Welcome, would you call the roll?
Commissioner Kwok, here.
Commissioner Ward, here.
Commissioner Klop, here.
Commissioner Reiser, here.
Commissioner Nating, here.
Vice Chair Anderson, here.
And Chair Strongman is absent.
I'm guessing there's nothing on the consent calendar?
Yes.
I get to ask if anyone wants to take anything off the consent calendar.
Any public communications?
I think, unless someone here wants to become public for a moment, we can pass on that as
well.
I'll ask for disclosure of ex parte communications, although I'm not sure there are parties involved.
Okay.
Very good.
Let's move along to public hearings.
There are none.
So moving right along, commission considerations, input for a city council priority setting.
Do we have a staff report?
Let's dive right in.
Hello.
I'm Erica Van de Brandt, the Community Development Director.
And thank you so very much for having me here
this evening, commissioners.
This is your evening to be able to talk about and share
information, talk about which information you
like to share with council with regard to upcoming priorities
for the next two years.
So just by way of background, council, every two years,
goes through and sets priorities for the city and that help guide budgetary decisions and
so forth. Their next Council's next priority setting meeting is going to be occurring on
February 11th of this year. Currently there are five priority areas which is included in your
packet. So the first is diversity, equity, and inclusion. The second is economic development
and job creation third is environmental sustainability and climate action fourth
is parks facilities and other infrastructure and then lastly there's public safety and social
wellness within that as in your agenda report there are you know sub areas within that for
specific emphasis for example in the parks facilities and other infrastructure there's
the Heather Park Community Center and Aquatics Center there that had been an ongoing priority.
But this evening, the request of you is for you to talk amongst each other, and should
you choose to identify three to five priorities approximately, that you'd like to recommend
to council that from your viewpoint and your perspective as a commission that to offer
you the opportunity to do this.
This is really intended to be more of an informal process as opposed to you know voting and
everything else.
It was how you know council had wanted to hear it.
But this evening both Sung and I will be taking you know notes and we'll attempt to summarize
the consensus of the commission.
And if you have any questions of me you know feel free to ask but otherwise it's your discussion.
Thank you.
I thought that just a little structure to the conversation, what I'd like to do is to
go through the current priorities for the past few years, see if you have thoughts on
that perhaps ought to be continued as priorities in the same vein as, and whether there's perhaps
a follow on to what one of those five is, or whether it seems like, you know, we think
they're probably done with that.
You can move on to something else.
I'm sure that's part of what the council is considering.
So it'd be useful to get information on that.
I'll just go through the five in order.
And then we can just kind of a little round table
on things that people are thinking about
and it might be ideas, present them
and have a little discussion on each
and it goes from that way.
See if we can come up with anything exciting.
So my sense of the first one was diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Reading through what they had done, it seemed to me,
I guess that there's kind of two ways of looking at it.
One is we're not done with that issue.
The other thing is have we made enough progress
So you set it up things in place where it can go on its own
without being a priority because everything's
in place and moving.
And or is it, in fact, something that we're still
trying to figure out and really needs to be prioritized
for another two years.
My thought on this one was that really the heavy lifting
had been completed, that the programs had been put in place,
operating for a while.
There have been staff, you know, have been added,
you know, for specific roles.
And, you know, that may be something that,
because of the number of programs that have been discussed
and talked about and people engaged in it,
seemed to me at least that that was one that
they might, you know, be done with that as a priority,
set it back to kind of monitoring and seeing, you know,
how things perform,
of the things they put in place of the form,
come back to it at some later point.
Are we just going one by one and we're gonna?
We're just, whoever wants to speak.
I mean, I hear what you're saying
and I think there's been quite a bit of progress
made in this regard and I do think there's a clear
commitment on the part of the city to keep this issue
going as a priority but I'm afraid if we take it off the list
and declare victory, then that effort will kind of fall
by the wayside.
And I think particularly with regard to representation
on city committees and commissions,
I don't feel like the process by which people are recruited
and appointed to commissions is broad enough.
And I think we had talked about at one point
having a much more kind of functional-based requirements
for people, like for example, to be on planning.
I think there's a feeling that people need to be
professionally involved as real estate attorneys
or planning professionals or otherwise have
some sort of professional expertise
to serve on a commission of this sort,
and I think that's false.
I think that what you need is the ability to analyze
and consider large amounts of information
and to be someone who is really committed to the issues
and familiar with the issues that the city faces
and to be able to turn that into an action plan
through the work that the commission does.
And I don't see that those goals have been translated
into the materials that are given to people
when we say we need more people for the planning commission.
And I of course love being on the Planning Commission,
but I think when you look at who's on it,
I don't think it reflects the diversity
of our community still,
even though we have made a lot of progress in that area.
So I feel like I am reluctant to take this off as a priority
because I think doing so would be a step backward for us.
