a little bit more. I heard it was a hot day today.
Good evening, I'm Cindy Darling, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek,
and welcome to the regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.
The City Council is conducting this meeting from the City Council Chamber.
This meeting is 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 wanted to welcome everyone and talk briefly
about the public comment process. For each agenda item, there will be an opportunity for public
comment on that item. 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 titled Public Communications, which is for public comments for items not on the
agenda. Any comments during public communication 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
communication for items not on the agenda. Additional time for public
communications for items not on the agenda will be provided at the end of
the open session portion of the meeting if necessary. If you desire to provide a
to public comment, please complete a speaker identification card and line up
behind the lectern at the appropriate time. Wait your turn and then when you
approach the lectern please state your name, city of residence for the record.
You 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
All members of the public have a full, fair, and equal opportunity to be heard.
The City Council handbook outlines decorum expected in the Council 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,
or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the Council meeting.
Again, each speaker will have two minutes to make your remarks.
and comments submitted and received up to two hours before the meeting have been posted
to the city website for public review and are included in the meeting record but will
not be separately read into the record.
Good evening and welcome everyone. My name is Councilmember Matt Francois. I'm filling
in for Mayor Cindy Darling this evening. And welcome to the Tuesday, September 16th meeting
of the Walnut Creek City Council. If you'll please rise if you're able and 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.
And City Clerk Susie Martinez, would you please call the roll?
Council Member Davini?
Here.
Council Member Francois?
Here.
Council Member Silva?
Here.
Mayor Pro Tem Wilk?
Here.
And Mayor Darlene is absent due to a planned vacation.
Excellent.
excellent. So we have a quorum and we can conduct business. We're going to start off
tonight by issuing a proclamation and recognizing Hispanic Heritage Month. And as many of you
know, from September 15th to October 15th is our annual celebration of Hispanic Heritage
month Hispanic and Latino people compromise a majority of racial majority in California
as well as in the country and this week we celebrate the Independence Day of several
Latin American countries including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
Day in fact is Mexican Independence Day and the 18th is the Independence Day of Chile.
So we're very excited to be able to recognize this important event and we have a special
guest here tonight, Francisco Rios from the Monument Crisis Center in Concord and I'd
like to present you with a proclamation from the city and allow you to make some remarks.
Hello, good evening.
name is Francisco Rios. I'm here with my wife and I've been here in the United
States for over 30 years and this is a pleasure to be here with you guys. So I'm
gonna read so be patient. Thank you to the city of Wonder Creek for
acknowledging Monument Crisis Center and allowing us to accept this proclamation
on behalf of the Latino community. It is thanks to the support of the community
such as the city of Warner Creek, and the many individuals, families, and organizations
that support not only Monument Crisis Center, but the community as a whole.
We have clients from all over the world with a rich and diverse background.
During the 2024-25 fiscal year, Monument Crisis Center provided assistance with our six core
programs and served over 14,000 individuals.
And of those, more than 52% are Hispanics.
Our staff also combines different cultures, and many of our staff and board members are
also Hispanic.
By the way, one of our clients, who is a senior, she receives food from us once a week and
spreads the love by cooking soup and sandwiches to feed the homeless and the day laborers.
What makes the Hispanic community important?
and interesting, are all those things that make the Bay Area,
California, and the entire country great.
Like food, music, traditions, work ethics, family values,
and friendship with everyone without any distinctions
or discriminations of creeds, nationalities, or gender.
We, the Latino community, make America great every day
with all the colors, sounds, and flavors
that we bring to share with the vast community
here in the United States.
Viva los tacos, las quesadillas, posole,
menuro, carnitas, arrapas, arrapas, gallo pinto,
horchata, pupusas, asado, mariachi, banda.
Viva toda la comunidad, Latina.
I thank everyone here today
for embracing us, the Latino community.
As a member of the Monument Crisis Center
and the Hispanic community, I am very proud
to accept this proclamation.
And thank you to the city council.
Thank you to the community for your support.
Thank you for having us here today.
And if you guys want to visit us at Morniman Crisis Center
and see how we work, you're welcome to come down
and see us working.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Cheryl.
Thank you.
We'd like to invite your wife who's doing some videography up, and we'll take a picture
with the council.
Oh, great.
Thank you.
What do you want to pick you up?
Right here?
Okay.
Okay.
Next on the agenda is the consent calendar.
Do any of my council colleagues wish to pull any item for discussion?
Mayor Pro Tem Wilk?
Okay.
Does any member of staff need to pull an item for discussion?
looking like it so now turn to the public would any member of the public
like to address the council on an item that's on the consent calendar come on
down Jan Warren woodlands item D having to do with the CDBG funds and I wish I
could remember what they stand for anyhow I just wanted a couple
clarifications it gets a little confusing with CDBG because we have our
funds but we do certain things with the counties and our other cities and so it talks about the
2025 pit count and shows 40 percent of Contra Costa County unhoused populations and they're
in shelter beds while other 60 percent remain unsheltered. But then later in the report
I think it's just talking about Walnut Creek that that was the county
And on page six, it's talking about the CR 10, the racial and ethnic composition of families
that have been assisted by the funds here Walnut Creek. And so I assume that means this list of
ethnicities have somehow been benefited from the CDBG funds that Walnut Creek has
used. And the other piece of that same thing as it talks about on page 11,
the Contra Costa County homeless population decreased by 21.9 percent or from 64 to 50 and that
also seems to be strictly to Walnut Creek so I just appreciate the clarification.
Thank you Jan for your careful reading of the report. Staff I think this is any immediate
responses are probably something that we can look at and make sure there are any clarifications
before it's submitted on to HUD. Is that sound right? Okay, any other public
comments on the consent calendar? All right, then I will entertain a motion.
Move approval of the consent calendar items A, B, C, D, and E with the
corrections submitted at the Dias for the CAPER report as well as the
direction to staff to check on those statistics related to the homeless and
whether though I think I think she's right that the homeless pop count that
we had was specific to Walnut Creek and not the county as a whole. Second. Any
further discussion or debate? So we have a motion and a second. Would the city
clerk please call the roll? Councilmember Silva? Aye. Councilmember Davini? Aye.
Councilmember Francois? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Wilk? Aye. All right moving right along.
Next on the agenda is public communications.
For those of you who have been here before, you know that this is the portion of the meeting
reserved for comment on items that are not on our agenda tonight under the Brown Act.
The council cannot act on items raised during public communications, but we can respond
briefly to statements made or questions posed.
We can also request clarification or refer the item to staff.
So consistent with our City Council handbook, we've set aside 30 minutes at this time for
public communications for items not on the agenda.
The time is 6.15, and we'll take public comments on items not on the agenda until about 6.45.
And then we'll put off any remaining comments until the end of the agenda.
So this time I'd invite any members of the public that would wish to address the Council
on an item that's not on the agenda to please step forward
and remind her that you'll have two minutes.
Hello, city council and city staff.
I am Diane Young.
I have the honor of co-chairing this wild
and wonderful thing called Community Service Day,
which was founded in 2011 by Cindy Silva
for her mayor's project.
And yes, she's still the driving force
behind our continued success.
2025 marks our 15th anniversary and big changes are afoot.
Community Service Day has always happened in early October.
These days, schools who are the source of many projects
and volunteers are taking fall breaks in October.
Therefore, we are moving Community Service Day
to the spring of 2026.
To bridge this transition,
we are looking to take a page for our pandemic playbook.
In 2020, we created a community food drive.
The generous people of Walnut Creek gave over 19 tons
of Food and almost $19,000 to the Contra Costa Food Bank.
This year, we're doing it again on September 27th
and hoping to really blow it up.
There are many ways to help.
More volunteers are needed to staff collection sites
at seven local grocery stores on Saturday,
September the 27th.
You can also give via dozens more collection points,
including schools, libraries, churches, and more.
12,000 Trader Joe's grocery bags will be distributed
throughout our neighborhoods next week.
If you're lucky enough to receive one,
you may follow the directions on the bag
and a lovely volunteer will pick it up.
There's also a virtual food drive.
Every dollar donated buys two meals.
These opportunities are listed on the city's website.
Just enter Walnut Creek Community Service Day
into your favorite search engine.
All the cool ones know about us.
Please mark your calendars and join us
for the Walnut Creek Community Food Drive
on Saturday, September 27th.
Thank you.
Thank you, Diana. Thank you for volunteering.
Next speaker.
Good evening, council members, city staff.
My name is Jim King.
I am a resident of Alamo,
but I've been a business owner in Walla Creek since 1981.
A member of the Walla Creek Masters Swim Club since 1987,
and the chair of fundraising
for the Walla Creek Aquatic Foundation since 2015.
And it is in that capacity that I meet with you tonight.
address you tonight. I want to extend our sincere appreciation for your continued partnership
and vision for the new aquatic center. A brief update. Our campaign, which launched earlier
this year, with the goal of raising $3 million toward the cost of the new aquatic center,
and its construction and long-term sustainability has reached its first goal. We now have pledges
and cash in hand of approximately $655,000, about 22 percent of our goal.
Some of you will recall we set the goal some years ago.
We appreciate that we are making progress toward that goal.
It is not something we expect to achieve by the end of this year and possibly not by the
end of next year, but certainly within the time horizon set out and our memorandum of
understanding, we feel very confident we'll be able to reach that goal. So far
we've had individual donations ranging from $100 to $300,000. We've had three
naming opportunities that have been claimed. The response from the community
has been overwhelmingly positive. Donors are excited to be part of something that
will serve all ages from swim lessons for children to therapeutic programs for
seniors. Several families and local businesses have expressed interest in
naming opportunities as I mentioned a moment ago. Upcoming efforts include a
continued outreach to major donors and grant-making institutions hopefully for
naming the center itself. Finally, finally I would ask your support that you would
share the campaign with your networks, that you would attend some of our
upcoming events we'll have a table at the farmers market on the 27th along
with the food raising people and the Walnut Creek master's support or provide
an opportunity of the annual short course meters meet on October 3rd through
the 5th and finally I would like to encourage the council and staff to make
a pledge or a contribution to show a leadership role and you can do that by
going to our website wscaquatics.org. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. King
and thank you to the Aquatics Foundation for the partnership on this we
appreciate it very much. Good evening council members and members of the
community. My name is Kayla Trenage and this is my colleague Sophia Cleveland
and we are the new district field representatives for Assemblywoman
Ana-Marie Avila-Farias who is honored to serve Assembly District 15. We are eager
to get to know each of you and foster a strong collaborative relationship between the Assembly
Member's office and your city council and board.
As your point of contact, we're here to serve as an ambassador for the Assembly Member
whenever she's unavailable to connect directly.
We look forward to working alongside you and the community projects and coordinating future
meetings with her.
We're also pleased to share that our district office has officially moved to a new location
downtown in downtown Concord across Todo Santos Park. We'll be hosting a new year's grand opening
and invitations will follow shortly. Hi, Sophia. As she said, we're with the state legislator and
that it is now recessed following the conclusion of the 2025 session and Assemblymember Avila
Farias will be spending more time in the district and is eager to connect directly with constituents
and with you all. We're excited to invite the community to several upcoming events.
First the Tadaada de Antonio which is our fall harvest fest and pumpkin giveaway. That will
be held at our district office Friday October 24th from 3 to 7 pm. We'll also be hosting a
Thanksgiving turkey giveaway and that'll be also at our district office on Thursday November 13th
from 3 to 7 pm also. We will also be hosting a young ladies empowerment tea party. That will
be an Antioch and that will be Saturday December 13th from 11 a.m to 2 p.m. A stocking stuffing
community event which will be held also at our district office in Concord that
will be Friday December 12th from 6 to 8 and then a toy drive giveaway at our
district office from on Thursday December 17th. We welcome your
partnership and community and participation in these family friendly
gatherings which celebrate the season support neighbors in need and engage our
community and activities that reflect the unique spirit of our district. Thank
you for allowing us to share these updates and we look forward to seeing
many of you at these events. Thank you. Nicely done and I think we have a
question from Councilmember Silva yeah thank you for being here tonight you
know since redistricting occurred after the census in 2020 I believe the
Assembly's the district 15 is different its configuration is different than it
was in the prior decorate I hate to quiz you but which parts of Walnut Creek are
in district 15 do you know offhand offhand I'm not quite sure which parts
Are you sure? It's along that border and it's about 400 constituents. So it is a much smaller portion
Yeah, but I can get back to you with the specific areas if you'd like
It's up near the Leonard's grocery store. Thank you
That's not where I was thinking. Okay, we might have another question for you
Oh, thank you for both being here. If I may request you leave your your cards or some contact information. Absolutely
Yeah, thank you. Thank you
And I too just want to thank you both for being here and it sounds like you're gonna keep your boss busy
this fall season with a lot of fun events and it speaks volumes that you
know you have 400 constituents in Walnut Creek but you came and presented
tonight so thank you. Yeah we'll be back we'll see you guys soon. Okay take care.
Any other members wishing to address the council on public communications? Okay
seeing none we'll move on to council member and staff announcements reports
and activities. I'll turn to the city attorney and ask if we have any close
session. We have no closed session reports thank you mayor. Thank you Mr.
city attorney and to our city manager, Dan Bukshi.
Yeah, good evening, Dan Bukshi, city manager.
