I'm proud to continue to live and work here, and I'm here today to reaffirm and support
your prioritization of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our city.
I just want to thank you for making that a city priority and reiterate that there's no
place for hate in my city, in our city, and I want everyone to feel welcome and included
here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Please state your name.
My name is Andrew Shapiro.
I am a resident of Walnut Creek.
Madam Mayor and members of the Walnut Creek City Council,
my name is Andy Shapiro.
I'm here tonight because, unfortunately,
I think the voice of hatred is also here tonight,
and I think it's important for us to be here.
I'm here for reasons that I could not have imagined
a decade ago, a decade ago before his passing,
when my father described for me what it was like
to grow up Jewish amid the anti-Semitism
of the pre- and the post-war period.
Back then, I blithely dismissed his warnings
as Jew hatred and it never goes away.
However, I thought he was merely channeling the paranoia
born out of the traumas that he might have experienced
50 or 60 years ago, which were no longer a concern
in these enlighted times.
How wrong I am.
Hatred of Jews remains lodged in the diseased minds
of sick individuals whom, like all bigots,
still find it convenient to blame blameless people,
be they Jews, Muslims, Chinese Americans,
or whomever for their own failed lives.
And it is because of that,
because these contorted and demented persons
have chosen to use public forums such as this,
council session to spew their lies,
their end of their bile,
that I and my co-religionists who are here tonight,
sit beside me, have been here tonight.
We are here because we need to be here.
Jews need to be seen.
And unfortunately, we need to be heard.
We cannot allow such slander to go unanswered,
and we will keep coming back for as long as necessary.
My father never shrank from his Jewishness.
He served his country through two wars,
and on his headstone, below the Star of David,
he had inscribed the central tenet of the Jewish people.
The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.
You see, even in his death,
he wanted his Jewishness to be visible.
I and these others who are here today
for that same purpose, we are Jews.
We are proud to be here, and we plan to remain very visible.
Thank you.
Next speaker, please.
I'm Arvind Malia, Mayor Eskew, members of the council.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
I'm Arvind Malia, and I live at 1045 Alfred Avenue.
I lived in Wallen Creek for 30 years.
I thought I'd get a little more than two minutes of the time
here.
So I lived in 30 years in Wallen Creek,
seven years of utter misery
during the last East Bay Mud expansion project.
So now they are expanding it again.
35 years with AT&T, now retired,
having awarded the highest honors, the S&T Medal,
for network reliability, network disaster preparedness,
and man-made and natural disasters.
Currently working on the Department of Defense
on a classified project to do with economic,
social, telecom, power, water infrastructure,
disruption, and mitigations.
So this East Bay Mud project right now
is a disaster in the making.
None of the impacts of these expansion
are discussed in the EIR.
This is a facility located at the top of a hill
with only undivided Larky Lane.
No sidewalk, T-junction, with a stop sign
all the way to the freeway.
It goes through two schools, churches,
homes, and apartments.
In case of a fire or earthquake, I think we are trapped.
It's basically like Hawaii.
There's no other way for us.
There's only Larky Lane going up and down to the facility.
This is basically a traffic engineer's nightmare.
The facility is also located at top of the hill.
They haul chemicals all the time up and down.
Okay, so it's surrounded by an open space.
So the only access, again, through Larky,
and there have been spills there.
I've watched the spills, I've photographed that,
and also sent it off to Cal EPA,
and hopefully they will respond back to me.
So anyway, we ask you to include this matter
for the next City Council meeting.
Thank you.
Next speaker, please.
Hello, my name is Greg Alcarez.
I've lived in Walnut Creek for two years
and Contra Costa County for 60 years.
We're here tonight as residents and taxpayers of Walnut Creek and we oppose
East Bay muds proposed pre-treatment plant at the Occalani's Ridge.
We want to make you aware of the health and safety of your constituents is
being threatened and we are requesting,
we are requesting your assistance. Thank you.
Some of the health and safety concerns are as follows.
During phase one of the proposed East Bay project,
there's a maximum of 136 daily truck trips coming in and out of the
neighborhood. There's a maximum of 60 daily workers coming in and out of the
neighborhood. Once the project is complete and at water peak
purification, there's estimated to be 42 daily truck trips, removing the solid
wastes that come from the cleaning of the water every day. Please note that
San Luis road, which turns into Kaneo way has become a cut through street and
already has significant traffic. The increased traffic due to the East Bay
Mud project will overload San Luis road. Additional track jams will occur and
increased likelihood of accidents in the neighborhood. There's also potential
for spills and leaks of chemicals and other toxic products via the trucks as
well as spills that could occur in the facility. We ask you to
agendize East Bay Mudd's proposed pretreatment project at the next city
council meeting. Thank you. All right. Here's the list of people who are coming
up next. Catha flat, well, Flortley, Hartley. Oh, excuse me. And
Samantha Francois, and Luz Gomez, and Norman Matloff. Please start.
Hello, my name is Catha Hartley. I have lived in Walnut Creek for nine years
happily. I'm here to thank the Walnut Creek City Council for governing
this beautiful city with such care and dignity and respectfully. I want to
commend the City Council for upholding the Constitution of the United States
especially the First Amendment by allowing and inviting people to speak
here in your meetings. I commend our City Council for patiently and respectfully
allowing what I consider cowardly hateful attacks on our Jewish community
by people, my guests, who have never lifted a finger to help our community or to
enhance the dignity of the people who live here. I want to thank you for the
dignity with which you conduct yourselves and your meeting. Most Walnut Creek citizens
understand the great value of our diverse community. I recall from history and my own
experience as a young girl in Chicago where I lived in an Irish Catholic Jewish neighborhood
and we celebrated each other's wonderful holidays. But I remember experiencing the hatred that
My best friend, Arlene Malkin, and her family
experienced from people outside who hated Jews.
This is 1947, two years after we knew everything
about the Holocaust.
Remember, in New York, 1939, 20,000 American Nazis
gathered, they were defeated.
And I believe that the people of Walnut Creek
will defeat any kind of anti-Semitism,
any kind of anti-other behavior or rhetoric here.
It's cowardly.
And certainly, again, I thank the city council
for the wonderful work you do.
I love the city.
I'm so grateful to be here.
So thank you for everything that you do.
Mayor, ask you, council.
Samantha Francois, Walnut Creek resident, 23 years.
Never in my life did I think my city
would be subject to racism and hate.
Standing with my Jewish friends and neighbors
and anyone who is othered in our community
standing against hate.
There are lots of places that need help,
lots of places that people,
instead of driving here for two hours,
could go and volunteer.
Instead of driving here and spewing hate for two hours,
could go and volunteer, I just don't understand it.
We have literally fought a war over this.
My great uncle did not sustain an injury at Normandy
to see this happen again, and I will not stand by
to see this happen again.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor Haskew, council members, staff,
and community.
My name is Luz Gomez, and I serve as the East Bay Mudd
Ward 2 Director.
It encompasses Walnut Creek, Lafayette, parts
of Pleasant Hill and San Ramon, the town of Danville,
and the communities of Alamo, Blackhawk, and Diablo.
I'm here tonight to introduce myself
to both the council and the Walnut Creek community.
I was appointed as the new Ward 2 representative
unanimously at the April 9th meeting,
just like last week, so I'm brand new.
And it's a tremendous honor to be a member
of this esteemed board.
We settled in Ward 2 40 years ago, my family and I,
and we literally fell in love with the water
from the first sip we ever took.
I had the privilege of visiting party reservoir last week and to see where the pristine water
comes from and ends up in our tap, it was an incredible privilege.
I want to point out that joining us tonight we have Dave Renstrom who is an engineering
manager and Joe Volcker who is our community of first representatives.
So as the newest member of the East Bay Mudd board, I'm eager to ensure that Walnut Creek
continues to receive the excellent service and water quality that you have
been used to receiving all this time. I'm immersing myself as quickly as I can in
all things at East Bay Mudd, all the projects that are coming up. I understand
that there's a project here in Walnut Creek that you guys are hearing about
tonight. I look forward to working with the council and with the community on
addressing this and any other project that may come up. I brought with me some
cards having to do with our community assistance program. If anybody is having
trouble paying for water bills.
I'm leaving these at the front,
and thank you so much for your service,
and I look forward to collaborating
and partnering with you.
Thank you.
Wait a minute, please.
Thank you very much for being here this evening,
and congratulations.
I watched the interviews last week,
and I truly thought you demonstrated
a real understanding of our communities
and the issues that we face,
whether they're sustainability or water quality,
or the challenges of infrastructure redevelopment
continuing for the future. I think you've already heard this evening that
there are some members of the community who live near the water treatment plant
up at the top of Larky who have some concerns and I assume since you brought
some staff members with you as well that you are prepared to talk to them
outside if they so desire. Absolutely. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks.
Thank you Council Member Silva. You're welcome. We will also finish with the
Public comment and then maybe have the meeting with with the people of concern out in the hall then would that be yeah
I'll be outside waiting. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. And anybody that wants to can go and talk to her now, please
Alright. Oh, sorry
My name is Norman Matloff. I've lived in Walnut Creek for
37 years
We live very close to that East Bay mud plant
we are not happy, just as the other speakers said.
We believe there is a real danger.
We believe that there is major, major disruption coming.
I don't know if you can imagine it, every single day for three
to seven years, trucks coming through our neighborhood,
Noisy, blocking traffic, dust, fumes, everyday starting at 7 a.m., not 8, not 9, 7 a.m.,
for three to seven years.
This is outrageous.
We believe there are good alternatives.
We do ask that you put this on the agenda for the next meeting.
Obviously, we can't legislate that right here.
basically we want you on our side. I want to make three quick points for, I
think. I'm running out of time. The most important one is this. This is not a
neighborhood issue. It affects all of Walnut Creek. Don't dismiss it as a
neighborhood issue, which we've already heard from city staff. Okay. If up there,
Up above our houses, there is a disaster, everybody in Walnut Creek is going to feel
it.
You're not going to have any water.
There's not going to be water here in City Hall.
Okay.
Second, why so late?
The final EIR is due in June.
Okay.
Well, I'll tell you, most people in our neighborhood don't know.
We know that because we've been canvassing.
And everybody we talk to, this is news to them.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
You'll have a chance to talk to them.
I do agree with the speakers about Jewish.
I'm Jewish.
Yes.
Thank you.
Um, let's see, um, Emily Chang, Chris Palomo, Craig Davini, and Norman Matloff.
Oh, I get a number for that one.
Oh, that's Norman Matloff.
No, you don't get two chances.
Hi.
good evening my name is Emily Chang I am a longtime resident of the city of
Walnut Creek and it's nice to see all the familiar faces here some of you may
remember me from when I served in the city of the city's transportation
Commission and when I worked for the Downtown Business Association I'm proud
to be a resident of the city of Walnut Creek there's a lot to be grateful for
but tonight I wish to echo the concerns regarding the East Bay mud project at
at Akalani's Ridge.
In particular, what concerns me are the health and safety
aspects.
I have two children.
And I'm concerned that the asbestos, the debris,
and the pollutants will have an adverse impact on their health.
Of course, I think the elderly are more at risk as well.
We know that the council does not have a vote on this project.
And we know about government code 53091.
But there is case law establishing significant limitations to the code and thresholds that
public entities must meet before claiming the full extent of the code.
And even if that weren't the case, what we're asking for tonight will not be in conflict
with that code.
I'm glad for the chance to perhaps speak with East Bay MUD tonight.
And I wish to also request the council consider funding an independent engineer's report to
make sure that the ERI data is accurate.
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Thank you.
Next speaker, please.
Good evening, Mayor, council members.
My name is Chris Paloma and I'm a field rep
of the NorCal Carpenters Union at a local 152 in Martinez,
covering all of Contra Costa County.
First, I'd like to thank you guys
for allowing me to speak tonight.
Sorry, my phone just went off.
Many, today I stand before you to discuss an urgent issue
affecting our community in Walnut Creek
and the surrounding areas.
The exploitation of workers by irresponsible contractors
and developers in our local housing projects.
These contractors are not only undermining the dignity
of our hardworking men and women,
but they are also compromising the integrity
of our development projects.
Many of these unrepresented workers who pour concrete,
frame buildings, and build the very structures
we live and work in are being denied a livable wage.
They work long hours under challenging conditions,
yet they struggle to make ends meet
for themselves and their families.
Furthermore, these contractors often fail
to provide essential healthcare benefits,
leaving workers vulnerable and unable
to afford medical care when they need it most.
Compounding these issues is the widespread practice
of misclassifying workers.
This misclassification strips workers
of the rightful benefits and pay rates
they should be receiving.
These practices are not only unethical,
but they erode the quality of our workforce
and ultimately the quality of our housing developments.
It is a disservice to both the workers
and the residents of this city
who will inhabit these buildings.
As leaders of this city, it is your responsibility
to ensure that development within our community
both sustainable and ethical. Therefore, I urge you to enact and enforce stringent labor
standards that protect our workforce from exploitation and keep developers and contractors
honest. Let us be a city that values not just the bricks and mortar of our buildings but the hands
that build them. Let's ensure that our progress as a city does not come at the cost of our workers
welfare and dignity. I'd love to sit and talk with each one of you guys and talk to you guys about
the crime scenes that are going on in all these honestly projects. Thank you for your time.
Next speaker please. Hello Mayor Haskew, Council members. My name is Craig Divini. I'm a long time
resident of Walnut Creek and I'm here with my family tonight. We'd like to address the hate
speech that's been that we've been listening to. We already live in a difficult time. We're facing
unprecedented challenges like climate change and overpopulation. We need to be able to find common
ground and common truth so that we can start working towards solutions. But in this age of
of the internet and social media,
we are engulfed by misinformation.
And instead of thoughtful, rational voices,
it is primarily the complainers, the haters,
and the most extreme voices that are amplified and propagated.
