I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the regular meeting
of the Walnut Creek City Council.
The City Council was 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.
each agenda item, there will be an opportunity for public comment on the
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 communications 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 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 and 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 members of the
public have a full fair and equal opportunity to be heard. The City
Council Handbook outlines decor 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.
Written comments submitted and received up to two hours before the meeting
have been posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record
but will not be separately read into the record. All right good evening I'm Kevin Wilk mayor of
the city of Walnut Creek and welcome to the Tuesday February 17th, 2026 regular meeting
of the Walnut Creek City Council and if you would all please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.
indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
And City Clerk Susie Martinez, would you please call the roll?
Councilmember Darling? Here.
Councilmember Davini? Here.
Councilmember Silva? Here.
Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Here.
Mayor Wilk? Here.
All right, for our first item, I would like to invite members
of the African-American Friends Club of Rossmoor,
including Mary Taylor and Debbie Thomas,
Program Manager with A3 Behavioral Health Crisis,
services of Contra Costa Health and come forward to accept the proclamation.
The proclamation for everybody here is going to be the Black History Month and
African American Mental Health Awareness Week and the A3 Crisis Response Program update.
And I'm going to join you in the diet.
So we have a proclamation here, and I'm so glad I'm going to extend it here.
And so whereas during Black History Month, we celebrate the many achievements and
contributions made by black Americans in our economic, cultural, spiritual, and
political development. Black History Month grew out of the 1926
establishment of Negro History Week by Carter Woodson and the Association for
the Study of African American Life and History. The observance of Black History
Month calls our attention to the continued need to battle racism and
build a society that lives up to its democratic ideals. And the city of
Walina Creek is proud to honor and celebrate the contributions of Black Americans in our
community who have indelibly shaped our history.
And whereas according to the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Alliance
on Mental Illness, some mental illnesses are more prevalent in the black American community
as compared to other groups in the United States.
Mental health and substance use issues and the devastating impact of COVID-19 are among
the leading causes of health challenges for black Americans in our region.
The City of Walnut Creek is committed to empowering black American residents by promoting the
benefits of mental health services through education, advocacy, policy development, raising
awareness and decreasing the stigma surrounding mental health.
Whereas the City of Walnut Creek collaborates with local government agencies and community-based
organizations to support the innovative A3 mobile crisis response housed in Contra Costa
health services to expand resources enhancing mental health in the black
American American community and the City of Walnut Creek supports and encourages
the efforts made to create the Miles Hall Community Crisis Hub as an easily
accessible regional contact center for people experiencing a mental health
crisis. The City of Walnut Creek supports efforts for local organization to
honor those who are who are or have been suffering from mental illness and
supports efforts to strengthen families and their role in sharing history and
shaping the future of our black residents and the city of Walnut Creek
acknowledges the designation of February 15th to Miles Hall Day of Remembrance
and therefore I Kevin Wilk mayor of the city of Walnut Creek on behalf of the
Walnut Creek City Council to hereby recognize the month of February as
Black History Month and March 2nd through 9th as Black American Mental
Health Awareness Week.
What I'd like to do is if you both have a few words that you would like to say, please
do, and then we'll take a picture.
You know me, I always have words to say.
So thank you very much to the council for this proclamation.
As the mayor said that it was started in 1926, as a weekend we've grown to a month, wanted
to share the contributions of African-Americans,
such as Crispus Attucks, who was the first person
to die fighting for American independence in Boston in 1770.
And there were over 2,000 Black soldiers
in the 369th Infantry Regiment during World War I,
known as Harlem Hellfighters, who
spent 191 days in frontline trenches during that war,
Drill War I more than any other American unit.
So we are fortunate to live in a community that recognizes the value of all of its residents
and a city council that honors the contributions of all Americans and recognizes we are stronger
together.
So in the words of Jesse Jackson who passed this morning, red, brown, yellow, black and
white, all of us are precious in his sight.
So on behalf of the African American and Friends Club of Rossmoor, and there's three others
here, we would like to thank you gratefully.
Thank you for this proclamation.
Thank you.
I want to thank Mayor Wilk, City Manager Dan Buxay, the Walnut Creek City Council, and
Susie Martinez.
It's an honor to receive this award and to share this recognition with Mary Taylor.
I would like to dedicate the award to the community of Contra Costa County, the many
allies of health services, community-based organizations, partnerships with all of the
other first responders, police, fire, emergency medical services, and the individuals and
families who are struggling.
What we do at A3 is truly a collective effort.
As tonight's joint recognition highlights the importance of black history and elevates
awareness around mental health within the black community, it brings me back to my own
personal story and connection to the cause.
When as a young adult, still in the first years of college, my little brother Byron
would experience his first psychotic break,
leading to a long journey and eventual diagnosis
of schizophrenia.
Our family then faced similar challenges
that are still very present in the black community today.
