Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, July 16, 2024 City Council meeting.
Before we start the meeting, let me read what I always read.
Welcome to the meeting of the Wellner Creek City Council.
The council is conducting this meeting from the council's chamber.
This meeting is also being video streamed and can be viewed live or later on the city's
website.
As some attendees may be participating in their first Walnut Creek City Council meeting,
I want to welcome everyone and talk briefly about the public comment process.
For each item on the agenda, there will be an opportunity for public comment when that
item comes up.
Thus, if you desire to speak to an item on the agenda this evening, please hold your
comments until the City Council considers that item.
Additionally, we have a section on the agenda entitled public communications, which is
for public comments for items not on the agenda.
Any comments during public communications should not relate to an item that is on the
agenda this evening.
Consistent with section 9.5 of the City Council Handbook, 30 minutes will be initially allocated
for public communications for items not on the agenda.
Full time for public communications for items not on the agenda will be provided at the
end of the open session if that is necessary.
If you desire to provide a public comment, please complete a speaker identification card
and line up behind the lectern at the appropriate time.
Wait your turn and when you approach the lectern, please state your name and the City of Residence
for the record.
will have two minutes to address the City Council. Please keep in mind that
this is a City business meeting. The City Council has adopted rules of decorum to
ensure that meetings are conducted efficiently and effectively and that all
members of the public have a full, fair and equal opportunity to be heard. The
City Council handbook outlines decorum, the decorum expected in the chamber and
can be found on our website. All remarks should be addressed to the City Council.
Please do not use threatening, profane, or abusive language which disrupts,
disturbs, and otherwise impedes the ordinary orderly conduct of the
council meeting. Again, each speaker will have two minutes to make your remarks.
Written comments submitted and received up to two hours before the meeting have
been posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record
but will not be separately read. That being done, would you all join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which
it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
May we please have the roll call. Councilmember Francois. Here. Councilmember
Silva. Here. Councilmember Wolk. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Darling. Here. Mayor Haskew. Here.
Item 2 on our agenda is the approval of the City of the consent calendar. Is
is there anybody from the public
who wishes to make a comment?
I'm seeing none.
Is there anybody on the council
that wishes to pull an item?
I'm not hearing anybody.
Madam Mayor, before the council makes a motion on this,
as the council recall after the episode down in Bell,
the state legislature changed the Brown Act,
and they do require that whenever the council's
gonna consider any actions
that involve executive management compensation
for a public agency that we need to summarize
the terms in the record as part of the meeting.
And so with the council's concurrence,
I will advise the council and the public
that agenda items 2C and 2D relate
to compensation adjustments for the department directors
and for the city manager.
The department director's salary plan provides
for a 6% salary adjustment in July, 2024,
a 5% salary adjustment in June 2025,
and a 4% salary adjustment in June 2026.
The salary plan for the directors also makes adjustments
to specified benefits that are provided to them,
as well as reflects equity adjustments
for the administrative services director position,
the police chief and the human resources director.
That's all in relation to item 2C.
With regards to item 2D,
the city manager contract amendment
provides an equity adjustment plus a 6% salary increase
effective in July 2024 and a 5% salary increase
in June 2025 subject to a satisfactory evaluation.
The city manager's employment contract also includes
an increase in the contribution to the 401A plan
and increases the hours that Mr. Buckshi can redeem
out of his general leave that he is accruing.
And with that, that's a summary of both sets of agreements.
Thank you very much for that excellent summary.
And with that, thank you.
I will move to approve consent calendars,
items A through H.
Second.
With the notation of the correction at the dais
on that image.
Yes.
Okay.
All right, I think we've covered our basis.
May we have a roll call vote, please?
Mayor Pro Tem Darling.
Aye.
Council Member Wilk.
Aye.
Council Member Francois.
Aye.
ask you. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Next on the agenda is public
comments and I am not reading that paragraph or 12 so if anybody wants to
make public comments please come down and avail yourself of the opportunity.
And I think that's what it is.
You're it.
I thought it was number three.
Oh, okay, well, the other people didn't show.
Okay, no worries.
Great, thank you.
So thank you, Council, for letting me speak.
I'm with Walnut Creek downtown.