At the same time, politics has become so divisive and extreme.
We've lost our middle ground.
Sometimes it feels like we're so divided and dissimilar.
How will we be able to rise to the challenges of the day?
And then in our own city council meetings,
the ugliest, most ignorant, toxic members of society
stand here at this podium spewing hate, prejudice,
and anti-Semitism.
These speeches are so disheartening.
And in combination with everything else going on
could make someone lose faith in humanity.
But after witnessing the response from our community,
I'm left with a very different emotion.
I feel hope, optimism, and empowered.
I was moved, I am moved, by the outpouring of support
from this community.
In response to the hate, we've heard messages of love,
kindness, and empathy.
I'm convinced that when faced with adversity,
our better angels will prevail.
This terrible thing has entered our community,
and as a result, we've only grown closer,
found common ground,
and emerged from it stronger on the other side.
Our goodness, our compassion, our empathy,
are our strongest emotions.
And though we face many challenges
when called to task and faced with adversity,
we will rise to meet the challenges of our day.
See, Ryan Messonnou, Guy Sterosen, and Alyssa Lawson.
What I'm about to say will shock many,
and that's because we've all been brainwashed from birth.
Time to take your children out of public schools and colleges,
throw away your television, stop watching movies,
stop listening to the radio, stop reading newspapers
and magazines, and get off social media except for GAB.
Television, radio, and movies have been run by those who
follow the Talmud since they were invented.
My website is MissanoNews.com.
I also have my own radio show, a Ryan Missano show
on Speak Free Radio.
So if anyone has a problem, come on my show.
I'll listen to you.
Let's talk about the Jewish Talmud.
If you're a woman and you're not a Jew,
according to the Talmud, you're a whore and a prostitute.
And by the way, I've got three million views for Sacramento.
Thank you for what you're doing.
You're going to bring millions more.
If you're a woman and you're not a Jew,
according to the Talmud, you're a whore and a prostitute.
If you're a man and not a Jew, you're an animal and a beast.
The Talmud says the best non-Jews deserve to be killed.
It also legalizes child molestation, homosexuality,
murder, lying, cheating, stealing, deceit,
transgenderism, and much more.
Now we have four victim groups in America.
This didn't order, you cannot criticize them.
First are Jews, and you could tell.
Thank you for the demonstration.
Second are homosexuals and transgenders,
and I see the rainbow flag.
Third are non-whites, fourth are women.
The media says white men are racist,
but any mistreatment of whites cannot be racist.
Of course, the response of Jews
when you criticize legitimate Jewish wrongdoing
is to holler, Holocaust.
Now, whether it happened or not is worthy of consideration,
but let's give our Jewish friends the benefit of the doubt.
If the Holocaust happened,
Jewish communism also happened,
murdering 100 million.
So why do we constantly hear about the six million
alleged victims of a Holocaust,
but rarely about the 100 million murdered
by Jewish communism,
because Jews control the money in media, that's why.
Talmudic Jew bankers took control of America in 1913
with their bogus Federal Reserve Act
and the 16th Amendment Income Tax and 17th Amendment.
I'll end there.
There was another speaker.
Mayor, city council members,
I know you've seen me here before.
I'm here for a reason.
I'm here to encourage the city workers
as well as people in the community that carried Narcan.
I am currently at work at Sacramento County coroner's
office, which is the ME's office.
And we've seen a real influx of people coming through there
that are very young from Fentanyl.
And Walnut Creek's a beautiful city.
And you guys really don't have a lot of problems,
but drugs are funny.
They come under the radar.
A lot of people don't think that these homeless people are doing fit and all, and they don't,
they think the normal person you would think would not do it, but it is a killer, and it's
rampant all over the state of California.
I encourage your city workers that work for public works or any of those departments that
carry Narcan, the police carry Narcan, all of you guys need to carry it.
you could save somebody's life seriously. There's a lot of people going through the
ME's office right now that are very young, and it's very sad, and it's because of this
problem with fit and all. So I encourage you people to possibly get the city to take a
budget and buy an Orkan. It's very inexpensive. You don't need a prescription board, and you
could save a human person's life. I would appreciate it if you in your
agendas moving forward that you could possibly talk to your city workers about
it. It's very important. We need to save lives. Too many people are dying. Thank
you. Yes. Melissa, is that you coming up? Yes.
Elisa Lawson. Good evening. Walnut Creek residents since 2011. I just moved from
an unincorporated area and I chose to stay in Walnut Creek because I love this city so
much. I hate public speaking. I should not use that word tonight. I dislike public speaking
but I was motivated because I really am upset about the hate speech that we've been hearing.
I just wanted to stand tonight and say that I am in support of a community in Walnut Creek
that is inclusive, diverse, equitable, and I appreciate your efforts.
Thank you.
I have another card from Lynn Fanger.
My name is Lynn Fanger.
I am Jewish.
Lynn, would you move the microphone so it's near your mouth?
Okay.
Thank you.
I am Jewish and I reside in the La Marinda area and I'm almost in Walnut Creek every
single day.
I thank the Walnut Creek Council for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight and appreciate
all the work that you have done to help with all these horrible remarks, anti-Semitic remarks.
Yes, we do have freedom of speech.
But with that said, in my opinion, freedom of speech comes with responsibility.
I am speaking on behalf of all the people who are not here tonight to speak up against
this disgusting and hateful rhetoric against the Jewish people.
This is not to be accepted or tolerated in this community.
Anti-Semitism is not new.
This trope does not define who we are, nor does it threaten us.
It is unnecessary harassment by a stupid group of people.
We do take this seriously because we are a minority and the highest targeted religious
group.
This is a call out to stop all kinds of racial hate.
So please, whoever you are, keep your comments to yourself.
Thank you.
Anybody else, we have one minute left for public comment.
Yes.
Don't forget to fill out a card before you go home.
Go, go, come.
Hi, my name is Erica Beth Dahl.
Go ahead and record me because you've recorded everyone else.
And I just want to say that, you know, I live in Concord,
but I lived in the Bay Area, Alamo,
Walnut Creek, for many years.
And I was horrified when I found out what happened,
I guess it was in February to a wonderful man and councilmember, Mr. Wilk, who had an
honor to meet the other day, and I am here to say that I will be here and others in our
community who will continue to stand up to this vile display that does not represent
who we are as a community, regardless of me living in Concord.
I feel this is my home too, and we are all community members together.
And just one last thing I want to add, there's some heavy research that's being done by some
of my colleagues who are working on this effort and on other efforts jointly.
And come to find out that members such as the man who stood up before to make a spectacle,
they actually make money off of doing this by GoFundMe sources on the dark web.
I'm not being interrupted.
I'm letting you know that that is actually true,
and we have receipts to show that,
and maybe my next time I come to speak,
I'll talk more about how when the videotaping goes on
for themselves and for others,
they make money off that on the dark web.
All right, it is the end of public comment.
I have a comment to make.
Every council member has taken a note
to follow the Constitution,
including honoring the First Amendment rights
afforded to us all.
Nevertheless, the speech today, full of threats
and inappropriate language, in my opinion,
borders on yelling fire in a darkened theater.
While under the letter of the law,
you may have the right to be disruptive, disrespectful,
and dreadful to listen to.
But we have the right and obligation
to vehemently disagree with your comments
and choose not to be bullied
and instead focus on communications that improve
and bring progress to our city.
To be clear, the council strongly disagrees with
and condemns your comments.
Thank you all for showing up
and I have Kevin, please.
Thank you, thank you, Mayor.
And I appreciate those comments
as does the entire community.
Jewish, Muslim, Black, LGBTQ, everybody.
Some things that I have privy to that other people may not
is the amount of feedback and comments and emails
and people that just stopped me in the street
or in meetings telling me how thankful they are
to live in Walnut Creek, how welcoming it is,
thank you to the city council for doing the things
that we have done to make people feel more welcome,
and for also speaking out against the hate speech
we've heard. While we've heard from a couple of terrible individuals over, you
know, the last couple of months, we've heard from hundreds and hundreds of
people both in the public sphere as well as just in the last few meetings who
have shown up. We've heard from dozens of speakers, many of them not Jewish, many
that are ministers, that are Catholic and Christian, Episcopalian, and a variety of
of different people that say these people align themselves
with white Christianity, no, we rebuke what they're saying.
Some of the comments that we've heard that these haters are not
just divisive, which we know they are.
They're ugly, toxic, disgusting, ignorant, hatred.
These are just some of the words that we've heard tonight,
and there's many more that have happened
over the last few weeks.
As a community, it heartens me to see this kind of support
and outreach that we've heard from the community.
Many people who have spoken, I can hear it in your voices,
many people who have spoken,
they're not comfortable with public speaking.
This may be one of the first times they've spoken
in a long time, maybe ever in this kind of a forum.
We've all become used to it, but it's a real challenge
if we think about what it was like
the first time we ever had to speak up in class
or the first time in front of a large group of people.
It can be intimidating and it's nerve wracking.
and these people have gotten up and out on a Tuesday night
to come to Walla Creek to a electrifying
city council meeting to be able to speak their truth
and what it means to them.
And I thank you for that because I think
that that's important because as we've heard
from many people along the way,
including Winston Churchill who I'll quote on this,
think that evil exists where good people say and do nothing.
It's not that the opposite of love
or the opposite of hate is love,
the opposite of hate is indifference.
And we have to show that.
We have to show how important it is for us to stand up.
All the people that have spoken tonight
and all the people that have spoken to me
in the last couple of months
are all from a five mile radius.
The two specific haters and dividers
that have spoken in Walnut Creek
and our city council meetings the last two months
have come from Stockton and Modesto,
maybe Sacramento, I'm not quite sure it's Stockton,
those two, they've had to come from at least
an hour, an hour and a half away
to spread their vile hatred here.
And we have shown that we are better than that as people,
that we are better than that as humanity.
And I thank God every day that I live in Walla Creek
and that we are a community that accepts
and loves one another, and I thank everybody
for being here, I thank people that are watching,
and I thank everybody in community
for being as welcoming as you are.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We don't, I'm sorry, I was otherwise occupied.
We don't clap, and that is not appropriate.
I guess you can do that.
This is a business meeting,
and we intend to run it like a business meeting.
And that being said, public comment is closed,
and we're-
Can I get staff, just get some information on,
We have some neighbors in one area
near the East Bay Mud water treatment plant,
and could we get clarification on why we are not taking this
up at the city council level
and what our level of authority is in English,
not lawyers, please.
I can provide some thought to the council.
So the city is under, by state law,
does not have jurisdiction over this project
as East Bay MUD's facility is a water treatment facility
and by state law, as one of the speakers mentioned
under the government code,
and by attorney general's opinion,
conclusion that the city does not have jurisdiction
over that project.
And as East Bay MUD is the agency
that's undertaking the project,
it is also the lead agency on the environmental document.
So it has the responsibility to prepare, review,
certified the environmental impact report. The city can't comment on that
report and the city has done that prior to the public comment period closing and
so you know the city has taken steps to review and respond to that comment on
that environmental analysis but otherwise the city is not it's not
within the city's jurisdiction to issue a permit a CUP or building permit
Otherwise.
Any other comments before we move on to the next item?
Seeing none, we are up to, I'm looking at the closed session, thank you.
I started to say that.
Closed session announcements, are there any?
No announcement there.
Thank you.
City manager reports.
And in case you notice, this is not Dan Buckeye.
This is Kevin Safeen, who now kind of is also in charge of Arts and Rec Department.
And before he opens his mouth, I'm going to bring the local New Sunday paper where there
is a giant headline saying, Arts and Rec Expanding Its Adaptive Inclusion Programs.
And two people who are very active in making that happen are here, one of which is Kevin
and Safeen are substitute city managers.
So thank you and Ms. Orkut,
who also has been a mover and shaker in this whole thing.
Now, city manager report.
Thank you, Mayor.
I was just gonna say what you already said,
which is I am not Dan Buckshi.
The city manager's out of town this week.
He will return, a schedule return on Thursday.
So I'm your acting city manager.
And then I'm also presenting an item later.
So you will see me over at the lectern a little bit later
and then coming back here.
So I'll be on the move,
but I just want to share that with you
and the audience that city manager Buckshite
will return on Thursday.
Thank you.
Anybody on council like to take wing here?
Matt, would you please?
Thank you, Mayor.
This morning I had the pleasure of attending
the state of the chamber talk over at the Oakview room
at the library, where we were able to hear an update
on the Chamber's strategic plan
and also celebrate outgoing Chair Audrey G
and welcome back incoming Chair Matt Gushard.
We had an interesting report from Visit Walnut Creek,
that's our visitor bureau, a visitor and tourism bureau,
and they had interesting statistics
in terms of the economic development
that happened as a result of a half marathon run
that was scheduled in early March.
I was signed up to run that race
and unfortunately got canceled
due to weather conditions on Mount Diablo.
But everyone was already in town for the race
and they had some good numbers that that one race
over that two day event garnered something
along three quarters of a million dollars
in economic development for the region.
So great news in terms of sports tourism
and more to come on that.
We also at that event celebrated legacy members
of the chamber, meaning they had been members
of the chamber for 50 years or more, I think that's right,
including Cal Shakes, Diablo Valley College
and CSAA Insurance Group.
So thank you to them for being such valued business partners
and members for many, many years.
And earlier this afternoon, along with the mayor,
I attended the public education committee meeting,
and we had an update on the Seat at the Table initiative,
which is for an initiative our Youth Leadership Commission
brought to us two years ago now,
and asked us to do a pilot program
where three youth members serve on our arts,
transportation and park recreation and open space.
So those youth members now have served almost two years
and have done a really fantastic job.
I watched one of them in action
at the pro's commission meeting and she was prepared
and she had great comments
and really contributed to the dialogue.
So this will be a future council agenda item
where we'll talk about the future of that program
since it was a pilot program.
