B, D through P with corrections to E and F. Would the clerk

please give us a roll call vote? Mayor Pro Tem Hask you. Aye. Council Member Will. Aye. Council Member Darlie. Aye. Council Member Francois. Aye. Mayor Silva. Aye.

Motion carries unanimously. I pulled item 2C this evening as it is a

resolution related to June and Gay Pride Month. From our residents, to our visitors,

from our business owners to those who work here. Walnut Creek is an

increasingly diverse community. As a city we recognize that our diversity is a

strength and we are committed to supporting the visibility, dignity and

equity for all who live, work and visit with us. Our goal is to be a place where

everyone feels accepted and welcome. As a city we are particularly proud to have a

a diverse LGBTQ plus community that contributes so much to the enrichment of our quality of life.

In recent years, the month of June has become a symbolic time for LGBTQ plus persons and

supporters to come together in various celebrations of pride and the flying of the rainbow flag.

The flying of the rainbow flag during the month of June symbolizes recognition and support for

for the LGBTQ plus community.

To that end, the City Council tonight,

with the adoption of this resolution,

will declare the month of June as LGBTQ Pride Month

in the city of Walnut Creek.

And to signify this celebration,

we are designating the flying of the rainbow flag

at City Hall throughout the month.

I move the adoption of the resolution.

We will take the roll call vote and then we have a speaker.

Mayor Silva.

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Hask you.

Councilmember Darling.

Aye.

Councilmember Fransdale.

Aye.

Councilmember Will.

Aye.

Motion carries unanimously.

Joining us tonight is Christian Aguirre

of the Rainbow Community Center of Contra Costa,

who will make a few remarks.

And I want to point out that it's through

their Kind Hearts Community Support Program.

The center provides support services for LGBTQ plus persons

who live in Walnut Creek, and that includes seniors

and those who are living with HIV and AIDS.

And thank you so much for taking the time to be here

and driving through traffic and not getting

hailed by any of our officers on average.

I was worried about that one.

Yeah, thank you for having me here today,

mayor, vice mayor, and city council members,

community members too.

My name is Christian Aguirre.

I am the Atalanta Family Program Director

at Rainbow Community Center.

And one of the programs that I help oversee

is a contract that we have with the city of Walnut Creek.

Some of the services that we provide are housing for youth,

services for older adults, HIV and STI prevention,

youth programming, mental health services,

and just different necessities within our community.

So it's really important to be here today

and also to get this recognition

through the city of Walnut Creek.

Being a resident of Contra Costa

and receiving services as a youth

from Rainbow Community Center when I was 14

has been very impactful to show representation

and also give back through philanthropy

and now my current job.

So it means extra for me.

I also want to thank you for providing visibility

through hard times currently all over the world,

especially Transgender Day of Visibility

earlier this year here in Walnut Creek.

and supporting one of the only LGBTQIA Plus clubs,

Club 1220 here in Walnut Creek,

that a lot of our community members

in Contra Costa rely on.

I also want to share that there are multiple attacks

that continue to happen to LGBTQIA Plus members,

specifically people of color, trans women, and drag queens.

I know there's an event coming up on June 9th

at the Lesher Center,

And it is very alarming that this continues.

And I just want to encourage you to please continue

to support non-profit LGBTQIA plus businesses

through attending events, volunteering,

donating of course funding is very fundamental

for our community.

And also attending our Pride at the Plaza

June 17th in conquer we will invite all Contra Costa community members and whoever wants to attend

So, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much for being here this evening

and again, the Rainbow Community Center of Contra Costa is among the recipients of

Funding from the city of Walnut Creek for the services they provide and that funding comes from the community development block grant funds and other sources

So, thank you. Thank you

Next on our agenda is public communication. This is an opportunity for members of the public to come in on items that are not on

Our agenda here this evening under the Brown Act the council cannot act on items that are raised during this portion of the meeting

But may respond briefly to statements made or questions asked

we may also request clarification and or refer the item to staff and

Consistent with our city council handbook. We will allow 30 minutes at this time for public communication

for items not on the agenda and then if needed we will provide additional time

at the end of the meeting now just to be clear the items that are not on the

agenda are the budget the City Council priorities and the request for that we

consider a general plan amendment for 1200 Rossmore Parkway so if you're here

for any of those three items this is not your time so anything else we are

welcome to it's anyone here in the chambers wish to speak to us on an item

not on our agenda this evening. Please come forward and if you if there are

more of you here in the chambers please queue up in the line we will allow two

minutes for you to speak and please introduce yourself and tell us what's

on your mind. Well I will. Thank you my name is Bruce

Zellis. I live at 1943 First Avenue and you are my neighbor because you are the

landlords of the Lindsay Museum and I have to tell you I absolutely applaud

everything they do and what they stand for but they are absolute horrible

neighbors. I lived at that property before they built you built the museum

there and we had public hearings public meetings about what was to be built what

was to be utilized how it was to be utilized and we did all that and as you

face the museum left his public parking right was supposed to be just employee

parking and entrance for like the hospital area and a quote corporate

yard that's right next to my backyard which is for me to you okay I had them

put in a seven foot retaining wall with a door because I used to have one to get

to the park so I could get to the park agreed to that I have passed a I have

taken photos this week of the museum property it is a dump if it were my

property you would have code enforcement out there on me in a second I've called

code enforcement no result and I think are you public works sir okay I'm not

sure you got a lady that works there sir are you sir huh excuse me me we're

gonna make your comments to the five of us and treat please try not to point

fingers across because it's good I heard I will I will find you the right

people, okay? Okay. Thank you. Well, we've called the city manager's office. I've

called county health enforcement. What they've done now, there's been no

public hearing that I know of to say we're going to enlarge the corporate

yard. They are building a bird cage that's 30 by 30 by 30, an aviary that's

supposed to be at the other end of the park for sick birds. They put a triage

unit right next to my backyard, closer for me to you, for sick animals. We've

had skunk infestations there over the last couple weeks. I have to close all

my windows, shut down my house because of the skunk infestation of foul odor

and smell. Finally I got somebody from Public Works office to call me, some

young lady, I forget her name, L1 or something, she said, I'll be, I said, no

please come here now, I'll walk you through the property, I'll take you

through my gate and show you what what's going on with this property she

wouldn't do it I'll go look at it myself I get no response from anybody you are

you and I say you because you're the city you own that property they are your

tenant so you have had a two-minute limit and your two minutes is up but I'm

going to refer you to the representatives from Public Works who are

here this evening and they're gonna meet you in the lobby very good thank you

Thank you very much, and hopefully we can resolve these

You've got it you've got a suit. We have heard you. We have heard you that thank you are very explicit

Thank you. My neighbor your landlord. You have it

Are there any other speakers here, please come forward

Good evening. My name is Mike Meman. I'm not a resident. So one of quick I do it

Bay Point. And once in a while, I come tomorrow quick for a change of atmosphere, just like any other people from other cities.

And I've had some very bad experiences.

Last Saturday, I was here and I parked my vehicle on the street right across here.

And there was a food truck, because it had kebabs, which I like.

So I went and got a gyro, and I went ahead, it was dark.

It was at night.

And I went and sat on the bench, and I was eating my gyro.

One of the, one of the quick PD officers came and parked right across the street with this

high beam at my face, okay?

From what had occurred in the past, I took that as harassment, intimidation, racism,

discrimination, okay?

Because I've had in the past, what happened was their bodies come when I was in traffic,

stationary, came and threw rocks at my face because my window was open.

And then when the Walnut Creek Police Office came, I told him go get him and he refused

to do that.

That indicated to me that that was his buddy who was doing this.

This is something that are occurring behind your back that is very detrimental to the

public because I could go to the newspapers which I have and disclose this information

and then it's not going to look good for the city and the police department.

I am originally from New York, I live in DC, Florida, I've been to many other places.

I have never crossed such conduct from any police officers, any other city except here.

Okay, this is, this, this is, this is, okay.

Your two minutes has expired, but I'm going to ask you to speak to a representative of

the police department in the lobby because they're here this evening.

Okay.

All right?

Because I'm not sure if you made your complaint the other night when this occurred, but could

we do that?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Anyone else here in the council chambers wish to speak to us under public communication?

Seeing none, we will go to Zoom.

on Zoom you have a two minute time limit and your microphone will be suspended at the end

of the two minutes. First speaker is?

Pete Bennett. Good evening, Council.

Good evening, Mr. Bennett. Hi.

You're well aware of my complaints. I've complained since 2000, when was the first time I appeared?

11. Yes, I will affirm that. Thank you. And I've probably spoken close to 50

times. About three months ago, I almost died in the hospital from a stroke. It

was pretty serious. I was out cold for a week in the hospital for three weeks. I

drive an old van, still runs. I've had my cars towed away here in Walnut Creek.

I've had them damaged, I've lost a lot of money, I've made multiple requests for my

police reports for things like assault and battery, where I nearly died in your library

of an attempted strangulation, where the library guard broke my ribs and it was still my fault.

You know I actually came up on an arson incident where the Maria Maria restaurant almost got

burned down.

I've been like a perpetual target.

My attorneys have been killed, my witnesses have been killed, my family has been killed.

I have nothing left.

I'm on Medicare now getting repairs for the injuries prior.

How would you like to try to help me get some housing?

I would you like to replenish my bank account?

No, nobody helps.

None.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Next speaker is Scotty.

Can you guys hear me now?

Good evening.

Hi, my name is Scotty, resident of Walnut Creek.

I'm calling today to address some irrational statements

made by certain council members who know who they are

regarding the pro-white banners

that they cried about on the news.

probably about six months back.

I was just wondering why they think it's okay to,

it's not okay to be pro-white,

but if you're a Jew or a black, it's applauded.

It seems every time whites express love for their people,

some Jew wants to shut it down.

Excuse me, let's be respectful, please.

We don't have an issue of white supremacy

like you guys like to push in your Jewish media narratives.

We have an overwhelming issue of Jewish supremacy

that is becoming more clear daily, even to non-whites.

We can terminate them.

Shut it down.

You guys cry about anti-Semitism.

Next speaker, please.

Next speaker is Barbara Guinness.

Hello, my name is Barbara Guinness

and I've been a resident since 1996.

But Mayor Silva, I'm not sure if you, did you want me,

I had a question about budget from last,

the May 15th meeting or 16th meeting.

We're speaking to budgets during the budget item.

So this is for items not on the agenda.

Okay, so you're considering that an agenda item then.

And I would speak then after all the budgeting

is talked about?

Yes, we will bring it forward at that time for public.

Okay, before the second consideration.

Okay, if I can attend, I will then.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

There is Jeffrey Peake. Next speaker.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Welcome back.

Nice. Thank you very much, Council Members. I was calling as well to speak about the bias

within the media and the Council, referring to the constant white supremacy issues that

we have within this district. No one's willing to address the fact that there's another group

of people who are clearly shutting everybody else down. They don't agree with. And I just

find it a lot of hypocrisy within this council that they don't allow for speech to be said

but they don't agree with but according to the Brown Act and the First Amendment, speech

is sometimes to be caustic or that we don't agree with and I find it just abhorrent that

you guys are shutting down people you don't agree with. No one's even using vulgarity

or profanity. Just because you don't agree with what people have to say doesn't mean

they don't have the right to speak. So what I was calling in to talk about was the fact

that you guys need to respect people's first amendment,

you guys need to allow people to finish

what they have to say, and stop shutting it down.

It's rude, and it's a violation of our first amendment,

as well as a violation of the Brown Act.

When someone says something you don't agree with,

doesn't mean that it's wrong, or racist, or bigoted.

People have the right to speak,

and I think that it's sad that this council

doesn't allow for other people to have an opinion

that doesn't suit that of which you guys have.

You've created an entire group called Banjo.

You've got a bunch of Jewish supremacists

that are shutting down anybody who doesn't agree with them.

And it's sad.

I really hope you guys reflect inward

and realize that there is no such thing as hate speech.

There's only speech that you do not like.

So that's what I was calling it to talk to you guys about.

It's okay to be pro-white

and it's okay to be pro whatever you are.

And I think that you guys need to really understand

that there's nothing wrong with being pro who you are.

No one chose what race they were born.

No one chose who they are.

You guys say it all the time.

So I just hope that you as council members realize this

and you will respect people's First Amendment

from here on out and stop shutting it down

like you always do.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Next speaker is Alexander.

Yes, thank you.

And I agree with Jeff on that.

The First Amendment has no exceptions for hate speech.

The Supreme Court ruled in Mattel versus Tam in 2017.

And actually what the council just did,

that's a First Amendment violation

and you could be sued for that.

So, my name is Ryan Massano.

I am a real journalist.

I am not a whore of the owners of the media.

I am not paid to spread lies.

For those who still have televisions,

listen to the radio, read newspapers,

and believe that social media and schools

are telling you the truth,

I'm afraid you're sadly deceived

and you must unlearn what you have learned.

My website is masonicnews.com.

If you read that for two hours,

you will receive more truth

than you did in 12 years of public school

as far as history is concerned.

We have a very important issue to discuss.

There are no exceptions, as mentioned, for hate speech.

So it is very troubling that we have members of America

who think they can silence criticism of their religion

by yelling and shouting about hate speech and antisemitism.

Every religion in America can be criticized.

And if you don't like criticism, move to communist China,

where you are not allowed to criticize the government

or other entities.

The only people who are angry at you for telling the truth

are those who are living a lie.

And unfortunately, every single Democrat elected official

in America is living a lie.

And the Republicans are controlled as well.

America is never voting our way out of this.

The sooner we recognize that, the better off we will be.

Lastly, let's discuss Memorial Day.