There is still the need to increase access
to culturally competent providers.
More provisions are needed for open dialogue
and promoting self-care to rise above barriers to treatment which leads me to the brief update
on A3 where timely and appropriate mental and behavioral health crisis services are provided
to anyone anywhere at any time in Contra Costa County. So in Contra Costa County
Our 1.2 million residents who live here, one in six people,
will experience a mental health challenge.
It is the third most reason for an ambulance call,
and 6,500 visits are made annually
to psych emergency services.
This is what the team looks like.
We are made up of RNs, mental health clinicians,
mental health specialists, peer support specialists,
level 1 interventionist, and substance use disorder counselors.
Our field response looks like this, where two of those individuals from those classifications
will go out in the field to provide crisis services.
Sometimes that crisis services also involves violence, and in those cases we will ask the
local law enforcement jurisdiction to co-respond with us.
These are some of the numbers from our countywide efforts in 2025, where in 2025 we received
20,255 calls, 12,418 of those were related to crisis, and there were over 5,100 field
visits that we made out in the community.
Most of the calls come from the individuals themselves or the family or friend or community
member calling about their loved one or someone that they care about. Law
enforcement represent about a quarter of the calls. And these are our stats for
Walnut Creek in 2025. 1125 calls. Of those 1125 calls, 702 of them were
related to crisis and 256 field visits were made here in Walnut Creek in 2025.
and this data just gives us a snapshot of what the last quarter of 2025 looked
like. Thank you very much for this honor and thank you for this time to present
the update on A3 crisis services. And let's let's get a picture all of us.
was they an eddy?
Right.
Next, we have a presentation
from the Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation.
And I invite Jim King
with the Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation
to present to the council.
Good evening, council members.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
Very briefly, a little background.
The Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation
was established in 2015,
and we've been working with the council since then.
We have a memorandum of understanding
to assist in raising funds for the new aquatic center
as part of the new community aquatic center
that's about to break ground tomorrow.
And I hope several of you will be able to join.
In this process, we have agreed to raise,
we the foundation agreed to raise $3 million
toward the cost of the construction of the aquatic center.
Excuse me.
And as per the MOU memorandum of understanding,
We initially have now forwarded our first installment,
payment on that, of $100,000.
And so I'm here symbolically with a check.
Well, there we go.
You presented.
Actually, I think it was a cashier's check
that came in a few days ago,
but this is our symbolic check.
And it's, I wanna note it's unerasable
so that the next check can also be,
we can use it again for the next round.
Should we fill in the amounts that we want?
Up to 3 million, Mayor Weld.
So I think we wanted a brief photo opportunity.
Absolutely, thank you.
Any questions that the council may have?
Well, actually, let me ask a question.
The groundbreaking tomorrow is the largest project in Walnut Creek's history.
So it's a big deal, $77 million for a new community center and swimming center.
So we're very excited about that.
And I just want to say thanks on behalf of the whole Council to the Aquatics Foundation.
I know we have worked together vigorously at times but with diligence to bring this
forward and you guys have been there and I really appreciate you guys signing the MOU
and living up to that and bringing us our check.
Thank you.
We've actually raised a little over $900,000 in cash and pledges so far in one year.
And we are in discussions for another $1.8 million, which would bring us to 2.7 or 90%
of our $3 million commitment.
So we feel very good about our efforts so far, but we're not done.
We take all contributions, small, large and in between.
And so I want to thank council members who have contributed to the plan as well.
If somebody were to look for a way to make the contribution, who would they, where would
they go?
All they have to do is go to our website, wcequatics.org.
And there's plenty of information on how to donate the dropdown tabs.
There are ways to donate cash, credit, securities, appreciated property.
If people have specific questions, they can be directed to me.
I'm chairman of the fundraising committee.
But we have a number of other people who could answer questions as well.
Thank you.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Let's do a photo op.
All right, next on the agenda is the consent calendar. Does any council member wish to
pull any item for discussion?
2F and 2H.
2F and H. And does any member of staff wish to pull an item for discussion? Does any member
of the public wish to comment on an item on the consent calendar? As a reminder, each
speaker will have two minutes to make their remarks. Written comments submitted have been
posted to the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record but
not be separately read into the record.
So this is for just the consent calendar,
not public communication for items not on the agenda,
not yet.
So do we have a-
Move to approve items 2A through E and 2G.
Second.
We have a motion to second.
Susie, could you call the roll please?
Mayor Pro Tem Francois.
Aye.
Council Member Silva.
Aye.
Council Member Darling.
Aye.
Council Member Davide.
Aye.
Right. Okay. If Councilmember Davini would like to brief questions. The first one is
on the bike trail improvement 2F. And I should direct my question to you. Okay. Yeah. So
Mike, hi there. So my question is on the written statement of the improvement, it says that
we're going to extend Class 4 protected bikeway from South Main to Capwell. Yes. And on the
diagram, it shows that same, that we're going from South California to Capwell. And just for the
sake of clarity, I was wondering which one we're doing. Are we going all the way to South California?