And I think we still have work to do.
Anyone else?
Commissioner Klopp.
Thank you.
I read the accomplishments in the attached report.
I was impressed with the amount of work that's been done.
And yet, like my colleague here, I
think there's still more distance to go.
And Walnut Creek, I know in the organizations I work with,
we struggle to try to find leaders who
are representative of the community,
because it is such a diverse community.
and yet the people who step forward
to step into leadership roles tend to fit a certain.
Demographic. Demographic.
And so how do we mentor, recruit differently, develop,
you know, the reimplementation of the,
what's it called, Walnut Creek Academy?
Is that what it's called?
The City Academy? Leadership.
Leadership Academy.
I mean, that's a way to help more different people
get exposed to how the city works
get interested in serving on commissions and serving on task force and I just
think we need to continue to expand that kind of training and exposure to a wide
range of people. Well we suggest perhaps what we can do is suggest that that it
become retained it as a priority but to shift it from a lot of the initial work
which has been done to to expanding it and monitoring how but the initial
and all the stuff as how it's actually operating.
I want to do this stuff, move on to the new.
I think I would agree with that.
It's not removing it as an item of importance,
but shifting the focus on how we implement the goal,
I think would be a good idea.
Very good.
The second one was economic development and job creation.
What struck me about this one was
a lot of what has been done to date involved initiating contact or initiating, it seems
like it's very much at kind of the starting point.
Of course, it's economic development and job creation is a huge item, just the scope of
it.
So I think that, you know, this may be one that, you know, might continue as a priority
in the same vein that has been going, perhaps suggesting a push toward more concrete advancement
in these things, but it is a large, large set of things that are included.
So with particular thoughts, it'd be good.
I think job creation is kind of an interesting one because, you know, when I started working,
first started my job, got fresh out of college, I started working in an office building.
I'm like, okay, you know, that was just years before the pandemic, and then the pandemic
hit and we all transitioned to remote work where I was.
And so when I think of job creation now, I think of not so much like, you know, do we
have office space for people to go work in offices, but also like, are we able to allow
people to have home spaces to work remotely if they needed to or other
functional spaces like you know cafes or the library or other such spaces where
if they want to get away from home or get away from the office they have the
spaces available to them somewhere in the city where they can enjoy you know
the city life that's going on around them have access to good restaurants and
food all the while having a place to do their work kind of at their leisure
where I really like. So I think, you know, I hope that we, you know, I think we do recognize
that the way we think about jobs now has shifted a bit post-pandemic. But I also think there's
a lot of opportunity here to really define how we move forward as a city to, with respect
to job creation and economic development. Are you talking about more coffee shops or
you're talking about identifying spaces that are creating spaces for people that can come
and use it for the day or the week or whatever.
I think it's a bit of both.
It really comes down to who's in the city at any given time, what they're looking for.
I think it's more, I wouldn't say it should be so prescriptive, but definitely should
be more taking an analysis of what is and how we can best meet the needs of people that
that are in the city and moving through the city.
Mr. Warren.
I think it's a really good point, you're not.
Turn on, not off, okay.
I think you've raised a really good point
and I think that the connection
between having a diversity of types of housing available
and the idea of job creation is a lot more important now
than it ever has been in a post COVID world.
And so I think that continuing focus on affordable housing
and a variety of different housing options
I think is really important.
And I think we've come across that
some of our regulations appear to be really restrictive
and we don't have a lot of flexibility.
And I'm looking at this section,
adapt to changes in office uses, for example.
We've really bumped up against that
in terms of what we can approve
or what people are able to apply for.
And I think that I don't know how to really
do that on a just theoretical basis,
but I think some thought into how we can loosen up
some of these restrictions on office versus residential
versus zoning, all these different things,
I think that would be helpful to us
in terms of re-imagining some of the spaces that we have
that are underutilized that could be really helpful
because I think without kind of adapting
to the realistic economic and job situation
that we have now, it's just gonna go somewhere else
where there's more practical ability
to conduct business in a modern 2025 way.
So I would like to see that.
I think, I did wanna point out that I think
that the streamlining permitting processes item
has been a pretty huge success on the part of staff
in terms of a whole different bunch of areas,
and I think they're really to be commended in doing that.
I think that there are communities in the Bay Area
that have really gone backwards in that area.
And I think that we've done a good job
in really trying to facilitate people
creating more housing or businesses
or just development in a responsible way
without just getting bogged down
and really onerous and time-consuming permitting
for no real gain other than just annoying people.
So I think that's been a huge success.
And I think we need to celebrate that to some degree.
I just think it's frustrating when we have large swaths
of old outdated office parks or shopping centers
that could be put to more creative use
and were prevented from doing that by,
specific plans or other zoning and regulatory restrictions.