America's founders were very clear.

should not have a standing military. The worst year in American history was 1913 when we got

the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and direct election of senators. The next year, the bankers

initiated World War I, and in 1917, America was forced into it with the staging of the

Lusitania incident. Right afterwards, America's standing military was created, and it was supposed

to be temporary, along with the income tax. However, we're over 100 years later, and there is

no sign that the income tax and military are going away anytime soon. Thank you very much.

next speaker please. Next speaker is Lev. Mayor before we bring in the next

speaker could I ask the attorney a question? Sure. If I could ask City

Attorney to define the difference between what would be allowed for public

comment at a City Council meeting versus what we would not not approve of in in a

public communication format. The Brown Act and the First Amendment do allow a

wide range of speech including speech that is critical of the government if

if speakers engage after being advised not to in hateful speech in obscene

speech in incendiary or threatening speech then the council has a limited

ability to to cut off that conversation generally as the council is aware we let

speakers express their view in particular during public communications

because that is what is referred to as an open forum and that speech is

sometimes unacceptable to a lot of people but it isn't illegal. The one

speaker that had his time limited this evening had been admonished by the mayor

and continued down a path that was inappropriate but the council should

generally as you have always allow the public to speak even if they're being critical and even if

it is opinions that that other folks may disagree with. Thank you. Last speaker please.

Last speaker is Lav B. Good evening. Hi can you hear me? Yes we can. Good evening. You'll have two

minutes. Hi I had a statement prepared but I just realized that your Jewish council member would have

shut it down so I'm just going to recommend that everyone go to gtvflyers.com

and that day you watch Europa the last battle at Europa the last battle dotnet that's all yeah

thank you goodbye thank you have a good evening are there any other speakers virtually there are

no additional hands raised on public communication is closed next item on the agenda is item four

council member and staff announcements reports on activities or requests city

attorney do we have any closed session announcements madam mayor there were no

reportable actions from closed session this evening thank you city manager we'd

look forward to hearing any reports you might have this evening I do not have

one this evening there Oh darn mayor pretend may I go to you first

why yes you can thank you so in my spare time I've attended Contra Costa

the Transportation Authorities meeting,

and we learned about the interstate improvements

for 680 Highway 4 and an update on smart timing

for our county-wide signals.

There was a finance committee meeting,

rather than bore you all, wait for the real report.

I went to an accessible transportation,

and we got an update on our pilot program

that is in effect right now.

We are working very hard to make transportation available

for seniors, veterans and the disabled

that isn't just trying to get on a bus

and then having changes buses and things like that.

We're trying to find a way to make an effective solution

to their problems.

I was honored to represent the council

at the employee recognition celebration.

And I will say yet again, I am so proud

to represent all of the staff of Walnut Creek.

We have people who bleed for the right

and wellbeing of our community and go above and beyond,

almost without even being asked.

so I hope everybody can find an employee and recognize them and thank them for their work.

Mayor, on the Memorial Day you led us through a very touching

reminiscence acknowledgement of those of Walnut Creek who served and who gave their lives

for our country and it was very meaningful. I also attended the CCTA planning commission

committee and we are learning about the A1 planning on State Route 4. They're going to do a

big plan about State Route 4 and how it's going to look at and this is supposed to address all

sources of public transportation if you conclude can include walking that is

also that something that they're going to do we several of us went to the

Contra Costa mayor's meeting and the topic was a three and I would like to

personally thank the city manager for doing a hugely important job at making

what is a nationally beginning to be a nationally recognized breakthrough on

how to deal with mental health in your community so thank you very much Dan

buckshi and last but not least I remind people that the City Council is almost

always at the farmers market on Sunday downtown my hours are between 10 which

is the earliest you can expect me and I beat it out of there by noon so if you

want to talk to me, you got to get there that time. You can check with everybody

else what their hours are, but that's it for me. Thank you very much. Thank you

very much. I noticed that we're going to be talking about Vision Zero and the

local roadway plan in the coming, maybe the August meeting. Do you think it would

be good to have Contra Costa Transportation Authority give us a 10

minute overview the way MCE did this evening on the work that you're doing

there? Yes, absolutely. Can you work with staff on that? I will connect.

Smidara and I will put it together. And I'm going to turn next to Councilmember

Wilk, but I'm going to ask the same question right up front, so perhaps

Contra Costa Transit Authority can come make a presentation after the

Council, after Labor Day in the fall. Separate from CCTA. Yeah, otherwise we'd be here

till from August to September. They would be happy to. That would be great. Thank you.

what do you have to report for us? 10 to 12, Sunday hours farmers market I'm with

you. All right yeah several things over the last few weeks I was able to be with

the Youth Commission on I think it was their last meeting a couple of weeks ago

and that was great to be able to see them a lot of them have graduated and

they're they're headed off to their college pastors and then so we look

forward to a new Youth Commission coming in in the fall or I guess later in the

summer. I was also at the Walnut Creek employee

recognition event with Luella and so our Mayor Pro Tem and I were able to

represent Walnut Creek and see the it it was amazing how many people are new

within this city and a lot of people don't think about the city of Walnut

Creek as being essentially this large organization that's like a company so we

have those kind of employee recognition events as well and some of the people

where they have been here recognized for over 25 years which is really a

testament to loyalty and stability. Memorial Day ceremony was wonderful as

As always, we were able to have our county supervisor, Candace Anderson, there and I

continue to hear about this from people well after the event that have seen it through

our own social media and just a really appreciative that Walnut Creek has this kind of an event

that everybody comes to.

The Art and Wine Festival, kudos to the Chamber of Commerce.

I don't see any representatives here, but it was incredibly well attended on, for us,

fairly mild weekend not in the 90s or 100 like we've had in the past so great

to see that kind of community spirit come out for that as well. This last

weekend I also represented within the Clayton Pride Parade and I bring this

up because I'm proud that we're able to raise the flag here and have the

resolution for Pride Month as we mentioned and unfortunately as we heard

about in public comments there are hate speech that's out there and no we don't

like it and of course we will allow it to be said but this hate doesn't stop at

anti-semitism as anybody that's in any kind of an ethnic or LGBTQ or a variety

of different minorities they know that hate speech will just move from one

group to another to another so I am more than proud to be able to show up and

represent Walnut Creek in a pride parade in Clayton or anywhere else that anybody

has any kind of any kind of ceremony about representing their their groups

And then lastly, I am on the board of directors for the county connection, and there's a couple

of bills that are coming through that we were given special attention to.

And actually, Mayor Pro Tem Haske is probably aware of some of these as well.

But just to let everybody know what's going on, there is a bill AB 96, which is about

autonomous transit.

We're all seeing certainly autonomous vehicles in the media.

And what this bill is saying, that if a transit agency deploys an autonomous technology, it

It must notify the union 10 months in advance and requires collective bargaining.

So that's something that we should know about, that it's not just going to happen.

These are the kind of things we'll have to be notified ahead of time.

And then for AB 316, any autonomous vehicle over 10,000 pounds must have an operator on

the vehicle.

ADA requirements and safety concerns without an operator certainly come to view on that.

But again, when we hear about autonomous vehicles, there will still be an operator on buses,

essentially.

And I know that we've heard a lot about the state budget.

There's no new funds for public transit.

And we put – but we need to put together new accountabilities for public transit.

And we hear about BART and the fiscal cliff that's happening there.

BART's putting together an emergency plan to balance the budget without new funds.

And if this situation continues in its current form, it's going to affect all the sub-transit

agencies as well like County Connection and LAFTA, WestCat, Delta Transit, all of these

feeders into BART.

So this is not just something about BART that we're hearing about when it comes to the fiscal

cliff and our concerns about what's going to happen to public transit.

This is all public transit and we all need to be paying very close attention to this

and ensure that we're able to get the funds needed to continue a sustainable transit system

and one that services the needs of the entire community.

well that's a that's a happy little note isn't it thank you very much

councilmember Francois thank you mayor I attended the recycle smart board

meeting on May 23rd along with the mayor and we were able to recognize one of the

highlights of the year for the recycle smart board is recognizing the student

scholars that get scholarships from recycle smart we had two of them this

This year, Michaela Bach from Carondelette,

who's a Walnut Creek resident,

and Mary Laska from Occalani's,

and Michaela's project,

she lives in a multi-family unit on Oak Road,

and her project was to try to bring greater awareness

to organics and composting.

To her development, she went around and handed out

pails for all the residents to be able to put their compost

and put it in the green can. Got the word out in her community and is continuing to do that with

giveaways for Walnut Creek. So I applaud her and wish her well. She's just going on to UC

Berkeley to study environmental science. We all on kind of on the more substantive front we

talked about the we have a franchise agreement which governs the collection and processing of

solid waste and recycles and organics. Our current agreement runs through 2027 and we're looking

forward to the process because it's a multi-year process of entering into new

agreements with potentially new providers to provide those services in

2027 and the board unanimously decided based on recommendation from staff that

we go through that we separate the process between post collection and

collection post the thought being that the collectors would know where they're

bringing the trash and the recycles too so that that would be said in terms of

of the landfill or the recycling materials,

get that set first,

and then go through a competitive process

to hire the companies to bring the materials

to those places.

So that was decided.

We also approved our operation and reuse fund budgets.

I was privileged to attend the Memorial Day event

along with my colleagues and Supervisor Anderson,

and hear Patrick Leary's speech.

We did have a public comment from a member of the public

who said how wonderful it was,

and don't forget the families of fallen soldiers.

And last year, we did just that, Mary Tolson,

who's a Gold Star mom, talked about her son, Ben,

at our Memorial Day celebration.

So I think that was good to hear

and something that we clearly agree with.

And it was very nice to see the Veterans Memorial Plaza

right here, outside City Hall, re-spruced and reopened

with some trees that are more native

and will do better in our climate

than the ones we had there.

I believe I was the last council member

to attend the Youth Leadership Commission meeting,

but we might have to arm wrestle over that.

Okay, let's say we did it and move on.

It was a great event.

It's always nice to reconnect with the members

of the Youth Leadership Commission.

They had a lot of questions prepared for me ahead of time

related to kind of how I got into city council,

you know, what I do during my day job,

what are some of the challenges and what advice they have.

And so it was fun to reconnect with them

and I thanked them profusely for the work that they're doing

and the change that they're having in our,

positive change they're having in our community,

including through a seat at the table.

And I just finally wanted to share too

that over Memorial Day weekend,

I went to the Reagan Library and I mention that because they had an exhibit on the Holocaust

that I thought was very moving and poignant and appropriate to mention tonight especially

given some of the public comments.

And it was an audio tour that took you through the darkest days essentially and told the

stories of resilience and people who are able to maintain humanity throughout that process.

And at the end of the exhibit, they were interviewing survivors, and what struck me were the survivors

who said, don't hate.

My advice is don't hate.

Love one another.

And I think all religions in the world preach that.

And I think we should all be well to remember that.

And that is my report.

Thank you. Before, Council Member, on Memorial Day, Mr. Leary's speech did acknowledge the

Gold Star and Blue Star families, but also we honored the eleven Walnut Creek servicemen

who were lost during the Korean War, and we did reach out and found, my husband did, using

genealogy research, found the families and traced it, and two of them responded but were

were unable to attend.

So we would have had they been able to attend.

Council Member Darling.

Thank you.

Like Mayor Pro Tem, I went to the Finance Committee

and we will talk about that later.

I enjoyed the Art and Wine Festival

and it was not blazing hot and that was great.

But the other things this month

were the Walnut Creek Homeless Task Force

were planning for the November outreach that we do.

or usually our annual public forum,

and we're looking at having that forum focus

on the difficult, the progress,

the process you have to go through

to build affordable housing,

because I think many people have this notion

that it's just easy, you just put out a tough shed

and that's a great place for somebody to live,

and so we wanna help people understand that.

And we also wanna help people understand

the path that people have to walk to get off the street.

Many of the people that are homeless

don't have a driver's license.

They don't have their social security.

They don't have their marriage license.

They can't prove who they are.

They don't know how to apply for benefits

and just the process that you have to go through.

And so that will be in November.

We'll get to that when we get closer.

We're also, the Homeless Task Force this year

is focusing on kind of collecting data

so that everybody from the hospitals to the core team,

to the HOP team, to the county folks

have know what each other is doing

and know who they're interacting with.

The other thing I did this month was really interesting.

The, a number of the groups interested in conservation

and sustainability got together and did a one day symposium

on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act

in Contra Costa County and all the different ideas there.

A lot of staff were there taking diligent notes,

but there's a lot of great things that can come out of that

in ways that we can help turn the tide on climate change.

So that was a good way to spend the day.

Thank you very much.

I had the ability to attend the May meeting of the Rossmoor

Golden Rain Foundation.

And after giving them an update, it was interesting to hear.

They put a new security system in at the entrance

to Rossmoor, which is 10,000 residents, 6,700 units.

And it's going slowly, but it's going

work very effectively in reducing the concerns about unwelcome guests and we'll

leave it there. Mayor's Conference, thank you very much city manager for your

participation and presentation on the A3 program and perhaps we can find some

time in the fall when the county can give us an update on how it's going

because they gave in a great presentation last Thursday. The mayor

Pro Tem and I had a quarterly meeting with our chairs and vice chairs of the

our various commissions and a few updates. Design Review Commission is

working on the objective design standards and we look forward to seeing

those in a few months. The Planning Commission approved an expansion for

Cali Craft out in the Shadelands Business Park. The Transportation

Commission is looking at Vision Zero and the local roadway plan and I think it

will be coming forward to us in the next six to eight weeks.

Park record open space Commission congratulations last night we got a plan

don't have the money yet but we do have a plan of where pickleball fields will

be and I thought the meeting was exceptional everybody listened to

everyone was respectful and thank you very much and I know you're talking

about trails in a variety of places in a coming months the Arts Commission talked

about a mural that the new Creighton barrel the former Talbots will have on

on the side of its building.

The Youth Leadership Commission will be having

a new class of members come the fall.