One update this evening,
regarding the state legislative session
that just concluded on Saturday, September the 13th,
which I should note was extended one day
from the standard session, which is fairly unusual.
There were last minute negotiations
and the legislature agreed to extend the session.
I thought I'd just give everyone a sense of scale
for those that work with these matters.
We have a sense of that scale,
I think though for folks that don't it's always quite telling just to see how much activity
occurs in Sacramento 2,397 bills were introduced to the legislature this year meaning potential
new laws were introduced and of those 804 were passed by the legislature and that number
is actually down a bit it's normally between a thousand and twelve hundred in any given
year but this year a new rule went into effect that limited any one member of the legislature
to introducing no more than 35 bills over the two year legislative session.
And this was the first year of the two year session.
The governor on average tends to veto about 15% of bills,
which means we will likely have around 680 new laws come 2026.
In terms of the impact to the city or to residents, obviously there are many.
There are those that we track through the California League of Cities,
as well as through towns and public affairs
and other networks that we have
to try to understand the impact of the city.
We are receiving those updates.
I anticipate that the city will be asked
to weigh in on some of these bills,
whether it is support or veto.
It's too late to amend at this point.
Either the governor signs them or vetoes them.
We'll work that through our legislative committee
of the council and send those letters.
And if needed, bring something to the city council
if it could be done in a timely manner
and if it's warranted.
And then in addition, in terms of process,
once the period in which the governor can sign,
which is up until October 13th is complete,
we will likely be bringing an update to the council
before the end of the calendar year
with a review of the legislative session.
And that is it, Council Member Frantz van.
Was there any questions for me?
Any questions of Mr. Berkshire?
I'm not seeing Mayor Pro Tem jumping towards his mic,
so I think we're good.
Who'd like to lead us off on council member updates
reports. How about Mayor Pro Tem? Is it okay if we start with you? Sure thing, hi everyone.
First of all I wanted to mention that I'm in Boston. I am chairman of the board of our county
connection bus system and there's the National Public Transportation Authority conference this
week and I led the delegation here which is why I'm in Boston. I return tomorrow so this is why I'm
of remotely calling in today.
Just a couple of things to mention.
First of all, on the conference itself,
as long as I'm here, we were talking about innovation.
One of the things that really excited me the most
is I am hearing about a proposal anyway,
to have a small autonomous vehicles
or essentially train of some sort
going between Antioch and Brentwood.
and how that will impact us is if that comes to fruition,
that will be fewer people that are coming over the hill,
over Railroad Avenue, Krueger passing,
Native Valley Road to get to the freeway,
people or even to go to BART,
people will be able to go directly
from being in Brentwood or in Oakley.
So that was exciting to me.
It's years down the line,
but we'll keep our fingers crossed that actually happens.
Couple more things happening.
We're having a little problem hearing you
and working with our audio staff here.
Is there a way to adjust the volume on your device?
Let's see.
Are you not hearing me very well now?
That's better.
Oh, that's better?
OK, great, great.
Did you hear what I had to say, or should I repeat it?
You trailed off at the end there about some service
between Antioch and Central County.
So there is a proposal that currently Tridel
is working with another company to provide
autonomous small trains, essentially,
to go between Antioch and Brentwood,
which would certainly help any traffic
that's coming over Railroad Avenue to Kirkra Pass
to Ignacio Valley Road.
Essentially, should that be completed in the years ahead,
it'll alleviate some traffic
that's coming through Walnut Creek on YVR.
We'll keep our fingers crossed,
there's a lot of dominoes to have to fall
before that actually happens.
I was part of a panel a couple of weeks ago
by the League of Women Voters.
It was in the library in downtown.
There were five panelists, including myself,
the Concord Mayor, County Supervisor,
Superintendent of Contra Costa County Schools,
and the Vice Mayor of Antioch,
all discussing how we'll be impacted locally
with the federal budget cuts to our local communities
or through Doge, as we've heard them.
Lots of important information was discussed
and interested residents will still be able to view it now
on Walnut Creek TV channel and on the City YouTube channel.
So I encourage people to watch that
because if we hear that there's gonna be $300 million
in cuts across California or those kinds of things,
what does it actually mean for us on the ground
in Walnut Creek and some great information came out
during that panel.
In addition, the city hosted an event
that the public was invited to for an opportunity
to see about the environmental impacts
of the Heather Farm Swim and Community Center.
Thanks to Rich Payne and his team
for putting this informative session together,
some great involvement from the community on that.
I was invited to Los Lomas, this was a first for me,
where they had a mock rock dance competition
for Homecoming Week.
It's a great turnout, fantastic participation and enthusiasm
with hundreds of students.
And great to see Los Lomas and Spirit of School
back in session there.
I also wanted to quickly mention
that there is a new organization starting up
called Friends of Civic Park.
And the first meeting is going to be on September 27th
from nine to 12 p.m.
People can help make our Walnut Creek
the actual creek itself, a more sustainable environment.
So people can meet at the Bridge of Civic Park,
again, September 27th on Saturday from nine to 12.
The first day will include removing invasive plants
and focus efforts on improving the creek environment
for native species and opening up the vistas of the creek.
And lastly, I just wanna mention
that the Jewish High Holidays begin next week,
which includes Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year,
and Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.
May the new year be a sweet one
for our entire community of residents,
Jewish and non-Jewish alike.
And that's my report.
Okay, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.
Council Member Davini, would you like to go next?
Sure, good evening.
Just a few things to report.
This last weekend, I was at our booth at the farmer's market,
and there was great engagement there.
It's really nice to meet members of the community in person,
get a chance to follow up with them, answer their questions.
Afterwards, I was over to the head west market on Main Street.
So that's an event that the Downtown Association has
hosted on Main Street downtown.
It's got local artisans, crafts, merchants,
great food and music.
The next one will be December 14th.
I think it starts at 11 a.m.
So you could actually hit the farmer's market
and then walk over to the head west market.
Let's see, in addition, I moderated an event
for Uplift Home Care, which was put on by Marlene and Adam Bartlett, the owners at the
coin coffee shop. Shout out to DJ and Tristan for hosting the event. It was basically honoring
our caregivers and really showing sort of their struggles, as well as the tremendous
empathy and dedication it takes to be a caregiver, sometimes a very thankless job that's going on
behind the scenes, and really affects everyone in the community at some point. So that was a really
great event. I attended the elected official webinar for Planned Parenthood yesterday,
and they announced that the federal funding had been cut to Planned Parenthood for the next year.
So you know, only about 3% of the services
from Planned Parenthood are say abortion related.
A lot of it is primary care, STD testing,
contraception, cancer screening.
So through direct funding and also funding through Medicaid
or Medi-Cal that will mean about a $300 million loss
for the state and it will affect healthcare here
in Contra Costa County to the tune of about five to seven million dollars so
additional strains for our health care system and then to wrap things up on a
happier note we celebrated my dad's 90th birthday this past weekend so happy
birthday dad nice happy birthday mr. Davini and councilmember Silva thank you
very much well I will announce that or mention that a couple of weeks ago we
had a meeting of the Housing and Community Development Subcommittee of
the Council and we reviewed the process for requesting our for submitting an
RFP and requesting proposals for affordable housing developments that
might come forward and we also reviewed our quarterly update on our progress
toward the housing element and Councilmember Francois and I are on that
committee and the Housing Element Quarterly Report will be coming to
Council in October. The East Bay Radio Communication System Authority Board met
recently and we adopted a comprehensive financial policy which the board has
been or the agency has been in existence since 2007. So we have been progressing
toward a full policy and it is now adopted. We also voted to authorize the
purchase of a radio shelter for the Walton Lane radio site which will be
going up in Antioch. So it's just one further step to closing a gap in
coverage that's out in East County for the radio system. The Association of
Bay Area Governments Executive Committee will meet this Thursday evening and the
primary topic of conversation will be priority conservation areas which are
being adopted and amended so that we can continue across the nine county bay area to preserve
green spaces for natural spaces, working agriculture, and other priorities around climate change,
etc.
And that's a really, really important project, and I'm glad we're making progress on that.
I will mention that I watched the webinar yesterday from the League of California Cities
on the bills that the cities around the state think are particularly important.
Those to support and those to suggest the governor say no.
We received a Cal Cities action alert today by email from Samantha Brightman, who is our
regional public affairs manager for Cal Cities.
I'll mention a couple of these.
Thankfully, the Governor was being asked to sign a B no, it's Senate Bill 456.
It's called the Community Beautification Act, but it's actually to rescind and make exempt
muralists from being painting, painting contractors.
For some reason, the state regulatory authorities thought that muralists should be contractors.
So the state legislature had to propose an exemption, a very narrow exemption for these
muralists so that we can continue to have murals and have painting contractors be contractors.
So that is on the Governor's desk.
Also on the Governor's desk is Assembly Bill 650, which is Diane Patton's out of San Mateo.
This is the planning and zoning housing element legislation which would give us a longer period
of time to actually do work on our housing elements and just as importantly
require the Housing and Community Development Department of the state to
be clear in their feedback and make it clear what they need us to do. I will
also mention that Assembly Bill 620 is on zero emission vehicle rentals and as
we look at our sustainability action plans some of the challenges we have is
you can buy an electric vehicle but you have to have the charging infrastructure
available for it and this if this adopted by the governor or signed by the
governor this bill would allow municipal agencies such as cities counties and
special districts to rent electric vehicles so that the charging
infrastructure would be part and parcel of the rental agencies infrastructure
and what they would provide to our cities.
So I think that's an important way to expand our infrastructure for electric vehicles.
And there are many others around wildfire, around theft of metals, et cetera, et cetera.
After all, there's 800 to choose from.
So thank you very much.
And I will give another plug for the food drive.
We need lots of friendly people to stand in front of grocery stores inviting customers
on September 27th to donate food.
So it'll be lovely weather, it's an easy task,
and no one gets mad.
Thank you very much.
OK.
So I'll round it out with thank you, Councilmember Silva,
for reporting on our HCD committee.
We will get the quarterly report on housing element update.
And it's something that we've normally only
received an annual report on.
So I think it highlights the importance of the housing
element that we'll start getting quarterly updates on that
and making sure that we're staying on track
to meet the many objectives and goals
that we adopted in the housing element.
I'm glad to hear there's some legislation
that might give us some more time to do that in the future
and more clear guidance.
But impressed with the progress that's being made,
happy that we have an amount of affordable housing funds
that we can go out to request proposals for,
for new affordable housing projects next year.
so exciting things happening on the housing front in the city.
On last week, I attended the chamber meeting.
I sat in for the mayor, who's the liaison to the chamber,
and received an update on our general plan update,
which from the community development department
and our director, Erica Vandenbrand, provided that.
And that's one of the five or four priorities
that the council adopted earlier this year.
We'll have a report on that later.
But it was interesting to get the feedback
from the business community on what their focus
in terms of the general plan is.
And not surprisingly, economic development
is high among them in addition to kind of land use
and making sure that we're allowing
for balanced land use, not just housing,
but jobs for the housing.
I think Mark Orcutt from the East Bay Leadership Council,
he was asked, well, how would you define
economic development?
He said, well, very simply, it's policies that help
businesses start, stay, and grow.
And so they're interested in having that kind of ethic
represented in our general plan update,
And we're just kicking off the process.
There were other comments about emerging technologies
and how we've got a zoning code that reflects maybe
the 90s or the early 2000s and maybe wasn't envisioning
autonomous vehicles or artificial intelligence.
And so the challenge is with bringing it up to speed
and being relevant and fresh when it's a 20-year document.
So we've got some challenges ahead of us.
But I think we're up to the task.
After that meeting, I attended the Walnut Creek downtown
meeting.
I serve as the liaison to that body this year.
One of their signature events is coming up later this month.
It'll be hosted again in Civic Park on September 26 and 27.
And that's Oktoberfest.
And it's a great time.
There's bands.
There's beer.
There's Leader Hosin, all of the above.
And there's plenty of volunteer opportunities.
So if you're interested in serving at a ticket booth,
or if you're of age and able to serve wine or beer,
please sign up on Walnut Creek downtown's website.
They also gave an update on their vision plan.
Each of us had the opportunity to provide input
on that earlier this year.
They have a draft of the plan prepared by their consultant.
their board now will be meeting internally
to provide feedback on that plan
and then roll it out to the larger public
probably later this year.
We got an update that good news
and original Joes is hopefully likely going to be reopening
sometime in October.
If you hadn't heard shortly after their opening,
they had an unfortunate kitchen fire which closed them down.
The city reacted very quickly from the permitting standpoint,
and so now it's just a process of getting the work done,
getting the new equipment in.
But October, fingers crossed,
will have another grand opening.
They would be the ones gathering a bunch of individuals
or a bunch of banks or mutual funds
that would add up to that amount,
and through that process they would set the interest rates.
The competitive sale process is very much like
what the city's used to for public bid projects.
We actually set a date, Tuesday, eight o'clock.
Bring your envelope with the lowest interest rate
that you're willing to buy the city's debt
or buy the city's bonds, and the low rate wins.
So we don't know until that moment,
and it's instantaneous,
when five to 10 different broker dealers
will come to the table with their best bid what it is.
As you can imagine, generally,
they know they have to sharpen their pencil
because they're gonna have competition on that day.
We anticipate the city is a very strong credit.
You do not issue debt.
So this will be very exciting for a lot of folks
to be able to get their hands on Walnut Creek paper
as what they would call it.