It's got this diagram that has the three spots that extend from California to Capwell. Is that
the intention, or is it just from South Maine? We're actually going to the underpass. Oh, all
All the way to the underpass, yes.
Okay, and that's with the class four
or just some sort of bike trail to the underpass?
At the underpass, it is not a class four.
However, the class four is to California.
Okay. Yes.
Okay, well thanks for the clarity, yeah.
If you'd like to make a motion.
I make a motion to approve item 2F,
authorizing transportation development act
article three grant funds from MTC
to construct the New Avenue Improvement Project.
I'll second.
Motion is second.
Susie, could you call the roll please?
Council member Davini.
Aye.
Council member Darling.
Aye.
Council member Silva.
Aye.
Mayor Pro Tem Francois.
Aye.
Mayor Welk.
Aye.
Motion carries.
2G.
2H.
Or 2H, yeah.
My question for 2H is that it looks like we
procured about like 3 million for the project.
So it was significantly under the cost.
And so the question was, do we wanna keep the funds
in CP 010131 or return them into source?
And I was wondering why we were gonna keep them
in that fund versus returning them to source
since it was like well over a million dollars.
And what were the pros and cons to that?
So the reason that we're significantly under
is because there was a shade lens maintenance fund.
So we used a lot of that money.
And then as far as returning the source,
we're using it, our plans are to use that for YVR paving.
So when that job goes out,
we'll have the money set aside already
for when we do the overlay, the big YVR project.
So we'll have that money ready for that.
So we've already identified an area
that we're gonna use the funds for.
Correct. Thank you. Thanks. So I'll make the motion to pass item 2H, the Wiget Lane
Rehabilitation Project as complete. Oh, well I asked about all of them. Oh, you asked? Yeah,
okay. Previously. We have a motion and a second. Susie, could you call the roll please?
Councilmember Daveney? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Aye. Councilmember Darling? Aye.
Councilmember Silva? Aye. Mayor Wilk? Aye. Motion carries.
right mayor if i could uh city clerk could you just verify did we have the lettering correct
on that i thought we might have initially pulled g not h maybe we misspoke on the lettering i just
want to make sure that all items were approved and we didn't invert we approve to a through e and g
and then to f and h were pulled okay okay we're good all right thank you all right next on the
agenda is public communications this portion of the meeting is reserved for comment on items not
on the agenda. Under the Brown Act the council cannot act on items raised
during public communications but may respond briefly to statements made or
questions posed. Request clarification or refer the item to staff. Consistent with
section 9.5 of the City Council Handbook 30 minutes will be allocated at this
time for public communications 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 meeting if necessary. Written comments submitted have been posted to
the city's website for public review and are included in the meeting record but
will not be separately read into the record. At this time I'll note that the
time is 6 28 and we'll take public comments on items not on the agenda
until approximately 6 58 and then the remainder of any such comments at the
end of the open session portion of the meeting. If you can please step up I give
your name and city of residence and you'll have two minutes. Great thank you
my name is Elizabeth Silva. I'm a resident of Walnut Creek and I'm a parent at Bancroft
Elementary in Walnut Creek. We had a group here you may recall at the last meeting to share that
Mount Diablo Unified School District announced less than 10 days before kindergarten enrollment
opened that our beloved Spanish immersion program would be immediately phased out. Thank you so much
for the support that you all showed and especially to cat city council member Craig Davini.
We really really appreciate your support. We're here to give you an update and to ask for further
support. The district has not adequately responded to our concerns and the immediate phase out is
still moving forward. Our Walnut Creek school board member Brian Lawrence has been engaged and he's
been supportive. We understand the decision was made by the district and that there was no
school board oversight. The district leadership confirmed that they did not do any outreach to
Bancroft Elementary families before announcing the decision. They did not consult with key
committees which is required and the district had no projected impact analysis or studies to share.
So it does really seem like this was a rushed decision. It was not thought through and the
reasons that they're giving do not add up. For my family it feels like we're being asked to make an
an impossible choice between choosing our local Walnut Creek school for our
son to attend, where our daughter currently attends and is enrolled, you
know, and being able to walk to school or choosing for him to be able to learn to
read and write in his heritage language. We moved to Walnut Creek specifically
and purchased a house close to the school for this Spanish dual immersion
program. Many other families did as well. And now Mount Dabble Unified School
District is taking that away from us immediately without any involvement
our community. We have more than 400 signatures on a petition that we have signed asking for this
pause. Numerous union complaints have been filed through the proper channels but they take 60 days
to review and meanwhile kindergarten registration is opened so we really want to ask the council
for additional support. If you can put a resolution vote on a resolution to ask Mount Diablo to please
pause this, or send an official letter from the City Council, we would really appreciate
it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, good evening.