And our library, our representative

to the County Library Commission reported

that the county is doing an audit of its DEI collection.

Some things happening in the community.

I really wanted to recognize the following.

The Diablo Regional Arts Association

in partnership with the Lesher Center

presented its 2023-24 season, and it looks to be a good one.

I wanna congratulate the cancer support community

for their ninth cancer support walk,

which was held at Heather Farm a couple of Saturdays ago.

They broke their fundraising expectations

and had more than 1,000 people.

East Bay Mud recently celebrated its 100th anniversary.

It was at Lake Temescal,

which is part of the East Bay Parks District,

but they held it there

because that was the first water source they actually had when they founded the district.

The Walnut Creek Equestrian Center recently celebrated its 50th birthday.

They are exceptional stewards of an area in Heather Farm Park.

There are no horses living there, but they bring horses in, various horse owners bring

them in for shows and events.

The Walnut Creek Aqua Nuts kicked off their summer season with their annual show at Heather

farm pool. And many of the young participants will be heading off to junior nationals in

the coming weeks. And I really want to once again remind everyone to say thank you to

the Aquinas for the funds they raised to help deepen the pool at Larky when we rebuilt it.

Tickets are still available for the annual fundraiser for Trinity Center, which is a

week from Thursday night, June 15th. It will be actually at the Ruth Bancroft Garden and

that looks like it will be a lovely event.

And the proceeds will help Trinity Center

fund various services, support services,

and wraparound services for those

who are unhoused in our community.

And finally, I will mention that June is finally here.

We've been talking about it for months

at the Leisure Center.

They're sponsoring Fiesta Cultural.

There will be numerous programs in the coming weeks,

including Anna Navarro, who will be speaking,

Arturo Sandoval, a preeminent jazz trumpeter will be playing

and there will be an all-day street festival

on Saturday the 24th.

And with that, I'm going to suggest we break for seven

minutes until 7.30 so that our budget and finance people

can get queued up for our next item on the agenda.

15 seconds everyone, please.

Welcome back everyone to the June 6th, 2023

regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.

The next item on our agenda is the consideration

of our fiscal year 2024 and 2025

proposed operating budget and master fee schedule.

And I'm gonna start with the budget manager.

All right, good evening, welcome.

There we go, okay.

Oh, we can hear you now.

Yes, good evening Mayor Silva, council members.

I'm Katie Bruner, your budget manager,

and I will be presenting the fiscal year 2024

and 2025 proposed operating budget

and master fee schedule this evening.

So tonight we are asking for your council's feedback

on both the operating budget and proposed changes

to the master fee schedule for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

Today is the detailed look

at the proposed operating budget and master fee schedule

to walk us through our discussion this evening.

First, I'll walk through our budget calendar,

both where we've been and where we're going.

I will discuss in more detail

the proposed operating budget,

which includes the general fund,

the measure O fund and reserves.

And then we'll walk through the proposed budgets

for the city's enterprise funds,

changes to authorize positions,

and then the changes to the master fee schedule.

and then I will detail where we go to get to budget adoption.

So we started off our budget development in April with a Finance Committee meeting with

a first look at Measure O, the Measure O budget and capital budget funding.

We've since presented a high-level overview of both the General Fund and Measure O Fund

to your Council.

Your Council received a presentation on the capital budget and capital improvement program

in May, and then we return to finance committee on May 18th for them to receive an overview

of the proposed operating budget and master fee schedule.

We are here tonight to share that presentation with your council, and after tonight we will

incorporate your feedback into the proposed operating budget and bring back the operating

budget, the capital budgets, to your council for budget adoption on June 20th.

So the fiscal year 24 and 25 operating budget allocate city resources on an annual basis

across our various city funds.

So before I go into what's in those funds, our city has multiple types of funds and they

all serve a different type of purpose.

So and these include general funds, enterprise funds, special revenue funds, internal service

funds and then our capital funds.

While I won't go into all of our funds by detail, I will provide some examples of what

these different types of funds are.

So our general fund, which includes our general fund operating budget, our measure O budget,

and our pension trust are typically the least restrictive types of funds.

They can be used legally for any purpose or designated by your council for specific uses.

These funds, which include the downtown parking and enhancement fund and the Boundary Oak

Golf Course funds, are for business-like activities which typically cover their own costs.

Our special revenue funds collect revenues that are restricted for specific purposes.

And examples include our in lieu fee funds, like the park in lieu fund or our gas tax

fund, which we have used gas taxes for capital road repairs.

Capital service funds collect funds from city departments for specific purposes like

our information technology fund or our vehicle replacement fund.

And then last our capital fund, funds our capital infrastructure program and is how

we operate our capital budget and it includes longer multiyear projects.

So tonight I will be specifically going into detail on our general fund and our enterprise

funds as opposed to our capital funds or some of the other funds.

So key highlights of our fiscal year 24 and 25 proposed operating budget across all of

our funds include expanded arts and recreation programming in the areas of recreation and

social services, the Center for Community Arts, and implementation of the Lesher Center

for the arts strategic plan, funding for community outreach and community surveys, diversity

equity and inclusion programs, which includes citywide DEI training of staff, city council

and commissioners, funding for the DEI task group, internal rising tide, the creation

of a DEI analyst position, and placeholder funds for city council DEI initiatives which

were discussed by your counsel in April.

The operating budget also includes funding for

implementation of the economic development action plan,

permit streamlining, downtown events and initiatives,

as well as additional development review staffing,

and funding for implementation of

the city's sustainability action plan,

which also includes the addition of

a sustainability analysts to help lead implementation of that plan.

Further budget highlights include funding for homeless services and

outreach programs, extra open library hours, parks, facilities, and

infrastructure maintenance, which includes both ongoing operation and

maintenance costs for park maintenance or facility maintenance, but also

contributions from our capital budget and general fund for capital

improvements to our infrastructure.

Public safety funding for security cameras, crossing guards, police equipment, and the

continuation of funding for police officer positions and the addition of police services

supervisors and a crime prevention specialist position.

And then funding for risk and emergency management, which is expanded funding for emergency management

planning and disaster response.

So the city's general fund is the main operating fund budget for the city.

And this proposed 24 and 25 general fund budget is projected to be balanced.

After estimated contributions to reserves, fiscal year 24 is projected to have about

a $700,000 contribution to fund balance and fiscal year 25 will have about a $90,000 contribution

to fund balance.

General fund revenues are budgeted at $100.5 million in fiscal year 24, and $103.3 million

in fiscal year 25.

Our general fund revenues are approximately 30% sales tax, 30% property tax, and then

30% department revenues can have other revenue sources and interest making up the other 10%.

Our transfers into the general fund include a transfer of gas tax funds for street maintenance

operations and administrative costs from the downtown parking and enhancement fund.

So as part of the budget process, staff take the time to review our actual budget structure

and recommend changes.

In this budget cycle, the general fund budget includes the following structural changes.

The creation of a pension trust fund.

So right in this, currently in this fiscal year, the city's pension trust currently sits

as a fund balance designation within the general fund.

We are in the 24 25 budget. We are going to create a separate fund for the pension trust to for administrative purposes

Within the general fund department changes include the creation of a budget and procurement

division within the administrative services department

the movement of transportation planning from the community development department to the Public Works Department and

Then for this budget cycle the movement of sustainability programs from the community development department to the general government department

General fund expenditures include program and service enhancements

employee compensation and benefits

known contract and cost increases

inflationary costs

Some one-time expenditures in fiscal year 24 and the general fund contribution to the general to the capital budget

transfers out of the general fund is primarily the general fund contribution to the capital

budget which is set of two percent of general fund reserves but it also includes transfers

out to the open space fund and the in lieu public art fund.

So the general fund expenditures are approximately 70 percent personnel costs which includes

regular and hourly employee salaries, benefits and pension costs and then 30 percent operating

and maintenance costs and operating and maintenance or O&M includes utilities, contractual and

professional services, supplies and materials.

To touch a bit on pension costs, our pension costs, which include both normal contributions

and payment of unfunded accrued liability, are projected to be about $16.4 million in

the general fund and $18.5 million across all city funds by fiscal year 25.

This represents about a 27 to 29% increase in pension costs from fiscal year 22.

So some key highlights of our general fund budget include expanded and enhanced arts

and recreation program for, programming for recreation and social services, the Center

for Community Arts, and the Lesher Center.

This includes the addition of one and a half full-time equivalent, or FTE positions, which

which includes a half FTE executive assistant to support the department, including the Boundary

Oak Golf Course, and a program supervisor to oversee marketing activities at the Luscher

Center. And these expanded program offerings are offset by increased arts and recreation

revenues. Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the general fund are the continuation

of citywide DEI training of staff, city council and commissioners, internal funding for the

internal DEI task group Rising Tide and the DEI analyst as well as funding for

City Council DEI initiatives. Public safety funding for citywide upgrades and

integration of security cameras, police specific crisis intervention and

de-escalation training, increases for animal control services, police equipment

and then the reclassification of a records technician to a police services

supervisor over the Records Bureau and then funding for contractual services for in our risk and emergency

management

Division which is training for city staff which includes exercise emergency management exercises and drills

development and implementation of emergency plans and maintenance and coordination of the city's emergency operations center

the general fund budget also includes

Funding for the implementation activities kind of the non personnel cost of the city's implementing the city's sustainability

Action plan which will be adopted later this summer

And one FTE for an assistant engineer in the city's current developing current engineering division

community outreach and community surveys

Parks building and fleet maintenance costs which includes the reclassification of landscape maintenance worker positions to park maintenance

worker, classifications in order to meet more stringent regulations related to pest management,

environmental and drought management, and technology improvements which includes communication

software and accessibility tools, social media monitoring, and a technical audit to streamline

city technology and create efficiencies.

So now we'll go into more detail on Measure O. And Measure O, as we all know, was a ten

year half-cent sales tax that went into effect on April 1st. A general use tax

measure O revenues can be legally used for any purpose but to facilitate the

requirement for annual audits and independent citizens oversight that was

included in the ballot language measure O funds will be accounted for separately

from the city's general fund. So again the fiscal year 24 and 25 budget is

balanced in fiscal year 24 after contributing 9 million dollars to

reserves for future pool and community center costs at Heather Farm Park and

using 1.16 million dollars of unallocated fund balance for one-time

costs. Fiscal Year 25 is projected to have about a million dollar contribution

to fund balance. So the Measure O budget is proposed with about two and a half

million dollars in ongoing expenditures in Fiscal Year 24 and 25 and nine

full-time equivalent positions, fiscal year 24 also includes $2 million for

capital projects, lighting at Ticefield, and the installation of turf at

Heather Farm Park. So the following will be funded with Measure O funds in the

proposed budget. Funding for downtown events and initiatives including

strategic planning, a full-time core homeless services team. So one key

difference between when we were last before you with the high high level

measure O budget to tonight is the city anticipates receiving permit a permanent

local housing allocation funds in both fiscal year 24 and 25 partially fund

core homeless services so we are still funding a full core homeless team in the

proposed budget but we're only using about half funding it half with measure

oh fund there's also implementation funding for implementation the Lesher

Center for the art strategic plan which includes marketing hourly staff and

contractual services as well as an FTE for a program coordinator to support

the Lesher Center presents program measure will also be funding 52 open

hours per week at the Walnut Creek and Ignacio Valley

libraries, public safety programming and staffing,

which includes five police officers

for additional downtown patrol, the addition of a crime

prevention specialist for coordination of crime prevention

activities, including community outreach and education,

and then a police services supervisor in the dispatch

bureau, and crossing guard services at Walnut Creek

Elementary and middle schools.

And then the sustainability analyst to support and manage the implementation of the Sustainability

Action Plan will be funded out of Measure O as well.

So to touch on our operating reserves for the general fund in Measure O, the general

fund has multiple reserves categories that are fully funded per your council policy,

which meet or exceed GFOA's recommendation of two months of operating expenditures.

The two-year budget does not recommend any use

of emergency or pension reserves.

And as discussed with the capital budget presentation

to council, $9.9 million of the facilities reserve

is recommended to be used for the design

of the pool and community center at Heather Farm Park

and installation of turf fields at Heather Farm Park.

And then additionally, we are recommending

that the pension trust be moved into its own fund

beginning in fiscal year 24 for administrative purposes,

removing it as a general fund reserve designation.

So as of June 30th, 2025,

general fund reserves are projected to be $54.7 million

or 53% of the operating budget.

This includes emergency reserves of $16.8 million

and pension reserves of about $26 million.

Our emergency reserves are about 16%

of the operating budget.

And pension reserves are about 25% of the operating budget.

So the pension reserves include the section 115 pension trust,

as well as a PERS liability general fund reserve

designation.

Interest earnings and changes in market value on the pension

trust balance remain in the pension trust

and do impact its balance.

And then other city investment earnings on reserve balances

are recorded as revenue in the appropriate fund

throughout the fiscal year.

For Measure O, as of June 30th, 2025,

there will be an estimated $2.7 million

of Measure O fund balance available,

and then a total of $18 million will be reserved

for future pool and community center costs.

So to go into our enterprise funds,

again, enterprise funds are for business-like activities

that fully cover their costs,

and the city's enterprise funds are the Downtown Parking

and Enhancement Fund and the Boundary Oak Golf Course Funds.

So for the downtown parking and enhancement fund,

fiscal year 24 is being viewed as a transitional year

for parking fund revenues.

This includes implementation of the outdoor dining policy,

which is just beginning,

as well as the anticipated completion

of downtown utility work.

So that being said, contributions to fund balance

are projected in both fiscal year 24 and 25.