And so at this point, we are anticipating
that this structure should the council approve it
in November would be recommended
to be through a competitive sale.
I'm gonna turn over the actual,
we're gonna drop down now into the actual proposed
kind of structure of the financing
let Chris the attorney get into those details. Thank you Craig. Good evening
council. My name is Chris Lynch and I work at the law firm of Jones Hall so we
will act as the city's bond council and disclosure council. So the bond council
helps the city structure the deal in compliance with state law and provides
the tax exemption opinion that investors rely on to buy the bonds and give lower
tax exempt rates. As disclosure council we help the city comply with federal
securities laws and I'll spend a little time talking about what that means. This
slide lists the four most common types of financings by cities in California
and I'm going to start with the second through fourth and then hit the lease
revenue bonds. General obligation bonds are approved by for California cities
approved by a two-thirds vote of the registered voters and they can only be
used to finance acquisition and improvement of real property. School
Districts are actually the most common issuers of general obligation bonds
because their threshold for approval is typically 55% compared to the two-thirds
for California cities. The second structure is called utility revenue bonds
or enterprise revenue bonds. Many cities have water, wastewater, solid waste
enterprises that they need to issue bonds to finance improvements for that
enterprise. I know that's not the case for the city of Walnut Creek. Those do not
require voter approval but their rates are subject to Proposition 218. The
The third type that's listed in the bottom entry is special tax and assessment bonds.
These are additional special taxes or assessments levied on property for a specific purpose.
So Melaroos is typically used by developers to finance the public infrastructure needed
for a new project, and assessment bonds are often used for things like utility undergrounding
or septic sewer improvements.
And this type of financing can also be used for perpetual public services.
The final source of financing through bond financing is the lease revenue bonds or certificates
of participation.
In that structure, cities can enter into lease financings payable from their general fund
from any unrestricted funds.
And in your case, Measure O as a general tax approved by 50% of the voters plus one is
considered a general tax that can be used for any purpose.
So in this case, that would be available to pay lease payments that the city would make
to finance the aquatic and community center.
So lease revenue bond is payable, as I said,
only from unrestricted funds within the general fund.
It sounds exotic, and I'll run you through the structure
on the next slide.
But I can tell you that lease financings have
been used by California cities, counties, and school districts
since the 1940s when the California Supreme Court first
upheld this structure as being available for this purpose.
OK, so this simple non-confusing structure diagram
will explain all you need to know about lease revenue bonds.
So the general structure of a lease revenue bond
is first, you need a second party called the Joint Powers
Authority.
And the city takes an existing city asset.
In this case, we may be talking about the Lesher Fine Arts
Performing Arts Center.
We may be talking about City Hall.
And the city leases that to a third party
called the Joint Powers Authority.
The Joint Powers Authority leases that asset back
to the city, and the city agrees to pay lease payments that
are equal to the debt service on the bonds.
The bonds are issued by the Joint Powers Authority,
and they are payable from the lease payments made by the city.
The proceeds of the bonds realized
from the sale of the bonds by the Joint Powers Authority
are used to finance the project for the benefit of the city.
So Joint Powers Authority, I want
to make sure I do a good job explaining that.
So in order to do a lease financing, you need a counterparty.
In most California cities, they formed joint powers authorities
with their redevelopment agency as the counterparty
for their lease financing structures.
Unfortunately, as you know, redevelopment agencies
were dissolved and replaced with successor agencies.
I understand your successor agency
is soon itself to be dissolved because it satisfied
its enforceable obligations.
So your existing joint powers authority
between the city and the successor agency
will no longer be available to be used for financing.
So, staff is going to recommend to you for this financing,
this proposed financing,
that you form a new joint powers authority.
And the second party to that joint powers authority
would be the city's housing authority.
The city council acts as a legislative body of the park,
I said housing authority, I meant parking authority.
The city council acts as a legislative body
of the parking authority.
the city council would also act as a legislative body
of the Joint Powers Authority.
Joint Powers Authorities have two sets of powers,
the common powers of its members,
which includes, in your case, the power to lease
and acquire real property,
and then it has the authority given it under state law,
including the authority to issue lease revenue bonds.
Would you like me to pause there
and answer any questions about Joint Powers Authorities?
How much longer is the presentation?
I would say probably five to several more minutes. I'm going to spend a little time on federal securities laws pause there then okay
Oh, I'm sure we're gonna have a lot of questions on that one. Yeah
So the the parking authority
That is a government agency right for the JPA
You need to have like two government agencies that that bond isn't it sort of just a subcategory of Walnut Creek City
How is that seen as a separate agency that one of the questions I have it was established under state law?
Okay that is allows the cities to establish joint parking authorities and the city council declared itself to be the legislative body of that parking authority
But it is a separate legal entity. All right, and then another question
so we're leasing
Possibly the Leisure Center City Hall to this JPA
At I guess any amount that we determined could be zero could be because I mean if we have to lease it back at the full
payment for the bonds debt service then I imagine we're not leasing it to them
for very much money. So yes the lease payments will be approximately equal to
the debt service or be equal to debt service on the bonds. Under California
law that lease payment needs to reflect fair rental value for the asset being
leased. So one of the things that we will help the city do is evaluate the leased
assets evaluate their value both the replacement cost insured value of the
improvements and an estimated real property value and then given the short
time period of the bonds only eight years usually with over 30 years we just
look at the the aggregated value of the real property and improvements and
consider that to be its fair rental value so we usually look for approximate
relationship between the principal amount of the bonds and the value of the
least property. Here where you have amortization over a much shorter time
of eight years we may need to have a relatively higher value than the
actual principal amount of the bonds. I mean you're talking about the
improvements to the Swim Center. No we're talking here about the the least
assets so Lesher Performing Arts Center or City Hall. Now I want to emphasize
it's not a mortgage so nobody will come and take those assets if you don't make
your lease payments. What they will more likely do is sue you on an annual basis
for you to make those payments, but there's not a risk of losing City Hall
or the Lesher Performing Arts Center in this context. But if we have to lease
that building to the JPA at fair market value and then lease it back at fair
market value, where's the Delta? Where's the where's the debt service? Well so
the the lease payment made by the Joint Powers Authority will be a lump sum
payment equal to the proceeds of the lease revenue bonds and that will be used to finance
the aquatic and community center one time.
That's right.
And then the lease payments made by the city will be semi-annual payments in an amount
equal to the semi-annual principal interest on the bonds.
And the other, the city staff I believe is planning to recommend that upon completion
of the aquatic and community center it would replace the Lesher Performing Arts Center
and the city hall as the lease asset.
If it's not, yeah, the reason you do that is under the California cases upholding lease
financings, if the improvements that are being leased are under construction and not available
for use in occupancy at that time, then you can't commit to pay lease payments for them.
So we pick another asset to start with, and then when the assets that's being financed
is complete, then it can be substituted in as the lease property.
And I said, again, I just want to highlight, I know it sounds a little exotic and complex,
it's been a standard feature of California public finance since the
1940s. Thank you. Okay Councilmember Silva any questions? So if I were sitting at
home listening to this I would probably have changed the channel by now but the
question would be in my head well why somebody's going to use the phrase shell
game because that's what it feels like it's moving these moving parts why do we
need to do this leasing option why not just float the bonds ourselves, pay the debt as
it accrues.
So California cities, counties, and school districts only have the power to do the things
that California law expressly authorizes them to do subject to limitations in the California
Constitution.
So the California Constitution says that cities, counties, and school districts cannot commit
future year revenues without a two-thirds vote.
So the lease financing structure is tied to use and occupancy of the leased asset.
There can be no acceleration if you don't make your payments.
If there's damage or destruction to the asset, we make sure there's insurance available to
rebuild the project so that the lease payments can continue to be made.
And we pay for rental interruption insurance during the construction period.
So the courts have upheld that this meets that requirement because you're not committing
to pay more than each year's payments from that year's revenues.
Okay.
So it meets California law that was established obviously before the 1940s because this system
came into place as a solution to meet the requirements of the California Constitution.
So the California Constitutional provision I mentioned is considered by the California
Supreme Court to be a balanced budget measure, and so that's why it's important to focus
on the annual nature of the payments rather than any, rather than the payments in their
aggregate.
You can't be obligated to pay the aggregate amount, you can only be obligated to pay the
annual payments.
So, unlike the federal government.
Mayor Pro Tem.
Just a quick question.
I want to take a step back for a minute, just for the benefit of the residents and people
that may be watching and just a little unclear on why
we're doing this in the first place.
Walla Creek has historically not incurred any debt.
So why is debt at all being recommended for this project?
Is that the city manager weighing in on that?
Sure.
I can speak to that one.
The other option would be to accumulate the funds over time,
as we know the primary funding source.
Not the only funding source, but the primary funding source
is Measure O, which is generating roughly $12 to $12.5
million dollars a year of which about nine million is being set aside for
future payment and construction of the of the center so if you do the math for
looking at a 77 million dollar facility it would take roughly nine years of
saving those funds assuming there's not inflation on the cost of the existing
building which there would be so in reality it could take a decade or more
to save that money in order to build a new facility so the debt financing is
very similar to the concept of buying a new house, where you take a loan and make the
annual payments or monthly payments or semi-annual, in this case, on the debt service so that
you can build the asset sooner and then pay off the asset over a set number of years,
as opposed to savings as you go, which, as I mentioned, could take a decade or longer
in this instance.
So essentially, this could, in fact, be saving us money by doing it?
I don't know about saving money, but it could on construction costs, yeah, construction
costs were inflating at a greater rate than the interest rates on the bonds and yes, it
could save money.
It would depend on how interest rates and inflation change over time.
Thank you.
Okay.
I think we're set for now.
Okay.
So we'll get back into a little bit more of the nuts and bolts on what happens if you
You are going to go out and borrow money, and I'll first start by saying City Manager
is absolutely correct.
The real financial analysis that you would do on this project is we're borrowing money
at a fixed rate, so we would know on day one exactly what the cost of funds are to
the City.
We're expecting that this is going to be in the 3% range, 3 to 3.5, but the speculation
is what would the construction cost increases be.
If anybody wanted to bet, would we
say that over the next six, seven years,
would the rate be higher than 3% to 3.5% percent?
And if you were getting further behind,
it would be like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, where
you would get done and realize you've
got to just keep going because you can't get it done fast
enough.
As part of issuing debt, aside from the legal structure
that Chris just went through, we need to effectively
get a report card for the city that investors then can know the city's
likelihood to repay the obligation. The rating agencies as you know will they
have a credit score that they will give you similar to our personal numbers
except it's grades like in school and they break it into five categories.
There's the local economy which you don't as a governmental agency don't
really control but you guide right so how well is your local economy financial
performance you've got absolutely great policies in places as was mentioned
the city's always paid cash for most of its improvements so it hasn't had to get
itself too far leveraged in in terms of debt but there's financial performance
piece there is the management you know what are how does the management work
from a city council down to the executive and then department heads
There's the debt and liabilities, in your case almost nothing.
We were, I had one of my colleagues, Mike Meyer, in front of you all last year regarding
your pension liabilities.
That is considered also a debt, right?
For most cities it's actually the biggest debt you have even over any kind of bond issues.
So, and then the other one is fund balance or your financial position, your balance sheet.
So they will look at all of that, and in sticking it through their sausage-making machine,
they will come up with a grade.
These are the three primary rating agencies that are involved in municipal financers,
Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch ratings.
They have very similar scores.
Obviously, AAA is the best one.
That's what you want.
The federal government does not have that, and then it works its way down, AA all the
way down.
Investment grade is still in the triple B category.
below that triggers a lot of investor types, some of the banks, some of the mutual funds,
they can't invest in anything below investment grade.
So that's where you think some of the corporate, the junk bonds that you hear about, those
all usually fall into that bottom category.
But the idea, and we would anticipate that the city will be high AA category if not potentially
from a G.O. perspective right up there against the AAA.
So I'm going to turn it back over to Chris to kind of go quickly through some of the
disclosure information that you'll need to know as part of making the approval process
in November.
So just on the rating, I think it's implied, but the higher the rating, the lower the rate?
Yeah, I apologize for not saying that.
That's absolutely right.
The stronger and higher the rating category the city gets, the more aggressive and they
lower the interest rates will be that you'll get from investors generally can
you speak to kind of what the difference in gradations are between a triple-a and
a double-a how far do you drop down so it since I'm a finance guy let's let's
talk the math so if if you were right now borrowing money let's just say for
ten years triple-a as a tax exempt you would be let's say right at 3% if you
you were a double A, so you were just one notch down,
you would be 305 to 310, so just 10 basis points.
And then it's kind of like a hockey stick.
Then you drop to a single A, it's probably up another 20,
and you get down to the triple B category,
you're probably 50 basis points difference
between triple A and a triple B.
Council Member Davini had a question on this as well.
Saw that when you go out to the bond market,
you can time the market.
Is that something that we need to do
or are we just picked our date
and we're going out for it?
What were your thoughts there?
Well, I had four kids and my crystal ball is broken,
so I can't tell you exactly which day.
We don't, you know, we will probably wanna stay away
from any elections and the only one would be
potential state calling for their November election, but we, we will be able to set the
date looking out two to three weeks and we, our firm is constantly watching the market
for supply.
You obviously want to be out there when the state's not doing two billion dollars worth
of bonds, right?