I believe that's coming back to our,
it'll come on our May agenda.
And then finally I attended the East,
the Economic Development Working Group Committee
of the chambers meeting last week,
where we had another report
from the Diablo Valley Tech Initiative,
which is a group of business folks, city folks,
entrepreneurs up and down the 680 corridor
who are trying to promote and garner new interest
in development in tech and economic development
within that region.
And their first initiative now,
or one of their major initiatives is gathering data
on the industries that are here,
the industries that we would like to hear to be here,
our employment base so that we can make strategic decisions
going forward in terms of trying to be attractive places.
For new businesses, we also talked about
the city's economic development action plan,
which I know we'll get an update on at our next,
or one of our future council meetings,
the shade lens rebranding project,
which we're all familiar with,
and then a scheduling of a technical advisory panel
with the Urban Land Institute,
which is actually part of our
economic development action plan.
Is there a lot of words in all those words?
And that will be a focused study
by the Urban Land Institute in conjunction with kind of our business partners here focused
on health care and the future of health care in not just in Walnut Creek but in our region
and how we can be well positioned to be an attractive place for additional health care
development. And I think that's it for me. Thank you.
I'm going to just roll right up. I guess that's me then. A few things that happened
in the last couple of weeks.
One is that as the representative for County Connection,
Contra Costa County Transit Authority,
wanted to mention a couple of things.
One is that there's a Senate Bill 1031.
I know that our mayor must be familiar with being on CCTA,
which is essentially that there is a bill that,
it's Wiener Wahhab that is looking to consolidate
All the transit agencies that are under one umbrella
basically have one large bus system
which would not be efficient.
Sounds efficient, it's actually not
when you get into the weeds a bit.
BARDA's not supporting it,
just wanted to put that out there.
I was part of the group that went to Washington D.C.
last week to meet with our legislators,
several different Congress members,
DuSaulnier, Eric Swalwell, Garamendi,
talking about the grant funding
that we're looking to hopefully continue
to have the federal support on.
There's a lot of different clean energy initiatives
working on when it comes to public transit, including electrification of buses, but also
hydrogen fuel cells. And there's a large cost for infrastructure in that, but it's
a cheaper cost afterwards. So there'll be more to come on that, but that grant funding,
of course, is always going to be necessary to be able to get the bus rolling, so to speak.
I did want to mention that there's the Bedford Gallery opening that I was at this last weekend,
Rediscovering Native America. And I've got, to be honest, I just don't know that much
about the Native American culture, you know it's interesting, I think in fifth grade they
teach that, but oddly enough I've been around the world and I haven't really, I don't think
I've ever even been to a reservation in America and seeing all these art that's there at the
Bedford Gallery really makes me want to go out of my way and get to a reservation, you
really see what's going on there as well, but it's fascinating, so I definitely recommend
visiting that while it's still open.
I had the opportunity yesterday
to meet some of the most enthusiastic people
I have ever met in my life.
I spoke at the Tice Valley School first grade class
and there was nothing like seven year olds
that wanna ask every question of the sun
and it wasn't just about hi who I am,
it was more about they're looking to try to
have first grade involvement in their student council
and they wanted to ask a council member
how can they make that argument
and why is it important to be part
of the decision-making process?
So I was happy to have that conversation
and the first time in my life that I ever said,
I've been a representative of yours in Walnut Creek
for their entire life.
I haven't had that opportunity before.
And then we have the Cal Cities Leaders Summit
in Sacramento this week.
I believe a couple of my council members
are going with me on that one.
And this Saturday is Earth Day.
And Walnut Creek is celebrating that in Civic Park.
A few of us are speaking at that.
It starts at 11 o'clock.
Not sure when it goes until, is it three?
It's two or three, but come at 11.
That's my report.
Thank you very much.
Just to build on what you said
about the Bedford Gallery exhibit.
It is a photography exhibit.
It is beautiful and it's running through June 23rd.
So you have a few weeks to get in there
because you could spend two to three hours
just studying and reading the placards
on each of these photographs.
And it really is reflective of all of,
I would say west of the Mississippi River.
So you can see people who are from tribes out of,
the Lakota tribes out of the Dakotas
and the Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona
and the Pacific Northwest.
So it's really interesting and really informative
and beautiful photography.
So check it out.
Council member Francois and I represent this council on the board of the
Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority which is euphemistically
known as Recycle Smart. We take care of the trash, the recycling and the organic
waste. The subcommittee of that is looking at various pieces of legislation
that are running through Sacramento right now looking to take positions on
these bills. One of the bills in particular that were particularly
supportive of would create expanded markets where our communities could acquire their
required compostable products, organic waste. We have a big requirement as a community to
basically purchase and use mulch that has been through the organics processing and so
they're we're very supportive of that. Also what's happening is there are a number of pieces of
legislation that, in an attempt to reduce waste, are really seeking to make the producers
of the manufacturers of products that are difficult to dispose of, to be responsible
for the end of life.
And that would include not only mattresses and textiles, but also things like EV charging
batteries and photovoltaic cells, all of which end up just in our landfills, with good uses
during their life, but then it's how do you properly dispose of those and not have them
in the landfills.
I will mention that the Association of Bay Area Governments Executive Committee is meeting
this Thursday evening.
I'm a member of that board and we will be having a robust conversation about the possibility
of putting an affordable housing bond package on the ballot in November 2024.
This would be for the nine counties and it would generate billions of dollars to reinvest
in affordable housing across the nine counties. So stay tuned for more information on that,
and I would mention that I attended the annual fundraiser for the California Symphony on Saturday
evening, and I really want to congratulate them for working to generate funds to support the work
of the California Symphony, who is a phenomenal professional orchestra with one of its homes here
here in Walnut Creek at the Lesher Center.
And I think the next performance is focused on Brahms
because I saw that card in the mail.
And finally, I will mention that community service day
is October 12th, that's a Saturday, 2024,
and the recruitment project for projects.
So we first have to find local groups to sponsor projects,
and then we turn around and now,
once we get a catalog of projects,
then we turn around and recruit volunteers.
So we're looking for non-profit schools,
other public agencies, sports teams, service clubs,
and the city, of course, to create projects for this year.
Again, Saturday, October 12th,
be sure to mark your calendars.
Thank you, Mayor, very much.
You're welcome.
Okay, so I won't repeat the Bedford Gallery
smashing exhibit, state of the chamber,
interesting lots of data.
I did wanna talk about the mayor and I,
I think councilmember Silva showed up for the Habitat for Humanity. We got to
welcome some of the new families. Oh and Kevin was there too. Yeah you weren't
there. I know you were. I was in yourself. And I was way in the back and she
noticed me from a distance. Well you had a bright colored raincoat on and it was
a very cold day. But we got to meet a bunch of the families that are moving in.
They've all worked a couple hundred hours on their homes and they are as a
as a group, super excited about moving to Walnut Creek.
There were two of them that were coming from San Leandro
and they met because they were walking around
their neighborhood and one of them had a habitat hat
and they figured out that they were gonna be neighbors
and they were super excited to be here.
I also, I miss the regular groundbreaking
or ribbon cutting ceremony for the John Muir Cancer Center
because my husband and I were off hiking in Patagonia
and so Sharon Jenkins from John Muir came back
and said, well, you know, for you two,
we'd give us a personal tour.
So we got the personal Sharon Jenkins tour
of the new cancer facility.
And it was just really great how much they thought
about the patient and the families
and the care that they were giving to them
as they came up with that center.
And last but not least, because this person was not at
the Walnut Creek Library Foundation,
authors gala has a spring reception for the sponsors.
And this year, like always, we have it at a Patel ferric,
graciously hosted by Brian Harahara.
And I just, he was not there that night.
And I just wanted to say thank you for inviting us all
and entertaining us in grand style.
It was a great kickoff to the library fundraiser,
which is coming up in two weeks.
And now I will turn it over to the mayor
to explain what a Llewellah is.
Okay, well, I wasn't gonna start with that,
But it was, in this very seat I stood up,
when they were looking at building the plant,
the habitat for humanity houses,
there was a little problem of five feet
in a conflict with our ordinances
and we went round and round and round and round
and the neighbors were not happy
because there was gonna be this new development
in the thing and they were using that as an excuse.
And so it was from this very chair that I stood up
and I said, I am five feet tall
and you can know how little that is
because you can see I'm almost the same height
as everybody sitting down.
So I said, let's not call it five feet,
let's call it a luella.
And I think after that, the vote was made
and the houses were built and it's all very well.
I did ask to have it, my name put on at least one building
because I had an impact.
Seriously, I also'm on CCTA
and I had the planning commission
and we spent some time talking about
increasing ferry service up and down
from Richmond to Hercules
to farther down the river
what it could be and what it would look like and how much it would cost. Also
related to Contra Costa Transportation Authority, I'm on the Innovate 680
program and they spent a lot of time talking about timing when you're getting
on a freeway and those annoying red lights, they figured out how to use
them very efficiently and there's new technology and they will be going in. And
And the third of my transportation jobs is Transpac,
and that's the local five-city group who comes up
and we decide how to spend Measure J money,
which is a half-cent sales tax that we pay for
because we voted it in.
Anyhow, that we heard the second half of the applicants
for getting accessible transportation funding
so that they can move people who have challenges
who are old, and some of them are volunteers,
and some of them are recognized by transportation,
so we have the job of figuring out how to allocate our money.
I got to be on the Diablo Regional Arts Board
and I went to their board meeting Monday, yesterday,
and they've got some pretty exciting things.
Of course, they have their annual fundraiser,
but they're also going to be doing a lot of things
about spreading culture around the community,
and they have a floating, well, floating, it's a truck,
that drives around, and there can be performances
at schools and other places so that we can reach out,
and then they have their giant fundraiser in the fall.
We presented some awards for our employee recognition,
but I also wanna say that we recognize people
who have been with our staff from five years to 25 years,
and it was impressive, and it warms my heart
how really dedicated our staff is at delivering services
and taking care of our community.
So I believe that's it.
And I have had an indication
that somebody would like to take a 10-minute break.
So before we get on to the next two items,
we will take a 10-minute break.
I'll see you back here at 7.35.
Thank you and welcome back to our City Council meeting.
And the next item on the agenda is,
let me turn my page.
put my glasses on my face.
The approval of the assessment reports
and annual levy of assessments
for the Downtown Walnut Creek Business Improvement District,
a bid, and the Downtown Walnut South
Business Improvement District S bid
for fiscal year 2425 and setting the public hearings.
Hi.
Good evening.
Would you tell me who you are?
Good evening, Adwal Mayor and City Council,
Angela Sway, Economic Development Manager.
Tonight's item 5A is the annual renewal
of the downtown bid and S-Bid.
The downtown Walnut Creek bid has been in place since 2005
and the south bid since 2010.
The bid and S-Bid are managed by Walnut Creek downtown
which plays a key role in promoting
and preserving the downtown as a vibrant
and successful destination through its events,
marketing, and beautification efforts.
As a reminder in 2022, your city council adopted
an automatic annual increase of 3% to the assessment amount each fiscal year beginning
July 1st of 2023. And at this time, there is no additional increase being proposed above
the 3%. The annual bid and ESPIT assessment renewal is a two-step process. The first meeting
is tonight with a presentation from WCD. And the second meeting is the public hearing.
And now I'd like to introduce Kathy Hemingway, the Executive Director of WCD, to give a brief
presentation. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Hasku and City Council members. I'm
Kathy Hemingway, Executive Director with the Walnut Creek Downtown Association.
I'm here tonight to share the organization's annual report for fiscal
year 2023-24. I'm looking forward to and ahead to fiscal year 24-25. The
The Walnut Creek Downtown Association is a nonprofit made up of 680 downtown businesses.
The map here shows our district boundaries and the bid and the south bid encompass 29
blocks of the downtown.
Walnut Creek Downtown leverages the bid assessments to increase the bid assessment fees to increase
the visibility and vitality of the downtown.
And these funds together with sponsorship support and event revenue pay for a wide range
of projects and activations.
And Wanla Creek Downtown Association acts as an advocate on behalf of our business members
through beautification projects, special event production, coordinating marketing and professional
development opportunities for our business members and member advocacy.
This is a list of our board of directors and current staff members.
Our board directors participated in a variety of committees as well to help engage with
their constituents through programming and their constituents, programming and staff.
And our staff currently consists of three full-time members and then three part-time
employees.
And we just recently welcomed a part-time intern from DVC, so Steven Doe now has joined
our team.
Our member advocacy efforts are accomplished through a variety of ways that are listed
here.
A couple of these items to note include the development of a vision plan that we've been
talking about.
We're just about to sign hopefully with an agency to assist with creating a vision plan
that will create goals and tangible tasks to enhance the downtown business district
and the organization through focus groups,
memberships, and resident outreach.
And then another item of note is that Walnut Creek Downtown
has a, is a member of the California Downtown Association
and the International Downtown Association.
So both membership organizations provide programming,
organizational and networking benefits
for our staff to connect with professional
place management leaders throughout the world.
So I personally sit on the CDA Board of Directors and recently participated in a lobby day up
in Sacramento where we attended the downtown recovery committee hearing followed by meetings
with state senators and assembly members discussing topics such as retail theft, clean and safe,
and entertainment zones, all while representing the priorities of the downtown business community.
And these are examples of our community programs that are occurring for one to six month time
frames, the downtown stages, arts around August, painted pianos, we've got painted
pianos actually will be a new set has been delivered as you may see they'll be
painted this Sunday so more to come for the 24th season. And then I'd like to
highlight two programs funded by the Measure O SalesTalks initiative.
Additional programs that we've managed throughout the year include the inaugural
year of holiday decorations throughout the downtown.
So those efforts were funded by Measure O to help brighten the downtown with seasonal
decorations and lights.