I'm much shorter than Elizabeth is.
My name is Jessica Lee, and I am a Bancroft parent as well.
And just building on what Elizabeth has said, we've heard that the district says that this
alignment is about long-term planning, but we heard it described as a phased transition
that won't affect current students.
But as parents were struggling to connect
that explanation to what actually happened.
Long-term planning doesn't usually come
with less than two weeks.
Notice before enrollment.
A phase transition doesn't usually mean
that the kindergarten pipeline ends immediately.
I currently have a TK student at Bancroft
who is either going to be in the monolingual course
at Bancroft or we'll have to do two drop offs at Woodside.
And saying current students aren't affected
feels hard to reconcile when TK students
who are already part of the Bancroft community
are being told they have to leave
if they want the same opportunities their sibling has.
We understand that this change can be necessary,
but when the explanations and the impact don't line up,
it creates confusion and erodes trust.
that's why we are asking for a pause,
not to block progress, but to make the process
match the values of this district
that it says it stands up for.
Please, we need your help.
Please help us reconcile this and make the district
take a pause and engage the community
and do it the correct way.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hi, Mayor and Security Council members.
Thank you so much for your time.
My name is Jorge Silva, and I'm also a parent at Bancroft.
My daughter and my son are right here.
What is happening with us is, as my wife said,
it's an impossible decision.
We either continue with our community, with our friends,
with our kids' friends, with their families,
so that my kids learn the culture, the language,
that we speak sometimes at home that we're trying to do.
or we split them, and we take them to a different school.
And we take them to a longer community,
and we separate them with their friends,
with our community.
This decision from the board,
or from the district,
have rattled a lot of members of the city.
We have 400 signatories right now
in this petition to stop,
but the effects are just starting.
We have seen people that not even go to Bancroft
saying that these kind of decisions
with 10 days before enrollment are not well done,
are not thought through.
We have started looking into the reasons
that the district gave us for this termination
and they're not adding up.
We're asking for a pause.
We're asking to review the data
to include us in the process, and to not rip this really,
really successful program that you guys have,
that we have here in Walnut Creek.
We moved to Walnut Creek for this program.
We looked at different districts.
We bought a house close to the school
so that our kids can walk to school,
can have that ability to create a community.
And with 10 days, to 10 days and 10 advance,
the district is pulling and ripping that away.
Please help us.
Thank you very much.
Next speaker.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Ana Maria.
I'm also a parent of a second grader at Bancroft.
I also have a three-year-old who we were hoping
would participate in this program, just like his sister.
My background, I was born and raised in Colombia.
I moved to the US.
I have my life at this point.
And I feel like I've been successful.
Thank you to being able to be bilingual.
Not only I can keep ties to my home country,
but I can develop new community, new career here in the US.
And it was a challenging journey for me.
And we have great programs like this one at Bancroft,
which will allow anyone who's in the program
to have a more straight path forward
to these type of opportunities.
They can be bilingual, and it's not just the language,
but it's both cultural, creating,
immersions, and everything that the program
has successfully offered to date.
As someone who works in data-driven environments,
I believe that decisions of this magnitude
must be backed by transparent and credible data.
The data that we have been presented by
the district has not really appeared to have
clear rational or comprehensive evidence that the program is
underperforming.
In fact, the data that we've reviewed
suggests the program has actually been successful.
We've been doing a lot of deep dives into the data.
And we can see that the picture that is being painted
unfortunately doesn't match with some of other data sources.
So you can play with the data in many different ways.
But the way we've seen the data that's backing up this decision
does not seem to add up.
And finally just equity requires transparency,
inclusion requires meaningful engagement
and trust requires data integrity.
I respectfully urge you to help us
and use your voice to encourage a transparent review
and ensure that this huge decision
that affects hundreds of families
now and into the future is paused.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Good evening city council members.
My name is Melanie Gaglioti
and I have two students currently enrolled
in the Bancroft dual immersion program.
I also had a plan for my youngest daughter
to begin in the 27-28 school year.
Under that plan, my daughters would have spent
at least four years learning and growing side by side
with this sudden change that opportunity
has been taken away from our family
and many other families in the Bancroft community.
Also, if this transition is too quick,
there is risk of destabilizing
entire dual language program altogether. We are asking the Mount Diablo Unified School
District to pause the phase out of the Bancroft program. We are not resisting change, we are
asking for a pause, time for transparency, meaningful community engagement, and thoughtful
collaboration to find a solution that works for all families that are directly affected by this.
Our petition has already gathered more than 400 signatures and continues to grow,
showing how much our community cares about this program and its outcome.