Because those investors are going to be staring at that and maybe missing an opportunity to
be involved in purchasing the Walnut Creek bonds.
So it's, we will set a date hard, it will be a Tuesday or Wednesday, most likely at
eight or nine o'clock in the morning.
Which week we do it will actually be a function of where you are in your bid acceptance and
award of the construction, right?
Because what we're really trying to do is align this with what you hear from staff when
you get those bids in.
Where did those bids come in?
Are they low?
Are they high?
alternatives in there that we want to maybe consider because that's what we're
gonna you know the this financing is going to be the balance of the money
that you need for the project and at that point we'll figure out when you're
going to award when you're going to need to start drawing money and we can work
backwards from there. And are you doing like investor outreach and sort of
trying to entice people to come to bid on the yeah there will be a period of
time where the disclosure document, which is what they'll rely on, and Chris will talk
about that a little bit more, because we can't be having, you know, telling one person one
thing and another person something else, so we will have the formal offering memorandum,
which is called an preliminary official statement, and then that will get distributed and blasted
nationally to create that, and there are certain channels that that goes into that then are
exposed to all of the buyers who would otherwise be buying California paper.
Okay, so I mentioned when I started that one of the things that we helped the city do is
comply with federal securities laws.
Craig mentioned there's a disclosure document sent out to potential investors called an
official statement.
So I'm here to talk to you about the federal securities laws that apply to your distribution
of an official statement, and I'm going to try to give you a very high-level background
on it, and then talk about what your responsibilities are
under federal securities laws.
So I'm going to focus on four things
that you should walk away from.
First, you should know that federal security laws regulate
the city's distribution of a disclosure document
that we're talking about.
Second, that city staff and elected officials
are expected to take reasonable steps to make sure
that that disclosure document includes all material facts.
and the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC,
which regulates federal securities laws,
has given us pretty clear guidance
on the type of steps it expects you to take.
So I'll explain those to you.
Third, city staff and elected officials
actually risk personal liability
if they don't comply with federal securities laws,
so it's really important to be aware of it.
And then fourth, on October 7th,
staff will recommend that you adopt
a set of written disclosure policies and procedures
that I believe, if followed, and I'll describe what those are
likely to say, if followed will help you comply
with federal securities laws.
Both of the laws that I will describe today
were adopted in the aftermath of the Great Depression, which
saw widespread fraud at the expense of investors.
So for your purpose, you should know
that the 1933 Act, which was the first general federal
securities law, and the 34 Act both limit or prohibit fraud
in the sale of municipal bonds.
The 34 Act created the Securities and Exchange
Commission to enforce those laws.
The SEC has adopted two sets of rules
that you should be aware of.
One is rule 10B-5, and that requires the disclosure
document that you're going to send to investors
to not omit any material facts and not to misstate
any material fact. So what's a material fact? A material fact is a fact that there is a
substantial likelihood that it would have a significant weight in the deliberations
of a reasonable investor. In other words, an investor looking at to buy Walnut Creek
lease revenue bonds will want to know what is the health of your general fund, what are
the long-term risks, what are the, you know, primary sources. So we're going to make sure
that that disclosure document includes the facts that a reasonable investor would want
to know about in investing in the city's, in essence,
the city's general fund.
In 1989, the SEC adopted a second rule
applicable to municipal bonds, Rule 15C212,
and it recreated a requirement to comply with certain rules
on a continuing basis, on an annual basis,
and when certain significant events happen.
So starting with the official statement,
we worked on a lease revenue bond
that the city of Walnut Creek did in 1997 for its golf course.
This is the cover of that official statement.
And so that's the document that gets distributed to investors.
It has to include a description of the terms of the bonds
and the financial and operating data that is material
to the repayment of the bonds.
We will help, we will draft that document with,
in collaboration with Craig's firm and with the city staff.
And we will, you'll see it's going to be a 100-page document
that describes all of the revenues and expenditures
and budgets of the city of the last five years.
And we'll talk about risks to future payment.
As I mentioned, there's now a continuing disclosure
requirement.
So if you issue bonds in the manner that Craig has described,
you will sign a continuing disclosure undertaking that
will require you to do three things.
One, post your audited financial statements each year
on a site hosted by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking
Board.
Second, to update the financial and operating
data that was included in the official statement
at the time of initial disclosure on an annual basis
so that investors can track how things are going along
and make trades on that basis in the secondary market.
And the third thing, there's a list
of 16 significant events, such as bond defaults,
are rating changes, bankruptcies,
certain significant events that the SEC has determined
are so important that when they happen,
you should tell investors about it.
So when and if those events occur,
you'd be obligated to provide information
about that to the market.
OK.
May I ask a question?
Could you go back one slide?
Audited financial statements.
Are those the city's audited financial statements,
or are they audited financial statements
of the JPA, which no doubt would really only have
these minimal transactions.
Exactly.
It will be the city's audited financial statements.
And so in the official statement,
we'll include revenue and expenditure tables
for the last five years.
And we'll include budget, comparison of budget
to actuals for three to five years.
And you'll be updating both the budget and the revenues
and expenditures each year when they're completed.
your ACFAR, which you approve on an annual basis,
will just get attached and submitted.
Okay, I mentioned that the SEC has given us
a clear explanation of what elected officials
and staff should do when they approve an official statement.
And I'll give you a little context.
In 1994, Orange County declared bankruptcy.
It had pursued an aggressive investment scheme
relying on above market rates of return
to balance its budget.
It sold notes on an annual basis and it was investing those note proceeds.
And it did not tell any of the investors the purpose of the notes that it was invested
in these risky investments.
The board of supervisors, when it approved the official statement, it did so on consent.
It didn't deliberate in an open meeting.
And even though they were aware that their budget was dependent
on these above market rates of return generated by risky investments,
they didn't tell investors about it.
So in the wake of the Orange County's bankruptcy
filing, which did not eventually result in any debt service
defaults, the SEC brought an enforcement action
against the Board of Supervisors, the county,
and members of staff.
And then they issued a report to emphasize
the responsibilities of elected officials
in their exercise of their duties
under federal securities law.
And the report highlighted again that the supervisors
new of the risks, and they did not make reasonable steps under the circumstances to make sure
they were telling investors.
So the SEC said that they expect you to take appropriate steps under the circumstances,
but they also indicate in that report they don't expect you to read the 100-page document
word for word.
That's certainly fine if you wish to, but what they really care about is if you know
about some fact that could affect the city that would impact its ability to repay the
debt service on these bonds through its lease payments, then it expects you to make an effort
to ensure it's disclosed, either by talking to staff, talking to your disclosure counsel,
raising a question, hey, have you guys disclosed this issue?
So that's the level of oversight it expects.
Elected officials may not authorize disclosure while recklessly disregarding facts that there
is a risk that the local agency won't repay the debt.
So in training sessions like this, I like to include this slide because it highlights
what the SEC has told us that local agencies should do in order to comply with federal
securities law.
Now, it issued this guidance in the wake of an enforcement action that they had brought
against the city of San Diego.
So first, issuers should adopt written disclosure policies and procedures, and again, that's
what staff is going to recommend you do on October 7th.
In those disclosure policies you will see that it proposes that there be a disclosure
working group established, the city manager, the city attorney, the finance director, and
then department heads depending on the type of financing that's being done.
The disclosure working group would then work with outside consultants, disclosure council,
municipal advisor to prepare the disclosure document, and the disclosure working group
would not send that official statement to the City Council
until it concluded that it had met the securities law
standard.
In other words, that it included all material facts
about this financing.
At the time that the City Council is being asked
to consider and approve the financing
and consider and approve the disclosure document, which
in the case of the Aquatic and Community Center,
I understand may be scheduled for November 18,
you would receive a staff report.
And in the staff report there would be about a page summarizing the information I'm giving
you here tonight about compliance with federal securities law so you have one more opportunity
to hear about it and understand your responsibilities.
And then the resolution under state law following Orange County must be docketed as a separate
matter of new business and it can't be on the consent calendar.
And we'll probably, in addition to the staff report, in the presentation we'll talk again
about this, that it has to include material facts.
So second, staff should provide appropriate training
to elected officials about their responsibilities
under federal securities law.
SEC is really focused on the training bit.
So that's what we're doing here tonight.
That's what will be in your staff report.
But it's important that you hear this
and understand what your responsibilities are.
Third, local agencies should focus in their disclosure
on the big picture issues facing the city.
I told you we're going to generate 100-page document.
In the city of San Diego, the SEC reported
that they had 100-page document, but they had ignored
the gorilla in the room, which was their underfunded pension
liability.
Fourth, local agencies should disclose the good facts
with the bad facts.
The official statement is not a marketing document.
It is a disclosure document, and it
discloses the financial health of the portions of the city
that are going to repay the bonds.
So for many issuers, it is pension and OPEB liability.
That is the key financial risk.
It could be litigation.
It could be a large employer or taxpayer leaving the city.
It could be deferred public infrastructure
or a structural and balanced budget.
Any of these things could be the big issue
that's facing any particular local agency.
And it's your responsibility to make sure
that those risks are just as well presented
as the strengths of the city.
and I know there are many.
Finally, the SEC thinks that local agencies should hire
competent professionals.
That was at question in San Diego,
where the audit of financial statements misled,
did not present an accurate picture
of the city's financial health.
So again, it's important to always make sure
you're employing competent professionals to guide you
through these processes.
OK, finally, you should know that the SEC has punished
individuals when they acted with an intent to defraud
or with a reckless disregard for whether they
were misleading investors.
In Orange County, the SEC found that the treasurer
and the assistant treasurer had knowingly committed fraud,
even though they did not personally benefit
from the investment scheme.
They were trying to generate more money for the county,
but still they defrauded investors.
And they were fined and had house arrest.
In San Diego, the SEC filed securities law
charges against a wide list of city staff,
including the city manager, assistant city manager,
and treasurer, and the SEC alleged
that their audit of financial statements,
their rating agency presentations,
and their official statements were misleading.
They fined three individuals $25,000 each,
and a fourth for $5,000.
Now, Westland's Water District is the largest agricultural water
district in California.
The SEC charged them in 2016 with fraud, misleading investors,
and a $70 million financing.
And the district had to pay $125,000 fine,
And so did the general manager and assistant city manager.
So the key point here is I'm not trying to scare you,
but I am trying to make sure you're aware of it.
And I think it's really important
you know that the punishment comes
for knowing intent to defraud or a reckless disregard for facts.
And I believe the process that we're talking about here,
working group, presenting you with a staff report,
and an official statement that they've concluded
meets the standard is the type of thing
that will ensure compliance with federal securities laws.
Okay, just two quick points.
Obviously the mayor isn't here tonight
so we'll make sure that she gets this training
so that she's equipped to participate
on November 17th or 18th.
And then there's gonna be a large disclosure packet
that the working group puts together
that we'll hear at a regular consideration item.
Yes.
And then on an annual basis, is it just an update to that document or what happens?
Yeah.
So first of all, there's the audit that just gets attached.
And for most of the information that needs to be updated, it's already in the audit.
But to the extent it's not, there might be a couple tables, large employers,
or measure O revenues if it's not clear in the audit, although I think it will be.
So for the most part, and many cities just do it,
they make sure that whatever they're obligated to disclose under their continued disclosure
obligation on an annual basis is included in the audit, so it's rote, and there's no
risk of failing to do it.
And is it the timing is coincided with our ACFRA, it happens, so that those efforts can
be combined?
That's right.
So the typical time limit for turning in your continued disclosure, which isn't wildly popular
with investors, is nine months after the end of your fiscal year.
So I know, I'm guessing your active is generally available in December or January.
So it's you have until March 31 to turn in to continue disclosure.
Great.
Councilmember Silva.
So continuing on that subject.
The professionals help the working group of city staff prepare the draft or the preliminary
disclosure document that has the good and the bad.
And then will that good and the bad be thoroughly presented to us at a council meeting.
So the normal process, and you can drive whatever process you'd like, but the normal process
is my firm would sit down and go through publicly available information, budgets, accfers, other
types of information and prepare an initial draft of the disclosure document.
And the first part of the document summarizes the bond structure, and the second documents
the city's finances.
We then would circulate it within the working group, and again, with this charge of making
sure we're including all material facts, we would work with city staff to make sure we'd
ask a lot of questions, often we can't complete everything, we'd ask questions and they would
add their own updates on that information.
The normal process would be once staff and we and Craig's firm felt like the document
included all material facts of which we're aware, it would come to council for approval,
it would be included in the agenda package, you would get the document and you would get
it as many days in advance as you'd like to have it.
One of the reasons we're doing this disclosure training, what seems like a long time ahead
of that process, is we don't want to wait until you've gotten the document and haven't
had a chance to think through these issues, so we're, you know, we're front-loading the
training, but the goal is that you would have as much time as you want to read it.
Normally, it just goes on the, for most public agencies, on their three- or five-day council
agenda and they have a chance to review it then.
So when is, looking at this, is this on the 18th or is it before the 18th?
I believe the plan is to bring the financing back for approval on November 18th and that
would include the legal documents and the disclosure documents.
That's correct and I would also add, and correct me if I'm wrong Chris, prior to this coming
to the council on November 18th, the rating agencies would also have a thorough review
of the county's financial situation and provide their ratings.
So that's another check and balance that helps ensure
that the information is correct.