And then another project is the Big Belly Raps.
So we've been working with the city's public art manager and the Bedford Gallery staff
on this project, which will install artistic images onto over 50 Big Belly units within
the downtown.
So we'll soon be conducting a public artist call and plan to complete this project in
early summer.
And annual programs that include, our annual programs include business networking and annual
public events, the very popular Walnut Creek Uncorked will take place again in June this
year and then also the Broadway Plaza Summer Concert Series are always a very popular program
that takes place in August.
These are highlights of our late summer and fall events.
And this past year, we had the return of Oktoberfest
to Civic Park East, which welcomed over 12,000 guests.
A winter highlight was the return of the Civic Park holiday
tree lighting ceremony, which was attended by over 200 guests.
And the return of Walnut Creek on Ice for its 19th season
welcomed 23,000 skaters and a new rink side experience
with fire pits that was added to enhance the visitor
experience.
This is a snapshot of this year's marketing statistics.
And in addition to a very successful digital campaign
in 2023, we coordinated co-op ads providing special rates
for downtown business members to advertise
in Diablo's weekly A-list.
And then we also created a co-op ad for the East Bay Women's
conference featuring eight downtown restaurants promoted to all attendees
before and during the program. And this slide shows moving into our
financial review. This slide shows the final budget for fiscal year 2023-24 and
the projected budget for 24-25. You'll note there is a small deficit for this
past fiscal year, however, our current savings can cover that amount. So I
wanted to point out too with the next couple of sides they will include the
past year's comparison using numbers from 22-23. So currently our AR total for
the fiscal year 23-24 is approximately $11,000 just kind of take that into
account. And a couple of notes on this table the reimbursements portion
includes items that were purchased in advance by Walnut Creek downtown with
the largest expense being the holiday decorations for this year.
Overall, 23-24 performed better than the previous year in almost every category.
The continued success of large-scale events required an increase in event supplies, professional
services and rental equipment, so you'll see a bit of a jump there.
Alternatively, our team is currently receiving bids for equipment rentals to identify one
vendor to supply all of our events. And the need for contract labor and
volunteers also grew to assist with the larger programming and this part of this
need was filled through a partnership with the Trinity Center providing
employment for some of their their members. And we're streamlining
administrative costs and staff roles that has begun this year to address
rising expenses and now that we see that our programs are stabilizing post-pandemic.
And the positive trend that we're also seeing is a significant increase in revenue from
our ticket sales, sponsorships, which have provided some revenue growth to help offset
our increasing operating expenses.
So our programs for the year continue to see a positive growth for Oktoberfest, Walnut
Creek on Ice and first Wednesday and again because of the sponsorship support
and guest confidence which is continued to to slowly come back post pandemic.
I've listed a few highlights here for the proposed 24-25 budget the
assessment review is projected to be three hundred and three thousand
dollars hundred thousand dollars resulting in a net income of
approximately $273,000. We anticipate maintaining general marketing and payroll expenses in
the year ahead after we've invested in these areas over the last two years as we've been
rebounding from the pandemic. This is just a table of the assessment fees reflecting
the 3% increase. And then we are excited to share a full slate of programs for 2024, bringing
thousands of visitors to the downtown.
And due to popular demand, we'll see two first Wednesdays
that will occur in 2024.
Last year's event was a great success,
and we're going to be hosting the first event on May 1st
and then the second on August 7th.
We'll be bringing this program to Locust Street,
so expanding that beyond our Cypress Street footprint, which
was definitely busting at the seams last year.
So we're hoping for a cooler day
because last year was beyond.
And we're excited to be able to work with the city
on Locust Street as they're wrapping up construction.
We're gonna be taking over Locust Street for a little bit
to bring some fun to that street.
Oktoberfest, this lists some efforts to update
and fine tune this year's program,
which is scheduled for September 27th and 28th.
In the 2024 season, event season kicked off with the Spring Fling, which many of you may
have either attended or had seen many kids running through the downtown.
So we co-hosted with the Walnut Creek Education Foundation, and they are celebrating their
40th anniversary year, and they asked us to assist with bringing back one of their more
popular events.
of all ages participated, families participated by performing in choral groups and bands,
sharing their artwork on city sidewalks, volunteering as guides, and as event support.
Oops, sorry, I want to go back real quick and address summer arts in Walnut Creek.
We're going to be tweaking arts around August to include a three month program or expand
to a three month program.
So all the arts programs occurring between June and August will be showcased as a rebranded
program called Summer Arts Walnut Creek.
The marketing guidelines will be sent to all of our partners to implement within their
own collateral.
We're featuring a new logo that should be done within the week.
And then program dates and information will all be uploaded to our website calendar to
be again used as a main resource for information.
And then our staff will be assisting with the marketing coordination, and the Arts Alliance
group has decided to move beyond employing a coordinator.
So our team will be dividing up those duties.
And then the ice rink real quick, we'll be back for hopefully a little bit longer season.
We are reviewing some alternative, a few items that we hope to expand to the venue, which
includes beer and wine service and potentially new features for our younger, even younger
kids to enjoy.
So more to come on that.
I did want to note that we will not be hosting the Spooktacular Trick or Treat event.
This year, our team, the last couple of years, our team has partnered with the Arts and Rec
staff to produce the boobash Halloween event and it's become one huge event
within the downtown. And while the trunk retreat event in Civic Park continues to
grow and thrive, excuse me, we've all made the decision to discontinue producing
the spooktacular stroll which goes throughout the businesses. We found that
a six-hour Halloween event within the downtown just wasn't as effective as the
three-hour event within the park that also accommodates three to four times
the amount of people. So while this decision does eliminate one of
our long-standing programs, we are definitely committed to supporting the
Arts and Rec Department with promoting their...or supporting the Arts and Rec
Department with promoting their program and engaging downtown businesses so they
they can still have a place at the trunk retreat.
And then a new effort in 2024 is to create a 501c3.
The community partnership for Walnut Creek downtown is going to be a new endeavor for
our organization.
Its mission is to develop, support, and promote artistic, cultural, and public events that
benefit businesses, individuals, and stakeholders within the service area of downtown Walnut
Creek. An application is in process and we will keep you posted on the
developments of that new endeavor. Overall we are continuing to streamline
our efforts or administrative and marketing programs which now are
resulting in a savings of approximately $10,000. One of the efforts we have been
able to identify is upgrading our our website and we'll be able to provide
more services and engagement to our downtown businesses so that concludes my
presentation and thank you very much for your time and support and I'm happy to
answer any questions. Does anybody have any questions? I didn't have one question
I might have missed it but was a moveable feast on there? No we are not
going to return with movable feasts we saw a very drop off yeah yeah and I had
a couple of a couple different things between the school calendar changing and
I just think that there was just a lot going on in August, which is great, but we
have our efforts that are going to be concentrated elsewhere. Okay. But we
appreciate all of the council members that led each of those evenings. They
were very popular in that respect. Thanks, Kathy. I'm not seeing any other
questions so let's bring it back to public comment or yes is there any
public comment at this moment on this topic okay so we do I'm bringing it back
to council and we do have some actions that we are expected to take and that
that would be the resolutions that are outlined
in our agenda report.
So who would like to embrace what the job is?
I would like to move to approve the resolutions
approving the Downtown Walnut Creek Business Improvement
District, quote, unquote, bid annual assessment report
for fiscal year is 2023, 2025.
Also the adopted resolution approving
the Downtown Walnut Creek South Business Improvement District
SBID annual assessment report for fiscal years 2023 to 2025,
adopt the resolution of intention to levy assessments
for fiscal year 2024 and 2025 for the bid
and set a public hearing for May 7th, 2024,
and adopt the resolution for implementation
to levy assessments for the fiscal year 2024 to 2025
for the SBID and set a public hearing also
for May 7th, 2024.
second. Thank you. May I have a roll call vote? Mayor Pro Tem Darlene? Aye. Councilmember Silva? Aye.
Councilmember Francois? Aye. Councilmember Wilk? Aye. Mayor Haskew? Aye. Motion carries unanimously.
And we are all so happy that downtown is coming back from Covid.
Okay that finishes that and we're on to the next item which is the new aquatic and community
Center at Heather Farm Park. Action on aquatic sustainability and essential
services options. Good evening Mayor Haskew and members of the City Council.
My name is Janine Cavalli, I'm a senior planner here at the City of Walnut Creek
and I'm very much looking forward to presenting to you this evening on the
new Aquatic and Community Center at Heather Farm Park. I am joined by other
members of our project team and including both staff and consultants who will be presenting
alongside me this evening as well as be available to answer your questions.
And this is the third in a series of meetings to present the schematic design presentation
package for the new facility.
And tonight's meeting purpose is to seek direction from City Council on options for aquatics
features, sustainability features, and essential services features for the new facility.
And once we have that direction, we'll be able to move forward with the next phase,
which is the design development phase, and that takes us into a little bit more detailed
design, and coming back to you with materials, pallet, landscape pallet, and more.
So the City Council action requested is to approve the recommended modifications to the
optional items for those three topics I just listed, aquatics, sustainability and essential
services and I'm not going to read all the details just yet.
We'll get into more of the details for each of these three topics a little bit further
into the presentation.
So the outline for this evening is I'll start with a few slides on the project background.
Then I'll hand it over to some other members of our team to present more of the details
on those three different areas I just identified.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to take, we're going to present one at a time
and then take council questions after each topic area is presented.
Then I'll come back, kind of wrap up next steps.
And if there's more council questions,
we're happy to take those again.
And then we'll move on to our usual order of things,
the public comments, and then concluding
with the council deliberation and direction.
So first, the project background.
This project started a number of years ago,
2018, with the Year Parks Your Future,
where we were looking at arts and recreation programming
and did a facility analysis, not just for Heather Farm,
but for Civic Park and Shadelands as well.
We are now in the phase of the project
in the new Aquatic and Community Center facility at Heather Farm
Park Project.
And we're in the design and construction phase
of that project.
Currently with the schematic design presentation package,
and as I just mentioned, we'll be coming back
with what's known as the design development phase, which
again a little bit more for their fleshed out design.
And that will take us through April 2025, and then we'll begin construction of the
new facility in summer of 2025, and that will take just over two years to complete.
So this slide shows the key project assumptions and principles that were adopted by City Council
in September of 2023, namely to replace the existing community center and aquatic building
with a new facility located at the existing community center site.
And it would be replacing three pools with a lap pool and a recreational pool and then
our recommendations would be realistic, implementable, and budget conscious.
So we presented the first of these three meetings of the schematic design presentation package
back in February, and the council preferred, of the two schemes that were presented, Council
preferred Scheme A. And some of the elements of that was that was the plan with the more
angled floor plan. It provided a little bit more of outdoor space at the event garden
site and also had a better presence and orientation towards the pond.
And this is an illustration of that scheme preferred by Council and the design team are
working on adjustments to the roof design based on the Council comments from that meeting.
We had a second meeting on March 5th where we presented the aquatics portion of the facility.
And we will we've updated our recommendation and we'll be presenting that shortly to you
this evening.
There are three outstanding items for which we're seeking City Council direction tonight.
One is on the aquatics portion and as I just mentioned we'll be presenting to you an updated
design.
In addition to aquatics, there's two other areas sustainability will be presenting you
with you presenting to you a menu of sustainability feature options and
similarly for essential services we'll be presenting a menu of options with a
recommendation for each and we're seeking council direction on each of
these and once we have that direction we're able to move to the next phase of
the project. So Kevin Saffin is going to present the first of those three items
the aquatics. It was someone who looked just like me over there. Thank you Janine for the record,
Kevin Safeen, Director of Arts and Recreation on this side. It's my pleasure to be here for lots
of reasons not just to present to you but because this is a culmination of a project that some of
us in this room have been working on for over 15 years and it's to the credit of many people
who are here and who came before us for all the hard work they did. So it's a great time to be
celebrating the work that we're about to discuss. So aquatics. When we last left off on this topic,
a discussion filled with a lot of detail, a lot of comments, a lot of puns, but good work and good
feedback that we got from the council. And so City Team presented to you a very detailed schematic
package of aquatics pools, pool deck, pool facilities. You all received a lot of input
from the public, heartfelt and staff and the council took that seriously. So the direction
that you provided to us was to go back and do a little bit more work with the Walnut Creek Aquatic
Foundation, WCAF, on how a revised design could potentially better serve the needs of all of the
programs, not just the swim teams, but all the programs in the community. And you are very clear
The changes, I'm going to read this, changes to design need to maintain a balance of programming
opportunities and those design changes are not intended to support new revenue generating
events, not intended. It could be that they support that, but that's not our intent.
And so staff did that. And so we are proud to present to you what we did and how we did it.
And so I'll come back to this slide if you'd like. I'm going to cover this information a
few times this evening. So I'm not going to go into detail here, but I'm happy to come back to this.
In sum, the changes that we made to the design on March 5th are to the 50-meter pool,
to the recreational pool, and to the pool building, the bathhouse.
To the recreational pool, there was the most of it, but I'll start at the 50-meter pool.
The biggest change there is that we heard from the community that the design that we
had at that time on March 5th had a hybrid of lane widths, some 8 feet, some 7 feet.
The change that you'll see is that all the lane widths are at 8 feet consistent.
But in doing so, it means fewer lanes.
And so we've gone from 20 lanes to 18 in the 50 meter pool.
Again, I'll come back to that.
On the recreational pool, we've widened the pool, we've deepened the pool, and we've made
it longer.
And I'll talk about what that means in a bit.
We changed the location of the changing room to address the needs of what we heard from
the teams as well as what we think is a better design.
we've taken out the bulkhead from the mix and used the money that we had set aside
for the bulkhead to go toward the changes here.
And so the net cost of that is about $150,000, which is pretty good, considering this is
a $77 million project.
So how did we get there?