Revenues in the parking fund are proposed to be about

about. As a rental and then we'll probably adjust the contract that

lifetime pays to the city to offset that increased revenue that's going to that

concession. So we are considering equity across the racket sports. We are. Yes. Had

to find the right word there. Okay. For sure. Thank you. We'll now open for public

comment because I know there's many people that want to discuss the return

on investments the the fee structure and categories anyway Jan Warren you're

either running from the for the door or you've got comments okay we are we love

your comments thank you so much for being here this evening okay Jan Warren

from the woodlands let's see thanks to Katie she's a lady amazing I've heard

her a few times and I can't keep up with her she's thank goodness she's in

charge of all that and Matt for answering and getting some of my

questions answered and to the residents of Walnut Creek for passing measure O.

I'm grateful for the positions with DEI and with sustainability. I'll try and go

through these quickly. Question or clarification on the positions for the

police department. So they added the crime prevention specialist and they

They removed the police records technician

and then they got two new police services officers.

So they have two.

Is the, is this person who was doing technicians

now doing the prevention specialist

or how's that gonna work?

And the other question I have

or topic of conversation is the,

our police department, we added five some years ago,

before COVID beat with ARPA and now I hear

it's gonna be split or something.

But, and we added two more to the police department.

So we're up to seven additional from,

I don't know, four years ago.

And I'm just ongoing, you know,

how are we gonna pay for them?

Because Measure O will end in 10 years.

So I know y'all have a plan.

So, or Katie has a plan.

And maybe we'll just make more money.

I don't know, but it's anytime you put Measure O money

and ongoing salaries, that's just a question.

Thanks.

Thank you, Ms. Horn.

Others who might wish to make comments.

Hi, everybody.

My name is Brandon Moran.

I am coming to you as a vice president

of the Community Arts Foundation.

Thank you for hearing me here, Mayor Pro Tem.

I am here because I'm representing my fellow board members

who put their time and their energy

into supporting the arts.

And that means we help raise money for scholarships

for people to take classes at the Center for Community

Arts, which I'm sure you're aware of.

The reason why we do this is because we believe

that arts truly matter.

And it matters to strengthening communities.

It matters to personal development.

And I was struck here, sitting here for the last two hours

So the reason why I do it is because I believe that if you

can get to people with the arts, whether they be young,

teenagers, even aging seniors, you can teach concepts of

humility and compassion and forgiveness and humanity.

And I think that's really important.

That's why I do it.

I had a prepared speech, and this is not what I was going

to talk about.

And in my short time remaining, I would ask you that when

And there are Measure O dollars to be looked at that you consider funding the Community

Earths Foundation.

We've had a challenging couple of years in the last few years just because of the pandemic

and our donor bases aging out.

Businesses are less reluctant to give.

So I respectfully ask that whether now or in the future that you consider a annual donation

from $10,000 to $25,000 to help keep the arts

growing our communities stronger

and our personal developments enhanced.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming this evening

and thank you for the work that you and the board members

from the Community Arts Foundation perform.

Does anyone else here in the chamber

wish to speak under public comment?

I will turn to the virtual environment and see.

We have one hand raised. John Livigood.

Yes. Hello. Can you all hear me?

Yes. Good evening. How are you? You'll have two minutes.

Thank you. Hello. Walnut Creek City Council.

My name is John Livigood, a resident of Walnut Creek for the record,

and I'm the board secretary officer for the Walnut Creek soccer club,

a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting youth soccer in our community.

I'm here today representing our club leadership and 3000 members to express our

heart-felt appreciation and gratitude for your plans to install new turf fields at Heather Farms

as well as the addition of lights at Peis Fields. These improvements will significantly enhance the

experience of our young athletes and provide them with better facilities to determine their

skills and passion for soccer. By investing in these upgrades you are not only supporting our club

but also are fostering a sense of community and promoting a healthy active lifestyle

for our youth. We stand in solidarity with the City Council in recognizing the

importance of these projects and the positive impact that they will have on our community.

We are excited to see these plans come to fruition and look forward to the continued

growth and success of youth soccer in Walnut Creek. Thank you for your commitment to our community

and for supporting the Walnut Creek soccer club. Thank you very much Mr. Livinggood and thank you

to the club for your commitment to raise funds to help us actually implement the new turf ball

fields and the lights. So thank you and enjoy the spring season. Thank you. We have another hand

raise Barbara Guinness. Hello my name is Barbara Guinness. I've been resident of Walnut Creek since

1996. I just walked in from outside yard work and I think you're doing public comments.

on the budget. So, uh, the, uh, question I had is I was at the 5 16 council meeting and I asked a

question about the open space infrastructure repairs a budget for 24 25 and I didn't really

get an answer. So I thought I'd bring it up again. I want to know if the 24 25 open space

infrastructure repairs budget, the capital budget is going to be used again for expenses involved

in the exploring the possibility of a new multiuse flow trail and lime bridge. And then also in

that 5-16 meeting another question came up because the director stated that environmental studies for

the flow trail were paid for out of the operating budget, which I had never heard. I had heard from

city staff like about three different explanations, one on the funding. One was they were going to use

grant 68 money uh six proposition 68 sorry grant money but that was proved to be not the case

because it only could be used for Larky Park not a not something that you didn't apply for

and then the second time uh the staff came back and said okay we can't use grant money but we're

going to use open space infrastructure repairs capital budget and now they're down to as of late

April about $6,000. And then it was stated in the 516 meeting that the environmental

studies will come out of an operating budget. So I'd just like to know you're talking about

the new budget for the next couple years. Where are the monies coming from for exploring the

possibility of a new flow trail on Lime Ridge and how much is going to be allocated for that budget.

And I'll just also add, I appreciate all the work you all do for the city of Walnut Creek.

Thank you very much. Thank you Ms. Guinness. Are there any other speakers this evening?

I know additional hands raised. All right then we will close public comment and bring it back

to the City Council for additional questions and then we'll get additional questions answered and

then we will make comments and provide feedback to staff. Councilmember Darling any additional

questions. No additional questions. Councilmember Francois. I did in regard to

the Community Arts Foundation request or presentation I was curious as to whether

or not that had been presented to the Finance Committee. When we get the

comments I'll tell you what we talked about. Okay. And I'll give you a historical

perspective as well okay and then looking forward to the teasers maybe if

I could turn to the city manager and ask about kind of some other one-time or I'm

not sure how we characterize them it is discretionary spending of outside groups

kind of how we've done that in the past and what your recommendation or thoughts

on it might be in the future. Yeah, Dan Buckeye, City Manager. Your council does

periodically receive individual requests for funding. I think, you know, somewhere

parallel would be with some of our services through CDBG, some of the

funding, some of the homeless service grants and the like. We have a set dollar

amount and there's a window period in which organizations can apply and that

way the council can make an informed decision about the broader interest and

broader needs as opposed to handling one-off requests because as we know

there's a lot of need out there in fact there's always more need than there are

resources and so in terms of considering funding requests you know very noble

cause that we heard this evening there are many others if your council is

inclined, you might want to consider in the future

some type of a program along those lines

where you could open up, set a budget,

open up a request period, and then consider

the applications that might come in for consideration.

May I augment that with what we were doing

prior to the Great Recession?

The city council had a $75,000 general fund budget

for this purpose, community grants.

And they were operated in this manner,

absolutely similar to the CDBG.

So community groups came forward with grant requests

for specific projects.

They were not recurring funding dollars.

They tended to be one time because there was no guarantee,

albeit what happened at night.

In 2009, the budget had just be slashed.

And when I was executive for the Library Foundation in 2006,

I brought forward one of the grant requests

for a very small amount.

Most of the grants were for $5,000 to $10,000.

And that program had to be eliminated

because of the loss of significant amounts of money

in the Great Recession.

And it's never been rejuvenated.

Now, what the Walnut Creek Civic Pride Foundation

has done in recent years is basically

fill the gap to a level of about $15,000

per year of community grants that is structured similarly

to the old community grant program,

civic grant program that the city did.

And they administer that program, we don't?

That's correct, they do fundraising for it

and then also residual sponsorship dollars

from community service day are allocated to it as well.

Got it.

That was a historical perspective.

Do you want to know what we talked about?

In the finance committee.

You know, we had, we talked about the CDBG process

and how a lot of the things that we're looking at

could fit with that.

And the CDBG process is in a holding year this year

and next year, and we're all at a point

where we don't really know how the revenue

is gonna come in for Measure O.

We do have a contribution to fund balance in FY25

of a little under a million dollars,

and so the thought was that would be a year

where the CDPD program would be

soliciting new grant applications,

and we could keep it in the back of our mind

that if we get to that point,

and measure O dollars are coming in in a way

that we have that extra money come,

or that, not extra money, the contribution to fund balance,

it's something we could entertain in FY25.

So that would be similar to bringing back the?

Community grants.

Yeah, bringing back something like that.

But it really was 10 to 15, 20 community nonprofits

seeking funding.

And it was very similar to the way the CDBG worked.

And like in the homeless task force

people have talked about, there's the bigger programs,

but there's little things that could happen for homeless

services that wouldn't cost much that are community driven that

We could get a lot of bang for our buck out of those kind of things

Are we in comments?

No, we're answering his question. Are your questions? That was as commentee as I get totally satisfied with the answers to my questions. Thank you

Well, I was mayor pro tem. I was going to congratulate the people who came here and reminded our community

That there is a mechanism to help

students get that access to arts and I encourage you to sometimes come and

remind us during public comment if you ever have a fundraising thing or

something like that because it essentially we have the programs

because we value the programs and you're making it available to the people that

really need it so thank you. Did you have any additional questions? No I used my

brain on that all right so I'm gonna call first on the mayor pro tem to make

comments to staff and then councilmember darlings ensure the representatives from

the finance committee and then may circle back to you based on any comments

that the peanut gallery has here so it's my job to start first of all I want to

congratulate the staff and Katie and everybody else

that helped her, that this was, I think,

the clearest presentation of our budgeting process

and how it goes together.

So that went a long way to helping everyone understand

what the situation is and what we're dealing with.

My other comment is we're not going to be as rich

as we used to be.

And so when we're looking at the budgets,

you know, like we used to have 3 million or so

at the end of the year.

If we are very careful,

we're going to exceed our budget amounts,

reserve additional, excuse me, revenue accesses,

but not by much.

And so everybody has to be aware that this isn't,

this isn't bank night anymore.

That was the message that I got out of this exercise.

And finally, thank you so much for cleaning up

that blasted master, what's the rest of the word?

Fee schedule and took out all the archaic things

that we were carrying forward and made it the modern piece of information that

it is. I think it's far more approachable to not only the staff,

but the public who will be using it in the future. I'm done.

Thank you council member darling. I do want to say thank you to staff. They,

I mean, as a newbie on the finance committee,

they walked me through it and it all made sense.

I felt as if the measure O dollars especially were done very intentionally and

the issues that the public brought forward to us as we ask them what they

would they want the money spent on and I think the staff did a good job on

leveraging things like the PLHA to you know help with the core services. I know

we've talked about this in the Finance Committee but I think Jan did bring up

a point that we are going to need to keep our eye on. We have this is not one

time money and it's not forever money, it's ten year money and we have to be ready at

the end of that ten years to deal with the end of the ten years. I do want to, I

don't want to, as far as what we do with the idea of a community grant program, I

would like to see that come into place but I think it's something that we need

to keep our eye on, we need to see how the money is coming in because as Mayor

Pro Tem indicated we are in a little bit of an odd financial time, you know, one

minute everybody's it's gonna be great and the next minute it's gonna be a

recession. So I would like to keep our eye on it and reserve that possibility

for FY 25. Councilmember Wilk. Thank you. Well I overall I like the budget. I think

that this was easy to digest even just reading through the report prior to

coming here tonight but thank you for everything on the elucidating of it. I

I tend to be when it comes to the Measure O discussions and groups coming, whether it's

nonprofit groups, I mean, the Community Arts Foundation, I mean, I was an actor, arts is

my background, I was on the Arts Commission, and even with all of that, I look at Measure

O as being these funds that the residents voted on specifically with a straight line

to the ballot statement, and so I want to make sure that that is specifically when it

comes to infrastructure, public safety, and the areas that were illuminated that went

out to the public.

And so when it comes to looking at any of these kind of grant funds from anybody, I

would look at that more to be within the general fund.

And if we have the money within that to be able to continue on annually, terrific.

If there is a line that can be drawn from Measure O to why that would be something where

the funds should go toward, I can understand that as well.

But my concern here is if we start looking at Measure O is, oh, well, here's a group

that needs it, here's a group that could use funds, here's the group that could use funds.

We get away from what Measure O was voted on, and I think that we as council members

owe that to the voters and the Walnut Creek community to hold fast and tight to what Measure

was designed for. That said I certainly agree with the budget as presented.

Thank you councilmember Wilk. Councilmember Francois. Just echo the

thank you to staff for making this very easy to understand and digestible and

applaud staff and our colleagues and predecessors for I think we're supposed

have 20 million dollars in reserves and we have 53.3 million so that's

impressive and recognized and I'm looking forward to some of the additional

police officers that we're getting the crime prevention specialist especially

and seeing what an impact that can have kind of in our neighborhoods in downtown

let's see I thought everything was explained very well in terms of the

Personally, I do like the idea of resurrecting the community grants program.

I think it does make sense to wait for a year.

Whether we do it through the general fund or through Measure O, I think we could tie

connected dots between arts and Measure O because I recall that that was one of the

items in the Measure O ballot language, but maybe we do it through the general fund to

have more flexibility and not cut off nonprofits from being able to be eligible for that funding.

So I like that idea.

I do think it makes sense to wait for a year to see,

because the Measure O funds do impact our budget.

And I would just reiterate what the Mayor Pro Tem said about,

if you're having a fundraiser, let us know,

because likely we'll all be there.

And we'll put out the word to the community as well.

And thank you for what you're doing,

because it makes a difference in a lot of people's lives.

And I appreciated what Mr. Moran said

about arts enriching people's lives

and adding to all of our collective humanity.