I'm Donna Labriola, and I just wanted to give a quick update
on some of our events that have already happened
happened on June 20th. We would like to thank Visit Walnut Creek, Broadway Plaza, and the
Leisure Center for being partners on that event. It was tremendously successful. We
had 750 guests that came out and spent a couple, three hours downtown. We had 29 businesses
that participated, 18 pouring partners, and 53 volunteers that came out to help make that
event successful. Coming up, we still are in the middle of summer arts in Walnut Creek.
Started in June and it goes through the end of August. We have a lot of great programs
going on. Visit our website, www.walnutcreekdowntown.com, and the event schedule is up on that and
there is a dedicated page for it as well. We also have the Broadway Plaza Concert Series
coming up August 1st, 8th and 15th and those should be great.
They start at 7 o'clock every night and the first one is 24 carat gold, a Bruno Mars tribute.
Anybody interested come out?
And then we have first Wednesday coming back on August the 8th from 5.30 to 9 we're anticipating
about 5,000 people to come out for that and we've extended that a little further on Locust
street. So we have a lot more vendors and more music and a lot more fun. So great. Thank
you very much. And thank you for your support. And I see no additional people to come up
and make a public comment. So we will close that section and we will do council members
staff announcements and reports on activities. I mean, excuse me, attorney. Thank you. Madam
Mayor I would like to report out that at the closed session on June 8, 2024 the
City Council by a five to zero vote concurred with a recommendation from the
Municipal Pooling Authority in the matter of Dugan versus Walnut Creek in
a settlement amount of two million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Thank
you Madam Mayor. All right good evening Dan Buckshi city manager I do have three
updates I'd like to provide this evening. The first is I think we are all well
aware there was extreme heat here in Walnut Creek and the surrounding area for a considerable
period of time beginning the week of 4th of July and extending into last week.
Wanted to share that the city worked collaboratively with the county to provide cooling shelters
during that time frame so folks had a place to go.
Do you want to highlight that the county had some gaps in coverage on various days.
We did open up some city facilities to fill in those gaps and I do want to extend a special
thanks to all of our staff that were involved in helping coordinate that particularly those
that worked over the holiday weekend to help staff those centers that folks did have a
place to go in order to stay safe. So good work by everybody involved in those endeavors.
Additionally, I want to share the announcement that went out last week that we will have
a new assistant city manager joining Walnut Creek, Charles Ching. He will begin with Walnut
Creek on July 31st and we'll be happy to introduce him to the council more formally at that time.
And then lastly, I'm pleased to share some good news, brag a bit about Walnut Creek and that we
did receive once again two awards related to our financial performance and reporting from the
Government Finance Officers Association, also known as GFOA. We received the Distinguished Budget
award, and then also received a certificate of achievement for financial reporting for
our financial reports, and we just note that we have received these awards most every year
over the last 15 years, so we have a strong history of providing a very clear documentation
in some financial reporting, and that's it, Mayor.
Thank you.
Matt, can I start with you?
Absolutely.
Thank you, Mayor.
I left my notes at home, so I'm gonna be winging it,
but I think I remember what I did.
I serve on the Recycle Smart Board
along with Council Member Silva,
and on that board, I am on the ad hoc
franchise selection committee,
so we're in the process of going out to bid
for new contracts for garbage, recycling processing,
organics, composting, and we've divided the,
explained it before in the past,
I think that we've divided the process
into post collection and collection services.
So we went out to bid for the post collection services
and we received proposals and staff is in the process
of reviewing those proposals.
And we'll be in a position to make a recommendation
to the full board, likely by our October meeting.
So we're making good progress there.
And then along with council member Silva,
I also serve on the council's housing
Community Development Committee, and we received a proposal from RCD, the housing developer
at 699 Ignacio Valley Road, to request some amendments to the loan agreement and regulatory
agreement for that, the loans that we've made to that project, all affordable project.
So we will, Council Member Silva and I made a recommendation to the full council that
that'll come back, I believe at our September meeting, yeah.
And they're in the process also of applying
for state grant funding,
which they should hear about next month.
That's my update.
Thank you.
Kevin, please.
All right, thanks.
A few things happened over the last several weeks.
One of them was the Bedford Gallery opening.
I'm not sure who else here was able to do that,
but congratulations to the staff
and also to our curator as well.
Cut, paste, and create lots of very cool 2D and 3D artwork.
It runs through September, so you haven't missed out.
You might've missed the opening,
but you got a few more months to still check it out.