We are here tonight as a community asking for your support in making our voices louder and
stronger. We are grateful for council member Craig Davini's email to superintendent advocating on our
behalf. And we understand that the final decision does not rest with this city council, but we
believe that your recommendation to the superintendent will not go unheard. And if you could please help
us thank you for your time and for standing with our community thank you
thank you hi my name is Linda Tuckal I have a little brother and I'm enrolled
in the bank off program from a second grader my brother my parents wanted it
while my brother and bank off but since they're moving the problem they can't
and Spanish is really important to me thank you thank you very much nice job
there you'll be on TV later you can watch it hello my name is Barbara Guinness
I've been a resident of walnut Creek since in 1996 city staff presented a
e-bike safety action plan to the mayor and city council in October 2025 staff
stated they developed an action plan that integrates education enforcement and
created partnerships. Regarding these partnerships, the city staff
specifically mentioned others stating that staff understands there are
many other groups that are going to be impacted by increase of e-bike use and
staff will continue to grow partnerships foster relationships. We all
know the residents of Walnut Creek are stakeholders. They deal with e-bikes on
the sidewalks, the streets, the parks, and the open spaces on a daily basis. We all know everyone is
busy, including city staff, takes time and effort for community members to attend meetings,
review, and send comments and questions to the city. However, with these original questions,
comments sent way back in October 2025 and four email attempts to attain a response from city
staff and hearing all the talk about building partnerships with stakeholders
building relationships there's still no response from the city this causes
citizens to surmise their thoughts comments questions might be considered
trivial and unimportant considering there is no response to community
questions comments perhaps the e-bike safety action plan should be retitled
with the name e-bike safety inaction plan.
I'm done with that, but I have a couple seconds left.
So I just want to thank Mayor Wilk, Dr. Davini,
Chief Hibbs in the back, also for their presence
and words at the news conference
regarding the e-bike Accountability Act.
We all know it's a problem, e-bike safety
in Walnut Creek, and we really appreciate you being there.
Thank you for your service. Thank you Barbara. Next speaker. I should have probably gone one
speaker before but I'm back with the Bancroft group. I want to thank the City
Council for all of your support so far. My name is Salman Sohawarthi, my son is
in first grade in the Spanish program at Bancroft. I have a daughter who will be
TK eligible in the upcoming year. When the Mount Diablo school district
announced this huge change and in all of our subsequent meetings with them, the
The biggest question from parents was why?
This program is successful, it's thriving.
What problem is the district intending to solve with this?
Who asked for this change?
Here's what they've told us.
The Bancroft Elementary to Foothill Middle
to Northgate High School pipeline is too crowded.
They wanna move students to the Woodside Elementary,
Oak Grove Middle, Ignacio Valley High School pipeline.
And they wanna start with kindergartners.
I'm sure that concern will sound familiar
to many here today.
When the Northgate CAPS group attempted to carve out their own district,
it was struck down by the state over equity and discrimination concerns.
By attempting to extricate a diverse student body from the same schools,
this attempt will also likely ultimately fail.
But in the meantime, this will cause chaos for many Walnut Creek families.
I'm appealing to the parents here.
Let's be clear with this decision, Walnut Creek kindergarteners will be separated
from their siblings.
At a time when the majority of California school kids
are Latino, Walnut Creek is losing
its only Spanish language program.
I actually live in the Walnut Creek School District.
Like many other families in the Walnut Creek School District,
I chose to apply for an inter-district transfer
to Bancroft so that my children would have the opportunity
to learn Spanish.
The early elementary years are the most critical time
for language development.
that opportunity is a pillar of Bancroft's excellence.
We're here tonight because Walnut Creek families
still need your voice.
We respectfully ask you to issue a resolution calling
on the Mount Diablo school district to pause this change.
If Mount Diablo wants its actions to survive
legal challenges, it must follow legal procedures.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi everybody.
I'm Jimena.
I am a resident of the Walnut Creek.
I have five kids.
Two of them in Foothill
and three of them in Bancroft Elementary.
My youngest is in TK, regular.
And for us, it's so, we started the program seven years ago
and the program is amazing.
Really, we don't understand why they decide
to transfer the program.
We want transparency.
As a family, we need to choose if we want to keep going
with the dual that for us is so important,
not only academically.
It's an amazing program for a lot of things
and really, on the other hand,
we need to transfer my youngest
to another school, separate with my kids.
Honestly, please help us to pause
or stop this the district decision that we are not involved and we don't understand the reason.
Thank you so much for the time. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening City Council, city staff,
members of the public. My name is Kayla Trenage and I'm a field representative for the assembly
member Anna Marie Avila-Farias of district 15. I just wanted to inform you all that she will be
hosting a housing town hall in partnership with the city of Martinez and the City Council.
It will be an interactive town hall. There will be live polling and keynote speakers as well as
group discussions. This event will take place on Thursday, March 12th from 7pm to 9pm at the
Martinez City Hall. I have some flyers here if you're all interested. We'd love to see you there.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming down.