So I think we need to look at that more seriously
in terms of what we're doing.
I'd have to concur based on input that I've received
sorry from both the real estate and business community
in terms of the frustration of getting things passed,
zoning, that type of thing,
getting businesses started, et cetera, so yeah.
I had a few thoughts about the jobs.
Housing, yeah.
Sorry, about the, yeah, the jobs.
And then I definitely have a lot of thoughts on housing,
because that's what I do.
For the jobs, I have really enjoyed when,
I think it was a year ago,
We were all waiting for a lifetime fitness to come in.
And they're there.
And my kids go to their kids' academy.
And being able to see the high school kids, college kids,
and then post-college folks that are trying to figure out
their way in this world, what do I do?
That young person in their early 20s,
it has so much potential.
And it's just about finding a place of where to go.
I've seen all of these young people,
including when Cooper's moved from Lafayette
to Walnut Creek and just kind of that whole area
has absolutely come alive
and being able to see these young people coming in
and they actually enjoy doing the work,
even if it's like picking up towels.
And so I think that the work that we're doing
to help alleviate some of the restrictions,
as you were saying, Melissa,
about even when we did the signs right,
of one of the office parks at the triangle
wanted to attract more vendors and clients and businesses
and being able to have a lighting in the sign.
When you, I would love to have that type of activity
and energization that Lifetime brought,
which I'm hoping original Joe's next door can bring,
But you start looking, there's so many areas
where we can get those jobs back, if you will,
or activation, like I take my girls to Trader Joe's
and that area right in front of Trader Joe's
is kinda empty and it hasn't been filled for a long time.
Or behind the Broadway Plaza parking lot
where it was the old train station depot area,
that right there could be a whole other place
where you can add that activation
because you know that there's the young people,
even if they go away to college,
they're coming back because these folks are calling me up
saying, hey, can I nanny, you know, for your kids?
So they're coming back because they love Walnut Creek.
So I think when the city did the housing element,
there was so much unbelievable data
that HCD required to be included in the housing element
in order to even be certified.
and there's a lot of data about vacancy that we're using
and it would be awesome to be able to open up the vault
for that vacancy data on,
because that's how the city right analyzed
on what had to be rezoned to meet the Rena numbers.
So if we could look at the data
of what commercial properties are not being utilized,
because frankly, for developers to come in
and to rezone or do a general plan amendment
to change the general plan designation
is so unbelievably cumbersome
because it's a completely discretionary process,
which then leads me to the housing
and something that Melissa brought up.
Assemblymember Wicks has been doing a lot of work.
She passed AB 2011, I think it was a year ago,
and then AB 2011 was there, correct me if I'm wrong,
it was like AB then 2243 that amended AB 2011,
which allows the conversion of commercial to residential,
albeit all these little nuances that go into it.
But to my knowledge, and me as a developer
and as an engineer, it's difficult to even get it
because, and that's what Assemblymember Wicks
was trying to do by changing it.
Because there's certain other contingencies, if you will,
like prevailing wage, or you have to have
a certain size of a parcel.
you can't, you know, adjacency requirements.
And so it would be pretty amazing if the city,
I know there's no redevelopment agency anymore,
but if the city could look at those beautiful gem
jewel properties that are commercial,
that makes sense to have something there,
whether it's a commercial aspect or a mixed use,
or whether it's just housing, to partner with somebody
and be able to kind of clear that pathway
to get that energization in there, whatever it may be.
And that's all that data from the housing element
that the city paid for, that's perfect to be used.
Sorry, I'm almost done, I apologize.
Regarding permit streamlining,
permit streamlining is amazing,
and I'm really glad that it was codified
in governmental section 65958,
or Claire, you can correct me if I'm wrong.
Because the moment that you're defined
as a housing development, you're protected
as a housing development and that permits
streamlining provision.
The one thing that I would love to see,
there is no permit, there's no statutory time limitations
legally on CEQA, and so it's interesting
because all those cities have to abide by the 30 days,
you know, you have to deem the project complete,
determined to be complete,
then you submit your formal application,
30 days, 30 days, 30 days, 30 days. That is all fine. But then CEQA can go on forever.