My favorite one was over 1,000 swimming pools
from Beverly Hills in Bel Air, filmed from above,
and you guys see all the little pools there.
It was like a where's Waldo, except Waldo wasn't there.
I also attended in City Mayor Pro Tem Darling's case where the Walnut Creek downtown board
meeting.
It was a really good meeting last week.
I do want to have a big shout out to our Director of Planning, Erica Van Embrand, that was there
and really lots of very direct questions coming from two dozen of our downtown restaurateurs
businesses, talking about things that go well but also challenges as well and
things they would like to see improving. Including one of the things that was
got a lot of discussion was the idea of a concierge or a welcome kit for new
proposals of businesses. So I talked about this with our city manager before
and of course our director of Adam Brand is familiar with it so he'll be
talking about based upon availability what's even possible but it was a very
good discussion and again I just really big thanks. I thought you did a terrific
job there. Thank you so much. I attended a Woodlands Traffic Open House that was
run by Smidar Bormann. I'm not even sure what your title is now, but the
traffic, I'm gonna say the transportation and engineering guru, and this was at the
Nasty Valley Library right around the corner from my house. You're never quite
sure, especially during a day where it's 103 degrees, how many people are going to
actually show. It was a great turnout. I was really impressed with not just the
of people that showed up. We had a variety of different stations there all staffed with people
from our department. We had two police officers including our own Sergeant Silva that's here in
the room tonight and with all the different questions that come up from this neighborhood
that is uh they are involved let's put it that way they know what's going on in their neighborhood
they have lots of very of interest in speeding and traffic and development and so the fact that
that we had this type of response of being available to them, and for several hours,
I was only able to be there for a half an hour. I was just really impressed. Nice job by Spanara
and team. We did have an open, actually had a couple openings, but one of them I went to
was our first Champagne Bar, Fizz, that last weekend. So there was a Champagne Bar in Walla
Creek for those that want to celebrate, or just have a drink after a meal. And then as,
Well we have a little bit of time here so I'm of the liaison for the county connection I said
on the board of directors there as I think I mentioned in our last meeting uh senate bill 1031
is not going to be happening this year which was looking to consolidate all the different transit
agencies under one umbrella in uh in the bay area that is not going to be happening this year anyway
but there are a couple of bills coming up that we were made aware of and I wanted to bring these up
here because it could actually impact us too. One of them is SB 1116 where employers with any
employees on strike for two weeks plus would be eligible for unemployment. Obviously this is
controversial but this is making its way through. There's also Assembly Bill 1904 where buses have
availability for yield signs to pop out as they merge into traffic. Now some of this is for buses
on shoulders but I think about Ignacio Valley Road especially during commute times when you have
and treat, when you've got buses that are going up during heavily commute times,
there will be the availability should this pass that a yield sign will then come out,
much like a children's crossing, if you think about a children's crossing is when those
stops or yield stop signs come out. So this could be coming, just keep an eye on that.
And then there is a pilot program in Martinez that will be happening by the end of summer.
It's an automated driving system for buses. After the regularly scheduled buses run,
And this would be automated buses.
So we're going to see how this works on some city streets.
And will this expand?
We'll see.
That's my report.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
The couple of things to mention, and I
will add to my colleague Matt Francois's report
on Recycle Smart, one of the issues
that we are grappling with as part of this new franchise
agreement is really the fleet of vehicles
that would be collecting the organics,
the recycling, and the solid waste,
or better known as the black, the blue, and the green bins.
The understate law that was adopted in the last year or so,
we have to transition to zero emission vehicles
as part of this.
The challenge comes in that there are not enough
being made anywhere,
and that we're competing with Caltrans
who has the same requirement and a much bigger fleet.
So we are talking a lot about what that is going to mean
and what we will decide to do as a transition and a run up
because it's not a solid,
it's not a rock solid all new vehicles,
but ordinarily when you get a new contract
for garbage and solid waste and all of that,
you ask the new provider or collector
to have all new vehicles.
But this will be a bit problematic as part of that.
We're also looking at where the hauler
or the collector would actually house its trucks
because it's not necessarily going to be
the current provider of service.
And if it's someone new, they're going to,
so we're looking at being able to put under a lease option
of 12 to 15 acres of land in an appropriate location
that is not only zoned for the housing
and allow an accommodation of vehicles,
but is also close enough so that we're not running up
our vehicle miles traveled and increasing the emissions
output while we're trying to reduce the emissions output.