What I'm also envisioning,
the reason the timing is a little bit tight here
is we have some deadlines that we need to meet.
One is that the bonds, I'm sorry, the bids are due back
from the contractors October 23rd.
We can't turn it around quickly enough
to give you an update in November.
And the reason we want to have this approved in November,
or no later than December, as you may recall,
we have the agreement with the Aquatics Foundation.
We heard from earlier that we need to enter into
at least award a contract by the end of the calendar year
to ensure that that Aquatics Foundation agreement
remains in place about three million dollars.
In addition, we want to move quickly on the project
and meet the commitments that we shared
with the Measure O folks.
That's a long way of saying we have a couple updates
between now and then.
I'm also envisioning we have the option
to brief all of you individually on where we're at,
to talk through questions ahead of time
to make sure you're all comfortable with the information
by the time it comes to you
at the second meeting in November.
These are complicated documents
and the point size of the type looks really small,
but I know I'm looking at it really small screening.
So hand out magnifying glasses
if it's as small as it looks like.
All right, thank you.
Mayor Pro Tem, any questions
on the SEC disclosure requirements?
Okay. I think we're good. Thank you.
Okay. So next, I'm going to talk a little bit
about preliminary analysis and recommendations.
And so, as we've talked about, and you know,
the financing is only a portion of the funds
that are needed for this project.
So, based on the engineer's estimate of 77 million,
we have provided for you here a source of funds
for the full project amount.
And so, we have 9 million in the general fund,
And 7 million of that came from the facilities reserve.
The measure owed $9 million set aside in the budget each year will have accumulated to
27 million by the end of the current fiscal year.
And then that leaves approximately 41 million in bond financing.
And again, this is based on the engineer's estimate.
So that may change, but this is the information we have now.
And so those funds will be used for the construction, as well as soft costs for the total of 77
And so, may I ask a question? Could you go back? Certainly, sure. Does the, these are
assumptions, but does the $300,000 to $400,000 in issuance costs included in the 77 or is
that going to sit, is that still to come? That is still to come. That would be part
of the bond financing. Okay, thank you. Kirsten, can you just refresh our memory on how many
more slides we have? Four. I'll try to go through them quickly. Some of it's information
that you've heard so throughout the presentation. Thank you. So staff is proposing a financing
term of eight years to align with the expiration of Measure O in 2033. If project bids come
in significantly higher than the engineer's estimate, staff will seek direction from City
Council on the term. Extending the bond term beyond the expiration date of Measure O would
provide the city flexibility on having a lower debt annual debt service payment.
However, if it went beyond that eight-year term of when Measure O expires, the general
fund would be responsible for those payments going forward.
So the structure of the lease revenue bond requires a tangible asset for collateral,
which was mentioned earlier.
So based on what we know now, we are recommending the leisure facility, but as was discussed
earlier, that will depend on the valuation.
Also it may end up being Lesha Center and City Hall, once we've gone through that process.
But again, once the new facilities are completed, the recommendation would be to transfer that
lease to those new facilities.
The annual debt service payments will remain the same throughout the lease term, so they
are fixed.
Measure O, adopted budget, has set aside that $9 million annually to pay for that future
debt service.
So the chart on the slide shows the annual debt service payments for three scenarios.
So assuming we might need between $40 million and $60 million to complete this project.
And what's important to note here is that even at $60 million for an eight-year term,
the annual debt service would still be less than the $9 million budget that we have set
for our annual debt service payment in Measure O.
So next I want to just touch on the financing timeline, and so we've talked about some of
these along the way, but this is kind of the complete picture of the timeline.
And so tonight, sorry, we kicked off the financing project back in August, and then tonight we're
here for the financing overview.
And then we will be back on October 7th to request the approval of the JPA, as well as
the adoption of a resolution.
This is a reimbursement resolution that would allow the city to use bond proceeds to reimburse
costs incurred within 60 days prior to the adoption of that resolution.
So that would just be an option that we had if we wanted to exercise that.
Then in early November there will be the credit rating presentation to one of the credit rating
agencies and then they will provide the city's rating in mid-November.
At the November 18th city council meeting staff will request the approval of financing
from the JPA and City Council.
So as was mentioned earlier this will be a competitive sale and the interest rates will
be set in early December and the project funded in late December.
So with that we welcome your feedback and because this is an informational item there's
no action requested of you this evening and staff and our consultants are here to answer
any questions you may have.
Okay, that was that's great great presentation team effort a lot of good information and
Important disclosure information that we need to be aware of I'd like to open it up now for public comment
Any member of the public wishing to address the council on this item will have two minutes
And if you haven't filled out a speaker card
Beforehand you're welcome to do so afterwards or we might know who you are already
Any public comment on this item and
Okay, I'm not seeing anyone rushed to the microphone
So there's going to be other opportunities obviously this is a big endeavor. It's a large project. It sounds like it's one of the
Maybe the second time the city has used a lease
bond financing not the first but we haven't done so at least in my tenure on council, but
We'll have other opportunities and check-in points for people to make comments on these milestones as we move along
Any follow-up questions from the council on this item?
Okay councilmember Silva. I'd like a little explanation on the reimbursement
how
Legal requirements, I understand the 60 days that we're going to be asked to adopt a resolution
But what can be covered in that and what costs a lot of the soft costs of the design costs have already been
Spent correct correct. Are those eligible? I mean so they would have to be costs that were incurred
60 days prior to the adoption of the reimbursement resolution
So when we come right around August 1st, and if we're doing it correct, so it would be any cost associated with
The project that occurred from October 6th prior the 60 days and these be third-party costs as well as
Yes
So this requirement is driven by federal tax law and
The IRS imposed this limitation on local agencies issuing taxes and bonds to reimburse prior expenditures
if you want to do that you have to declare the intent to do it and
And there's two types of costs regulated by a reimbursement resolution, hard costs and
soft costs.
The 60-day rule of reimbursing costs incurred no earlier than 60 days before the declaration
of the reimbursement intent applies only to hard costs.
You do not have to be limited to that 60-day period for soft costs, but the limitation
on soft costs is it can't exceed basically more than 20% of the financing.
This resolution is being recommended to you by staff just to preserve flexibility.
Federal tax law allows the financing of capital facilities that are used for governmental
purposes owned and operated by state or local government.
If there are unique rights by private organizations, such as, for example, the swimming organization,
then sometimes there's a limitation on issuing taxes and bonds, so it's important to preserve
access to as much equity as we can have as we structure this financing to make sure that
the equity can be allocated to things that maybe taxes and bonds couldn't finance such
as portions of the project used by on an exclusive basis by third-party organizations.
That's the couple of bullets in the middle of page three of the memo.
All right, thank you.
remember Davini so a couple quick questions in this process who are we
designating as the trustee so we did do a competitive process and the trustee
would be US Bank okay which is our also organization that's okay yes and then I
was wondering and we have a I think a written debt policy and I was wondering
in the scenario of $60 million over eight years,
we'd be, we'd have payments of 8,400,000.
If our operating budget is around 100 million,
does that exceed some threshold
that we're supposed to keep our debt ratio,
say less than 5% or is there some written policy
that states that?
Our debt policy that was recently adopted
by this council does address that,
But that is specific to debt service that is being paid out of the general fund.
And so this is being paid out of Measure O, so it's not subject to that same limitation.
Okay.
I thought Measure O was going into the general fund.
No, it's staying in.
It's actually in a separate fund.
Okay.
All right.
And then my last...
Just to clarify that, it is part of the general fund, but it's in a sub-fund, effectively,
at the general fund.
So if you're looking in the aggregate, it is part of the general fund.
we have a subfund in which Measure O is tracked separately for reporting purposes, not only
for this activity but also when we report out to the public, we want to make sure we're
tracking all revenues and expenditures for Measure O very specifically so we can report
out to the voters how it's been used, as opposed to co-mingling it more generically with all
the other funds that come in.
So it wouldn't violate our debt policy in that regard?
No.
In fact, I believe we have a statement in the policy that allows for this.
Okay.
Yeah.
say we go out for 60 million and we use 50,
what do you have to do with leftover bond money?
It'd be a nice scenario to be in,
but yeah, what would happen in such a case?
So one of the things we'll do, actually,
as part of the structuring of the financing
is to make sure that you have authority
to finance the Aquatic and Community Center
and other authorized projects.
It's generally not a good idea to have leftover bonds
have to use them to pay down the bonds early. That's not an efficient use of funds. So
my assumption is that staff working with NHA will structure the financing in a way that
you're sure that you'll use the bond monies. Tax law requires you to have a reasonable
expectation of spending 85 percent of the proceeds within three years. So the assumption
is that you'll intend to use your bond monies first, and you'll use your equity second.
So you may have leftover equity, but you wouldn't have leftover bond money.
And if I could just add to that, one of the decision points that will be made in the future,
we don't have enough information, depending how the bids come back from the construction
firms, is going to impact how much debt we issue, and one of the considerations would
be depending upon the amount, how much of that other money that we have saved already
do we want to use versus issue more or less debt to potentially preserve some of those
other funds.
And that really depends on what the numbers look like once the bids come in, but that
That will be a key consideration that gets to your very point.
So that you wouldn't have to issue all 60 million in bonds all at once?
You could do it in a phased process so that you're not borrowing more than you need for
the project.
Well, we should know that total cost of the project and obviously there will be some variation
for potential change orders and that sort of thing that we would want to account.
I would defer to our advisors if we think we would issue one debt or issue it in tranches
over time.
guessing giving the shorter duration of this use it would be one tranche but yes
that's correct we would be only suggesting that there be a single
financing multiple series that you run up transaction costs and new you know
paying additional rating fees and things like that our financing plan
anticipates once we have a good idea of where the bids are coming in for the
project and we validated with staff the fund balances that we have for measure
to probably build the contingency in on the cash side on the measure O side and
then kind of go hard on what we believe we're really comfortable financing
knowing that the cash in a worst-case scenario we draw down more on the
reserves we the example that the administrative services director gave you
was here's our fund balances we have now and we need 41 million if the project
It turns out to be 77.
We would probably be recommending
that we hold back a certain part
of those Measure O revenues as your contingency.
So maybe you are borrowing 50 million
or 48 million or something so that you have that comfort
that you're not gonna run out.
You don't wanna be short, right,
as you're blowing through this.
To Chris's point also about the expenditures,
we understand this is a pretty aggressive project
to get done in time for the season.
And then we're thinking it's 24 months to get,
to blow through not only the cash,
but all the bond proceeds as well.
Any further questions, Council Member Davini?
No, thank you.
Okay, Mayor Pro Tem.
All right, we're set.
And I just had a maybe one or two final ones then.
In terms of the schedule, the bids come in on October 23rd,
but we're doing the financing on November 18th.
So that's okay, even though we haven't awarded,
haven't signed a contract with a contractor yet, we can.
So that would happen in the same evening.
So the intent would be that if we came on November 18th
with the contract award, we would also come and request
the authority to do the financing.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
And then in terms of kind of the contingency costs,
I recall that the facilities reserve was,
there's more in the facilities reserve
than just the nine million.
and I think it might be helpful for us to know
how much is in that account to when we come back
and make the final financing decision.
I can tell you that separate from the money
that has already been dedicated to this project,
there's 11.7 million in the facilities reserve currently.
Excellent.
All right.
All right, I think we've exhausted this topic.
And thank you all for a really good counsel
and advice on this.
How are we doing do we
Should we power through it looks like we probably have at least another hour on the next side
Why don't we take a 10 minute? We'll come back at 8 o'clock. So an 8-minute break
Okay, welcome back next on the agenda is another consideration item our update on
2025 2026
City Council priorities and I would invite staff to provide a
presentation. All right well good evening council members members of the public staff, Joe Caroza
assistant to the city manager. I'll be kicking off tonight's presentation on council priorities
and the September 2025 update. So thank you for this time this evening to present this update.
This is the first update since we came to council in May to present the scopes of work
for your Council priorities for 2025 and 2026.
So by way of background, in February of this year,
Council identified five priorities
for calendar years 2025 and 2026
and they're listed here on screen in alphabetical order.
Tonight's presentation is intended to share
how these priorities are moving forward
and to date and what's on the horizon.
This evening you'll be hearing directly
from the staff leads who are moving these projects forward
by managing the accomplishments and turning these
into real projects and accomplishments and priorities
with the help of their teams and beyond.
And so that will be Mike Neiman
who will cover economic development and downtown vitality.
We'll hear from Candace Rankin-Mumby
on environmental sustainability and climate action.
Erika Vandenbrand for general plan update.
park and recreation facilities will be done by Rich Payne,
and then public safety and social wellness
will be covered by Captain Ryan Hibbs.
While these leads are the drivers and representatives
of the work and accomplishments done to date,
these priorities cut across many departments in the city
and are accomplished by the support and collaboration
of many teams and staff members.
And as a reminder, significant progress has been made
on many of these priorities to date,
but much work does remain in the coming months and years.
And some priorities, like the general plan update,
will extend well beyond the two-year cycle.
So for some logistics tonight, each of our leads
will come up and present these significant accomplishments
and work to date for their respective priorities.
And they'll do that so in a high summary level fashion.
And then they're going to, before they pass the baton
to the next lead to cover the next priority,
pause, they'll solicit any feedback, any input, and take any questions that you have.