And I would love to, you know, the city of San Jose, they've been issuing this documentation
that kind of gives timelines of what they're trying to adhere to for CEQA. And I know that
our staff. San Jose is fine, but Walnut Creek is amazing and our staff is awesome and we're
knowledgeable and we're always been ahead of different laws with Claire and her team and
Sung and Erica and so it would be pretty amazing if we can then say we know that statutorily
permit streamlining doesn't apply to CEQA but if it truly is for example a CEQA exemption by way
of a one five one six eight or one five one six nine right then we can kind of
put that timeline so we can start issuing those permits and really kind of
get ahead of it and not try to use CEQA as something that stops or holds the
development whether it's a commercial activation which doesn't I don't think
premise streamlining does that protect commercial I think it's only housing
right clear housing right development as as define so those are kind of my
thoughts I just jumbled it all together but
let me comment on one area we're not the only city that is dealing with too much
office space if you will or unused office space that's pretty general you
you throw together you know the advent of zoom and the whole idea of working from home
and you throw in the pandemic and it just kind of put everything on steroids and here we are
nobody needs offices anymore. In fact the suite that we're in the main law firm there
sent everybody home and said don't don't come back on the pandemic we're all working fine
and after about a year after the pandemic they looked at the bottom line and said okay
everybody come back into the office because their buildings are way down but that's not
the case in all cases but it's something that it's certainly turning and trying to figure it out.
Certainly if Walnut Creek wanted to really look at you know streamlining of you know
reusing office space, reconfiguring it, using it for new purposes, combining empty office
spaces in order to create something different, whether it's youth-oriented, more vibrant
situation.
Of course, I mean, we have more people asking to sort of bear after 1130, but that's another
story.
Yeah, I mean, I think that may be something that could be a real focus of, you know,
we've got a lot of this office space, you know, or a city that, you know, should use
what we have.
How can we do that?
What are other cities doing?
Yeah, I will just add, as I read through the detailed report, I was surprised to really
only find the housing element mentioned in one bullet under one topic and
considering the amount of work that has gone into that you know I feel like
that's a priority area for us that hits so many different sectors of these
priorities and a lot of work has been accomplished in terms of the sort of
of structural policy updates and changes.
So now what's the next step?
What's the next step to really live up
to our housing element, our plan?
You know, looking at office spaces,
looking at education for developers,
looking at finding new partnerships, new ways to build
because we need housing, we need affordable housing,
we need housing for all types of people.
And so to me, that would be a priority area.
I would really hope we bring into this
and focus on over the next few years, so.
Are you suggesting that we have housing
be a separate priority category?
Because we have these five that were here,
and I wonder if, I mean, I don't know if we're allowed
to do six or make a new suggestion,
but it seems like maybe housing is baked into a lot of these,
but maybe it needs to be its own category.
If I might interject just quickly,
at the last priority setting meeting council,
it actually talked about potentially having housing
as a separate priority.
And then at that juncture felt that,
oh, we're so close to getting our housing element certified.
Well, lo and behold, the world changed
and it took many months longer to get it certified.
So, I think that there's certainly space there
for you to provide feedback to council about that.
And I guess the other thing too,
as you were talking through the area
about economic development and job creation,
this came very close to becoming a priority last time,
but then the council backed off,
which was doing a general plan update.
And I think that they would be very much interested
and your thoughts and opinions about the city
undertaking a general plan update.
Because I think many of your comments in that section
really would be reflected in that type of effort.
When was the last update?
2006, and it goes through 2025.
So there's certain timeliness around it.
And it takes a couple of years to get that going.
I mean, that was not as slow as getting started.
It's a great idea, you know, I think it's overdue or due or timely or something but
I think some of the frustrations that we're expressing here or some of the opportunities
that we're expressing could be could be alleviated by having a more modernized up to date overall
vision for, you know, what we want to do going forward,
what we want our community to look like.
So I would, I think that would be a,
now I'm adding two categories, right?
Housing and general plan update.
I'd like to have 17 priorities, please.
It's all a priority, oh my gosh.
No, but I think that's a great point.
And I appreciate that, Erica, very much.
All right, moving on, environmental sustainability.
Again, this seemed to me that a lot of that work
had been done in the sense that the action plan is in place,
staff has been, as a sustainability manager now
has been hired, sustainability programs in place,
there's a communications plan in place.
So it seems that maybe I'll suggest one that say,
okay, you've done the heavy lifting initially,
and this may be a time to step back,
let it do its job and see, you know,
kind of, you know, watch and wait
and see how that plays out.
See if there are things that we need to do beyond that.
I think the fear is perception that if you take it off,
we're not doing anything about it
or we don't care about it,
and that's certainly not the case.
It's just not one of the five focal points, perhaps, so yeah.
you can't just focus on the same five things indefinitely, so yeah, but I think
again, nothing's been done that you know a clear direction is set and there's
people and programs in place to do it. Commissioner Niedge? I wonder if similar to what we're
doing for the DEI where instead of a more global we kind of take it in and
put our aim towards a certain focus. In here, I do remember there was a lot of
work the city did for the sustainability action plan which is now in place. One
thing about here is open space protection but more importantly
disaster resiliency and especially everything that is going on right now in
Southern California and I know that a lot of folks in when the the state we
have local responsibility areas and state responsibility areas in the city of
Walnut Creek and a lot of the areas that were state were actually put on high fire
hazard zones and it's interesting because in a lot of people subsequently
got their insurance canceled which actually does not help with the affordability of homes.