So more to follow on that, but had a robust discussion
at our subcommittee about that yesterday morning.
At the recent or last week's meeting of the board
of the League of California Cities,
of which I am one of 55 board members, so it's a big table.
the we heard about four propositions that will be on the November ballot and we took positions to
support on three of those. Proposition four, which is a 10 billion dollar climate bond,
will be up for approval by the electorate or the voters and it is very interesting because
the explanation of it is pages long because it's allocating buckets of funds to very specific
programs, but some of those funds will be available in these categories, but out of
the $10 billion, $3.8 billion is allocated for drinking water and groundwater, $1.5 billion
for wildfire and forest programs, and $1.2 billion for sea level rise.
And part of this money would be available to a local government, which would be cities,
counties, and special districts through grants.
So we took a vote to support.
Incidentally when we take a support position from the League of California cities on a proposition something going before the state voters
It requires a two-thirds affirmative vote of the board for whatever position we take so it's a heavy lift
So the reason I'm not going to mention
One of the propositions we discussed is because we couldn't get to two-thirds on either
point of view
We took a support position on proposition five, which will lower the vote approval requirements for certain local housing and infrastructure bonds should a
local government choose to
Seek that it has stringent requirements
But currently if you need a need bonds to build affordable housing or rebuild a swimming pool
You need a two-thirds vote this would allow for a 55 percent voter threshold
Which is very similar to what schools have been allowed to do
since 2001. And finally we took a support position on what is now called
Proposition 36, which will increase, if approved by the voters, will increase the
penalties for theft and drug trafficking. This was brought to us from a
consortium or a coalition of the district attorneys, police, fire, and other local
government agencies and this initiative is likely to be contentious because it
would adjust some elements of proposition 47 which was adopted by the
voters in 2014 but I did ask the DA that was presenting it if it would in fact
address organized retail theft and some of the problems that we have had in
Walnut Creek and he said yes. So more to follow over the course of time. I would
also mention and you may have heard that in late June the California Supreme Court in a
momentous decision ruled that the Secretary of State was not allowed to put on the ballot the
proposition that was proposed by the California Business Roundtable and the language of their
ruling was basically that it would substantially alter the basis the basic plan of government
by exceeding the scope of the power to amend the state constitution by way of a citizen
initiative and therefore they ordered the Secretary of State to refrain from placing
it on the November ballot. This is good news for all levels of local government, but most
likely we'll come back in some form in a couple of years.
And I would finally mention that this Saturday, this is the cultural festival, Fiesta Cultural
event celebrating Latino and Hispanic culture.
It's all week long and Saturday is a free street fair in front of the Leisure Center
from 12 noon to 7 p.m. and come on down and hopefully it won't be overly hot.
Thank you all very much.
In keeping with the hot theme, the first thing, I did catch Cabaret.
The production my friend and I were originally supposed to go to was called off because somebody
was ill.
So we snuck in at the end.
And I think we were sitting right here looking up their noses.
But it was great to see, really enjoyed the production.
It was very powerful.
Now moving on to hot.
I managed to escape all of the heat wave by going up to Canada.
And so I enjoyed it vicariously through social media.
But MCE has a couple things going on that are important for people to think about as
a, you know, I know utility bills have gone up dramatically and so there's a couple things
going on.
First one is MCE has a program that they announced back in June that allows, that gives people
in lower income categories up to $25 off their monthly bill.
already had about 13,000 customers sign up but it's an important way for people
that are struggling with their electric bills to help get some assistance with
that and the MCE website will have that. The other thing that MCE has done is
they've updated their website and they now have a rebate and incentive finder
tool so you can put in are you an owner where do you live who you know what city
you in and it will give you a list of all the different kinds of electric rebates from
federal credits, local credits and you can shop through those and if you're not a website
electrification person the city of Walnut Creek and MCE are jointly hosting at Cali Craft on
September 14th from 12 to 4 you can drink beer while you peruse the website so this will be
attractive I think to some of my fellow council members but it's just a chance
to go through and learn about how you can electrify your house and my husband
and I changed out a couple things and I have not had a PG&E bill of any
substance for three months because it's so much more efficient and the solar is
carrying the load so it's really it's worth it because you'll feel better
from a sustainability perspective but you'll also feel better because your
PG&E bill will be much lower.