Just like Janine talked about some of the work that was done in years past, this is
going back to 2019, the mission statement, around aquatics that was determined by the
Council at that time. It's a multi-generational community facility. It provides a balance
of instruction, recreation, and competition. It supports family events and social activities
for local and for regional activities. And again, the need for balance programming drives
us in what we do, and I will say that a few times tonight.
Principles. So we start with the mission. Now we have principles. We establish these
principles when we started the conceptual and the schematic process. So I'm not going
I'm not gonna read all this,
but again, balance of recreation competition
accommodates the programs that we currently offer
at Clark Swim Center and provides an opportunity
for future programming,
but our focus on the programs that we do today.
That's competition, that's recreation,
and that's people who just wanna drop in and have fun.
Maximizing the pool deck space,
rightsizing the bath house,
and providing more spaces to improve our functionality.
So those principles were what we focused on when we went back
and said, how can we make the March 5 design even better?
Our agreement with the Aquatic Foundation
was our other principle here.
So this was a pledge back in 2022,
an agreement between the city and WCAF to raise money
toward the construction of the pool.
Primarily they're focused ones on the 50 meter pool,
but the money is gonna go toward the whole facility.
So $3 million was their pledge.
For those two pools, a 50 meter pool
and a family recreation pool.
And the city's commitment to the Aquatic Foundation
was to allow them to write input on designs
and location of facilities throughout this process.
And we've done that.
So what's the net result?
I'm pleased to be able to share with you
what staff believes and the design team believes
is a solution to the challenge that we were faced with
just a month and a half ago.
So those include short course lanes in the 50 meter pool.
Those are the 25 yard lanes going across.
When we show, and I'll show you an image of this
in a little bit.
When we showed this to you before,
there were 20 short course lanes.
Remember that some of those were seven feet,
some were eight feet wide.
We made them all eight feet wide.
But in doing so, we've gone from 20 lanes to 18 lanes.
So it's a loss of two lanes on the short course.
The pool depths remain the same in this design,
and the long course remains the same,
which is nine lanes going 50 meters.
So again, with that loss of two lanes
on the 50 meter pool,
Staff looked at this and said,
what if we added two more lanes to the recreation pool?
So going from the six lanes that we had on March 5th
to eight lanes today, same total lanes, right?
We had 20 in the 50 meter pool,
six in the recreation pool.
Now we're showing 18 lanes in the 50
and eight in the 25, at that time 25 yard,
and we're looking 25 meters,
but essentially the same number of lanes, 26.
We're also suggesting that we deepen a third of that pool
beyond what we showed you on March 5th.
On the 5th, we talked about a shallow pool
from three, six to five feet.
We heard a lot during the meeting on the 5th
that the artistic swim team
was looking for more deep water.
And so what I'll show you in the image
is that there's more deep water programming opportunities now
than we had on the 5th, which allows the Aquanuts
a place to be both during their regular practice time
and especially during the long course swim time
that we heard a lot about whether it's Aquabears or Masters.
So it provides a place for the Aquanauts
and gives a little bit more room to the Masters
and the Aquabears during the time
that they're in long course.
We've extended the recreation pool.
We heard from the Masters that the annual,
what they call short course meters meet,
a 25 meter meet that they were on the diving well,
which is 25 meters was something that was important to them,
not just for the community, for their programming,
but as fundraising.
And so extending that pool from 25 yards to 25 meters
addresses that concern, also takes away the potential need
for a bulkhead, which is what the potential was.
If the bulkhead was there, you could have a 25-meter course
in the 50-meter pool.
We have relocated the changing rooms,
and I'll show you what that looks like
from kind of the far west side of the building,
over to the eastern side, which is closer to the pools,
better access, better visibility,
and easier for the teams and community
to access the pools from that changing room.
And that didn't add cost to the design, even better.
We're providing support for future scoreboard.
This is not the scoreboard itself,
but the infrastructure and the design
would allow for conduit wiring,
everything that's needed for a scoreboard
to be identified and placed,
and that could be a fundraising opportunity
for the community.
The other elements that you saw on March 5th are not changed.
So the beach entry, the place structure,
and the current channel are still the same
as what we showed you back a month and a half ago.
So again, in terms of cost, if you remember the bulkhead,
which was in the $77 million budget
was about a $1.08 million option.
We've taken that out.
And as a result, we're able to allocate those funds
toward the recreation pool.
And the difference is a little bit more, $150,000.
But again, we still feel that's worth it
for an investment to get this.
So those are the design changes that we show.
But so what?
Do they meet the expectations of the council and community?
A question that was raised a lot during March 5th
was does the design meet FINA,
which is now World Aquatics Standards,
staff and the Aquatic Foundation met,
and we talked about this immediately
after the March 5th meeting.
And we agreed that a third-party review
of the work that the Aquatic Design Group had done on this
would be helpful to determine do we or how does the design meet those standards.
So staff contracted with a company called Councilman Hunsaker, which is probably the
other big aquatic design firm in the country.
And they independently reviewed the work that Dennis and his team had done with the overlay
of how does this meet the world aquatic standards.
And that's in your packet.
I'm not going to go into the detail, but the summary sentence from that group was the findings
were the proposed concept, which we showed you, complies with the World Aquatics Competition
Regulation for swimming depth and for artistic swimming field of play.
That's a technical way of saying, yes, this complies with World Aquatic Standards, which
supports the work that Aquatics Done Group had done and staff, and I think the Aquatic
Foundation feel good about that.
And then there's a question about scheduling and programming.
We heard this from council.
This was direction from you to say,
does a new design better meet the needs of the community?
This is across the board in terms of programming.
So we believe that this concept allows
for more competition use.
When I say competition, competitive team,
use of the recreation pool to synchronize
the artistic swim team.
Could also be used by the masters, right,
for their swimming and maybe even the aqua bears
for some of their practices.
This balances the programming across,
What I'm saying is three pools, right?
You have two pools at Clark, and then one pool at Larky,
allowing a balanced mix of programming
for the three competition teams,
the community uses, and things like camps,
and our programming that the city does.
So, staff shared this concept with the Aquatic Foundation.
Staff met with the coaches from all three teams.
We received support from the foundation
and the teams for this conceptual schedule.
And so, what does that mean for the foundation?
I'm gonna brag a little bit that the partnership
that we have with this group is really strong.
Mike Heaney, the president of the foundation
is here tonight and I appreciate their support
and partnership and relationship that we've had
for the past 15 plus years on this project.
Going back longer for the teams
and the work they've done here at Clark,
30, 40, 50 years.
And so we received and the city was grateful
for this letter of support from the foundation,
which is in your packet.
Shung's support for the design,
which is presented to you tonight.
as well as a commitment to continue to work together
on meeting the terms of the MOU
and receiving and soliciting their input
on the design as we move forward.
So partnership with the Aquatic Foundation
continues to be strong
and we're very pleased with their support.
So images, what does this look like now?
This is where we were on March 5th
and I can toggle back and forth between these if you'd like.
So again, this was a 20 lane 50 meter pool
which is the rectangle on the right,
from the depths of 3.6 to 13 feet,
a varying width of the lanes from eight feet to seven feet.
As you go south to north,
it went from eight feet to seven feet
as you have that lighter pink area.
And then the recreation pool was six lanes,
and the depth was three and a half to five feet.
So as I go to what we have now,
the 50-meter pool, the dimensions don't change.
It's still 50 meters by 25 yards,
but the change is that we have wider,
consistent eight-foot lanes throughout the pool.
But again, we go from 20 lanes to 18.
So that's what I've circled there.
It's hard to read,
but there are 18 lanes going left to right there.
That's 25 yards, short course.
We still have the same long course.
That's north to south, nine lanes there.
Thank you, Elena.
On the recreation pool,
which is the smaller rectangle on the left,
It's gone from, again, six lanes at 25 yards to now eight
lanes at 25 meters.
And then the other change is in that little bit darker blue
there, that's where the deeper water is.
So now goes from 3 and 1.5 transitions to,
Dennis, 4 and 1.5, to 8 feet at the deepest end there.
And so, again, about a third of that pool is, is that 8 feet?
Yeah, a third of that pool is 8 feet deep.
So we've had a lot of discussions with the aqua nuts
about will that meet your needs?
Nobody's needs will be met completely
in any of these designs, including the cities,
but it will meet a lot of their needs.
And this is very similar to what we have at Larky.
Larky has about 10 or 11 lanes.
This shows eight, but the synchronized swim team
is the primary user of Larky,
and this essentially adds more deep water to their needs.
And so we're pleased with that.
And then up on top is the change in the changing room.
So it goes from, it was on the left there,
which is again a little bit farther,
and the entrance, Elena, is up on the right a little bit,
if you keep going right.
Yep, that's where the entrance is.
And so we had the changing room way on the other side,
closer as you're heading to the park.
And so this new design,
which was suggested by the Aquatic Foundation,
moves it as you just enter the building.
It's immediately there on the changing room.
And so there have been some other changes
to the bathhouse as well,
but we're primarily focused on the changing room.
So again, happy to come back to this if you'd like.
This shows the overall site plan.
The point I want to make here is with all the changes
that I just described,
there is no additional encroachment into the park.
So it's still the same footprint that we had on March 5th,
which was something that was important to the council
and to the community.
And so, Jeanine already showed this, but I like it,
because this is a very nice picture
of what this facility is, at least at this point,
schematically going to look like.
the pool you see, you know, the 50 meter pool is farthest going, going toward Mount Diablo
is a 50 meter pool. The recreational pool is the one a little bit closer. And then the
community center is in front near the pond. And so this just kind of shows you how it
all relates to, to each other. And so in closing, at least for my part summary, this meets this
design staff fields, this meets the balanced mission that the council approved back in
As well as the design principles that were established as we embarked on this project.
It satisfies the World Aquatic Standards.
It adds potential scheduling and programming opportunities.
It doesn't add significantly to the budget.
And it's supported by staff, the design team, and the foundation.
And before I close with giving kudos to council, I also want to acknowledge my staff, specifically
Karen Houston Martin, who's here in the audience, whose relationship with the teams, and her
dedication to putting together not one, but two, many page conceptual schedules I think
really made the difference here in helping the teams, the foundation understand that
this is a facility that can work for all of us. So thank you, Karen, for all your work.
And so with the City Council support, as you've shown throughout this process, this project
will continue to move forward. So we're excited about that. So with that, happy to answer
your questions.
I was so fascinated, I forgot I had to run the meeting.
Is there any further questions from Council?
Kevin, please.
Thank you very much.
I'm sure we have a lot to talk about during the debate portion.
Great to see some of the compromises here
that were worked out, but I'm curious,
were any of the aquatics groups, I'm
talking about all the groups that we were putting this
all together for, compromised negatively by the change?
It looks like great positives.
was there a consequence that is going to negatively impact
one of the teams?
Staff doesn't believe so.
I would expect that if the Aquatic Foundation president
has thoughts about that, he would share them,
but when we met with the teams a couple weeks ago,
we didn't hear that from any of the three major swim teams.
That's good.
Thank you for the question, yes.
That's good.
We heard a lot about competitive tournaments.
How are those impacted by this?
So tournaments meaning broadly swim meets
We believe I can show you through this concept while the city doesn't host meets we don't host meets right it's the swim teams that host the meets but we believe with this design we can do more than we showed on March 5 so for example the masters meters meet can be hosted here now by the masters team we can
continue to host the All-City Meet, the conference meet, but it's not our
intent to have a whole lot of major swim meets because again one with the
proximity to the community center, the more big meets we have here the less we
can do in that building, it also affects the rest of the park and so events that
probably take up most of the facility, we're looking at maybe four big big big
events a year like All-City, like conference meet, and so that's when we
kind of closed down other activities in the park, rentals and other activities on the
soccer field. But when I say four, we can still do, in addition to those four, we can
still do the master's short course meters meet, right, because that does not close the
whole facility. We can still do a synchronized swim show that does not close the whole facility.
So we can do more through this design, but the intent is not to do a whole lot more.
Great. Thank you. Those are my questions. Anyone else? Thank you very much. To me, this
feels like good news. One of the issues that had come up over the course of
time was that the original design at Clark all three pools were connected on
the same system which meant that we get one temperature and everybody had to
live with it. Does this accommodate multiple temperature pools? Is it and can
you explain that or should I hold my question and ask this of the pool design?
I will answer your yes or no question and say yes.
And then I will have Dennis Berkshire address
the how of that.
And even today, we can have different temperatures
in the pools just because the pool depths are different,
but you can't set it that way.
It just kind of happens naturally,
but I'll have Dennis talk about that.
It's an organic process.
Exactly, well, the deeper pools, right,
hold their temperatures better than the shallow pools.
But Dennis will talk about the design going forward.
Good evening.
It's nice to see you all here again.
yes, first of all, we have two separate systems.
So both of the rec pool and the competition pool
operate independently.
We can have temperature set up with whatever it is
we're wanting to use to those.
Within the pool itself, say the rec pool, for example,
we have the ability to vary,
and based on the way we're looking at the sizing
and the turnover of water,
we can vary the temperature slightly.
In other words, we can set it up
so that we've got more water going to the shallow
coming out of the heater so that you
can try to get that slightly warmer than the other parts
of the pool.
But beyond that, you're going to be
limited to that co-mingling of the water within the pool
itself.
So the 8-foot deep water in the recreation pool
is likely to be cooler than the splash water near the slide
and play air.
It is, for two reasons.
Massive water, that depth that you've got.
We look at the pounds of water that we've got there
in the battery that it becomes.
And the second is that in the shallow water,
we're going to have water turning over through that area
about once every hour or so, whereas in that deep water,
it's turning over once every six hours,
so we're not taking the heated water to that deep water
as frequently, which will allow us to get that as well.
Organic, natural.
Okay, I have some other questions,
but they may involve you.