But one thing that we've been looking at from a sustainability for a group I volunteer with
is putting together, there's so many available resources in order to create resiliency with
regards to fire hazard. One of them for example is chapter 7a of the California
building code. Normally that would only apply if you were in a WUI or wildlife
wild life wild land urban interface. So you can correct me if I'm wrong.
But there's also this other organization it's IBHS and they have
very similar mitigation measures if you will about how to create that fire
resistivity to not allow the embers to get in so creating like firewalls and
the soffits and how to how the embers like can't get into I am NOT an architect
guy sorry I'm a civil engineer but how those embers can't like roof scatters
Those vents, fences, decks, so it's basically they have this whole list of mitigations against
embers and flames because it's absolutely heartbreaking what's happening right now in
Southern California, and we're very blessed right now that we don't have that, but very
near to us in the Bay Area, we've previously had some horrible, horrible fires, but I know
that there's all these things that can be done to help create that so I wonder
if that could be one thing that in our environmental sustainability and climate
action plan or maybe it's not called that but it's more it's more focused on
on a disaster resiliency which is the last item in the description of what we
had previously had a priority. So I'm wondering if because so much of this
category appears to have been accomplished as has been pointed out
but disaster resiliency still remains a key item that we're doing. I wonder if
that more appropriately should be moved to the public safety and social
wellness category so then it can remain a priority but would just not be under
the umbrella of environmental sustainability and climate action.
I see a lot of recording going on over here. I appreciate that.
That makes sense to me too. I know that the community that I live in, Rossmore, is doing
a tremendous amount to try to be more resilient and fire safe and pursuing fire wise designation.
And I just think there's a lot to do and learn in this space and a lot of risks.
So I think for me, so when I think about disaster resiliency, you know, working for the county
government, I often go around to a lot of different places around the county and look
at different buildings and how we think about, you know, how does it function not just as
a building for the public, but also, you know, if it needs to be converted to a place to
hold evacuees or as a place to, you know, what alternate purpose can I have? So I
like to think about disaster resiliency in terms of multifunctional uses. The
general intended use when buildings or other public infrastructure is
functioning, that's like maybe the flood channels, but also it's like how can it
be a recreational use? So for example, like you know the canal trail that runs
to the city. It's by the, it's not like by Walnut Creek, but you know if you think about
it in terms of if there were a pretty severe flooding event, how do we ensure that, you
know, is there like an extended level of infrastructure work that we can help to, that we can do to
contain the waters within like a wider channel, but also when it doesn't rain that much like
when we're in a drought period, how do we ensure that those kinds of spaces are also
functional for the public, maybe as you continue to use as trails or other types of interesting
amenities that will help people attract people to those areas and keep them as activated
spaces.
Right.
Moving on to parks, facilities and other infrastructure.
My thought here was that in this category, the city, rightly so, has made heroic efforts
to get Heather Farms on its way.
And they've done that.
You know, there's a design, there's people involved,
you know, who are gonna continue to carry that forward.
There was very little mention of, you know,
a couple lines on other infrastructure.
But it occurred to me that,
you can sort of take Heather Farms off the list,
but maybe you wanna add not only park infrastructure,
but infrastructure generally.
You know, whether that's roads, trails, utilities,
may want to partner with some of the utilities
to kind of find out what they're doing
to maintain the infrastructure.
What are the issues that they see?
Is it something that the city could, you know,
could cooperate with them to move things along?
Are there things that we should be concerned about
because 10 years down the road,
all the water mains will disappear
and just run away and we'll have water every day
or nowhere, I don't know, sure.
But, you know, just kind of get in touch with folks
and the communications,
you know, whether that's cell towers
or all kinds of other infrastructure for that.
But it occurred to me that just when I saw
the other infrastructure,
and I didn't get much play because of Heather Farms,
there's a lot of infrastructure beyond even
what they anticipated here that could be a focus
in the future.
Thoughts?
Again, I think this is an area where our city staff
has really excelled in terms of engaging
in cooperative projects and grants and other programs
with the state and federal government for things like roads
and bridges and the flood control and the like.
And I think we're doing a really good job with that.
we may need to advertise a little more
about what a good job we're doing.
And I know I had made a comment at a previous session
about, you know, fairly critical remark
regarding flood control being, you know,
our sandbag stations, which was not well received
and rightly so, so I guess I'll apologize again for that.
But I do think that, you know,
with climate change being a reality,
our flood control and fire control issues
particularly are taking a different form
than was anticipated when these systems
were originally developed.
And along with our population increase,
it's certainly something that deserves some attention,
I think.
And it's not, I know it's frustrating to say,
well, it just costs so many billions of dollars
that we can't even contemplate doing anything about it.
So we're just gonna kind of give up.