Then the other thing that I did was, there was a, you know,
the mountains of California have had tremendous amounts of
biomass from both the fires that have gone on and the
clearing to help mitigate future fires and a consortium of
community choice aggregators, local land use agencies,
water districts, power generators got together
up in the town of Lincoln and talked about
all the different ways that you could take that biomass
and use it to either generate electricity
or to do other things.
But the biggest most exciting part of that is
there are a couple of projects going right now,
one with our partner community choice aggregator
and pioneer that would move a biomass project forward. They will take the chips coming from
fire clearing and use it to generate electricity. And that's really important because the California
electric grid has so much solar and wind on it now, and solar and wind don't operate all the time.
We need additional baseload. And if you have a project that's running off of biomass,
that is the perfect base load, you just keep putting chips in when you want them to go in,
and the electricity comes out the other side. So that was really interesting and exciting to
look at. I know it's a big lift, I know the CPUC is not a big fan of it because they remember all
those eucalyptus groves that everybody was trying to grow back in the 70s and burn, but this is a
much cleaner technology. The last thing that's going on in the world of electric utility rates
is the CPUC has been looking at this idea
of a fixed charge on electric bills
and they've struggled mightily with this.
We'd see little flares go up every now and then.
Apparently they have now adopted a decision
to begin applying it in 2026.
They don't have it.
Originally the fixed part of the bill
was gonna be much larger.
They've made it much more modest.
So an average low income customer, their bill would,
it's about a $3.40 a month change.
Customers at the higher end might have a little bit
like up to $9 a month.
If you're really conserving,
you'll still have to pay this fixed charge.
We're still trying to figure out exactly what CPUC
decided to do and there'll be workshops coming up
and there'll be a lot more media on it.
But the big splashy thing about how it was gonna be
so much bigger did not come to happen.
So that's the world of electric rates
and hopefully no more heat waves.
Okay, I had a lot of your schedule.
One of my special favorite things to do
was to go to the 4th of July concert
put on by the Walnut Creek Band.
And they did a fantastic job.
They even did the noon one
at a hundred and something temperature at Rossmore.
It cooled down to about 90 something degrees
by the time we had the one in Civic Park.
I also recorded the July mayor's update.
Give it a go.
Cause a lot of what we've just heard is already in there
and maybe some things you haven't heard.
I testified at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality
Board in defense of Central San.
And all I can say is, in public, it
was an incredibly frustrating experience for all of us.
And then as soon as we left, they voted to not amend.
I'm going to say there were three hours of really good,
not just central sand, but all the suppliers
had really, really good ideas to slow down this process that
puts nutrients in the bay that sometimes triggers
the algae booms that kill fish and basically,
it's bad for the bay, could kill it.
So, they just completely ignored everybody's good ideas
and went forward with their original plan,
which is incredibly frustrating,
but hopefully cooler heads will prevail
and they will finally wake up to their better ideas.
I led the Contra Costa Mayor's Conference
and we had a lecture by the Contra Costa Fire Department
about the wildfire mitigation program,
fascinating work.
They're really working hard to do things to prevent fires
and contain fires before they get outrageously busy.
I visited a business in Walnut Creek
under our economic development program
and I'm looking forward to doing more.
And I think the thing that is kind of really heartfelt
for me and is comes with a joy
and a sadness I have decided not to run for a fourth term on the City Council this year so
there's an open seat. That's it for me. Any other things? Okay we're on. Well I'm not gonna let that
comment pass without at least some comment from me and maybe others but I really want to thank you
for the three terms in the 12 years that you have been a City Council member. I think anybody that
sits here knows how much work it takes, how much involvement there is, how many times
we are invited to things that we want to go to and things we go to that we may not necessarily
want to go to.
And for you to do this for 12 years and be mayor three times and finishing your tenure
as mayor, I really appreciate that and I appreciate your service to the community and your constant
wanting Walnut Creek to be the best that it can be. So thank you. Thank you. I've got something
great to work with, yeah. And I just want to say thanks because as Mayor Pro Tem, you actually
are teaching me how to be mayor. Should I get the opportunity? And I really appreciate that.