The elimination for the need for the bulkhead also just to ensure I understood, because
we never saw it in the design previously, we needed to add two meters to the 50-meter
pool previously to accommodate the storage capacity for that bulkhead.
So the cost savings was not only in the bulkhead itself, but also in the extra length of the
50-meter pool?
Correct.
That's right.
Will the recreation pool, the eight foot deep end, be deep enough?
I think the answer is yes, for starting blocks for the 25 meter master's program.
Yes, it does.
It exceeds the state requirement of six feet, six inches.
It exceeds the world aquatics or FINA standard.
In fact, the World Aquatics Phenix Standard is four and a half feet, which our state health
doesn't even allow.
So while it exceeds that, and so high school, master swim, all of those, it exceeds the
requirements for safe diving.
So that, okay.
And previously, it wouldn't have been able to do that.
So it'll be set up for starting blocks, but portable?
Correct.
Yeah, they're removable, and they can be stored away.
Removable, thank you.
Well, they're portable, too, because even if you remove them,
you're actually only them sitting on the deck.
The last meeting that we discussed this,
there's a grade change between the area with the 50 meter
pool and the area with the recreational pools.
What have you done here to accommodate
the location of bleachers and taking
advantage of the grade change?
Oh, I got somebody else.
Yay.
I'm gonna see if I can think of a question for each of you.
You wanna hold up a flash card to tell me what to ask.
Good evening, thank you.
So we, oh, I'm Gina Chavez,
landscape architect from RRM Design Group.
So we do have space in that center area
for removable and portable bleachers.
So lots of space, yeah, that whole center area.
There are, we removed one staircase,
which was in the center which allowed for more blank, flexible, oh, thank you, yes.
Correct.
So now we have staircases at either end as well as an accessible ramp on the north end.
And I noticed in the staff report that we lost a bit of square footage of paved service.
Is it in the recreation area or is it in the 50-meter pool area?
It's in the recreation area.
All right.
Basically, the recreation pool slid west
to accommodate the additional length
of the recreational pool, as well as not to lose
more deck space around the 50-meter pool.
That's correct, yes.
Because of the All Abilities playground,
we have no more room to move south.
Right.
Right.
Thank you, I think that has been very helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Oh, wait, I did have another question.
Who's responsible for the changing rooms?
All right, see, I'm working my way through you all.
I don't know you exactly,
so I don't know what to ask you.
Don't worry, you'll be able to.
We received a public comment that it's still not right.
There's still not adequate changing rooms, et cetera.
Did you see that public comment?
I did.
Would you like to clarify what's being misconstrued
by the member of the public?
Sure, Jocelyn Lawrence-Barrish,
I'm with Nolentam Architects,
And the question that we received
was talking about how they did not appear to be sinks,
either the adequate number or maybe they weren't able
to see what we were representing to be sinks
in the changing rooms.
So the changing rooms include showers
that have changing room compartments attached to them.
So there's a little more privacy
than what you would have at Clark today.
And restrooms and sinks.
And the amount that are in that block
that you see to the north aren't the only ones
will be available to the pool deck, but they are able to accommodate the traffic that mostly
will be usually coming through the pool facility.
So there definitely are sinks in the design, if you're not.
There is actually a code requirement for a specific number of fixtures, and we are going
to meet that.
And I remember that there is a code requirement, and it's really based on the amount of flat
water.
Exactly.
Right.
So this actually addresses the requirement that a certain amount of flat water has to
per toilet. Yeah, it was essentially that there's a certain amount of flat water
determines an occupant load factor. There's like a 15 square feet per person.
That's right, Dennis. Good. And that tells you how many people they could expect at
maximum capacity. And even though that's actually really tight, you're not
really gonna have one person every 15 square feet in those pools. But it
accounts for spectators and various people on the deck that might need
facilities as well.
So that maximum number of people is then compared to a table that tells you how many fixtures
are required for restrooms, for showers, for sinks, for even drinking fountains.
And those will all be accommodated in the design.
So the important thing is that you have to show that we have adequate number of toilets.
That's the driving factor.
And the sinks will be in the more detailed design in the subsequent.
All right.
Thank you.
You're welcome, I'm waiting to see if you could figure out one more question and ask
for the guy that managed to get away with it.
But I'd have to guess, like, you know, what kind of plants are you going to use around
the pipe, but he might not be the landscape architect, so.
Okay, Matt, would you go next, please?
Thank you.
I'm not sure who among you, but one of you can answer it, I'm sure.
In terms of deck space and landscaped area, which I know was really important, compared
to the what we have now at Clark and the prior design,
well really mostly what we have now at Clark.
Yeah. Jane, do we have a backup slide on this?
All right, I'm going to ask one of my staff, Karen,
can you look at this, each other print out of it?
Mike, do you have a print out of it
that you can see what this looks like in real time?
Like anyway, so Jane, it's going to come up.
So the headline is there's more.
There's more landscape area than we have in Clark today
and there's more deck space than we have in Clark today.
Unfortunately, my slide is a little bit too tiny to see
unless you can have really good eyes,
but you may have to go from memory.
Well, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it is more.
Yeah, in previous presentations,
we had a blow up of that table.
Can you zoom in?
Oh, yes.
It's on page 9 in the staff report, bottom.
okay my eyes still aren't great 35,961 currently so it's about 36 today
square 36,000 square feet today is the pool deck and you're going to about 40
thousand the number he showed you in March was about 42,000 roughly so it's
gone down a little bit councilmember Francois from where we were in March
because of the expand expansion of the recreation pool that's the pool deck the
landscape area is going from about the same about 36 it's about 5050 at Clark
today to about 39,000 square feet so it's more square feet in both and was
the bulkhead factored into the March deck space because that was taking up
space it was it was not because we hadn't pursued that option yet so if we
had then it would have been it may be similar what you see today in this
Okay. I think that's all I had for now. Thank you.
Mayor Pro Tem. I just have a simple question and it's going on the rec pool
from 25 yards to 25 meters. Is that gonna is that gonna be used as part of
regular training ground and does that difference between the yards and the
meters affect the kids as far as I remember the obsession with learning
your number when you cross the T and how to your flip?
Right.
So this is similar to what we have today in the diving well.
That's 25 meters.
And then the 50-meter pool has 25 yards in the short course.
So we already have that mix of different lengths
in both pools.
But Karen can talk a little bit more
about how we anticipate programming it.
And I don't expect there's a whole lot of difference
between programming 25-meter and 25-yard pool.
Sorry, Karen Houston Martin, program manager.
The way that we envision programming that pool,
if we need to move,
it would be used primarily during long course,
when the 50 meter pool is long course,
we would be able to divide the 50 meter pool up
and have Synchro in the 50 meter pool
while putting some of the older kids
or at the discretion of the Aquabear coaches,
which of their teams would use
that 50 meter pool.
Currently, the aqua bears use the diving well in the morning
and swim 25 meters all year round.
So it's already happening.
Sorry, if it's wrong, it's already happening.
Yes.
Yeah.
And then, oh, there was one more question.
Oh, I know.
The lane widths in the rec pool are 7 foot or 8 foot.
They're currently 7 feet, which is consistent with the diving
well right now.
So it's basically replicating what we have
in the diving lab at this point.
Okay, all right, thank you.
I've never competitively swum
and I don't know what I'm asking, except it seems to me
like if we're having meats, are the pools compatible?
So like the recreational long part can be warmup stuff
for somebody who's going to be in the.
Yes, if we held a 25 yard meet,
typically we would take the 10 lanes that are the deepest
and up to 13, 14, wherever that cutoff is
and use those for competitive have two lanes,
at least two lanes of like a buffer.
And then the remainder of the lanes
could be used as warm up, warm down.
We could also use the 25 meter
for warm up and warm down as well.
And we've done that in the past.
Okay, I hope everybody knows that I know
you need to warm up.
OK, is there any other?
Yes.
Let me, one more quick one.
In the new pool, I know when we would run the Clark pool
for a meet, you couldn't do dives in the practice area.
Is this pool going to be deep enough
that you could do dives in the practice area?
To do, like, racing start dives?
Yeah, racing starts.
By practice area, you mean the recreational pool?
I mean the shallow end, when you have a meet
and you have the?
So it would not be, but when we run meets,
we don't want those swimmers diving into the practice lanes
because it's a little more organized.
They jump on top of each other.
I've been in charge of that, and it's not fun.
Like, ah!
Okay, all right, thanks.
Okay, I don't see any need for the council
to ask additional questions.
Is there any other additional information
you'd like to share with us?
I'm gonna hand this over to Jocelyn Lawrence-Barr
to talk about sustainability,
and then she's also going to talk about essential services.
And then we'll be happy to answer any questions.
So the questions about each of those topics
after she's done with each one,
and then we'll come back to you again
if you have any more about aquatics.
But Jocelyn, thank you.
Good evening.
So we also have some sustainability options
in addition to aquatics to talk to you tonight about.
And I wanted to start by saying,
I'll really focus on option two and saying,
what is already part of the current design?
option two most clearly defines that.
So we did already have, in our design,
building that you could call sustainable.
It is not simply a code compliant building.
You should know that the California code does
require that buildings be fairly sustainable at this point.
But we've gone beyond that in three key respects.
The first is, there is no technical requirement
for a photovoltaic array of solar panels currently required
by code for this kind of facility.
And instead of just bowing to that, we've said, no,
it would be a great idea to have,
we targeted a 25% to 50% energy offset for the building.
It results in a 135 kilowatt PV array, which can easily
be accommodated on the well-aspected roofs
of the current design.
In addition to that, we've made the commitment
that the building will be an all-electric facility.
Similarly, even though the code is trending towards that
requirement, it is not currently a requirement
that the building be all electric.
So we're exceeding code by saying
that the building facility itself will only
run on electric energy, which allows
it to be compensated by renewable energy sources.
And lastly, we're aiming for a LEED silver equivalency.
So just a little brief primer about what that means.
So LEED is a standard set by the US Green Building Council
many, many years ago.
And for those of you who are less familiar with it,
It's a series, a very long series of checklists.
And it's a certain combination of all of the points
that you earn on that checklist that determines
which level you can reach.
And so we have not yet completed the checklist
to figure out which exactly ones we would need
to get to lead silver.
Having the PV array, having an all-electric facility
gets you well towards that lead equivalency,
but there'd be an additional number of strategies,
probably largely focused on water use reduction
that could get us to those lead silver points
that would be required.
And by equivalency, we mean we probably would refrain
from actually registering the project with the USGBC
and instead focus the somewhat sizable fees
that it's required to do that on actually the design itself.
So that's all included within the current project costs
that we've been holding.
We've given you a number of other options to consider.
However, the first is a more conservative, less
sustainable option over in the left-hand most column,
where instead of assuming an all-electric facility,
it would be a hybrid electric and gas-powered facility.
And there would be a very much smaller array of PV's.
It's still not the zero that's required by code,
but closer to what code would require should code
be applied to this kind of building.
The code requirements for photovoltaic arrays
is actually fairly small currently.
So it would be closer to this 50-kilowatt PV array
you see in column one.
And instead of looking for those extra water reductions,
et cetera, to address a lead silver level of equivalency,
we would simply be sticking with the code guidelines
for how the building would be sustainable.
And you would have a resultant savings of about 500K
for the project.
In addition, there's two more columns.
The third one is the staff recommended option.
So as the group of designers and city staff
who have been considering all of the multitude
and the sustainable strategies that could be implemented
for a project like this,
I was really decided that providing the infrastructure,
so specifically providing the structural support required
and the electrical support that would be required
to have more photovoltaic array in the future,
more possibility for adding some battery backup
for the building would be a very worthy investment
at this point in the project.
Retrofitting structure to support more PVs over time
is very difficult and costly.
And at this point, building it from scratch in that way
is a much more cost-effective way to build.
And the batteries, I can spend more time
talking about them as you so choose,
but we did a pretty deep dive into research.
That's actually what our additional row member here is for.
is our Director of Sustainability and Project
Architect for the project, can talk about, research
we did into how batteries could or may not
play a role in the project.
Essentially what it came down to was the current battery
technology would require that if we house them
within the facility itself, there
would be a very significant fire separation that
makes it difficult to house them within the building itself.
It would actually be more cost effective to house them
separately in a separate structure, perhaps
in the parking lot, which makes the folks who
concerned about parking access and parking count a little nervous and in
addition the ways that the battery can act in concert with some of the other
services that will and options that we'll talk about that the building might
provide are not quite as flexible as they are poised to be in the near future
and so it seemed as we were a group deciding on what to recommend or not
that battery technology is about to get a lot better and giving yourself the
opportunity to expand into more battery capacity that could be contained within
within the building itself with more flexibility in how those batteries function is probably
the best way to spend your money at the moment.
However, should the council choose, there are some other sustainable options we've provided
costs for.
One of those is a 10 percent battery backup for the facility, so you can see the actual
cost of what that would require.
You could also add additional photovoltaic panels if you wanted to come close to actually
equaling out the energy consumption of the building itself.
you'd need to add another 165 kilowatts of PVs.
And that would mean more than could be accommodated
simply on the roofs themselves,
you'd need to then have some of the trellises
and other structures within the site able to support PVs.
You would therefore not need to have
the future support functions.
You would have maxed out your PV capability at that point.
There are other things that we could look at
and would need to look at if we, for instance,
wanted to reach the next level of lead equivalency
certification. We've actually put the price here for actual certification for
elite gold level. And some of the things that were brought up that could be, for
instance, in alignment with the city's sustainability action plan
could be things like instituting natural ventilation throughout the building,
having a portion of the building include a green roof. They do come with a price
tag. And we've summarized some of those prices in the in that far right column.
So, obviously, to the leftmost column, that's the more conservative, more fiscally responsible
set of options and to the left, the more sustainable, slightly more first cost, has
more first cost in that right-hand most column.