So with that, I'm happy with the direction

that the budget's going

and looking forward to seeing it back on the 20th.

So I will do the wrap up.

Thank you to staff and all of the departments

because you're working on this with staff.

It doesn't that the budget and finance department

figure it out all by themselves and et cetera.

You're inputting and feeding into it.

I realized before I start

that Ms. Warren didn't get her questions

about the staffing in the department,

but perhaps chief, you can do it post this meeting

because there's a complicated shuffling.

And I don't think the same, anyway,

I would not answer that question, but if you can, thank you.

I think this budget reflects the priorities of the community

and the priorities that we have set as a council.

So thank you to that.

And it's been a while that we've been,

since we've been actually able to do that

due to the COVID crisis, et cetera.

I also appreciate what it takes to create a budget

in which you are doing a general fund budget

and a Measure O budget and then merging them together

because I appreciate that we made a commitment

to the community as part of the passage of Measure O

that we would keep careful track of the funds coming in

and the funds and how they would be spent.

And in order to do that, you have to set a budget

that basically does that.

And now we can audit against the budget.

so I appreciate that.

I think what Ms. Warren said, and my colleagues have said,

that we are mindful of $12.5 million a year

that we'll be taking it in Measure O funds.

Nine million of those are being set aside for one time dollars,

so we're not overextending ourselves into ongoing funding,

but we do have to be mindful of what happens if,

and on that note, we have to be mindful

of the November 2024 election

and the threat of the California Business Roundtable

to try to take it all away.

So I would be hesitant to get overly excited

for the 2024-25 budget cycle,

because if it disappears we have to figure out what to do.

But first and foremost, we have to fight like heck

to not have it disappear.

And because I would love to bring back

the community grant program, that was the happy times.

And I also appreciate that our reserves are healthy,

but we're not wealthy.

And I think we're going to have to probably invest

a little more in the pension trust

because there's a lot of pressure on the CalPERS board,

not only from the market,

but also from those who would advocate for divestiture

in certain investments,

and that causes the CalPERS assets to underperform.

And CalPERS is not in favor of that,

but the state legislature does not seem to be listening

to the pressure.

So that could also be a push that's happening.

And so I am very, I think this budget

addresses our priorities and our opportunities.

So thank you.

And we did this in just three minutes over an hour.

So we're going to do it in 30, well,

we have to do the capital budget on the 20th too.

But at that time, we'll merge some questions probably

about what's the capital budget pay for versus what

is the general fund pay for.

And that's, for those of you, hint, hint,

public works, be prepared.

All right, thank you very much.

Did you need a, you don't need a motion, do you?

I wouldn't know what the motion should say.

No, it was just requesting feedback.

All right, thank you very much.

I'm gonna give us a five minute standing break

just because we've been sitting here.

So we will be back at 8.40.

good evening and welcome back to the June 6th 2023 regular meeting of the

Walnut Creek City Council the next item on our agenda is an update on our city

council 2023 2024 priority scope of work too many numbers and in titles budgets

you know good evening good evening mayor council members members of the

public I'm Carla Hanson I'm the deputy city manager no shortage of information

information in this presentation, but less numbers, which is good for you and me, so let's get this started

So in February you all set priorities for the next two calendar years and these are your five priorities

They look a little similar to the last two years priorities and that's because we still have work to do on these five

And so this evening I'm going to be walking through staff's proposed scopes of work for each of these five on

the new work that we're proposing.

We've got a lot of continuing work,

we've got a lot of new work,

and then you all heard what we've completed

on these five in last October.

So we're gonna be talking about new and continuing work

this evening on these five.

I'm gonna go through each priority in its entirety,

and then at the end we'll have questions.

And although I'm the sole presenter this evening,

there's not a shortage of staff here

to answer questions about all of the good work

that we're gonna be doing on your priorities

in the next two years.

So diversity and equity and inclusion remains a priority

for 23 and 24.

And as you heard through the proposed budget,

we do have a focus and a commitment with funding for DEI.

And that was something that the council in April

signified that they did want an ongoing commitment

to DEI efforts.

We're gonna be doing that through a new DEI focus position,

which you heard about already from Katie,

the budget manager earlier.

And this person's gonna be really responsible

for the technical parts of DEI,

which is researching, developing,

and implementing our training programs,

our policies, and really managing

and partnering with our Rising Tide,

which is our internal DEI task force,

to help really bring about the culture

that we want in Walnut Creek,

which is a welcoming and belonging culture

in our organization.

We're also gonna be focusing on ongoing training

for all city staff.

That's city staff, that's council,

that's our commissioners.

And our human resources department

is gonna be running our training program

and partnering with Rising Tide

to really develop a foundational type of training

and make sure that all of our new incoming employees

are all getting that foundational training as we go.

For our city commission and committee representation,

the goal of this work really is to implement

long-term solutions to support

more equitable participation across the city and we're going to be doing that

through really seeking to broaden and diversify our pool of candidates for our

commissions and committees and what we're going to be doing is really

seeking feedback and insights on equity and inclusivity efficiency and

transparency from our existing commission and committees and really

looking at the processes that we go through to recruit and then this

feedback is going to be vital into considering what specific challenges

we're facing currently and what can we do to overcome them and really get to

that point where we do have a broad, diverse representation of our community

on our commissions and committees. We're going to be focusing on integrating DEI

into all of our city communications. As we all know the city uses a variety of

platforms to communicate with the community including these types of

meetings and sometimes we can be a little formal and it doesn't feel

welcoming or you don't feel like you understand what the heck we're talking

sometimes, thinking about government acronyms and things like that. So we're

gonna be looking at doing an audit of all of our city communications. What's

working well? What can we improve? Where are those gaps? Where are we missing people?

One example of this is our website, which is really geared towards people who

understand the structure of our local government, but maybe what they're

really looking for is like how do I get that service? How do I access that

program? So we really want to look at our communications as a way of, from a

customer perspective. How are we really getting to our customers? How are we

showing them what we do? And doing that in an inclusive way. For cultural events

we do have a lot of offerings as we heard this this evening from our Library

Foundation is doing a bunch of events. Our Lesher Center and our Arts and

Recreation programs are we're expanding those events to really be culturally

sensitive and culturally inclusive of different things that are going on in

the community and we were going to be also continuing to use our city

facilities to offer events and event space to continue doing those types of

community events. Through our rising tide team which I mentioned is our internal

team and they are focused on really advancing a culture of inclusion and

belonging in our organization and they're doing that too by ensuring

ensuring diverse perspectives and backgrounds are represented and respected in the workplace.

This workgroup has established a couple of priorities that I'll tell you about this

evening.

One of them is a chosen name policy, which is allowing employees to be recognized through

city systems and platforms by their chosen name rather than maybe when it differs from

their legal or their birth name.

Also reviewing city policies as they're developed to ensure that we're looking through our policies

from a DEI perspective and through a DEI lens.

And then also ensuring that our language translation is widely available and used among city employees

for interaction with our residents, visitors, and businesses.

And finally, we're going to be partnering with our libraries to share a diverse range

of DEI-focused book collections.

We heard this evening that they're doing an audit of their collections, or DEI collections,

so we're going to be working with them to help share what book collections do they have,

How can we help promote those things throughout the city?

So that is DEI, and I will move forward

to the economic development and job creation priority.

And this priority has four components,

so I'll go through each one separately.

You heard a presentation on May 16th

from our economic development team

on their economic development action plan.

And the goals of this, the plan really has 12 strategies

with the goals of growing our office and retail base,

increasing the number of jobs in the city,

supporting and growing our robust healthcare

and auto industries, exploring emerging industries

that may want to come to Walnut Creek,

and then working with our internal and external partners

to ensure that we have business-friendly policies

and practices.

So the council gave feedback

to our academic development team on the plan,

and that feedback's gonna be incorporated into the plan.

And then our team is gonna be working with our partners

that you see on the screen here

to really understand how they fit in

to the economic development plan,

what they can do to help support some of those actions,

and then we'll be updating you on the progress

of that plan quarterly with this council priorities update.

Moving on to improve jobs housing balance.

As we were thinking about this priority,

and this area of this priority,

we realized we don't actually have a definition,

a technical definition of a jobs housing balance.

And so staff is proposing to really focus on

how do we get to, we know we're a strong job center,

but how do we make sure we have strong,

we have a strong job base and we have people

who can live here and work at those jobs

so they don't have to commute out of the city.

So we're gonna do that through analyzing our current jobs,

the housing ratio and defining what is an ideal balance

for a community like Walnut Creek,

evaluating our acreage that's dedicated to residential

retail and office property and then evaluating what is future growth look

like in our projected population growth but also in our office and retail and

residential basis so we'll be bringing back that that definition for your input

as we go through our council priorities update. For permit streamlining our goal

is really to create an easier and more efficient way for our customers to to

access our our processes through our permit center. And we're going to be doing that specifically

through really having city staff serve as a proactive guide through our through our processes

and really looking at it from both an online and in-person services. So currently we do have

through COVID we were able to offer online services because we had to. A lot of people

couldn't come down to City Hall and get a permit. So we're going to be evaluating our current

processes, including stakeholder feedback and customer feedback, to really determine

what processes are working well, what are really need improvement, and then

what stages during those processes are really challenging, and where can we improve those things.

In addition to that, we're going to be working on a couple of things that the state is mandating us

to do, which includes offering solar permitting online, which we have to do by September 30th.

as well as being able to accept electronic submittals online as well and

that we need to do that by the end of this calendar year. So we're gonna

there's a lot of work in permit streamlining and we're gonna be doing

that over the next in in earnest over the next couple months and then

certainly through the end of the year as well as really evaluating our permitting

as a whole and understanding where those those gaps and where those improvements

can be made.

Thinking about our downtown and really enhancing downtown

is a sense of place where people want to work and live

and shop.

And we've got a lot of things going on downtown.

We've got infrastructure.

We've got safety.

We've got maintenance.

We've got streetscape.

We've got outdoor dining.

We've got public art.

We've got events.

And then we have a lot of business processes

that go on with this.

And we really want to work with our downtown partners

to develop an integrated action plan

that coordinates all of these things at once.

So we're all working together as a staff

and with our downtown community

to make sure that we're approaching these improvements

in a coordinated and really integrated way.

Environmental sustainability and action plan.

This has been a priority for you all

for the last several years,

and we've been in the process

to update our sustainability action plan

since 2020, you know, 2019.

We had a major milestone in April

where the draft plan was released to the public

and we've been accepting feedback on the draft plan.

We've done a survey.

We've gone out to the community Earth Day event

and had a workshop to really create awareness

about the plan, what's in the plan,

gather feedback about the plan.

And we're gonna be bringing all of that to you

for your feedback on June 20th.

We'll also be bringing back a draft climate emergency

resolution on the 20th for your feedback

of what should be in that climate resolution.

And then I think something that's been mentioned

to the public a few, by the public a few times

is how are we gonna implement this major plan

that we have to implement?

We gotta reach these goals.

And as you heard this evening,

there is a proposed position,

an environmental sustainability coordinator position

proposed in the 24-25 budget.

So once the plan is adopted,

We're gonna move right into implementation

in that position if approved would help us do that.

So for parks, facilities, and other infrastructure,

the focus here is our Measure O infrastructure projects.

So as we all know, 65% of the Walnut Creek voters approved

Measure O for funding for a multitude of things,

but some critical infrastructure projects

are included in that funding.

One of those is our Heather Farm Aquatics

and Community Center.

So we're gonna be focused on that

for the next couple years.

Progress made so far, we've hired a project manager

and a CEQA consultant to start the work on the project.

You all will be hearing council,

we're gonna be asking for your feedback

on a community outreach strategy coming in July

at a July meeting.

And then I believe tomorrow?

Yeah, tomorrow.

We'll be interviewing potential architecture firms

to help design the pool and aquatics, sorry,

aquatics center, community center.

You have to have a name for that.

So we're gonna be in the design phase.

Once the architect is hired,

we're gonna be in the design phase for about a year.

And then construction will begin probably in 2025

and complete it in 2027.

The other infrastructure projects that are funded by

Measure O that we've heard about again already this evening

is the lights at Tice Field.

So we're projecting to go out to bid for that

and really begin construction in spring and summer of 2024.

And then the ball fields at Heather Farm Park,

we're estimating to complete those in fall of 2025.

So there's a lot of infrastructure work going on

in this priority and this will be,

these three projects are really gonna be the focus

of this priority over the next two years plus.

So public safety and social wellness,

there's five components to this priority.

And again, I will go through each one separately.

As we've heard this evening,

Walnut Creek has been very instrumental

in the A3 program.

And I think what we don't often talk about

is like really what we know what it is.

It is access to behavioral health Christ services

anytime and anywhere.

And what that really means is you can call

the Miles Hall Crisis Center and get someone to talk to.

You can get someone to respond if you need it

And you could get some help with a place to go that isn't jail.

It is really focused on services to really help you get through a mental health crisis.

So as we know, our city manager was one of the founding steering committee members for

the A3 program and continues to be involved in this program.

And our police chief is also working with standing up a countywide protocol for

dispatching calls and getting a memorandum of understanding between

agencies for the A3 program. So a lot of Walnut Creek representation for this

really impactful and nationwide, soon to be nationwide copied program. So our

Walnut Creek Police Department manages and participates in several programs

dedicated to responding to mental health challenges and connecting folks to

homelessness services. Some of these challenges often overlap and so these

programs really try to address these issues in a holistic way. So we partner

with the our police department partners with the Martinez and Pleasant Hill

Police Departments to improve each agency's ability to respond to mental

health crisis within the region and we support this program with three officers

and a sergeant, and these folks are specifically trained in de-escalation and

crisis response and are available to respond within our region at any time. We

also work with the City Funds as we know, and we're proposing to continue to fund

at a full-time level, the Contra Costa Coordinated Outreach Referral and

Engagement Program, CORE, our CORE team, which serves as an entry point

into Contra Costa's coordinated entry system

for unsheltered folks, and really works to locate

and engage and referral and find housing

for our chronically homeless folks and families.