And then with that, I'll go ahead and pass to our first person, Mike Nieman, who will
cover Economic Development and Downtown Vitality.
Thank you.
Good evening, Council, Mike Nieman, your Economic Development Manager.
And I'll start with Economic Development.
There is a lot that goes into economic development and the work that we're doing is largely
encapsulated through the economic development action plan, which is a two-year plan adopted
for the 24-25 timeframe.
There's been a lot of effort, thought, thinking and community input that's gone into that
effort.
And there are many goals that you can see that are captured in that document.
They include looking for a strong, resilient, forward-looking economy.
There's a lot of business support efforts permitting regulatory environment improvements.
Downtown continues to be one of the major foci for economic development.
There's an effort for higher-paying jobs and their various policy considerations and performance
tracking as part of that.
efforts are broken into four major goals or objectives. The strategic objective number
one is continue building a resilient, inclusive and diverse economy. A number of accomplishments
in that regard since what you've last heard from us are re-initiation of the mayor visits.
That was the program that was restarted after a delay where now we conduct these on at least
the quarterly basis with the mayor.
And there's also a number of other less formal business
retention efforts where staff continue building relationships
and working with the business community
through various efforts, communications,
and various facets.
We also launched a size up data tool
that is a tool largely for small businesses.
It supports data driven decision making.
And what it does is it provides employers, business owners,
property owners, with access to resources,
to a lot of data for better decision making
and investments into their business things,
such as what are the typical pay rolls for competitors?
What is the saturation and supply of other competitors
within a certain region?
What are certain costs of doing business?
What are typical revenues for like services?
So these kinds of performance metrics
enable existing business owners,
but also prospective business owners
make better decisions about locations
where they can maximize revenues and reduce costs,
or identify where they may be
varying from some of their competitors.
I will also expand that outreach
to specific strategic industries,
having building relationships with the healthcare industry,
the technology industry,
and the auto dealer industry as well.
And we also continue to collaborate with the chamber
on the upcoming Funders and Founders event.
This would be the second event scheduled for November.
And the goal for that event is to promote,
to put the funders together
with some of the potential tech industries
and create more awareness and momentum around
health tech and other tech options in the shade lens
that would be complimentary to the sports mall
and some of the uses that have already evolved there.
Strategic goal number two is to continue creating
a business friendly environment.
You could see a number of accomplishments here
that have been completed by the community development
department that Erika will cover in a bit more detail
that include a launch of the parcel viewer platform
on the website.
There's also an approved contract now
for the lean process improvement
that will improve the permitting process for our customers.
And we're excited to see the lobby open up shortly
and we have gotten a lot of positive feedback
from the public on that.
Also within the economic development division,
We have continued to engage property and business owners
as well as brokers and build new relationships
as we better understand some of the challenges
and opportunities from the private sector
so we can continue accommodating them
and building a resilient economy.
And lastly, we have continued serving
as a single point of contact,
making it easier for businesses
to navigate the city hall process,
more notably the outdoor dining program.
A lot of the restaurant owners, they're experts in running a restaurant but not necessarily
applying for some of the outdoor dining program elements, so we were able to build relationships
and help them navigate the process, making it easier for them.
And with this I will invite Erika to talk a little bit more about some of the community
development accomplishments within the specific economic development goal, too.
Thank you very much.
I'm Erika Vandenbrand, the community development director, and development is a team sport,
and whether it's economic development or development services.
And one of the things that's going live tomorrow is a parcel viewer, which takes about five
of different places currently on the city's website,
and you have to go and hunt and pack for, you know,
when you're trying to go through and do a development,
as well as several other outside of the city websites,
such as the county parcel data,
and essentially combines it into one place,
which will make a very powerful tool
for our development community to be able to use.
And so just wanted to have that announcement there.
Aha, there we go.
And following up on what Mike had said,
there's been a substantial effort that's taken place
both with an Apex customer service first floor lobby
as well as the development services team
really focused on creating an ideal customer journey
so that we have been focusing on the physical space
on the second floor to be able to have a welcoming,
very customer focused approach for seamless navigation, efficient services, and then sending
our customers away with a smile on their faces, which I'm sure you will all appreciate.
But this will be realized starting on October 6 when we open the counter on the second floor,
so it will be open for service, except during the noon hour, but then even during the noon
hour people can prearrange for special appointments if that's the only time that they can come
in.
And we will continue to offer services basically from the development services counter both
over the counter in person as well as electronically.
And then last but not least, this is a preview of things to come but it's what we have been
working on.
For a long time, you have all been asking for permit metrics and so forth.
So we have an initiative underway, still not ready to launch to the public, but we felt
it was important to share with you that the entire development services environment will
be able to be captured in terms of the workload and the number of permits coming through and
so forth.
So that I'm looking at that over time.
But then in addition, probably one of the most frequent questions that you each get
and certainly we get is why is my permit taking so long?
So individuals will be able to look up online under their permit number and see where things
are at and see who actually is holding the next action, whether it's city staff or whether
it is the consultant.
I'll turn it back over to Mike.
you so I'll cover the next two goals for economic development we have a total of
four the third goal is continue enhancing the downtown experience and
tourist attraction we've made some accomplishments there more notably we
designed and want to thank council for adopting the outdoor dining grant it was
very well received by the restaurants we are happy to report that the first
outdoor dining pot has already been established under that grant largely due
to the financial incentive that we were able to provide and we are working with
a number of other restaurants that are currently going through the application
process that we're guiding them through and are cautiously optimistic that you
will be seeing several more in short order. We also continue collaborating
with Downtown Bonnet Creek, Visit Bonnet Creek, the hotels, other organizations to continue
bringing events, vitality, and new experiential experiences to downtown.
And strategic objective number four is to promote the city brand as a premier destination.
We're known for a distinguished quality of life, and we want to continue creating the
narrative that enforces that and positions us well ahead of the
competition. So we do that through a number of efforts one of the
accomplishments that we have completed was an office market study recently. That
is part of some of the analysis that will be going into the general plan
update to right size some of the land uses and making sure that we can ensure
that all land uses in the City continue performing well and support job
generation. We continue, we have also, we're currently developing an
interactive database that helps us better measure performance over time.
We already have an annual data fact sheet that we're putting out and in
addition we will soon have a more interactive dashboard that compare that
compares different metrics over time. We continue operating the city's economic
development portion of the website which serves as the city's window on the
internet into the business-friendly nature and is something that is looked
at by prospective tenants, things along that nature, and we're also operating the
LinkedIn platform sharing some of the positive narrative about accomplishments
and further enhancing the city's image.
And lastly, we are currently working
on updating the city's economic development action plan
for the next two-year cycle, and we will be bringing
that effort forward to provide you with an update
in the December-January timeframe.
And with that, I am happy to answer any questions related
to economic development.
Okay, thank you, Mike.
We have four priorities to go.
Mayor Pro Tem is on East Coast time,
so maybe if we can limit our questions to,
on this topic, to one or two real pressing ones,
we can get on.
And it was a great presentation and very thorough,
so we got a lot of good information.
Any questions on economic development?
Just, I had just one on the pod that came in.
Do you know how much that ended up costing?
Yeah, we were told that the total all-in cost was about $45,000.
$45,000.
Yes.
Since you asked one question, though, my one question
would be for Erica, what do you see, like best case scenario,
what's your vision for that walk-up experience?
Are people walking into the first floor and being greeted?
Is there something, or is it, you know,
there's a sign on the elevator that says, go up to the side?
What does that initial customer experience look like?
So Smidar and others on the development services team
have been really instrumental.
So if you have recently been through City Hall,
you've noticed a couple things.
So one is that on the first floor,
a lot of the monitors and everything have been taken away.
They've been moved up to the first floor otherwise.
So that people aren't left with a presence
that is not friendly.
So that on October 6th, we'll have wayfinding signage.
We will have directionality so that people are directed
to go to the elevator.
So signage will be there.
Go up to the second floor.
You'll be greeted by a human individual.
And then if we're able to have the people there right then
that are not working with other clients,
they'll be able to be served immediately.
Otherwise we have a queuing system,
so that you get your place in line,
so that it'll be very seamless,
and then you can go from person to person to person
to have that experience.
No longer having to go to the information booth
to be let up and so forth,
because the elevator will be there.
For other things within City Hall,
they'll be able to go to the information booth
and have things directed there.
One question.
So, if you had a crystal ball, and what you know after,
actually, you've been here a little over a year,
I think, maybe a year and a half,
what is our greatest opportunity,
and what is our greatest challenge
when it comes to economic development?
So, I will answer this question more
in the general plan context,
because they're kind of layers
from strategic to tactical. Things change over time, yeah.
But, I would certainly say that we have a number
strategic opportunities from our central location and being really well positioned within various
modes of transit in the East Bay, having the momentum and business clusters that are well
established given that location, having the quality of life elements, educated labor force,
having a downtown that is a jam from almost any kind of an experience.
So there's certainly a lot of assets to build on.
And all of these work energetically as an opportunity.
I think in terms of a challenge, certainly uncertainty about the future of workspace,
as it relates to office, and having some of the conversations about how can we best position
ourselves for the futures of shade blends, and also making sure that we remain having
conversations about how do we remain a regional job center with an increase in market pressure
for housing and some of the regulation that is making housing something that we're seeing
a lot more where at times it's eating away at the supply of land that has traditionally
been a job serving and supporting some of the higher paying jobs that we have been able
to develop here. So I think those are some of the conversations that are really important
in the general plan context.
All right, thank you.
Mayor Pro Tem, any questions on economic development?
No questions, I just want to really thank
Mike and Erica for what's been going on to date.
I'm hearing fewer complaints and more accolades
about the department in general, which is great,
so thank you.
Thank you, and next we have sustainability,
so I'd like to introduce Candace.
Good evening council members.
As Mike mentioned, I'm Candace Rankin-Mumby,
the city's sustainability manager,
and I will be discussing our
environmental sustainability climate action topic tonight.
This priority area focuses our lines very closely
with our sustainability action plan
that was adopted by the council in 2023.
So we're gonna touch on just a few of the highlights
of what we've been accomplishing
over the last few months here
on creating a more sustainable community
addressing carbon emissions and our impacts on the environment. So first
we'll touch a bit on the work we've been doing and generally in the building
space and we really focus on this as one of our main areas as there are carbon
emissions that come from the use of energy in buildings so either from
natural gas power in the building itself or what is being put into the electricity.
So a couple of big highlights here. One, there's been a lot of work done over the
summer and this year on the Lesher Center and its HVAC systems to make them more efficient and modern
and so this is going to have a variety of improvements. One should definitely reduce
the carbon emissions and make it more efficient. That will also provide energy savings and also
bring better comfort to our patrons within the Lesher Center so this is really one of those big
win-win-win areas in the work that we do and we look forward to doing more of these types of
facility improvements throughout the city. The second note here is on ongoing work that we do
partnering with MCE, our community choice aggregator for providing energy. They work alongside PG&E
to provide energy to the vast majority of accounts within Walnut Creek and we're working on trying to
get more of those accounts on their 100% renewable deep green plan. This is for those folks who have
just a little bit extra flexibility in their energy budget. It can be a really low effort
way to make a big impact on your household's energy footprint and it's especially helpful
for renters or other folks who might not be able to put solar on their house. It's a way for them
to still have 100% renewable energy. So we promote this through our different newsletters and social
media and activities and that continues to be ongoing. The last note on here is less of an
accomplishment and more of just an update on kind of a change in the environment since we last
spoke with you in May. So Assembly Bill 130 was adopted by the California
Legislature in June and it's a large bill with several elements to it, but
one in particular applies to the ability to adopt reach codes or amend the
building code in general over the next six years. There are some exceptions to
this that relate to allowing certain cities to make adjustments for
environmental sustainability reasons. Our analysis with our city attorney's
office we've our current status is that that would not apply to us. This means
some of the updates that we came to you with in May we're not going to be able
to approach in the next two years the way that we had expected because this
law will apply for the next six years. So staff are we're still sort of analyzing
this change and looking at what other opportunities we can have to still
achieve our goals just in different ways. So more to come on that but we'll
likely be able to come up with some creative solutions to still be working
towards reducing carbon emissions from residential buildings in the city. The
next topic that we're going to cover is our upcoming gas-powered leaf blower
band. So staff have transitioned internally to the vast majority of cases
using electric leaf blowers. Now that that's kind of been taken underway we're
really focused in our division and this is kind of our number one topic right
now of working on bringing forward to you the proposed policy for community
wide gas power leaf blower ban. This is something that was a commitment made in
the 2023 Stanley Action Plan. So we know this will have a really big impact on
our community so we're doing a lot of work on outreach at the moment. We've
We've sent postcards to about 400 landscapers, HOAs, and property owners alerting them to
the fact that this is a policy that we're looking to undertake.
Our office assistant, Sophia, is following up and calling each of those contacts as well
so that they'll hopefully receive that information in one of those two ways.
And then we're making several updates on our website.
So we have a dedicated webpage.
The URL is on the screen.
If you just type Walnut Creek leaf blowers, you'll also likely find it.
continuing to be updated with more information and resources
translated into Spanish as well. And then we have an email
newsletter for folks who can sign up if they're interested in
learning more and staying up to date. So we're trying to make
sure that everybody knows this policy is likely coming because
it really is going to be important for compliance reasons
to see the biggest effect from it for people to know that it's
there. So this is a big focus, and we expect to be back to you
very soon later this fall with more information on that policy.