And I also note that you have been mayor in some of the most difficult years that we have faced and
good on you for surviving some of those years. Thank you. Thank you very much. I adore this
city it is it is um I I have labeled it little Camelot and I truly believe it is a blessed place
and we have an incredible staff that makes it um safe and makes it function really well
senior management as Kevin said has done rolled up their sleeves a lot of times and and just did
work that needed to be done. So I'm so proud of oh and of course the police department one of my
all-time proudest moments is being somewhere with a police officer and being able to brag
about how well they do. Arts and Rec can't forget the fun so there is so much about Walnut Creek
that is worthwhile and I am so proud of it and if I forgot you I'll get you next time.
And Mayor, I too want to share kind of a deep appreciation for your 12 years of service,
for your commitment to the community, for the role model that you've been to me and
others that might aspire to serve on the City Council in terms of how to be a leader and
how to reach out to the community, how to always show up for events.
Even on nights I was trying to give you a night off, you still showed up, and I've thoroughly
Enjoyed serving with you and we'll look forward to serving with you for the next six months
So, thank you. Okay. Well, I can't be outdone
Well, if I say nothing, I'm gonna look like I don't like you
It's been an honor to serve with you and I it's not over yet
Let's see how much harder we can make it over the next six months
but thank you for your service and for your friendship and
your advice and counsel
My pleasure. Okay. Can we talk on something else now?
Let's move on to the next item and
Cindy I think you're up
Thank you
Good evening, Mayor Haskew and members of the City Council. My name is Rindy Azzavito
And I'm an administrative analyst in the city manager's office and also staff liaison to the Youth Leadership Commission
So I'm here to present the next steps needed to implement councils direction on the a seat at the table pilot program and to officially
To officially add student commissioners to the arts pros and transportation commissioners
I just want to note this hearing is a ministerial step required to make changes to the municipal code and
reflects previously given council direction rather than new policy considerations
So the recommended action before you this evening is to introduce an ordinance to amend the municipal code to add student commissioners to the arts
transportation and pros commissions and to adopt a resolution
amending the Commission rules and procedures and the City Council Handbook and
Before we begin for the purposes of discussion tonight, I'd like to go over a few definitions
These are the terms that are used throughout the updated documents
So Commissioner refers to adults who are appointed by the City Council
Student commissioner refers to individuals who are both between the ages of 12 and 19
and also students in grades 9 through 12 who are appointed by staff and have a preferential
vote and member or commission member refers to both commissioners and student commissioners.
I do want to note that youth commissioner is the usual term that we use to refer to
members of the youth leadership commission and this is a separate and distinct role from
the student commissioner.
So just to briefly recap the seat at the table program, in 2021, the Youth Leadership Commission
identified a policy project and developed their initial proposal to add student commissioners
to each of the city's commissions.
And in 2022, they received input from the various city commissions from the Public Education
Committee and brought their initial or their revised proposal, excuse me, to the City Council
for consideration.
did approve a pilot program which we call a seat at the table to add youth seats, student
commissioners to the arts, pros and transportation commissions.
And shortly thereafter the pilot program began and student commissioners were appointed to
serve on those commissions.
In 2023, staff conducted an evaluation of the program and based on the positive outcomes
developed a recommendation that the seats be made permanent.
And that brings us to 2024, where over the past few months, staff took that recommendation
to the Public Education Committee and the City Council for their feedback.
And this screen shows a summary of council direction that was provided on May 7th.
At that meeting, staff presented an in-depth review of the pilot program, the evaluation,
the various options for making the program permanent, and after some deliberation, the
council provided direction to staff which is summarized here.
First, most importantly, council directed staff to amend the municipal code to make
these student commissioner seats permanent, and then provided some guidelines on term
length, appointment to commissions, and term dates.
So the student commissioner roles are one year, they have a one year, one two year term,
excuse me, one two year term with an, without an option to reapply for a second term.
They are appointed by staff with involvement from the Youth Leadership Commission in the
interview process and recommendation and their term dates would align with the school year
running from September to August rather than with the calendar year.
So in order to implement council's directions, staff has proposed changes to the municipal
code, the council handbook, and the commission rules and procedures.
Each of these documents has a specific purpose.
So the municipal code is the adopted laws and regulations for the city and is generally
limited to directing and prohibiting actions.
The council handbook provides guidelines to the city council members on accepted practices
and expectations, and the commission rules and procedures provide guidelines to council
appointed commissions, committees, and task force, including how to run meetings and codes
of conduct.
So these three documents were amended to include the student commissioners to define their
roles and to describe the preferential vote.