And so these outreach teams identify individuals

in unsheltered conditions, assess their housing needs,

and facilitate connecting them to shelter

and other services.

And that core team works with our homeless outreach program,

or HOP team, which consists of a sergeant and two officers.

And these folks are really out there on the street

building relationships with our homeless community

to help them get to services, to connect them to core,

of course, enforce laws where appropriate,

and work with our residents and businesses

to address the quality of life issues that are related

to homelessness in our community.

So the next two slides I'm going to talk about

are approaching crime in a way to prevent crime

before it happens.

And we're gonna be doing that through using data,

and we're gonna be doing that through building partnerships.

So we'll talk about the data first.

So this is, Walnut Creek developed a,

and implemented a direct patrol response program,

which is a tactic to prevent crime before it happens.

And this is through analyzing crime trend data,

and proactively adjusting our patrols

to get to that crime before it happens.

So this data consists of crime,

obviously crime data, complaints of crime,

reports of suspicious activity,

or input it into a mapping program,

and then they're able to say,

okay, we've got these service,

we've got this data,

how are we gonna best deploy our patrols?

And this is a proactive, a best practice in proactive form of policing.

The Police Department is also exploring new technology for intelligence gathering and sharing platforms in order to improve investigation outcomes and sharing cross departmental, cross departmental jurisdictional coordination.

And on the preventing crime through partnership side, this is the new crime prevention specialist

position is proposed in the 2425 budget that we heard about earlier today.

And this is the police department is going to be using this specialist position to develop

a formal crime prevention program with a focus on community policing, which allows officers

to create a stronger bond with people living and working in their patrol areas.

And they're going to be using best practices to build this program and really build on

the existing partnerships that we have with the community and continue some of the events

that we already participate in, like Coffee with a Cop and National Night Out.

Fostering a modern and healthy police culture is a focus of our police departments and they're

going to be doing this through implementing an active bystander, bystandership, law enforcement

program, ABLE program, and this really aims to create a police culture which

officers routinely intervene and accept intervention to prevent misconduct, avoid

police mistakes, and obviously promote officer health and wellness. And another

thing that they're going to be doing is implementing the swear not to swear

campaign. So this is making sure we're acting professionally out in the

community and not saying bad words for lack of a better word to really again

show that we're we're the utmost professional we're using the utmost

professionalism in our police department and really fostering that that healthy

culture so we are going to be working towards improving our traffic transit

and pedestrian and bike safety with the goal of providing a way for all

residents and visitors to get to their destination in a safe and comfortable

And this is an affordable manner.

One of the main ways we're going to be doing that

is adopting a local roadway and safety policy plan,

which you will be seeing in July.

And what this plan does is really

helps identify and estimate a plan for current and future

safety concerns.

This plan is also required if we're

going to apply for federal and state grants.

of this program in place.

And our team, our traffic engineering team

is also gonna be looking,

as we're going into maintenance,

we're planning for maintenance and capital projects,

really looking through a lens of traffic safety

as we plan for those programs and those projects.

We're also gonna be tracking implementation

of safety programs and projects

and sharing that information with the public,

so they know what we're doing and how we're doing it.

and then establishing a traffic safety working group

in our, across the city.

And on the enforcement side of traffic safety,

we do, our police department have added two officers

to our traffic bureau to fill two vacancies

and they're exploring grant funding to support

enforcing our traffic safety program.

So our housing element update,

not a priority that you all identified last February

because we figured that we would have adopted

and certified housing elements by now.

We are still working on that.

Your council adopted the housing element in January,

and we're continuing to work with the California Department

of Housing and Community Development for Certification.

We will be bringing those proposed changes to you in July

as well to talk through.

With that, questions.

Thank you very much, Carla, and to all of staff,

because this obviously not only reflects our priorities

as a council, but it also reflects everything.

You all make it happen for us and the community.

So questions from council members.

I'll start with Mayor Pro Tem.

Do you have any questions about?

This is the second time you picked on me.

Questions, not comments, because we'll also then

allow for public comment, and then we'll.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

When we were talking about the jobs and life balance,

I am constantly struggling with being

Walnut Creek-centric versus outside of Walnut Creek,

for example.

Really good worker people live in Concord and Pleasant Hill

and San Ramon and Danville.

How do we balance that?

It's almost a regional project versus a completely Walnut

Creek-centric problem.

I'm phoning a friend on this one, either our community

development director or assistant staff.

Anybody to rescue you, huh?

So staff members who think they might get a question,

maybe a better move into the front row over here.

Hello, I'm Erica Thine and front community development director.

The answer is we don't have the perfect balance.

and you are entirely right, there is,

we're part of an ecosystem, we're not an island,

and as part of this effort, what we're trying to do

is to get a better assessment with the high demand

for housing in our community,

to preserve for both now and in the future

our different commercial opportunities

so that we have economic vitality

and trying to assess what that would mean in the future.

we don't know exactly what all those dimensions are

right now, but it goes beyond just simply,

there are different kinds of jobs

and there are different types of land use and property.

So as part of this effort, we want to really explore that

and help support economic development in our community

as well as our residents living here.

Good, thank you.

And don't move, because actually you get to answer

my only other question, which is when we're talking

about permit streamlining, I know from what I've heard

from the outside world who has to deal with this,

that some frequently, Walnut Creek gets blamed

for the fact that there are many other entities that

are involved in getting a building from point A

to really being built, if it is, let's just say, a building.

How are we trying to help our community work

through the almost ridiculous other levels

that they have to deal with.

So part of it is doing data-driven decision-making

and analysis so that trying to gather the data

to be able to discern fact from fiction.

So that's one thing.

Second thing is that there are problems

and to be able to recognize that

and work with partnerships and so forth.

We don't have all the answers right now.

that's part of the exploratory process.

But we are going to, our intention is to go about this

systematically and quickly as it possibly can.

Thank you.

Do you have any other questions?

So before you walk away, Erica,

let me check with my other council.

Might as well do this, we'll sort,

we'll do a little sorting order here.

Any other questions that might be related to housing,

community development, planning, permitting?

So I'm going to elaborate or ask you to elaborate

on the job housing balance.

We're not trying to balance job housing

in this little micro ecosystem,

the east side of Walnut Creek

versus the west side of Walnut Creek.

We're really talking about Walnut Creek

as part of a regional and Bay area economic engine.

I think that the concept there,

there's the concept of job housing balance

in the regional context.

It's like looking at jobs and housing

just you know generally as a ratio but I think what we're trying to deal here is

get more texture and so to be able to look at in the future you know sort of

the now and then in the future how much land capacity do we need for all these

different types of uses. Great thank you. Councilmember Wilk questions. Councilmember

darling okay um I think this is probably a Carla question we got a number of

recommendations from the DEI task force and I'm assuming that many of those

recommendations will need some work before we understand what it would mean

to implement them is that going to be on the job description for the new DEI

person I think yeah this that position really is going to be focused and in the

funding that is proposed in the budget is really gonna be focused on on the

things that are proposed here under this DEI priority so yeah that that position

will be instrumental in implementing those these things that are listed here

or that were listed here but I think there's the the ones that are listed

there there were several things that came back to us from the task force like

and we talked about the Chiefs Advisory Board as being a potential way to meet

the interest but we'll need to we'll need somebody to be working to flesh

some of those recommendations out before we can take any kind of action on them

is that part of the work plan yes I think what we heard from the council was

is wanting CAP, the Chief's Advisory Board,

they're doing a lot of good work.

And I think you all wanted them to come forward

maybe once or twice a year to give you updates

on what they're working on.

And I believe the police chief has already planned

to come forward with an update to you all in November

before the Chief's Advisory Board members rotate

and where the folks that are rotating off

get to a chance to tell you all the good work

that they've done and what they've accomplished,

what they've learned,

And then the new batch of members will start thereafter.

So that is gonna be included in this as well.

That was something you all said

that you wanted under our GEI priority.

Okay, and I was just wondering,

at some point are we going,

it would be useful for me to go through

and understand how those recommendations crosswalk

with the work plan that you guys have.

So that would be good.

On the crime prevention part of things,

know I've asked this question the chief before so it's nothing new but um is

there going to be enough in there to help I mean this is kind of the

intersection of law enforcement and DEI we hear about people feeling profiled

when they come to Walnut Creek is some of the crime prevention work going to be

focused on helping stores understand best practices to prevent crime and just

randomly trailing 12-year-olds.

Yes, good evening, Jamie Knox, chief of police.

Absolutely.

We'll be very intentional as we develop this program.

And we'll make sure that we include

that as part of the program.

This position will work closely with the business community,

especially downtown businesses.

And that's one thing that we will offer

is doing site visits and employee educational sessions

where not only it's just Q&A for them and the police department,

but also explaining what best practices are

and really what our values are here in this community.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Thanks.

And then, this is my last one, it's for you again.

I'm assuming when we came up with our priorities,

we talked about metrics being an important part of this.

And so I'm assuming that as these work plans move forward,

for example, on the permit streamlining,

that we will end up developing metrics

that say X number of permits issued in under blah, blah, blah?

Is that expected to be part of this?

Yeah, so the intention is to really gather your feedback

on these scopes of work,

and then as we come back to you quarterly,

so that our next update to you would be in the fall,

our plan is to take your feedback on these scopes of work,

build those detailed work plans

that you've seen in the past

that show how much progress have we made,

how much further do we have to go

on some of these things before they're complete.

So that is the plan for the fall.

So in that hearing that, yes, that was the intention

of certainly on most of these is really,

what are those things that we said we were going

to accomplish?

How quickly are we making progress to those things?

We'll be updating it quarterly on those things.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Francois.

Just following up on the metrics concept.

Let's see, how do I formulate this in the form of a question?

I know on the economic development action plan there were two areas in

particular permit streamlining and kind of the office vacancy rates that it

seemed lent themselves probably rather nicely more so than just your garden

variety priority item to some sort of metrics has there been further

whether elaboration or refinement on kind of working that into the economic development

action plan.

We are just beginning those discussions.

So what we've been doing since, sorry, Terry Kilgore, our Assistant City Manager, Economic

Development Director.

We've started the discussions within the team.

We're starting the discussions with our partners.

What I would say is that for the permit streamlining, the ED action plan is actually deferring to

this activity as a council priority.

So the action there is to support these efforts

around streamlining.

So I would defer to either Erica or Heather

to comment on that.

But on the other pieces, yes, we are starting to work out

what those metrics would be.

And like we talked about, there's some that will be

sort of within our control and some that are not,

but that we're hoping to influence.

So we're having a lot of discussion around

how do we show progress?

what do we really want to track?

And that will be part of what we come back with.

Great.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add to make sure we're all clear on this.

So part of the discussion we had, as I recall,

in the economic development action plan

and it's relevant here again tonight,

is obviously there's a lot of interest and focus

on permit streamlining, entitlement process,

and the like, which we hear loud and clear.

At the same time, I do want to be up front

that we are focusing a lot of those resources

on completing the housing element first.

and so we are intentionally deferring some of that work

and so we can get the housing element over the finish line.

As Carl had noted earlier, we had,

as far as this work plan goes,

anticipated the certification occurring sooner.

So it's all hands on deck for the housing element.

Hopefully we get that wrapped up and certified soon,

and then we can divert our attention

to a lot of these streamlining

and process improvement efforts.

Understood, and there were some sort of staffing issues

in community development as well

that need to get fulfilled in order to round out the permit

streamlining, is that right?

Yes, correct.

They have been running at about a 25% vacancy rate,

but some key positions are in the midst of hopefully being

filled here soon within the next month or so

and allow a little time for those folks to come up to speed

and we'll be in a much better position.

And then maybe another one for Karla on a little bit

of an esoteric one.

But have you given any thought, or could you

give any thought to kind of graphically depicting some of these programs

particularly you know like the local roadway safety plan or even an update on

on turf fields the pool and the lights you know when we're at the farmers

market we have somewhat dated graphics and visuals and I think these are very

topical and timely and people would be really interested in that and I know

know that's more of a comment but I tried to ask it in the form of a question.

So to answer your form of a question, yes. Thank you. That's great question and

feedback on how to communicate what we're doing with these priorities. I

think that's a that's a really good point that although we do have these

quarterly updates people are always hungry for more information and what is

going on over here and over there. So we'll be working certainly with our

communications division on what is the best way to show this information, make it understandable,

and integrate our communications through a DEI lens so we can use some of the priority to do

some of the priority work. And I guess along those lines, the Citizens Institute seems to me like

it would be another I know that that was a very popular program at one point and it's a way to

reach people that we don't necessarily or haven't traditionally been able to reach.

Is there any thought of resurrecting that at some time in the near future?

There is.

I suppose it depends how you define near future.

That would be the key.

It's open to interpretation.

It is.

Yes.

Staffing and staffing.

That is something that has been, you know, a focal point.

There's a lot of benefits to that program in many different ways.

We also had run an employee institute internally that's somewhat similar for new employees

so that they gain a much greater understanding of how the city operates.

So those are on our to-do list.

To be candid, I think it's unlikely in this calendar year, but we are thinking about the

next calendar year once we get hopefully our vacancy rate down.

This is the type of program that we had to shelve unfortunately, but we'd like to bring

back.

Great.

Thank you.