And I don't think we can do that.
I think we need to come up with some sort of realistic plan
and see how we can break it down into smaller plans
where we can at least do something or come up with something.
Although we should keep the sandbag stations
in the meantime, but it's a big task to do.
Now I know I used to work in one of the office buildings
Main Street and the you know we lost power constantly the grid just wasn't set up for
you know the kind of power needs that a modern office building had in that location and
so something like that is important to keep renewing revisiting because we can't have a vibrant
downtown business center without the infrastructure that goes along to to support that.
Something when you said billion-dollar projects I was thinking you know they don't come up very
often, at least not successfully, but I was thinking what are those projects around here?
One occurred to me as the Naval Weapon Station and that's a huge project that's kind of come
and gone, floundering forward, I think you could describe it.
On the other hand, another one was the fourth funnel of the Caldecott and that basically
went ahead and got done.
It got done.
It was a miracle.
Well, I'm still waiting for the museum for all the dinosaur fossils and stuff, you know.
Where did they go? I want to see them.
billion dollars, not billion years.
Oh man.
But I, you know, I think we've, we've, um, we're going to start working on the bridge replacement
and road replacement, you know, canal area, um, uh, project. And that's a pretty big federal,
you know, local partnership, um, with regard to that. I don't know if it got to a billion
dollars but it's many many many million so no big projects some of them so I I
think we're doing a great job but I think we need to keep thinking big with
regard to what needs to happen to keep updating and it's it's it's such a broad
area to try and tackle the priority may be to prioritize infrastructure yeah
Yeah, I think we've taken it for granted in a lot of ways.
And I think there's a general trying to shift responsibility from a municipality to private
developers in terms of developing new projects and having responsibility for roads and drainage
and other things that are historically a government task to private entities and homeowners associations
and the like.
that that's not a sustainable policy, you know, I think it's got to be much more
thoughtful in terms of how we do that because you can't just say well now you
hundred homeowners are just responsible for your road and that's the way it's
gonna go. I think it needs to be more than just passing the buck, which I'm
not saying we've been doing that necessarily, but that's certainly the
inclination of a lot of entities and agencies right now to try and do that
Transportation falls under infrastructure, too, right? I don't see a lot of focus on that in terms of that, but it actually has traffic
transit pedestrian bike safety under public safety and social wellness, and I'm not sure if that might not belong more under infrastructure, but
the old report has it under the public safety and social wellness, so it is indeed under public safety and social wellness.
So with that, let's turn to public safety and—
Turn to that.
Why not?
On that segue.
So in this one, I had a—I'll look at the five subheadings there, the first one, innovative
effects and responses to homelessness and mental health challenges.
There was a lot of work that had been done in that area.
the others it's not as clear to me how far along they are with the plans they
trying to put in place I'm gonna question I had is is that something that
they need to expand or just evaluate what they've done what's the next step
in that I wasn't entirely clear what that should be I don't know anyone else
had thoughts on that I mean looking at looking at the proactive police response
as to crime trends, I think that we, this organized retail theft issue has become more
than just a nuisance and an issue for individual retailers at this point.
It's become an incredible safety issue for our entire downtown and is compromising our
economic development and job creation, our ability to attract new businesses and to have
people feel safe and happy to be taking advantage of the excellent retail
opportunities that we have in our downtown. So I know that police are
working on it but I think it definitely needs to still be a priority and it needs
to be more than a PR effort of you know social media posts and the like which I
I know it is, but I just, I think it needs a coordinated
multi-agency approach, and I know that's happening,
but I think that's not reflected in the priority
as it's listed here, and so I think that maybe
it needs to be a separate bullet point of its own,
combating this organized retail theft issue,
because it just seems big and scary to me,
and that maybe it's just because it's in the news,
but I feel like it's really causing us
some significant issues.
Mr. Clark.
Thank you and of course I have to comment
on the homelessness and mental health challenges
priority area and I agree there's been
a tremendous amount done and Walnut Creek
is really a model for some of the services
that we offer with our partnership with CORE,
the Contra Costa Crisis Center work that's amazing
as well as our HOP team, which is unique.
But I still think we have challenges
and opportunities, plenty,
as we see the impact of some of the Supreme Court
case work and clearing of encampments
and people showing up in our city
that are not who we usually have seen before.
There are two things I would love to see
woven into the priorities.
One is Walnut Creek also was cutting edge
in establishing a homeless task force,
which was a volunteer-led collaborative agency,
collaborative organization that many not-for-profit agencies
in the city and the county all participated in
a way to communicate and collaborate on issues that were coming up that were affecting everyone.
And that organization, that entity accomplished a lot and sort of lived its life span out
in that format and then dissolved last year.
And so I think in the new year to be thinking about what was good that we learned from that
And how can we do it differently to even move into the next ten years and figure out how
to help each other through these challenging problems?