Dear Volnetrik City Council and Mayor, first of all I want to thank you.
Six months back, we at Open Governance Initiative came here and spoke about it.
And Mayor had given a very good reasoning why it should be the fragmented information
need to be at one place.
And we need journalism to cover all the city meetings and what is happening at the city.
Since then, in the last four or five months, we have turned our open governance initiative
into a news, and we are having much bigger hits than local news right now.
And I want to thank you especially for giving that idea.
It really helped us.
Since then, we have gone to multiple city councils and seen so many different issues
that are common across different cities.
I have been I've decided to run for state assembly district 16 and
I would love to have your support and anybody who would like to communicate with me and
Let me know their priorities especially from the city council. I would love to know your priorities
I would be waiting after the meeting to talk to you. Thank you very much. Sure
Hi, everybody, my name is Lucila. I'm actually not a resident of Walnut Creek. I live in Martinez
But I chose to take my kids to Bancroft. I'm a Bancroft parent and
I have three kids. Two of them are currently attending third grade and first grade, dual immersion program. My youngest
She's five years old. She's gonna start kinder in August. So the decision directly affect us now
I have to choose between two different schools
But I'm here to express that I chose to drive 20 minutes each day one way to take my kids
to Bancroft.
It's because of how that's represent how important the program is for us and how important the
program you have in your city is such important that we don't care.
My husband and I we both work and we tag team in order to attend the school.
we follow the path to file a complaint form,
that's what we have to do,
but they have 60 days to revisit it
and to give us a solution, a response.
And if we don't like it, then we have to appeal it.
Now, if we have to wait for that to happen,
we're gonna be in May and that's too late for us.
We cannot wait that much.
We are talking to the board members
who are sending emails, sign the petitions and so on,
but I wanna share this with you
because this is how important for us
and that's why it's so important for us
that you support us.
Even if we follow the administrative path,
we are not gonna make it on time
without the help of the city board members.
Just wanted to share that with you.
Thank you very much.
Do you have anybody else for public comment?
All right, seeing nobody else,
we'll then close public comment,
bring it back to council.
Do we have any questions from staff from what we've heard on any of the issues that were
brought up?
Councilmember Silva.
Thank you very much and thank you to all of you to raise your concerns to us.
The challenges are that we need to be transparent as well and our rules don't particularly allow
us to take up a new item without informing the public in advance, but I do want to ask
the city manager and the city attorney, what we have done in terms of reaching out to the
school district, and if we've received any response in that term, and is there anything,
Mr. City Attorney, that we could do tonight without it having been agendized already?
First off, you know, we gathered information relative to the situation, and it's generally,
as the speakers noted, the district is moving forward, I think, as we all discussed during
in the last council meeting when the speakers came forward.
That was the first any of us had heard about this.
So we were not notified,
not necessarily that we were legally required to do so,
but it seems as if the noticing
was short and somewhat limited.
It is accurate as my understanding
that there is another Mount Diablo
Unified School District board meeting on February 25th.
I would recommend you continue doing what you're doing
in terms of making your voices heard.
And I do believe that kindergarten enrollment
NTK ends on February 27th, so the deadline is close in terms of being able to effectuate
this change.
So not a lot of new information to share beyond what you've heard already.
It's generally accurate in terms of the assessment of the situation.
And we did not receive additional details as to why, other than some of what you heard
this evening already.
So there's a board meeting next week, the 25th.
That is correct.
I don't know that this is necessarily agendized,
it's my understanding the school district
is proceeding with this and implementing it,
but obviously there's an opportunity for public comment
and an opportunity to ask that it be agendized.
I don't know that it necessarily would be,
but that is an avenue.
And are we legally allowed to have any conversation
about this, Mr. City Attorney?
This is not an item on the Council's agenda tonight,
and so if the Council wanted to have a discussion about it,
you would need to direct us to add an item
a subsequent agenda. The Brown Act has allowed the council to take comments for items not
on the agenda, but as indicated by the mayor in his comments, the council is not allowed
to take action on those. Specifically, the speakers have asked for a resolution that
would not be authorized this evening. If individual council members or anyone wish to write a
letter, you're able to do that in your individual capacity as council members.
So for my understanding, not as an official city letter that would come out from us, but
we could do so individually if we so choose.
Correct.
So we also individually could reach out to each of the five members of the Mount Diablo
Unified School District board, encouraging them to put it on their agenda for next week,
including an emergency.
They can follow the rules.
Yes.
That same set of rules to get it on their agenda.
Right.
The council could do that.
the formal action of the council.
Right.
As well as the superintendency that we could reach out to.
Okay, all right.
So, yes.
Yeah, so I commend the Walnut Creek residents
for speaking up and making your voices heard
and you're, I think, doing all the right things
and it sounds like we can continue to engage individually
but not as a group tonight.