And so, both myself and also Edward Reifnerstein, our Director of Sustainability, are happy
to take your questions about any portions of this, and there's certainly a lot of background
information we put in the staff report and that went into the creation of these categories.
So please feel free.
I'm going to get the first question, which is, do we take into consideration this is
just the building cost?
I'm assuming the more you get in the power department and the battery department and
that sort of thing, your day-to-day operating costs are saved.
And so, you know, it would take a long time to make up $2.3 million, but is it worth considering
that the operating costs would go down?
It is a consideration.
It's not one that formed the basis of this matrix, but it is worth paying attention to
as you move further to the right.
By definition, when a system is more sustainable, you will, over the long term, have a greater
return on investment.
However, there is a specific project budget that we are trying to meet.
And so that did inform that balance of fiscal responsibility and making sure we kept the
commitment to have this be a sustainable building, hopefully that answers your question.
Anybody else?
Matt, please.
Thank you.
Thank you for the information.
What were the assumptions in option two about battery storage?
There is none.
Okay.
And is that it's only when you get to option four?
That's right.
Okay.
And so it's just essentially that we have solar on the building to offset about 25 to
50 percent of our energy usage of the building.
That's right.
And nothing for the pool, and maybe that's a pool guy question, is that just something
that you wouldn't do for a commercial facility like this that's only done for a residential?
I can partially answer that question, and Ned can help me if needed, but we did actually
look at the possibility of having electric pools and finding a way to offset them. And
the cost of that did not fit within the project budget as it currently stands.
Because of the number of arrays that you would need to heat that amount of water.
Yeah, it's a scale factor different than what you're looking at here, because heating pool
water is energy intensive.
Okay. Thank you. Those were my questions.
Mayor Pro Tem thank you and thanks for diving into this um sorry um I'm kind of
looking at when I started looking at this I really started looking at it as
the well I was talking about as as we're investing in the sustainability
features that reduce the operating costs there's a payback period and the things
that affect that payback period are how much does it cost how much are you
saving and then how much what our opportunities are there to reduce your capital expenditures.
And so I know I know the answer to this. Can I ask the staff the the federal inflation reduction
act included a provision that is going through rulemaking right now that allows cities who
do not pay taxes and who have been unable to benefit from the 30 percent. We will be able
to benefit from them when the rulemaking is done. Did we factor in the inflation reduction act in
in the cost of the raise and the storage?
At the moment, we can't, only in that the price
that we need to keep in the project budget
is the one that you have to pay the contractor.
And so those are the prices reflected here.
Any of those incentives that you would get
would be received after you would have already
paid that money to the contractor.
So you would, as you've discussed,
be able to potentially be eligible for those programs
and then see a savings.
But just to make sure you have the money
to cover all your costs, we have to tell you what it is
without those at first.
Okay, and then there's also a number of different programs
looking at the dual challenges of sustainability
with emergency response.
And I know I could give you some of the names,
but there are a couple that are focused specifically
on energy supply reliability and storage for buildings
that are used as emergency response centers.
And they have weird criteria, like you have to have had two power safety shutoffs, and
you have to do this and you have to do that.
Have we done any evaluating of the grants that are available right now?
I know the CPUC has like 2 billion right now for the sustainable.
We looked less at the grants because we had our mechanical engineering plumbing sub-consultant
give us a deep education in how batteries could play a role in your essential services
functions.
What they told us is that the bottom line is it wouldn't be their recommendation to
use batteries, even though code is beginning to allow batteries to provide energy for essential
services specifically because batteries soon will be, but are not as flexible as a gas-powered
generator.
And when you're trying to provide emergency energy, the flexibility of that, and specifically
that a gas generator can keep running all day with gas being poured into it, but batteries
have a specific capacity and must be recharged.
And so it's likely very soon coming that there will be the same kind of network of batteries
that there are a network of portable generators to supply that in the future.
But since we're not quite there, that's why we're saying give yourself the opportunity
to have battery energy take over in the future.
But at the moment, since you're not quite there, don't commit to a system that could
very soon get a lot better.
Okay, and then when we started the project,
I know lead times with PG&E are long,
but I understand we didn't apply for net metering two,
we're at net metering three,
and I know net metering three really doesn't pay off as well
unless you have solar storage combined.
That's right, but maybe I'm holding out hopes
for an NEMA 4 that could be better than NEMA 3
that you could be eligible for, who knows.
As a personal, I'm personally signed up into NEMA 2.
I understand exactly what you're talking about.
And so it's true that a battery storage
is kind of the only way that you will get any benefit
in your relationship with PG&E, with PVs.
And so that's still being said,
this was our way of meeting the project budget.
So if you were to go through and do option three,
which gives you the flexibility
to add components over time.
One of the other things with the Inflation Reduction Act
is there are all these requirements on those things about
project labor, and not using bond dollars,
and all of those things.
If you were to pull those together
and make them a separate component
that you didn't do instantaneously with this project,
but looked at it as we are investing
in reducing our operating cost over time
with when we get past that magic threshold
where the batteries work better.
You could come back then,
like depending on how well you believe
miracle batteries in a year or two and say okay now we have we're going to do
just that part of this you could do that with this absolutely especially since
what we're looking at now is not something that's integrated into the
facility but would have been separate anyway so it's very easily a separate
project so regardless as long as we're using lithium for batteries they're
going to be separate from the structure they're gonna be in the parking lot they
might not look attractive but they're gonna be in the parking lot so we can go
in and add that at a future point and be fine.
And that's what option three's package would make easy by having those connections ready
to be switched, you know, throw the switch and it's all connected.
Okay, and then the, when you get to the full 300 kilowatt, at that point you're actually
putting them on the trellises not just on the roof?
That's right.
Okay.
There's not enough roof space for the full 300 array.
much roofs, how much, and I know they're getting more effective over time, but I got
them up. Yeah, how much, what can you put on that roof? Yes, I'm Ned Reifenstein, also
an architect with Noland Tam. So you can get about 200 kilowatts on the roof, that
is in the really optimal orientation, the south-facing orientation. We could put
more it wouldn't be it might not be as cost effective in terms of the yields
you'd get and the optimal would probably be on the trellises instead that's a
study we would do in the next phase if we were to go for a 300 kilowatt target
we would figure out where to put them but our sense right now is that only
only about 200 if that would fit on the roof.
OK.
I'm thinking.
I'm thinking.
Because the last part, it seems you're
saying that you're pretty sure that the batteries are not
worth it right now.
But I know I also sit on the MCE board,
and we are actively looking for commercial and industrial
locations that can combine solar with batteries.
What our engineers said to us was,
right now projects that opt for that
are bearing the forerunner cost of that.
And so it's a higher first cost
than you would eventually bear.
So if we had a much more flexible project budget,
it would be easier to recommend it
because we have a number of costs.
You know, the changes in the aquatics options
and you still have one more.
Actually, we're going to look at that have costs associated with them that we needed
to balance that with the fiscal responsibility overall.
So I still wanted to put the price up there so you could see if this is something, a direction
you want to go and it's-
And I know there's also private companies like Engy that are out there actively looking
to bear that tip of the spear cost.
Have you on- it doesn't sound like you've taken that there on this project.
Have you worked on any other of the projects?
I know that they are approaching some of the cities around the Bay Area about, um, they
have been approaching a couple of the cities about putting solar and storage together on,
um, from a, from an entrepreneurial perspective.
A public-private partnership?
No.
You haven't?
Okay.
All right.
Thanks.
Looking for other questions?
I feel like after that, anything I ask is going to be simple math after hearing that
calculus course so I'm gonna let Cindy's questions feel like we've gotten
further. We change out the batteries in our cabin and the technology from 2009
to this year is gobsmacking. Yeah, I know it we're getting gobsmacked like in a
in a law. Okay I don't I don't hear any forward motion from the council here so
do we have one more section to discuss so let's move hopefully not requiring
calculus yeah okay so there was also a directive at the beginning of this
project during conceptual design it was set that this this facility should act
in some manner as an essential services facility for the city and so we did a
lot of exploration into how exactly that could get to find what exactly that
would include, and there are three different options in front of you for how that could
be accommodated.
So specifically what we've been targeting is something called an EOC, or an Emergency
Operations Center.
In order to qualify for that, the structure has to be designed to what we call structural
risk category four.
And what that means in layman's terms is that the building is immediately occupiable after
a seismic event, like a hospital.
makes it seem like anything less than structure 4 might be unsafe, but it's really not true.
Most of our buildings are not designed to that level, and they're very, very safe.
But this one is extra safe.
Essentially, it's a very similar structural design, but everything is upsized by a certain
factor to make sure that it really won't go anywhere, so that emergency personnel within
the city can use this as a center for communication.
So in order to do that, you don't actually have to have the whole facility to be designed
into that structural level.
Obviously, having larger structural members
bears a certain amount of cost.
Relative to the overall cost of the project,
it's not that large.
But there is a, we've broken this down
so that within the first category,
we would design at least 50% of the facility
to this higher structural risk category level.
Probably the community center portion
since it has rooms and areas
that are easier for staff to assemble in.
We would also assume that there would be
spot for hookup of a portable generator. We did consider whether or not there
should be a permanent generator on site and it the the city staff have a lot of
familiarity with using portable generators generators and assure us that
that is the most cost-effective way to provide an easy source of consistent
energy for this particular function. And then the HVAC systems that we're
specifying also has the ability to add smoke filtration so that in the event
that it's not actually an earthquake
that causes everyone to rush to this building
to need to do emergency communications.
There could be protection from wildfire smoke, for instance.
So the first option is the most conservative, again,
of the three.
The middle column would be simply
adding that higher risk category level
to the entire building.
What that would gain you is potentially
a longer period of operation.
The rest of the building has more restrooms.
And so potentially you could have a larger number of staff
that could be accommodated who might need to be taking action
with the emergency communication.
But none of them are truly in EOC, excuse me,
neither column one or two are actual EOCs.
They're called EOC ready, as in they're almost ready
to act as this communication center,
but the portion that's missing is listed in column three,
which is the communication systems themselves.
there's additional infrastructure
within the communication system
and the actual equipment itself that doesn't have a use
during the regular normal operation of the facility
that could be housed on site
that would make it from EOC ready into an actual EOC
that literally all that would have to happen
would be staff roll up and begin to use the center
to provide emergency communications for the city itself.
Each of these does have a slight more cost.
All of them are currently well within the cost
that was set aside and allocated for this particular function
for the building during the conceptual cost estimate.
And it's literally just a question of, you know,
a slightly more conservative, do we need all of that space
to withstand an earthquake?
And do we want to have the communications functions
already on site?
Or could we use other ones that the city may have?
So any questions you have about this,
we're also happy to take.
We looked into a lot of other options than these,
but these seem like the best way to fulfill
this function for the city.
I'm looking for lights.
Cindy, Silva.
Okay, now you're in my wheelhouse a little bit,
not as much as hers.
But, so let's talk about EOC operational,
what it means from a true communication standpoint.
Does this mean we need more towers or antennas on the site?
Do we need to store consoles there?
Do we need to store radios there?
Not likely one or two, but yes, likely three and four,
and the design has not been completed.
So I don't have a 100% answer to any of those,
But that's the initial assume that the the network itself is going to yes
We're assuming the network itself is actually still working the same. What is actually true of the plumbing system
And I'm just saying, you know, I'm on the California seismic safety Commission and yes seen pictures. Yes
Just to and its hospitals which might stations and police departments for force and why wouldn't we want to make this a for?
Which might sway your decision from column one to column two because there's a pool that you could get to if the whole building is
seismically sound just
Okay. Thank you. I was a little confused in about this the discussion of the budget
It says all options are in the EOC budget allocation
But it they don't obviously all cost the same one. No, no, no and and they incrementally they incrementally increase by about
200k, okay, roughly each but what we mean by that is that um
When if you looked in the staff report at the approved project budget from February of 2023
There was a line item held for the EOC function. It was one point seven seven million. So compared to
Compared to what is already in the project budget. These are just in incremental increases and they don't take all of that budget
Okay, so they're all well within
We can have if you could have any of the three of these just realize though we have said elsewhere that
The project does not have infinitely expandable budget,
so any of the gains you make towards the more fiscally
conservative columns are easily absorbed
into what we're trajectorying overall.
We will talk about that when Jocelyn's finished.
We'll talk some of these other cost considerations.
So this isn't a, oh, we can save money here,
let's go spend it elsewhere.
So I don't want to say the same thing.
I wasn't going to go buy a battery.
Just to be clear.
Okay, and then my other question is I had not even thought
of this until we started talking about this as an EOC,
and then I was thinking the last time our EOC was activated
was not fire, not earthquake, but flood.
We're not in the flood zone here, are we?
Heather Farm is not in the flood zone.
Okay, good.
I just thought I should ask that question.
California Department of Water Resources one time
was planning their EOC on the banks of the American River
until it was pointed out that it was in the flood zone.
And that was a bad idea.
So, we've advanced- Moving on.
Our knowledge has advanced.
Some of us, yeah.
So, let me just clarify my understanding.
Yes.
Basically, unlike the sustainability
where you can get things ready for the future,
this basically says if you're gonna build it to category four,
category, yes. Yup.
Category four, you need to build it.
Yes, I know. Because otherwise,
you're going back and trying to shore up.
Very expensive difficult. Yeah, you want to do it now.
And you want you want to do that the equipment now to the infrastructural part
at the very least, you know, the portable portions of it, that's that's easier
to have later. But the communications infrastructure to support those pieces
of communication equipment that you want to do now as well, if you can.
Councilman Councilman from so on.
Thank you. We don't have an EOC facility now.