So I'm not sure what that looks like, but I think that there's an opportunity to have
conversations about a future of that.
And the second is, we are, as I was talking with my colleagues here, just opening our
our transitional, or our evening winter shelter
for this year will only be two and a half months.
And we did the hard work in our updates
of all of our plans and zoning elements
to show where we can have shelters.
Now let's have one, and have one year round,
because that is a key gap in our community,
in our ability to address some of these issues.
So, we don't want to do traffic.
I am.
I am more.
So another element of social wellness that I think we kind of don't address head on we
address in a really reactive way rather than a proactive way is the kind of the alcohol
permits that we that we approve on a regular basis.
And I know that, you know, frustration that I have is that we don't have a measurable
way to kind of evaluate the effect that alcohol use and abuse has on our community and we're
just reacting essentially to crime and, you know, gross violations of the alcohol licensing
regulations as opposed to social wellness overall and looking at the effect of kind
of promoting legal alcohol overuse in a lot of ways
as an assumption that that is necessary
in order to have healthy businesses
in our downtown community,
and I'm not sure that that assumption is valid.
I think it's kind of a self-perpetuating belief,
and no one is a bigger fan of restaurants
in this community than I am,
and I want to see them open and thrive and do all that,
but I just think that we've gotten kind of caught
in this kind of strange numeric issuance
of late night permits versus other permits
and assumptions about who's drinking where and when
and how that is regulated and controlled.
And I think that maybe a broader view
about social health and wellness in our community
with regard to both alcohol and legal cannabis use
would be helpful because I think there's a lot
of social assumptions that are baked
into the way that we regulate and use it
that aren't really reflective of the,
both the benefits and the harm to our community
that those elements present to us.
And so I don't really know how to do that,
but I think that taking each license application
in a vacuum or only looking at police calls
is not a way to promote social wellness
in our community with regard to alcohol use.
So I don't know who to consult about that or what to do,
but I would like to see possibly it being put down
as an area where we need to rethink how we're doing this
because I think it's an issue that needs some thought
and some consideration.
I think I'm going to speak a little bit about the improved traffic aspect of this priority.
And I think for me, the wayfinding signs would be a big help as someone who's fairly new
to the city, trying to learn my way around it and understand, you know, I didn't realize
there was a big hill in the city that divides the downtown area from the rest of the city.
when you go over where John Muir is,
and to get down to the other side
where the shade lands area is.
So I think wayfinding, but not just in the sense of like,
you know, if I'm driving around the city,
do I know how to get to shade lands?
Do I know how to get back to downtown?
Also like if I wanted to bike around the city
and do it on bike or by foot, how can I do that?
So I often like to take BART to go to San Francisco
and I think about, you know, on my way back,
For people that are traveling from the city,
San Francisco to here,
do they know that there's a number four shuttle
that'll take them to downtown?
Or do they know that there are buses
and other ways to get to major attractions around the city
if they wanted to go to the Shea Lance Farmer's Market
or if they wanted to go check out the Farmer's Market
on Locust Street?
I have seen the signs that the temporary sandwich courts,
I think those are helpful.
But to advertise kind of what are the main attractions
in our city that people might want to see
when they visit and get off at the BART station
or get off, not however they get to here,
we find need would be a big help.
And also we had a communication from someone
who was very excited about getting the city
to do more for bicycle and pedestrian trails
or lanes or whatever.
I know that, I mean, I live about three miles from work,
but I can't bicycle three miles to work.
if I really wanted to do it with any kind of safety,
I got to go over to the Iron Horse Trail,
I'll go down there and then come back in.
That's about six miles that way.
But yeah, there's certainly,
especially the downtown kind of gaps in, you know,
kind of safe, safe pathways to get around
bicycle or pedestrian.
Mission needed.
There's, there's so many manuals on bike lanes,
class one, class two, class three, three,
The easiest one is where you're sharing bicycle and vehicular, but in a proper bicycle lane,
and you drive around the city, we have an established city that's older than a newer one.
A lot of the streets are actually really, really wide.
I've seen our transportation department, Smedara has been doing a really, really good job
about trying to figure out what areas. I remember she put her and her team put
together kind of test areas where they can do traffic calming where they did
the cones the temporary cones just to kind of so the neighbors don't squawk
and was like what are you doing you know before putting in the actual you know paint
striping and there's speaking of like the amount of money that that it takes
to do any sort of improvement. That to me is something that is now visible on like a
poor ductile iron pipe underneath the ground for water. But that would be something that's so easy
because there are a lot of bikers, walkers, joggers, and strollers, like myself with the stroller,
that even if we support the transportation department to help locate the different areas
where there's a lot of pedestrians or there's routes where they can prioritize main routes to
get from certain sectors of neighborhoods into those areas where we are eating, working, visiting,
Even if it's just paint striping, I noticed they did, I live near an elementary school and they did
the paint striping and they added a stop and goodness gracious it helped out so much because
we drop off my little girl at kindergarten, you know, by foot and seeing how fast the cars drive
and that stop sign made all the difference even if it was just for that little period.