Right, and again, as we've mentioned before,
Of course, this does reside within the Mount Diablo school district, but I think most of
us do know some people that are there and we can ask some questions and additional clarification
and as they make sure that they are listening to the residents as well.
Again, that's not something that would be officially done from the city, but individually
if we so choose.
You're not able to say anything now, but if you would like to write to any or all of us,
certainly may. I understand thank you thank you so much and thank you for
being here and some of you passed your bedtime so really appreciate you being
here as well. Mayor welcome. One other suggestion would be that they reach out
to their assembly member who has a representative sitting in the audience
tonight. That's a good point so there is a there are a couple of assembly
members that represent Walnut Creek one is assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Cahan
there's also assembly member Anna Marie Faria so there's they can help out as
well, including State Senator Tim Grayson who has an office in Walnut Creek. So all
of these people can be advocates for you as well. So communication works. We'll
just say that to the public at large. I too just wanted to thank all of you for
coming tonight. It was a program that I wasn't aware of before two weeks ago and
it sounds like a real special one. Obviously very deep felt and it's had a
meaningful impact. So I think we all share the concern if there's going to be
a change like this it should be done in a public forum where public input is
considered and I'll just leave it at that. I agree and typically with enough
time to act. All right that ends public comment we'll move on with the agenda
now and appreciate everybody who has made comment tonight. Next is council
member and staff announcements reports and activities or requests turn it over
to the City Attorney if any closed session announcements. Madam, Mr. Mayor
there are no closed session announcements so we did not have a
closed session today and no announcements from prior meetings. City
Manager? I do not have an update this evening, Mayor. All right so now we have
City Council member reports on activities AB 1234, assignments of various
activities and why don't we start with Council Member City Darling. All right
thank you very much. I did manage my husband I went out with the cleanup crew
picking up trash, that weirdly satisfying thing.
But I did want to know, a number of friends of mine
always say, when is the next one?
So February 21st, Rudd Gear Park and Ride
at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning.
And they will provide all the gear you need
and you will have a weirdly satisfying experience
and our on-ramps and off-ramps will be much cleaner.
I joined most of my fellow council members
at the neighborhood reception for our new police chief
and Ryan did a great job.
He smiled, he took pictures with everybody
and it was a great chance for the community to ask you.
I heard from several people,
they were really glad to get a little time with you.
You and I did the Verde ribbon cutting,
which was really a lot of fun.
It's a new restaurant, our new olive oil
and you've been strolling around.
I can't even talk.
Olive oil tasting?
Olive oil and tasting on Main Street,
and that was really fun.
One of my favorite commissions, don't tell them all,
but Youth Commission is my favorite.
and I got to talk to them.
And it was great fun like it always is.
It's something that is really a special part
of our city government.
And I love the ideas and the way they look at the world.
And I got to share with them,
when I was about their age
is when the shootings at Kent State were,
and you talk to them about how they process
kind of what's going on in the world.
They're at to a point where they start to understand
what's going on around them and care about it.
and I just really quite enthused with that group.
The last thing I wanna talk about is on MCE,
we have gone through an extensive process of workshops
and budget prep.
We will be looking at a potential
for a rate reduction this Thursday night,
and then we will move to adopt the budget next month.
And this is in the face of the headwinds of PG&E,
putting additional costs onto the members
who are enrolled in MCE.
They have a retroactive rate increase.
They got the CPUC to agree to.
So they are collecting this year additional money
from all of the community choice aggregate customers
for both 25 and 26.
So we are looking for ways to make that more affordable
for our citizens throughout Contra Costa County
for our MCE customers.
We are also looking at extension of a program
called MCE CARES, which we had at the end of COVID,
which provided additional funding for families
at the very low end of the economic scale.
Those are the families that, you know,
a $20 rate change affects them.
So we're looking at ways to make it work for our families.
And I'll have another update next month on it.
So thank you.
All right, Council Member Silva.
Thank you very much.
and thank you to all of you who are here this evening.
A few things to report in the last few weeks.
I attended the first board meeting of the year
for the Diablo Regional Arts Association,
and it was really nice to hear about all of their plans
from their consultant on their branding
and outreach and improvements.
And also, there are some programs and performances
at the Lesher Center for the Arts
that I want to highlight over the coming weeks.
this Friday evening.
The 20th is Annika Steyer who is from SNL fame,
but also she was a Broadway performer in Wicked.
She was Elphaba.
So there are tickets available.
On Saturday night, SF Jazz will be presenting
the jazz vocalist Adeline Renoir.
I think that would be how I'd pronounce her name.
It's French.
And then Saturday the 28th,
the two-time Grammy nominated Mariachi band Mariachi,
and Horancia de Mejico will be performing.