And then in an effort to keep things brief, we do only have one more topic that I'll highlight
from the report today, and that's our efforts around reducing generated and land-filled
solid waste.
And so this, these updates really focus on our efforts around events.
So we permit a lot of events, either we have rentals within our facilities or we help with
permitting for events that take place in public spaces, and those events can generate a significant
amount of waste particularly if they have food involved. And so we are
working on updating the guidance that we have for folks who rent on you know what
they can do voluntarily and then we're also looking at the permitting process
to see if we can improve potentially more stringent requirements there what
impacts that would happen on our event providers. And then we also work closely with Walnut Creek
downtown who as you know put on a lot of wonderful events in the community and they also really take
seriously the waste generation elements of that so they reached out to us about you know potentially
brainstorming on ways that we can help them they're already doing a really great job but you know how
can they go even another step further and so we're looking to partner with them in their 2026 event
season on just taking some of those potential guidances as a kind of a test
case at their events and really using their knowledge to help us make sure
that whatever recommendations for making are practical for the community. So
that's the last overview slide that I have but happy to take questions on
anything I just mentioned or anything that's included in the group. Any
questions on environmental sustainability? Councilmember Silva. Thank
Thank you very much for the report and for all the work that you're doing in this arena.
It's complicated.
It's a lot.
And there's a lot of moving parts, I know that.
Regarding the gas powered leaf blowers and outdoor equipment, one of the concerns that
I anticipate us hearing is that it's more costly, tariffs, extra batteries we have to
carry, how efficient is it, et cetera.
Are we collecting data on that so that we get,
so we get that full picture when we discuss it?
Yeah, thank you for that question.
So we're doing, in addition to the outreach that I mentioned,
we're doing a lot of research
on sort of the policy development side of that.
So there's kind of two big sides of that
that I think address your question.
One is reaching out to other cities and organizations
in the state that have adopted gas power leaf blowers bands
and to done analysis on them.
So the number, there's different types of restrictions,
but at least 100 cities in California
have some sort of leaf blower restrictions.
So there's a lot of options to look at
for folks on what they've seen there.
And some of those are more recent,
some of them have been around for a while.
And the other side of that is we are looking at
the commercial side of it
and trying to understand that perspective better.
So that's part of this outreach to landscapers,
understanding folks are potentially using electric already
and how that is going.
We've also been reaching out to retailers.
So we met with Ace Hardware earlier this summer
and talked to them about the offerings that they have
and the work that they do to sell electric equipment.
One note that I'll make is that
you can't sell gas powered landscaping equipment
in the state anymore.
So whatever you buy has to be electric.
So there are definitely a variety of options out there
and the market is changing,
but we're doing our research
to kind of gather that information and we'll definitely
provide it in the report that we bring back
on the potential ban.
One of the things to keep in mind,
and I know that this is not the agendaized item,
but it's a big item for people,
is that with the change in the labor market,
I think there are fewer landscapers
and efficiency of the work they have to do
is going to be pretty paramount to them,
otherwise they're going to have to charge
all of their customers were for the same work.
So, just don't look.
Council member Davini.
No, I just wanted to thank you for the presentation
and the work you're doing in this area.
Thank you.
Mayor Pro Tem.
I echo those comments, thank you.
And again, thanks to you and the team
for the involvement in the discussion last week
with the residents for all of the climate change
and the environmentally friendly aspects
of the Heather Farm and Community Center.
I too echo the compliments.
And we just know we got some public comment
about kind of the status of our fleet and EV chargers
and perhaps in some future updates
we can get more statistical information on,
are we on track?
Are we meeting the metrics and milestones that we had set?
Yeah, the reason I didn't touch on that topic much at all
is because we're coming back to you,
I think it's scheduled next month
with a whole topic just on the REV fleet and charger.
So we'll be able to get in a lot of detail there.
There you go.
And on the leaf blower ban,
is that a typical, goes into effect 30 days
after the ordinance is adopted?
Yeah, it's a typical municipal code update process.
I imagine there'll be some sort of
public education component for a period of time
before any heavier enforcement of that?
Yes, we have options on how we structure that.
So staff will make a recommendation,
but there'll be flexibility.
Okay, and I'm violating my own rule on one question.
On what challenges do you see in terms of,
at the federal level, some of these incentives going away
with solar and kind of the carpool stickers
and things like that?
Yeah, it's definitely a changing environment this year.
So for folks who aren't aware,
there are several federal incentives from the IRA,
the Inflation Reduction Act, excuse me,
that are expiring either at the end of September,
so very shortly, or some of them are expiring
at the end of the year.
They'll likely make the cost of buying an electric vehicle
or doing some of these updates to your home.
They'll make it more expensive.
So we have been trying to get the word out about them now
so that people try and take advantage of it
at the time that we have now.
but we do, it'll be one less tool that we have
in our toolbox next year and we're just gonna have to rely
on other opportunities.
Okay, thanks Candace.
Thank you.
And I'll pass it back over to Erica
to talk about the general plan update.
I am still Erica Vannenbren,
the community development director.
The general plan basically is,
and the update that we'll be doing to it
is pretty much looking at the long-term vision
for the next 20, 25 years
putting together the pieces of the puzzle in order to help get us there. And
you will all have a much greater time etc. to take a deeper dive about the
general plan at a special study session on October 7th. So I won't
belabor the point. But as we get ready to do the RFP for consultant assistance
what we have been doing is we have been out in the community reaching out to
them and asking them questions about what makes Walnut Creek special, what
makes Walnut Creek great. And the information we've gotten back is that
people love the walkable downtown, restaurants, shopping, sense of community
and safety as a community. And the graphic that's over there is basically a
timeline of the city that we use as the backdrop as we're having these
conversations with the public as we did with the Loca Street Festival. And for
those that didn't have an opportunity to see that we are going to be at the
trunk retreat event and it will be a hauntingly magical endeavor. So with that
just wanted to also let you know that Councilmember Francois stole my
thunder about the reaching out to the business community and his report out so
I don't need to go over that again, but we have been reaching out not only to our
constituents to find out what kinds of things are of interest to them, but also to the business community and then certainly staff here within
The city to be able to have a better understanding of what's needed to be able to have success from each and every department within the city
And helping develop the general plan and so as we issue the RF the request for proposal
So with that there's more to come on October 7th, but I'm here to answer any questions you have
Any questions on the general plan?
It's exciting. I
Was here during part of the last one the very end
Um, I appreciate that you've reached out to the Chamber of Commerce the Locust Street Festival
on the Creek downtown
Have you thought or could you put into your?
back of tricks to actually reach out to the historical society and convene some of their members they are a
Vast resource of the path information on the past and I think that perspective might be very helpful
we're certainly going to be very inclusive and and that is you know one of the elements of
That we're you know attempting to capture with the RFP the requests for proposal for the consultants to be able to gather you know the past
Information as well as all the demographics and so forth as we look toward the future
Mayor pro-tem any questions on the general plan
Okay, thanks, Erica
Good evening members of the council. My name is rich pain
I'm a public works director for the city of Walnut Creek and I'm here tonight to present to you on the parks
The parks and recreation facilities, there's a lot going on right now. All you have to do is just drive in
Heather Farm Park and really around town who's a ton of work
and so I'm here to present just update you on some of the work that's happening and
Just wanted to remind you that this work is a lot of this work is funded by the measure
Oh that we discussed tonight and then along with our capital budget and also we have some grant funding associated with these projects as well
So I'm going to be covering
There's a little bit of a delay here. Sorry about that
You have to be patient. Okay. I will be covering four objectives that were set by
Your council and the first one is the park and facility improvements. We were working on
I'll give an update on the aquatics and community center
We'll talk about some of the pedestrian friendly development that's happening in our community
And then I'll end with sort of an update on what we're doing our plans our future plans for the Clark pool site
so
As I said, there's a lot happening out in our parks in terms of our facilities
The ball field lighting project at Tice has been completed if you've been out there in the evening
It's it's kind of a cool project of the lights are LED and they're very directional
So we don't have a lot of spillover and I think that that's a nice touch to that park
It doesn't create light pollution that normally comes off of large fields like that.
Our synthetic turf project is on its way if you've been out there.
Like I said, there's a construction zone out there everywhere you look.
Ball fields one and two are obviously receiving the treatment along with the field to the
north.
And the sub base is in place and I know that the turf is on site and is going in as we
speak so that one is moving forward.
The next one on the list here is the court resurfacing at Arbelado and Red Gear Park.
If you've been at either one of these facilities you'll know that in the past they're looking
pretty rough and the resurfacing as you can see in the picture looks fantastic.
inviting for the public and I was out at Red gear the other day and saw you know
basketball pickup game happening so it was really cool to see that I think in
the past it's been an underutilized space and with the improvements it's
really drawing people to that site and then and then I know Mike Vickers has
been busy and and team have been out doing pop-ups and reaching out to the
public to talk about the amenities that are projected to go into Civic Park
and Walden and we've been getting a lot of feedback in fact I think over 600
folks have given feedback on this on these two projects on these playgrounds
and so we're going to be taking that information the feedback that we got
from the public back to pros and present that to them and get some direction in
terms of options so that's what's happening there and then I'm happy to
report that phase one is moving along as you all know we've got our permits in
place and the project just started and many of you take took a tour out on site
and it's an impressive project to look and see the progress that's being made.
Specifically at the expansion of the lake, that whole area along the pathway
looks totally different and then and so there's still a little bit of work to do
there. We've got to do the planting on the bank and finish that element of the
work you know along with some trees and some other things along that bank. And
and then the focus now has turned to the cement pond and really constructing
that that new edge line of the pond in preparation for phase two and phase two
I'm pleased to say that it went out for solicitation for bid last Friday and so
we're eagerly waiting for those bids to come back as our city manager mentioned
And we should be getting those back on October 23rd, and then bring it back to Council on
November 18th.
And I just want to acknowledge staff, not only Public Works, there's a lot of work that
went into bringing this to this point.
We had three plan checks, a lot of work from our architect, our Griffin and Nolan Tam put
a lot of work into along with our engineer staff and our building
department. And I just want to say publicly thank you for getting us to
this point. There's a huge milestone. A lot of work went on and a lot of
dedication from staff to make this happen. And given the deadlines that
we've been given, as you heard earlier tonight. So it's been a real tight
schedule. And I will say city staff rose to the challenge and it was really
Great to watch.
Nope, I think I hit it too many times, sorry.
And as I mentioned, Clark Pool will be looking.
I think I skipped one, I apologize.
Okay, and then along with all the projects
that are happening in our facilities,
out on the streets we've been working,
doing a lot of work, specifically
from our traffic engineering.
I will say a lot of these projects were grant funded
and just go down the list here. Crosswalk safety improvements in a lot
of the areas, specifically in the larky area. We've been getting a lot of
feedback from that neighborhood. So there's a lot of work happening in
there. The expanded sidewalks on Parkside, um, just filling in some of
those gaps for pedestrians along Walker and Jones and then all along the
Walnut Boulevard in front of the Walnut Heights School right there, just filling
some of those sidewalk gaps and making it safe for pedestrians. Our trail
crossings, a lot of enhancements with, you know, beacons and just really defining
some of our crosswalks better so that more visible, making it more safe for
pedestrians across those wider streets. And then along with that, a lot of these
These projects are in design, including this one, the high quality bike facilities.
This is a raised bike facility in some of the designated locations, and that work is
in design.
It probably won't happen until next year.
And then taking us back to Heather Farm, we'll be looking at reimagining this site later
the fall or winter of 2026. In the meantime, we've done some study on the
sound, the existing sound, so that we can use that as a baseline as we get closer
to, you know, looking at that site and how sound will be impacted by whatever
improvement that we make moving forward. So with that, I'll take any questions
that you might have. Mayor Protem, any questions on park facilities? No
questions. I just want to make a comment that when rich says the cement pond like
Beverly Hillbilly's it makes me smile. I was trying to place that reference thank
you. Councilmember Davide, any questions on parks? No, thank you for the update. I
I know I've got a busy department with all the projects going on, but I appreciate your
work.
Councilmember Silva.
Thank you for the update and thank you to your entire team and all of the city staff
and the contractors that have been working on all of this.
I appreciate the nutshell has been doing updates on where we're expending the measure O funds,
but it would be really important to not only have construction signage up, but like out
at Tice Valley, the change occurs, people will not forget that there was a change,
perhaps we can do sign. We have a sign shop. Maybe they can do some signage that
says, you know, before and after or something like that, just to keep front
and center that the voters came together with us to do all of this. It wasn't just
about a pool and a community center, it's about a lot of different projects in the
city. Just a thought. Absolutely, it's great feedback. Councilmember Davini. Do we
have signs up that are saying like paid for with measure adult those being
posted around yes those signs are on-site yeah but I think it's a good
touch to look at maybe you can get more I know the county's done that with a few
of the things they've passed where they'll actually like have it right on
the street when you're driving by absolutely yeah good suggestion I love
like that I think that was a concurrence from mayor pro-tem and just in terms of
logistical challenges I guess with the turf fields and the soccer club how's
how's that working out so at Ties we have we obviously have a little more
flexibility and and I know we've been programming that obviously into the
evening so that's you know I think that's really helped out obviously that
will improve as as we get hella form on board so and that that's happening this
this fall? Yeah, the goal is to finish that by December, have it complete. I was
just gonna add Councilmember Francois, you know, staff's been communicating
regularly with the Mauna Creek Soccer Club in terms of usage and timing so
they were able to adjust their schedules accordingly and just based on some
feedback I've received from them they're really pleased with the project and
obviously really excited to get out there and play on the turf hopefully in
October. That's great. I haven't heard from them, so I was assuming that was the case.