So I think having that priority to your point would be amazing to try to look where those areas and support the transportation department that's been doing that.
All right, so we've actually identified a number of areas beyond the five that are currently part of the city council's priorities.
and just broadly housing, office reuse, reconfiguration,
general plan update, infrastructure of a variety of kinds, whether that's all one big priority or
some specific parts of it might be, I'm sure the notes still being taken are more complete than
that but those kind of the general years that come out of our discussion of what's
already there. Are there any other things that you've thought about that you know
ought to be priorities that we haven't covered? I know when I before I came over
here I asked my wife on the way out of the office oh yeah we're going to talk
about City Council priorities what do you think they should prioritize? And
immediately came back, more pianos on Main Street.
So, I'll just throw that out there from Mr. Ojito.
But any other thoughts that something
that we've all been missing that really needs consideration?
I mean, I think that there's been a lot of effort
to have public Wi-Fi and access to technology
and other things available.
I think we need to continue to improve
and expand that kind of opportunity.
I know it's easy for us to think,
well, I got my iPhone, I'm ready to go,
I'm all good, but not everyone in our community
has those kind of resources.
And I think we need to make sure
that everybody's able to participate fully
in the modern communication and opportunities
that that kind of technology,
that we often take for granted,
but actually requires quite a,
maybe it goes in infrastructure,
to have a technology component
in the infrastructure provision as well.
I think that can be a social justice issue
for people that are less resourced.
And I think it's important
that we make sure everybody's included in that way.
You can combine that with Commissioner Kwok's satellite.
There you go, right.
This is for downtown.
I like it.
Maybe have some at the schools or around town.
I wanted to add a comment about the city's public art.
I really love the art that we have in the city,
and one of the things I enjoy doing with my family
when they come to visit here is to walk through downtown
and say, oh, look, there's the fountainhead on Main Street,
and then kind of go see, well, what's,
is there more art around the corner that we can discover?
So I love the dedication that the city has put
into public art and kind of inviting the public
to look around and see what they can find around the corner,
what kind of art will I find on the next street over,
or where does this street go?
What will I find over there?
So the element of discovery in the city
is one that I think we do really well in.
And I think that for public safety and social wellness,
having that kind of art and continual,
finding new things in your city is something
that I think is as an intangible quality
is something our city really does well in.
And I think we should continue to work on that.
Well, I will ask the staff if we've given you enough to think about relay onto the City Council.
So you've definitely given us many notes for us to try and synthesize.
I will ask the question is there are there any of the priorities that you would recommend
that we take off this time or that the council take off this time?
I mean I thought there was some consensus that perhaps the environmental sustainability
and climate action category could be removed with disaster resiliency being moved to public
safety and social wellness.
Likewise, the parks and other infrastructure be sort of tilted off of the parks and onto
the other infrastructure.
Okay.
Good.
I just wanted to make sure that the way that I heard it was the way that you were actually
saying it right now thank you any closing remarks if not I think just a
quick question so this process happens at all of the commissions correct so
each of the commissions is being asked to you know provide input to the council
and you know the way that that input will be provided will be through the
notes that we captured and so on. And it's meant to be, you know, a more
informal process as opposed to, you know, voting and all the rest of it. But it, I
think that as you have all spoken, there's been a level of consensus that
you've identified and we've attempted and will continue to attempt to capture them.
Great. Thank you. All right. Item 6 on the agenda is Commission Member and
staff reports or announcements?
So are there any staff reports, announcements?
No staff reports tonight.
If I could just, there's not a staff report,
but there is one thing to note that on the 30th,
there is a joint meeting scheduled
between Planning Commission
and then the Design Review Commission.
And it is really just more of a study session
slash introductory session about the signed program
and the sign ordinance update,
because probably the last time you saw this
was back in what, 27, 2018,
and so we just wanted to bring everyone up to date,
and then also to request a member of Planning Commission,
and then a member of the Design Review Commission
to serve on a working group as we go forward.
On that note, I would add that I carefully arranged,
I'm gonna be gone this Saturday for four weeks.
But I did it to cover an area
where it was a fifth Thursday in January,
so I was only gonna miss one planning commission meeting.
And now I'm gonna miss two,
because I could find another one on the fifth Thursday.
Plus you're gonna be the representative
to the house force too, so.
Yeah, I saw that coming, I saw that coming.
Yes, indeed.
Any other comments?
Meeting is adjourned.
And we'll see you, I won't see you,
but we'll meet again on the 23rd.
No, no.