Just looking to see if I think most of my questions can be formed can be phrased as comments

So I will defer my questions to comments because my colleagues

Had their questions answered and so we'll take a few minutes and open it for public comment

Thank you very much

At this point we are welcome to receive comments from the community

Does anyone here in the council chambers wish to give us comments? I'm looking around

Is there anyone on Zoom who would like to give us comments? Please raise your

virtual hand and we will call on you. No hands raised on Zoom. All right then we

will close public comment and bring it back to council. Mayor Pro Tem, why don't you go

first? Thank you staff. Actually let me do this one thing. Let's take this one

priority at a time and do all of us and then because otherwise it's and turns out

be a bit of a jumble for staff to keep notes. All right, so can you take the DEI? Any comments,

suggestions? No, I think it's well thought out. It's the sort of thing that you watch other places

go rushing in and not have a plan. It's, I think, a good idea that we have a plan that we keep our

minds open that just because they were recommendations from the DEI team task

force it doesn't mean there aren't other good suggestions out there and I don't

want to slam the door on missing out in a new opportunity so I'm pretty excited

that we're trying to ground it and get it running right from the start

Councilmember Wilk? I agree with Mayor Pro Tem. These were categorized, I think

that easy to understand. I was wondering how we were going to look at DEI with

this holistically as well as specifically and I think you've done a

good job on this so thank you. Councilmember Darling and you made some

comments earlier in your questions. Any other comments? No, I think I'm looking

forward to bringing the expert in and and having them help flesh this this plan out as we have a

staff person specifically working on DEI and look forward to seeing what they come up with.

Council member Francois. Yeah I I I do agree I think that you did a nice job of of taking the

input from the task force and then recognizing that we need and what was clear serving on the

task force that is that we need an internal expert to help guide us on this issue you know

You know, particularly in regard to training,

but also in regard to some other best practices

and kind of in looking back at the recommendations

and looking holistically at all the priorities,

especially in public safety, some of the ABLE training,

the bystander training that the chief is passionate about,

getting committed to, and then de-escalation training,

continuing that, the community policing.

I think it folds in to, they're cross sectional,

and I think it folds into some of the diversity work.

So I'm looking forward to making progress on this item.

I concur with my council colleagues.

I think it's important that we have that staffing level

to be able to support the internal work

and the external work, and also be able to tackle

any questions that we have as we move through this,

such as, well, what about?

What are the best practices out there?

one little comment about city commission and committee representation and

diversity.

The most pressing one we have is women because we're going to have a legal

requirement in about three years to ensure that 50% of our commissions and

committees are 50 50 represented with women,

which doesn't really work very easily sometimes in a odd numbered group.

So, um, we have to be mindful of what the legislative future is. Um,

also I'm curious, um,

how we're actually going to do the cultural

and event work.

Is it going to be institutionalized in arts and recreation

or are we going to just hope that it happens?

And still looking forward to the rest of this month.

Next item, council member Wilk,

you get to go first this time.

Economic development and job creation.

Well, again, I think this is well thought out.

We're looking at, I mean, I think what we've already done

with economic development and downtown next

is terrific, I think that we're looking at the next,

the future of that expanded even more,

and I think that you've done a good job

in putting all of this together.

I did have one question because in our previous strategy

or priorities, it mentioned a discussion

of a cannabis location or having that discussion.

I know that we talked to staff about bringing that back.

It was probably a little over six months ago,

but in six months, and that's not here,

and I don't know if that's intentional or not,

but that's, I know, something

that we had been discussing before.

overall when it comes to economic development

and job creation, I think that we're right

on the numbers with this.

Council Member Darling.

The economic development, that's gonna be a great place

for the metrics and it will be useful

both on the permit streamlining and then when,

one of the things that to think about as we go through

and look at our processes is something

that has been useful in other forums

has been a specific staff person that

is assigned to unstick things.

Because we could have a really great process.

But sometimes things twist in the pipeline

and people get stuck.

But having an ombudsman type person in the process,

you could have a very clear process.

But people can still get stuck.

And as painful as the housing element completion will be,

that really does fit in with the jobs housing balance.

because that is going to be an important part of our economic plan.

So, thanks.

Councilmember Francois?

I think I made my comments earlier in terms of the metrics, but I think you've got the

right focus here in terms of the four items.

Go to Mayor Pro Tem.

You've forgotten me this time.

The concern I have is that we want to make sure that all our economic development reflects

the changes in what's going to happen in our whole economic system.

I'm not even going down the AI issue, but it is things that people aren't buying the

same way they bought before and how to enliven downtown so it isn't just a money grab.

So that we balance it out with entertainment and other things, and I don't mean just food

is entertainment. I think there are lots of things we need to do to recognize the

economy isn't the old economy that was here ten years ago. I agree with the

focus in here. I appreciate the comment about ombudsman in that permit

streamlining because it could be very different. Streamlining is really hard to

metric as much as it seems like it should be just easy to say. It started

on day one and it needs to end by day 29. That's the way the legislature thinks

our lives should run and there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens along the way where they're

multi- a multiplicity of routes that everything takes. So the- I would suggest in the improved jobs housing balance that we think

creatively about existing commercial properties and how they could

flexibly

incorporate housing and

Jobs, and I don't mean housing over retail

I mean do we have sites that actually would be better mixed use with housing sitting atop?

Particularly with office spaces that may become vacant. Do we need to repurpose?

In a mixed-use environment in that way and start looking at that

Opportunity particularly given

What density bonus law will allow us to do with height issues if there's housing in it?

Environmental sustainability and climate action plan councilmember darling any thoughts anything feedback?

This is one actually that I think when we talk about metrics that you guys have been doing a great job in the climate action

plan of tracking the progress on that and that's

you know, I'm looking forward to seeing that continuing to work here and so

Good job, and we'll see it in two weeks

Councilmember Francois anything additional comments? No

Mayor pro tem

Yeah, you've done an impressive job so far and keep up the good work

Keep it going and I look forward to seeing it in you know the next two meetings. We also have to be mindful that we set

realistic near-term midterm and long-term goals and that we understand that so that

We we get it funded in order to be able to achieve the objectives

the next item

Councilmember Francois we'll start with you parks facilities and other infrastructure

You know this one is is exciting to me

Because I think it's gonna have a tangible and positive

impact on a lot of lives in Walnut Creek with the new

Aquatic Center and community center the turf fields the lights at tice. We heard it from a representative of the soccer club tonight

Certainly, I would like things to happen faster, and I know that there's we have to go through

processes, but I think I would just encourage us as a council and staff to

look for ways that we could streamline the process as opposed to slow it down

going forward and probably particularly true with the Aquatic Center and the

Community Center. So I think we're otherwise in good shape and look forward

to getting the update on the architect and the community engagement strategy

a little later this summer. Mayor Pro Tem.

So parks and rec is an economic generator in my mind. It gets people,

we are, I believe a regional destination, um,

because our parks and our open space are, are entirely, um,

attractive to places and people from other places.

I think you don't want to forget that it is an economic generator and there is a reason

to hurry because we want to keep our edge in terms of being the place to go to enjoy

the outside world or build your mind and enjoy the arts.

I'm still waiting for the Lesher Center to get that Tony I predicted 10 years ago.

Councilmember Wilk.

I think in the mid-60s when a lot of these infrastructure were built, they were state

of the art.

And now we've seen other communities start to become those state of the art, and Walnut

Creek becomes more of an afterthought in this regional area, especially when it comes to

Heather Farm.

So this puts us back at state of the art, puts us back at the forefront.

I think this will be the most tangible of all the priorities that people in the community

will be able to see the progress of this, and not just when it comes to the lights at

at Tice Valley or Heather Farm Aquatic Center

and the community center.

But they'll be able to see this as it goes along

and everybody will be talking about this.

So I look forward to this.

I'd love to see it move as fast as possible,

but understand that there's procedures

that have to happen as well.

And I'll look forward to seeing, yeah,

to being there as part of the ribbon cutting

and as part of the groundbreaking and everything else.

Council Member Darling.

Yay.

The only thing that I would add here

is the community input process.

We all want to go fast and so we have to keep that in mind

as we put together the community input process.

And I would build on that and I really appreciated

the way the community input was described

because we have had a dozen years of community input

and I think we're at a stage where we know where it's going,

We know what we're building and the input is really refined down to some very refined

questions that we haven't yet been able to ask.

If we don't adhere to our assumptions and move forward on the assumptions, this will

turn into scope creep and it won't get done for another 15 years.

So I think we have to balance what we're considering here and I look forward to the process.

But I also want to be mindful that last night the prose commission came to an agreement

on recommending eight to ten pickleball courts at Heather Farm.

And so we also may be looking after we get these initial two years worth of projects

kind of working away as how are we going to fund the future infrastructure projects that

are maybe needed from a quality of life perspective.

member Francois public safety and social need did you start with you did

then it's back to you public safety and social wellness that's that's such an

important topic and something that the the public has voted for more more

confidence that we're as safe a city as can be be had anywhere and I think the

plans that we're making make the,

make it open and welcoming.

And the police are,

are going to be part of our community,

not just the monitors of our community.

So thank you for thinking about the intangibles as whether,

as well as, as the hard stuff like new cars

and, and new technology.

Council member Wilk, thoughts?

Yeah, this is important.

It continues to be at the forefront of any of the surveys

that we've done within the community.

And I think that, especially when it comes A3

with social wellness and the public safety

that we've already put out there

and that we're already continuing to recruit for

and between high def cameras and everything else

that we have out in the community

that we're looking to be able to improve upon.

I think this hits the right tone

and the right note that we're trying to get across

in community policing and wanting to make sure

that the public feels comfortable, safe, welcome,

and that we are a safe community, so thanks.

Council Member Darlin.

I think this plan hits the sweet spot

because public safety pulls really well,

but people mean different things

when they think of public safety.

Some people think of public safety meaning

to keep the guy from stealing your bike out of the garage

and other people think public safety

means helping the homeless person.

And other people think public safety

means getting rid of the homeless person.

So this work plan right now spans the variety of approaches

that are gonna really be needed to address

the broader concern of making sure everybody feels welcome

and safe and their stuff is too.

Council Member Francois.

I think this is a very important priority.

I think it, you know, the public told us as much

when we went to community survey results for Measure O.

I'm glad to see appropriately that Measure O funds are going towards additional resources

in the public safety realm.

You know, I think what we've all learned is that, and I think Councilmember Darling spoke

to this, is that public safety is coupled with that social wellness component and that

there are some what had been traditionally law enforcement roles that are better handled

by others.

A3 program is up.

And it'll be running up to full speed at some point soon,

hopefully.

And coupled with the de-escalation work

that the police is doing, the crisis intervention

training with other agencies so that we can have someone

on staff 24-7 if a police officer

responds to a mental health call,

that they have the specialized training.

I also appreciate the Chief's focus on that

bystandership training.

I think that's critical and something

that more departments need to be doing nationwide.

And I really appreciate the focus

and the emphasis on crime prevention.

And I think that's what our public here is looking for

and I'm glad that we're moving towards

delivering that for them.

And finally, the roadway safety plan.

at the farmer's market kind of, I get a lot of questions

about traffic, Smidark could attest to it,

because usually on Sunday or Monday morning,

I'm emailing her, and she's in, you know,

and we saw this with the capital budget last month,

that they're on their way to developing a plan

to address a lot of the questions that we're getting,

and that's exciting too, and that's gonna make a tangible

and positive difference in our community.

So I'm looking forward to seeing that

be developed and implemented.

Thank you very much.

Well, this is fifth in the list.

It is not fifth in the priorities.

These are all equally weighted priorities.

We should try to figure out a way

that alphabetical order.

This is alphabetical order, not priority order

when we list them.

So this is important and it reflects a true balance

that many communities don't have the opportunity to do,

whether it's caring for those who are unhoused

and getting them the services they need

to preventing serious crime in our neighborhoods

or in downtown, so thank you very much.

Do you need anything else from us

to be able to move forward?

I do want to put the plug in for Matt's things

for the farmer's market.

Certainly, yes.

How we communicate about all of these different things

is something that is absolutely,

so one of the things I would suggest in

is that photos rather than icons.

Photos make it real.

Drawings make it, you know, diagrams make it real.

Icons make it just ethereal, academic, Harvard.

So we can think out some ideas on even maybe making a four.

We can do one of those banners.

We can make a four page.

We can talk to the banner because that would be great.

Those banners are out of date.

Great.

Thanks so much.

I don't think we provided our feedback.

We don't need.

We're going to keep moving.

You OK?

All right.

last item on our agenda tonight is a public hearing on the preliminary review

of a proposed general plan amendment and rezone to allow a two-story commercial

building at 1200 Rossmore Parkway application number Y 23-24. I will start

by asking my council colleagues to report any ex parte contacts. None for me.

None for me. None. None. And none for me either. I guess they couldn't find us.

all right good evening and welcome good evening thank you mayor and council

members my name is Jessica Gonzales associate planner be sure you're

speaking right yeah sorry my name is Jessica Gonzales associate planner and I

will be presenting the potential general plan amendment to allow commercial and

retail at 1200 Rossmore Parkway so before I get into the proposed concept I

I just wanna clarify that this is not a project review

or application for a project.

What is before you is a preliminary application

which provides the council basically an early review

of a general plan amendment request.

And so as stipulated in the municipal code,

the council can either deny the proposed amendments

if the council believes that the proposal

should not move forward,

or you may direct staff to process the amendment.

So, jumping into the proposed concept location, the site is located at 1200 Rossmore Parkway

and the corner of Tice Valley Boulevard and Rossmore Parkway. The 1.35 acre site is currently

developed with a one-story building approximately 5,000 square feet in size and formerly occupied

by Bank of America. As shown on the aerial, the site is surrounded by a variety of uses

including retail and commercial medical and professional offices as well as community

facilities.

And so here is the existing site plan and massing study of the existing building just

to provide some context and understanding of existing development.

So moving into the general plan, the existing general plan designation is office.

This designation allows administrative, professional, and general business offices with retail generally

prohibited outside of the core area, and I'll just clarify that the proposed concept location

is outside of the core area.