And since publication, based on questions and feedback from council members, we have
published an addendum which includes some additional changes highlighted in yellow.
And these are available in your council packets and they're also available online.
Additionally, just to clarify, staff did make some additional cleanup type changes for these
documents to remove outdated references or to include updates based on current practices.
However, this was not intended to be a comprehensive update of those documents.
So if there are additional changes, we would propose to bring those back at a later date
so
again, the the council action is to
recommended action is to introduce the ordinance to amend the Municipal Code and also adopt the resolution to update the Commission Rules and the
City Council Handbook and
Next steps if the ordinance is introduced it would return to Council on August 6th for adoption
And with that, I will take any questions that you have.
Are there questions?
Okay.
I see no questions.
I will now ask for a public comment.
I actually don't see any, oh, I know I do.
Correct me.
I have seen a public.
But that person isn't moving here.
So we're going to assume we're just going to roll forward.
Now, I will ask for comments.
And since you committed to the fact that you had them, please.
I have myself.
Thank you very much.
And thank you to all members of staff who executed this.
It is complicated when you're dealing with an ordinance,
a policy document, and a handbook.
And what you realize as you're cross-referencing them
is that maybe there are already some inconsistencies
between them that we have to be sure don't happen
or get exacerbated.
So I have three, so thank you for the work.
Thank you for taking my comments yesterday morning
and executing virtually all of them.
So I appreciate it.
There are I think four things that are still,
and the one that is the issue that is of concern to me
is we still, we have to ensure that if we require
residency of those commissioners,
those adult commissioners, that it is says so
in the ordinance and all other documents
because we did have a problem at one point
in our recent history that council members
Wilk and Francois had to straighten out
and we may not have caught all references to it,
so I'm going to give you some page references.
In the ordinance on page three, item two dash 1.105, qualifications, the B paragraph,
I think we have to insert shall be residents of the City of Walnut Creek.
And I checked this with the City Attorney before.
I appreciate that on page two, it says that unless otherwise specified, the commissioners,
which in this case would be the adults, must be residents of the city of Walnut Creek.
So that page is correct, but if you go to pages 6 and 7, so the Arts Commission and
the Design Review Commission are the exceptions.
The Design Review Commission no longer has any reference to the fact that there are certain
three of them may not, only two have to be, and it's in the handbook, but it's not here.
And then the Arts Commission where it says, I think that phrase works as long as we remember
that commissioner is an adult and member is any age.
So I think page six is okay, but page seven has lost at some point in time the reference
that the architects may do not have to be residents of the city of Walnut Creek.
It does say the architects need not be residents of the city. Oh, I'm sorry. I look for it
Okay, so I stand corrected so it's just the students need to say the city of Walnut Creek on page three
Okay. Thank you
We can include that as part of the motion when the council's ready
Okay
Are you done? I'm done. Okay, is there anyone else that would like to make a
comment? I'll just make a comment that I really appreciate that we have the pilot
program. We saw how well it worked. We saw the enthusiasm among not just the
people, the youth commissioners at the seat of the table, but the Youth
Leadership Commission as well. Thank you for being the liaison to this, Randy and
Carla, your involvement as well. And I'm really pleased that we're gonna move
this forward. I'm gonna let Councilmember Silva though. I'm just gonna say is there
more comment? I just want to say I really appreciate all the work that you guys
put into this and it is exciting it's fun to have the kids involved I really
appreciate it and sometimes they go on and do great things there was one of the
kids that was an Eagle Scout under our program and ended up going running for
local election and one and so it's it's fun to see them go out in the world okay
now may I have a motion do this in two motions I move to introduce the ordinance
to amend title to chapter 1 article 1 of the Walnut Creek municipal code as
amended tonight to add student commissioners to the arts transportation
and pros commissions and way first reading second roll call please
Councilmember Silva. Aye. Councilmember Wilk. Aye. Councilmember Francois. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Darlene. Aye. Mayor Haskew. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.
And I move to adopt a resolution amending Policy 102 Commission Rules and Procedures and the City Council Handbook. And I'll second.
Okay and another vote please. Councilmember Silva. Aye. Councilmember Wilk. Aye. Councilmember Francois. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Darlene. Aye. Mayor Haskew. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And since that is the sum of our agenda,
we get to leave while the sun is still up.
So I adjourn the meeting until our next meeting,
which will be a week from tonight.
See you then.