I'm going to have Rich Payne talk about what our current EOC capability is, if
that's okay, Rich? It's not as if we're not prepared to handle and we have
handled emergencies but not to this stand by. Rich, talk about that. Good
evening, Mayor, Council Members. Rich Payne, I'm the Interim Assistant Public Works
Director currently. In terms of our EOC, we currently have an EOC that we use
here at the building on the third floor in the conference room. It doesn't meet
the class 4 classification currently. There is some seismic upgrades to the
facility. When this building was upgraded and we expanded, half of the building is
seismically ready. The other half, it doesn't meet all the requirements of a
class four so yes yeah we're in the old side unfortunately and not to do too
deep of a dive on this sorry class for I'm familiar with the standards I've
worked on a hospital project sure ash pod standards and I recognize that those
are a different level is is this class four is that level is that or is it or
are fire, I heard fire stations and police headquarters are built to those
standards. Yeah, the ash pod metric is separate. So this is actually within the
seismic design criteria code. So it's a, it's a, it's a structural, it's from a
structural perspective that, um, what is the exact language? It's, it's, it's
within the CBC. So it's, it's straight up building code and there are different
delineations of structural risk categories
This is the best one
You know the other categories are safe buildings, you know you if there is an event you will be able to
to leave and not you know not have it fall down on you with the the
Dylan the difference is that for two and three?
You would need to have the building unoccupied and inspected and perhaps repaired before you could use it again
whereas for means, you know aside from a very quick visual inspection you can go right back in and
Press the button and start using your equipment
So thank you. And then I had a similar question as councilmember darling on the budget. I wasn't sure
How the changes resulted in a savings seemingly of one point three seven million
And what the page 15 in the staff report? Okay, and it's for the essential services category
Right that you take the one point seven seven held on page two from the conceptual design and
Subtract the staff recommended portion prices aren't listed there
but I did say they're roughly 200k per level.
And that's the savings that you've got, 1.77 minus.
So was it overestimated in 2023?
Thank you, Janine.
Yes, is the right answer.
And it has to do with having no real clear scope about what
we meant by that.
And some of the other things that you
could do to make this a more robust EOC exceed the 1.77.
So it seems like this covers you.
If you, for instance, wanted to have a backup plumbing so that regardless of what happened
to the grid, you would have running water that could be disposed of on site.
That's not something typically you find in EOCs and would be far more expensive than
was held for the 1.77.
So we looked at, you know...
And they have a whole swimming pool right there.
Just give them, like, water filters.
And a canal.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Canal might be better.
Okay, I don't see any more questions and is there anything more that staff wants to?
So Janine is going to wrap up and then we'll turn it back to Council and then we'll do
public comment.
Okay.
Thanks.
So just to summarize the staff recommendations for this evening, this slide here represents
the options that are recommended for aquatics, essential services and sustainability, and
it compares it to what's in the current schematic design on the left-hand side.
We can come back to this again, but it just summarizes everything in this one slide.
And one of the things that we wanted to point out is that the project team is currently
working on a cost estimate for the schematic design package and in so doing, there are
a number of items that have come up, both construction costs and soft costs, that are
cost pressures on the project budget.
And those were items that weren't anticipated when the $77 million budget was accepted.
So this list is some of those items.
For example, the first in the list, the natural lake remediation, that's a mitigation measure.
Now we know that that's a requirement as a result of reducing the size of the manmade
pond.
In addition, we've been looking at a lot of these more soft costs and more detail such
as the permit processing times.
I think initially those were anticipated
to maybe be more streamlined than is typical in a process.
So these are a number of costs
that we will continue to monitor.
And if necessary, we will come back to you
if there's any additional budget allocations
that are required.
But at this time, we are doing our best
to monitor and monitor these and stay within the budget
to the best of our capability.
The next steps are if Council approves the recommended options
as proposed, we will continue with the next phase
of the project, which is the design development phase.
Otherwise, if any modifications to those options are requested,
then we'll need to come back and we'll
stay within the schematic design phase.
And those may have additional impacts to the budget scope and schedule.
So in conclusion, the action recommended this evening is to approve the recommended modified
options listed below.
So for the aquatics, it's to implement the April 10th Aquatic Schematic Design Package.
For the sustainability, it's to approve the LEED Silver equivalent.
And for the essential services, it's to upgrade 100% of the building to an operational EOC.
And that concludes our presentation.
Oh, yeah.
Clarification on the sustainability options staff and the design team are recommending
what we would call option three.
Let me confirm.
Yes.
Is that correct?
Option three.
Yes.
The one that's got a big black line around it.
Okay.
I'll leave it here.
Thank you.
I had one quick question.
Sorry.
On the phasing of building demolition, are we looking at demolition and then issuing
the contract for construction or are we issuing those together?
Or have we decided yet?
There's still a little bit of processing to do with the environmental impact assessment
but currently we are planning demolition of the building first, the pond work second and
and then the main project blast.
Okay.
And as part of the demolition,
would that include the excavation of the pool area
so that you can use that as part of pot remediation
or is that not working?
That hasn't been decided yet.
Okay.
It's okay, you're not the only one.
So we are at the moment when we open this to public comment
and if anybody is up for it,
just the person I was hoping we'd come and share with us.
Thank you.
Council members my Keeney Mauna Creek Aquatic Foundation. I just wanted to come tonight to reiterate our support for the
proposed design changes to the aquatic facility and
Most of all thank everybody who's been involved in this process for so long
for all their time energy and concern for your communities and
We look forward to a continued partnership
You got more time if you want it. No, thank you. Okay
Can we use some of your time though? Yeah, and just say thank you for the aquatics foundation
I know you guys had to do a lot of work in the last month to put together
Working with the staff and I really appreciate the effort that you guys have put into this
It's a pleasure working with you guys any any other comments back here way
No
Except yes. Thank you very much. It made a difference made our days happier
Okay, no more public comment
No more public comment. So we're back to council input. I believe
Acting city manager. That's correct. So the what you see in front of you is the recommendations from staff for council
If you'd like to take these one at a time, that's fine. If you want to do the whole package at once
That's exactly but I'm happy to answer more questions if you have any or take your comments in direction. Thank you
Councilmember friends well
Well, first of all, you know, I'd like to kick it kick off by thanking
staff
everybody on the arts and rec staff
Kevin obviously Karen
the whole team
You know our consultant team and certainly want to thank the aquatics foundation
this is a
Contrast from the last meeting and a pleasant contrast,
I think it shows when kind of we listen to one another
and we roll up our sleeves and sit down
and try to work on solutions.
It's pretty amazing what we can accomplish.
So I'm really pleased that we're at this point
and really happy to move forward.
Happy to make a motion now or later,
but I will be supporting the staff recommended options.
I think the logic on each of them made sense to me.
I think on the pool, we've reached a consensus
with the Aquatics Foundation and honored our commitment
to meet the programming needs of the teams,
which is very important as well as balancing that
with our community needs.
So I think we've certainly checked that box and taking care of my very favorite aqua nuts
with some additional deep water space for them while still allowing the aqua bears to
do their long course swimming.
On the sustainability, the recommendation made sense to me that the roof can only support
so many arrays at this point and at some point that battery storage is coming and that by
doing the staff recommended option we're not foreclosing ourselves from
taking advantage of that. Hopefully it comes in the near future. And on the the
ECO I definitely think that we need a facility that's not just 50% built to
that standard but 100% built to the standard. And so each of the
recommendations made sense to me and I think is the appropriate course to move
forward. And I'm really glad that we were able to do this in a quick amount of
time to I know the city manager is watching and would be to that we were
able to accomplish this really in about a month's time so and not really lose
any time because we're having the sustainability conversation now so great
job everyone and thank you very much yes please Kevin all right they I would
agree with that basically everything councilmember Francois said I'm so glad
to see the compromise, the solution that we worked out here. It really does balance what
we were hearing from the swimming community, and that was all of the swimming programs,
and what we know was needed with our community at large, which are paying the bulk of the
cost for all of this. Here we started this several years ago. We were able to pass Mejuro,
and it's just terrific to be able to see that we've come to an arena now where we really
seem to have been able to provide the best options for the groups that we've been discussing
this with.
And hearing what everyone wanted to make sure that they got their points on and that we
could agree upon.
So I'm happy we've come to a consensus on that regarding the aquatics.
When it comes to sustainability, as I was looking at everything over the course of the
last several days on the report, it occurred to me we can't solve everything on the sustainability
right now. And just like technology and just like improvements that happen as well, they're
going to be lower costs and more efficiencies, and we're going to see new improvements that
come that future councils down the road will be able to take advantage of and save costs
at that point as well. I can't remember which was the council member that said this on another
topic several years ago. We can't boil the ocean, but we can certainly make a lot of
solutions to get to that point where there we will be setting the table for
those councils down the road. So I'm happy we come to a compromise on the
consensus with all this that we have a project and a facility that we and
future generations can be proud of and I want to thank you to staff for all of
your work and I think you left out Jim but I know that you meant to include Jim
as well but along with Karen and Kevin and and Public Works everybody this is
This has truly been a full team effort here, along with our consultants, along with the
aquatics foundation and the various aquatics groups.
Thank you for all finding a solution to making this work.
I'm going to enthusiastically support this and all of the staff recommendations.
Thank you.
Thank you to all of you, members of the public, the staff, the consultants.
song, A Long Winding Road. One would have hoped that 17 years ago when I first was
elected to the City Council and one of the first conversations was related to
what are we going to do about the future of Clark Swim Center that there was a
straight line and a straight path but there rarely if ever is and we could I
could reiterate all of the places I've been along this long winding road but
But we've learned a lot in each step and we've learned how to compromise and work together
and I think that's what's really important here because we still have many, many steps
to take through this process as was evidenced by that one slide that said the unknowns that
are still out there.
I am very supportive of the recommendations that have been made tonight.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness not only on how to make a balanced approach truly feasible
and the aquatic solution, but also what we can do on the sustainability front, to be
ready to be poised when the future, the true future arrives, and also to ensure that we
have an operational emergency operations center, because disasters, we've had disasters.
It's not only been flood, but we've suffered from fires.
Not close, but you don't have to be close to suffer from the smoke from Paradise Fire
or Santa Rosa or Napa.
And so I'm pleased, pardon me, well, yeah, that's true.
I think we're in the right place and I look forward to being able to do this and setting
the stage for a very long future in our community.
Thank you.
And I similarly thank everybody.
I think everybody really worked hard to get us to tonight, but I'm the new kid on the
block.
So I'm just looking forward.
we're gonna be looking at the next design phase next year.
It's a lot that's gonna, the unknowns are in there.
And so I really wanna emphasize how we got here tonight
was strong communication,
shared understanding of each other's interests
and how they can be met by this project.
And I wanna see that continued close collaboration
with the Aquatics Foundation,
with Sustainability Committee,
with everybody that's got an interest in this project.
And I know you guys will do that.
That's why we picked you.
I think the one challenge I would like to leave
is that with sustainability,
it is a fast evolving process
and it offers significant federal cost sharing now
as the inflation reduction act gets.
I mean, we're putting PV's on there.
We have the opportunity to get the credits for those.
so it's incumbent upon us to become conversant in that
as the federal government clarifies
what the heck they mean when they say
they can give cities money.
It's like, oh, okay, sounds good.
And then take that knowledge and then look for opportunities
to turn this into thinking about it,
not just as a capital cost,
but an investment into a long-term operating regime
that is more efficient and lower cost for the city.
looking at that as the mayor said,
what's your payback period and how,
when is it to that point where yes,
it's worth it and ready time to pull the plug?
So I'm not sure if that's next April
when you guys come back with the next design phase
or somewhere in here.
So I don't know if I stare at you guys
or stare at you guys.
Next April, 2025, that's the next phase.
You got a whole other year till we come back to this.
But I would like to see some additional analysis
of this as an enterprise.
We have batteries, we have solar,
we have the opportunity to offset our own costs,
the opportunity to market excess energy
to those that are willing to pay for it
and look and see if there's a way
to create some value out of the proposition
because we might not be quite there yet,
but things are changing fast in the field, so.
Okay, I guess I should thank you.
because you made my day.
You really did put together something
where everybody can walk away.
I think I was talking to our,
acting, I can't remember again, it's my cold,
acting mayor, and I said sometimes under pressure,
better things happen than if the pressure hadn't applied.
And along the way, everybody gets really upset with it,
it gets personal, it gets frustrating,
it looks like it's never gonna happen,
and then all of a sudden like a giant balloon
that you stick a pin in,
somebody says the right thing somehow, some way,
and I don't know who to give credit for everybody.
I bet you all have your own little balloons that you popped
and then found the big balloon that made it all happen.
I really appreciate it.
The thing that makes me most excited is the practical,
which is we have needed a community center,
a current operation, emergency operation center.
And in all of the problems that we had getting here,
I think we kind of never even paid attention
to how much this community needs something
that we will every day get up and pray
that we will never need, but when we do, we have it.
And so it makes me feel better that we have taken care
of that.
That was very special.
I think the pools are going to be sweet,
and more people are going to enjoy swimming,
and you're going to think of new ways to use them.
And this creativity, I think, will inevitably
pay great dividends to our community.
And so thank you all for hanging in there
and finding the solution.
I believe there is a potential nominee for a motion.
Madam Mayor, I'd be very pleased
to move the staff recommended options
in terms of the aquatics option implementing
the April 10th, 2024 Aquatics Schematic Design Package
on the sustainability option,
approving the LEED Silver equivalent
with support for future add-on features,
and on the essential services option,
upgrading 100% of the new building
to operational EOC capability.
Second.
Thank you.
We have a motion and a second,
and I now need a roll call vote, please.
Council Member Francois.
Aye.
Council Member Wilk.
Aye.
Council Member Silva.
Aye.
Mayor Pro Tem Darling.
Aye.
with a giant smile, yes, aye.
Motion carries unanimously.
Thank you.
We did it.
You did it.
It is now ready to move on.
And that gives me the right to adjourn the meeting
to the next regular meeting on May 7th.