In terms of what is being proposed, the applicant is requesting a general plan amendment to

change the existing land use designation from office to general retail to allow retail uses

and commercial uses at the site.

Moving into zoning, the parcel is zoned plan development or PD 1140.

A bank is the only allowed use at the PD currently.

In addition to the allowed use, the PD also establishes a maximum height of two stories.

As far as what is being proposed or requested, the applicant is proposing to rezone the site

to a new PD, based on the existing community commercial zoning district, with those existing,

allowing those existing land uses at the site, which would allow for retail and commercial.

As far as the proposed concept, what is being proposed is a retail or commercial use at

the site.

The new development would either include a new building potentially, or potentially just

adding onto the existing building.

The building would be potentially one to two stories with a maximum height of 30.5 feet.

And a 0.50 FAR maximum is proposed where the community commercial district allows a maximum

of 0.30.

So they're requesting the community commercial zoning district as the kind of base template

for the project, for the PD, but with an increase in FAR.

And so in order to depict the differences in potential development at the site and change

in FAR, the applicant has included a massing study as the concept plans.

The site and elevations shown on the screen depict the potential massing and size of a

potential building at the size built at .30% FAR.

And so this site plan and elevation depicts the potential massing and building size at

the site at a .50 FAR.

Just to kind of give some context in terms of differences in size.

So as described in the report, the concept requires a general plan amendment to change

the general plan designation from office to general retail to allow retail and commercial

uses at the site.

The concept also requires a rezone to allow any use other than bank.

And the proposed PD, as I mentioned, would be based on the existing community commercial

zoning use allowances and standards with two requested modifications, one being to the

FAR and the other one being to the height.

But tonight, what is before you with the pre-application is really just a review of the request to

change the general plan designation from office to general retail.

And so with that, staff would recommend that City Council review the two available options

on the screen, which would either be to provide preliminary comments on the proposal and direct

staff to process the requested general plan amendment or to deny the application.

And with that, that does conclude my presentation.

I'm available for any questions, and the applicant team is also available.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions for staff as opposed to we could go ahead and listen to the applicant

so that we can then figure out who's the best to answer our questions?

Councilmember Wilk.

Thank you Jessica.

Just a question.

How many other banks are in that area, in that shopping district area?

Yes.

So my understanding is the Rossmore Shopping Center directly across the street has about

three banks and financial institutions.

at her? So there are three banks and then one mortgage institution. Great, thank you.

Mayor Portim, did you have any questions? So let us have the applicant. Good

evening. Thank you so much for being so patient with what must have been a

fascinating evening. You'll have up to 15 minutes. Oh, thank you. It was

excellent evening. Eric Erickson with Colliers. I'm here on behalf of the

applicant Thomas Bloxham and we're really pleased actually really pleased

that we came following the the last session which were the priorities in the

scope because this this this is a perfect example of a piece of property

that when we came across it it was it was a bank branch for 50 years and we

just don't bank and branches let that big ever anymore and they're all smaller

the bank branch typically now is about 1500 to 2000 feet and it sits inside of

a strip mall. And so when we saw this piece of property, we thought, well, it's zoned

bank. What else could we do? And are there other uses that we could do with the property?

And as we explored the market, we just realized there was just fewer and fewer things you

could do with the property because of the zoning. So my specialty is office. And I've

been a transacting office leasing and sales here in the area for about 26 years. And this

This has been a paradigm shift with the pandemic and what things have changed and how we use

office space.

And so with the general plan being office right now, I just don't know if we'll see

a lot of demand for that property, even if we were to change the zoning from its current

PDE to more of a general office zoning.

The current vacancy for offices is sitting about 22 percent.

We expect it to grow.

There's going to be further contraction in the banking industry.

So we're going to see some of that in the regional banking, probably see some more jobs

come back in vacancies here in Walnut Creek.

With that, there are several large bank branches of similar size that are now vacant, in addition

to Rossmore.

You have a U.S. bank that's across the street.

We're expecting it back, well, there's another U.S. bank branch on North Main Street, 2890

North Main Street that is currently being occupied by an office tenant, but it will

be coming back to the market next year.

were expecting Chase Bank to give back at least two branches in town over the

next next 12 to 18 months so we're definitely going to see you know those

sort of ground floor spaces change in Walnut Creek and with that you know we

we look closely at this site and this site talks retail it's probably going to

have some sort of mixed commercial component to it it'll have probably a

take away restaurant it may have a bank branch a small bank branch it it most

likely will have some sort of medical office use and maybe a little retail

store but we are proposing here to the council that you accept our request for

the zoning amendment and go work with the Planning Commission and staff to come

up with a game plan for that site that you know the city can be proud of for

the next 50 years and with that I'm happy to take any questions you have

councilmember Francois thank you very much mr. Erickson thank you in terms of

the I know it's just a concept at this point but it sounds like you're

anticipating multiple tenants in a not a strip mall but a kind of a multi-tenant

built mixed single multi-tenant building and is it have you done the math in

terms of figuring out the parking and that you can make that work at a point

five FAR under our current parking standards. Ah okay so that's a great

question so with the current site design there's 30 parking stalls and what we

think is keeping this current parking site design we could just expand the

existing building maybe get to about 9,000 feet. Maybe we could put some

parking behind. We actually haven't studied it because we we wanted to wait

for the zoning change, or at least to know we were moving down the path to getting a

zoning change, because the smaller tenants just won't wait. They won't wait 15 months

to go through a zoning change. We need to sort of get the land use component done first.

Under the massing studies, the .3 and .5 FAR, and .5 FAR, if you will, that is the existing

maximum density under the current general plan office.

That's, as I understand it.

With those two elements, we would

be looking at a completely new structure

and probably do something to redo the site and the site

design with possibly some subterranean parking.

And that would be a pretty bold project.

But right now, no, we're not planning anything like that.

And then have you given any thought

in terms of the uses and how they would be compatible

or synergistic with the Rossmore shopping center?

Totally, totally, yeah.

Some uses may appear to duplicate.

There could be another pizza restaurant that wants to go in.

There are another taqueria that wants to go in there.

But I sort of imagine that we're going

to see businesses and services that

are going to benefit both the Rossmore community

and the residential community that's there and growing.

I think that's all I have for now.

Thank you.

councilmember darling thanks so looking at it I think councilmember Francois

already answered asked my questions about parking the Rossmore shopping

center adjacent to it I know we had to they came in and originally we're going

to do all retail and ended up doing some medical office in there so it sounds

like your plan would include would allow something like a medical office in there

with the other uses if it wasn't possible to do 100% retail?

Right.

So Rossmoor Shopping Center had a dentist.

Rossmoor Shopping Center had some vacancy.

And at the 1220 Rossmoor Parkway Building,

owned by Golden Rain Foundation, it

was an almost 30,000 foot building,

John Muir had a facility there.

And they downsized.

They actually right sized to their market.

And they went at about 11,000 feet into the shopping center.

there is still some office demand in that market, probably some limited medical, but it would be more service-oriented.

So, yes, we could see another dentist go want to come into that market,

maybe a small dermatologist, but we're not talking about large office component. It will service the local market there.

Okay, and so the class, the zoning that you're looking at is just one that will give you maximum flexibility.

Yes, it's it's it's really the only zoning ordinance we could find

That we could adopt. I mean

You'd still need to go through a use permit

Process to have any office in that location under that CC zoning. Okay

Thanks. It's all I have

Councilmember Wilk any questions? I

Think the only question I would have is and everything that I've heard makes makes perfect sense here

What would you say is the general types of customers that come into banks in person now? I mean again

There's a huge a huge push for all of us to do things online and of course using ATMs

Has has really brought down the amount of foot traffic into banks

But what do you typically see as the type of traffic that comes in?

You know, you're talking about

Shop owners who have do deal in cash and they're gonna come in with a cash bag and check checks and meet with their banker

So that cash management side I think people I'm setting up accounts and needing customer service

There's still customer service component to the banks that people want to do in person

Especially when they change banks people, you know consumer banks people will come in for that reason

I don't particularly see this as a business banking branch

Business banking branches would stay here right here downtown. This this little quarter right here is very popular with the business banks

and possibly go in for a mortgage and to discuss, you know,

various instruments to make small investments.

Would you see the demographics play into it some as well,

that older people typically would go into a bank branch?

I would think that, sure, some older folks would prefer to go

into the branch and have a personal relationship

with a teller and make a deposit or talk to the banker.

Good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem?

Thank you, a couple questions.

The massing study, the two story was just a massing study.

It would be articulated.

Oh, for sure.

In design.

Well, you never know who's watching,

and I'll get home tonight.

My husband will go, why would you

allow that in our neighborhood?

Well, I'm not.

And then this isn't just about a bank for the future,

because that is a significant.

This is about a variety of ground floor, retail, or office,

and a second story office, which is similar

to what's further west, I guess,

on Tice Valley Boulevard, closer to,

between beyond Rossmore Parkway,

there's this two-story retail office complex.

Yes, there's an office complex,

it's almost like a two-story retail center

where you drive down and you've got a physical therapist

and two-pin construction and then on top,

you've got a Wells Fargo wealth management branch and some other

services a dentist it would be similar to that so you I mean in concept it could

be similar to that yeah great thank you any other questions before one more were

you you're not proposing any live entertainment dancing or late-night

alcohol sales because he lives in the neighborhood as do I and we would really

I have to account to my wife when I get, no.

The reason I ask is because that zoning district seems to allow those either permitted as a

rider with a use permit, and I think we'd want to give a little thought to the plan

development permit and the uses that were allowed there.

I mean, we took a rough stroke to the CC zoning.

I mean, as we've come closer to this and into this hearing tonight, you know, there probably

there are a few nuances we would want to see changed in the zoning text but again that's

something we can work on together with the planning commission and you can voice your

comments to them and we can just work through it for sure.

I'll tell you the entertainment that we've fielded of interest in the marketplace has

been families, families that want to see something that they can do up there because there are

families up there.

All right. So we're going to close this and see if there's any public comment. I don't

see anyone virtually. No, there are no speakers. No speakers. All right. Then we will bring

it back to council to see if there are any further questions of staff. All right. Did

you have a question? I just want to ask maybe a follow-up question about the parking and

maybe this is getting too granular now but my quick read of the CC of retail

general uses is 1 to 250 so that would require significantly more parking than

is there now and kind of how does staff have a concern with that at the proposed

FAR we haven't really researched into whether or not the site can support the

additional parking in the FAR I think it you know it's gonna really depend on

the exact use and the mix of uses because our parking ordinance does

stipulate you know depending on the exact uses there's a different parking

ratios for that okay so is the office use a different parking standard than

the retail yes but I believe it's so the current PD it's one to 250 might be for

separate PD. I think for the adjacent PD it stipulates the parking ratio, so sorry

about that. There is no parking ratio for this specific PD. So it'd be based on

the uses. No more questions. Councilmember Darling, Councilmember Wilk, Mayor Pro Tem,

let's talk what we want to do. Councilmember Francois, I'm going to rely

on you here. Yeah, I mean I think that the site is sorely in need of

redevelopment thank you for being willing to kind of bring this forward

and I mean in general in con you know concept very supportive of this

proposal I think the thing the nuance I think that needs to be worked out here

is is probably the FAR and the parking and how those relate and and to get a

little more granular in terms of the the uses than the CC and I but I think

we're in alignment on that so I think it could be a positive addition to the area

I know the shopping center across the street has started to build out in accordance with

the changes to the PD zone we made there and has had a very positive impact on that center.

And I can imagine not sure what they were thinking when they did a PD allowing one use

back in the day, but this I think could allow a lot more flexibility.

And I did like the comment that medical office could be in the mix, too, because I think

that that could be a use given that it's right next door and the and the area in

general could be a use that's in demand so yeah I'm generally supportive and I

think we'll just need to be careful in terms in terms of some of the details as

the project moves forward would you like to make a motion yes I move that we well

we did provide preliminary comments on the proposal so I move that we direct

staff to process a requested amendment of the general plan. Do I have a second?

Yes. I second. So we have a motion and a second. Further comments? Council member

Darling? The one thing is as you're looking you know I support the concern

about looking at parking and making sure it works and remember your audience

those are door dingers and so make sure that we have parking that works for the

Ross Morayans. I'm gonna take offense since that's my neighborhood as well, but

I guess that explains my door dings. No, it was a very specific thing when we were

doing the shopping center is making sure that we had enough handicapped parking

and enough room for people to navigate. So I'm in support of Mayor Pro Tem. You

made the second so you're supportive. Yeah, I thought that did my job, but yeah

I, I, I, thinking is, is not good, like I'm trying to explain to the rest of the world,

the world isn't going to be the same going forward, and we have to adapt on so many different

levels.

And so, yes, I support thinking creatively, and this is an opportunity to prevent, I can't

even think of the word, but old dying buildings just sitting there.

So yeah, thank you for taking on this project.

Council member Wilk, any final comments?

Yeah, I agree with the change as well.

Banking is changing as we've mentioned.

I think the fact that there are still several other banks

that are in that general area I think is a help

because I do agree that senior adults

tend to want to be able to go into branches directly.

My mother does, for example,

and she wants that connection and that assuredness.

So I think that we've got that sorted out.

So in this particular instance,

I think that we do need to be more flexible

in zoning for additional uses

that are in underutilized areas.

You have a couple areas downtown I'd like you to look at,

but anyway, thank you.

Yeah, I'm certainly supportive of this.

They are.

I'm supportive as well.

I wish the Bank of America was still there

because that was my branch.

But oh well, life moves on.

I now know how to take a photograph of a check

submitted electronically thank thank you very much we'll take a roll call vote

councilmember Francois I mayor pro tem haske I don't remember darling I

remember well I mayor Silva I wish to carry as unanimous that concludes our

business meeting this evening thank you all very very much and we will see you

on June 20th