And that's good and then what looking ahead logistical challenges with the pool
Community Center footprint what do you there'll be some fencing going up at some point and it'll be near the all abilities playground
But won't necessarily it might impact some of the picnic facilities I understand but not necessarily the playground
That's correct. There's some shade structures that are currently in the turf area adjacent to the all abilities playground
But the all abilities playground will remain open and accessible
Excellent. Thanks for it. You're welcome and I'll turn the time over to Captain Hibbs
Thank you rich. Good evening city council city staff members of the public Ryan Hibbs administrative services captain police department
I'm here to give an update on I'll wait a few seconds now
There we go
public safety and social wellness, so
Within public safety and social wellness there are five strategic goals listed here. One is to build an effective and innovative police department
maintain proactive police responses to crime trends
joint agency responses to homelessness and mental health challenges
crime prevention partnerships and and programs in neighborhoods the downtown and other commercial areas
and improvements to traffic safe traffic transit pedestrian and traffic and sorry bike safety and
community and regional disaster preparation resiliency to meet the increasing challenges of wildfires, earthquakes, droughts, floods, and other hazards.
So we'll start with
Maintaining an effective and innovative police department. The first bullet point might give some folks some pause here.
So AI for report writing is something we are currently exploring in order to take some of the labor intensity out of our report writing.
So, um, I'd like to assure members of the council and the public and city staff that
this is all closed source.
So the information is taken from body cam footage and it's taken from our report management
system and our computer aided dispatch system, uh, to generate a police report based on the
information it receives out of those three sources.
And what happens is the author is the officer that has to then go in and they essentially
edit, but there's an attestation at the end of it that includes essentially a disclaimer
that says that the report was generated by the use of AI.
This is a process that has been vetted through the District Attorney's Office.
Other agencies within the county are using AI for report writing.
They're reporting up to about 50% reduction in time spent for report writing, but we're
not seeing that so far in our trials.
we are seeing significant decreases, but we're not seeing 50 percent.
Our social media engagement, I'm happy to report, is up, and this is actually a little
bit of a low number.
It's up 20 percent.
Some of the metrics that we use to determine social media engagement include video views,
and we did recently have a video that went viral based on a crime tip that we put out.
The other major technology investment that we made was upgraded and expanded our automated
license plate reader cameras which speak to some of our other software a lot more efficiently
and they give us essentially better more actionable data and it comes in much faster so it's made
our decision making in terms of where we're allocating resources to combat crime and regional
crime trends that much better.
Strategic goal number two is continue proactive police response to crime trends and so I'd
I'd like to highlight some of the work of our crime prevention specialist who essentially
took that program from the ground up and built it, and she's taken it and running with it.
Her name is Kira Raman, and she is, at the moment, reigniting both the Neighborhood Watch
Program and been building a crime-free business watch program.
So the crime for these tend to go hand in hand.
Obviously the crime-free business is more commercialized, but essentially what they
both do is they provide training to recipients.
So whether it's a resident or it's a business owner or a manager, they receive training
from us and then they receive the crime-free business model as a certification.
So they'll receive a certification that basically shows that they are participants in the program
and that they've received the training.
And based on the, there is actually a crime-free business national website based on their
reporting robberies reduced for businesses that participate in crime free business, the
crime free business program robberies reduce about 40%, 40 to 45% and then assaults to
employees typically are reduced by 30%.
And that, we hope to have that program up and running late October, early November,
we're about ready to launch that.
And then we talked a little bit about evidence based policing.
We're very data-driven at the police department in order to best allocate our resources to
crime and crime trends and issues.
We want the best data available, so we take that data, we analyze it, we essentially devote
resources specifically when we've had to, either we've had a reduction in staffing or
we've had to reduce overtime hours, we've been able to stay on top of that.
goal number three is joint agency response to homelessness and mental
health challenges we did recently work with community development and public
works and the city attorney's office to update the homeless encampment protocol
part of that approaches and we'll get to this a little bit later but part of
that approach is also disaster response to the unhoused we recognize that they
are very vulnerable and natural disasters and so we wanted to make sure
sure that we incorporated, we made a policy to make sure that we kept them
safe. The emphasis with the homeless encampment protocol is to protect
environment and public spaces and then offer resources to the unhoused
population. Our approach here is compassion. So our homeless outreach
program officers work in conjunction with CORE to offer the unhoused
resources, help to get them off the street, but we also want to make sure
that we address public safety and quality of life issues
without criminalizing the homeless.
And then CORE is available,
see I jumped the gun there.
CORE is available weekdays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
in their on-call weekends and evenings.
Strategic goal number four is to develop
crime prevention partnerships and programs.
We did talk about Neighborhood Watch earlier.
That is essentially a refresh of that program.
The Fraud Prevention Program,
we've reached out to a number of community groups
including the Golden Rain Foundation of Rossmoor.
We do conduct fairly,
quarterly updates on fraud issues, basically.
So we present to the community there to make sure
that some of our most vulnerable members of the community
aren't victims of fraud.
National Night Out, well attended this year.
That's gonna continue.
And then I have a shameless plug here
for under community outreach.
We do have coffee with a cop coming up on October 1st from 930 to 1130 at Telos Coffee
on Main Street.
Everybody's favorite, traffic, transit, pedestrian, and bike safety.
We'll get to e-bikes in just a minute, but we did host recently a bicycle rodeo at Civic
Park that allowed parents, kids, and members of the community to come out and ride an obstacle
course.
They did get some education on e-bikes.
We are actively working on an e-bike education campaign to go out citywide.
That will be included in our social media as well.
We recognize that e-bikes have flooded some areas of the region, and we're mindful of
the dangers they can cause if people aren't riding them properly.
So I know Councilmember Davini has spoken a number of times about his experiences in
the ER, and we want to avoid that if we can.
One thing we did start recently was high visibility traffic enforcement.
This is an overtime assignment that is dedicated strictly to traffic enforcement and education,
and so officers are deployed out to, on an overtime basis, are deployed out to hot spots
in Walnut Creek.
So higher traffic areas, high complaint areas, and high collision areas.
On that note, in kind of, I would, I don't necessarily know that I would point exactly
to that effort but it's definitely a big part of it, our traffic stops and our citation
issued are both up approximately 45% as a result of our traffic enforcement efforts.
And then regional traffic saturations in DUI checkpoints, we've been lucky enough to collaborate
with a number of agencies in the region to conduct traffic saturation details along with
DUI checkpoints and more forthcoming there.
This is to highlight some of the work that we've done with other agencies.
In June, we conducted speed saturation, both June and July, we conducted speed saturation,
the first with San Ramon, the San Ramon Police Department.
These are typically operations that run about two and a half to three hours, and within
that timeframe, our officers in conjunction with San Ramon police officers made 31 traffic
stops and issued 24 citations.
And then in July, we collaborated with Concord Police and made 66 stops and issued 54 citations.
stations in that timeframe. And then back to eBikes. So in August, we conducted essentially
an eBike sting in which we basically focused on the downtown corridor. Out of that timeframe,
this was about a two-hour operation. Out of that, we made nine stops and issued one citation
for an unlicensed driver, and then we actually towed an electric motorcycle.
Continue on with improving traffic transit pedestrian and bike safety. The police department
part of a traffic safety working group which includes traffic engineering and
traffic commissioners. We meet quarterly and the topics generally talk or generally
go to engineering concerns, traffic concerns, education and enforcement will
come up as a part of that but one of the nice things that this is a multi-pronged
approach, we are not. Enforcement is one arm of that but we want to take an
educated an education approach to changing driver behavior that's our
that's our goal. Strategic goal number six, enhanced community and regional
disaster preparation and resiliency so the big priority here is for us to
refresh CERT. We are seeing some challenges with filling the
manager position for CERT being that it is a volunteer position it is a bit of a
heavy lift, it does require a level of passion that we need to, uh,
find the right person to fill that job. So, uh,
but one thing we've also done with the city is, uh,
we have an emergency operations center training for city staff. Um,
these are hosted with a put together in conjunction with an outside consultant
that is an expert on emergency operations. These are training,
these trainings are quarterly, uh, and they include a number of different
things like tabletop exercises, scenarios, role definition, and best practices.
And the idea is that we don't, when we come into an emergency operations center, we all
know what our role is, and we all kind of, that muscle memory kicks in and we're able
to kind of take on the role instead of essentially guessing.
And then as part of the, I spoke about it earlier, but as part of the disaster response,
We were very mindful that the unhoused is very vulnerable in these types of things,
and so we want to be prepared to assist them as well.
With that, we'll open it up for any questions any of you may have.
Okay.
Thank you, Captain Hibbs.
Any questions on public safety?
I just have one question.
I haven't heard anything, which is always a good sign, but what's the latest with crime
downtown or any kind of downtown activity that we would like to avoid has
there been any problems especially on weekend nights? Also haven't heard
anything and overall our crime is down 4%. Thank you. Councilmember Silva. Thank
you very much for the report and for all the work that the department does. I
think my colleagues would agree with me that what we hear about is crime,
neighborhood speeding and e-bikes now. Is it possible if you have the time in the
falls at some point to get a little more detail on the neighborhood watch and the
and the business crime-free program maybe traffic enforcement to get a little
more so that we have a little more in our memory to be able to respond to
those inquiries that we get.
Absolutely, we'll be providing an update in the near future.
That would be great.
OK.
Thanks again, and Joe, you're going to wrap it up?
Yeah, with that, I'll turn it back over to Joe Carroza.
All right, well, very quickly, thank you
to all of our leads for sharing the milestones
that we have to date.
We will be coming back to council in January
with our next update.
And with that, that's the close of our presentation.
Thanks so much.
I'm going to open it up for public comment.
you for being patient and waiting. Members of the public have up to two
minutes to address the Council on our priorities updates and feel free to fill
out a card now or later. Welcome. Welcome. Well, my goodness, it's so nice to be
here with everybody. I have the names with the faces straight instead of just
reading it and getting confused. I had some points here and I got most of those
answered and learned a lot more. Just a crazy thing came to me today, I was at
Safeway, drove in and not a very, just like a bumper sticker on the front of
this big car that says, you know, new driver in training, you know, be patient
or something. And I remember when there was something on the top or something
was large. And so I don't hardly ever see anyone who's learning how to drive anymore.
My question has to do with bicycles and where we park them. I know that there's some places
you can lock them up and reserve at the BART and there's a few places. I don't know why
we have a crazy one over at Del Monte by the Kaiser. I think it's room for two. I've never
seen anybody use it. And I know sometimes they get broken into like a bard or something. And so I saw
something, now I can't find it of course, having to do with what's coming in terms of bicycles
and storage and all of that, and so how do we, you know, you either think of those containers
or you think of you lock it up around a pole or something like we have a lot of, and so
I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you for being here tonight, Jan, and you're right, we do have everyone here tonight.
So as a wealth of information, a lot of resources that went into this and we're very appreciative
of that.
referring to maybe as a curb management plan that we had a study session on last
meeting which should have further details on bike parking and where you
can park your bike what types of facilities and what improvements we're
gonna try to do in that regard so bringing it on home any want to start
with councilmember Davini any thoughts comments direction to staff atta boys
and out of girls. The floor is yours. No, thank you. Our presentations were very
thorough. I appreciate all the work that went into them and the work you're doing
to improve the city and I don't have any questions for now. Excellent. Council
Member Silva. Thank you for all the work. You make it an honor to be able to serve
this community because you serve it so well, so thank you. That was very
poignant thank you mayor pro tem made most of my comments but again thanks to
staff this is terrific to get these kind of updates and just seeing the
improvements everywhere including with the seam and pond I love it I'm gonna
have that song in my head for the rest of the night now I too would like to
thank staff I the presentation was extremely well done I like the focus on
the strategic objectives you take a lot of information and put it into very
very digestible format.
I'm particularly excited about, you know,
the second floor opening up again.
I think that that will be a real big improvement.
There are things that get lost through email
that you can't do, that you can only do person to person.
And I think it's a lot more efficient to do it that way.
And I think that'll be, it'll be very well received.
So I'm excited to see us doing that.
And then at some point, maybe not now,
but when the General Plan Consultant is on board,
you know, to the extent there are opportunities
to have flyers with QR codes
or something we can put at the farmer's market,
that's another touch point in an area
where we can engage with the public on that effort.
So if there aren't any other comments in,
we'll go ahead and close that item and thank staff.
And we're all almost done,
but I would like to, we're going to adjourn tonight
in memory of Patty Court.
Patty was a cherished member of our city team for 24 years,
and throughout her career with the city,
she made lasting contributions to both our art and recreation
programs.
I know she touched the lives of countless colleagues, artists,
and students, with her warmth, her dedication,
and her unwavering support.
Paddy's dedication and spirit will be remembered with gratitude and affection
by all who had the privilege to work alongside her and let us honor her
memory and the profound difference she made in our community. Thank you all for
being here tonight. Good night.