And then in the middle of March on the 13th and the 14th,
back by popular demand will be the production
of College Notes, which brings acapella groups
from universities around the country to perform here
at the Lesher Center for the Arts.
Tickets for all of those productions and others
are available online at leisureartscenter.org.
And I would also like to mention
that. The Association of Bay Area Governments at their administrative committee meeting last
Thursday, we got an update on, or Friday, we got an update on the comments that were received
regarding the draft environmental impact reports for plan bear area 2050. And they explained that
most of the comments involved confusion about the population estimates that were being used.
what's interesting is that the state uses numbers that are very short term in duration, eight year
swaths at a time, and Plan Bay Area 2050 is really looking out to what the population
could be and both and jobs and housing needs in 2055. So there are differences in the numbers just
because of short term versus long term, but also the sources of the numbers are different as well.
so that was good to get that explanation. I will mention that Community Service Day is Saturday,
April 18th. There are about 40 projects and the city has some in parks and some in the theater,
etc., and all the schools are involved. Registration is open and if you go to the
city website on the home page and you'll see a banner that's circling through there,
you can click on it and we already have 10 people signed up and it only opened
secretly over the weekend which is good and so thank you all and thank you to the community.
Great thank you very much council member Silva and I think I'll actually I'll just go next as
long as I'm in line here. As we heard there was the meet and greet for police chief Hibbs great
community turnout for that. The mayor Pro Tem and I had the mayor and chair quarterly meeting for
all of our commissions which is always a great opportunity to hear from the different commissions
of what's going on and it really helps to extend what's happening in the city through
our commissions to have the chairs also tell their commissions and help to amplify what's
happening in the city to everybody.
There was a press conference that Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Cahan had.
We heard about this a bit during public communication, but it's on e-bike safety legislation and
and accountability, and we have received more emails
and accounts over the last year regarding e-bike safety
and speeding and going wrong ways
and too fast on the trails than any other topic, period,
over the last year.
And so this legislation, which essentially is requiring
anybody that has a class two or three e-bike
has to register it, have a license.
And that way there can be accountability
and they can be, if they're seen,
then they can be reported.
And it's not just, oh, it was a green bike
that there is actually a license.
So I gave introductory remarks.
Council Member Davini was there also gave remarks,
not just from a council member perspective,
but from a doctor perspective
of what he's seen in the emergency room
and members of the bike community as well.
So great to see that.
Got some good media coverage on there.
And I look forward to seeing how this legislation
makes its way through.
Lastly, today is the Chinese New Year
and Lunar New Year is today and it's the year of the horse
and gung hay fat joy.
And do you want to go, Mayor Pro Tem?
I thought I was next to him.
All right, there we go.
Go for it.
Mayor did a great job in terms of talking
about the commission chair and vice chair meetings
and just to highlight a few items that stood out to me.
The Arts Commission mentioned that with the inclement
weather and rain, normally they do public art walking tours
from the spring through late fall.
But this year, they'll be adding in
a public art walking tour of the library.
We didn't get an exact date, but it will be held in March.
If you go on the art website,
you'll be able to sign up for it.
So it's an indoor activity, and you can see all the great art
that's right across the street in the downtown library.
And then our transportation commissioners
shared about the shared mobility hub,
which is essentially high speed bus service
down the 6th AAD corridor from Martinez to San Ramon
and that the Walnut Creek BART station
will be a landing place for that service.
So this will help take, I think a lot of cars off the road
and it will be a good thing for our larger community.
And then the following day after that meeting,
I attended the Unleash the Love Adopt-a-thon event
at Joy Bound, and that was great.
They had a, I'll just say, driving into Shadelands,
thanks to the PBID and the Chamber
and the city's efforts are really paying off.
But there was a lot of activity happening there
on a Saturday morning with a farmer's market,
with the Joy Bound event and just Cali Craft
and just a lot of good things happening there.
So I think our efforts are definitely bearing fruit,
but it was nice to get,
it was nice to connect with some of the folks at Joy Bound,
learn about all the great work they're doing,
getting a tour of the facilities
and seeing their surgery clinic,
how they partner service animals with former vets.
And then also, it was amazed by,
they have over 800 volunteers.
They have a paid staff of like 140,
but 800 dedicated volunteers
that really make the place run.
So that was a fun thing to do.
And then I just wanted to give a shout out
to our public works team.
I saw them busy at work today in my neighborhood
checking the storm drains,
and I know they're doing that throughout the city.
So Rich Payne and his crew, thank you for doing that.
And you can go on the city website
and find out where the sandbag locations are,
but know that we're being proactive
and trying to stay ahead of these storms
that are battering us right now.
That's my update.
Nice, thank you, Council Member Davini.
Yeah, so regional transportation update from Transpac,
they gave us an update on the Innovate 680 project.
It's basically six projects which consists
of shared mobility hubs extending the express lane north
from La Vorna up to Martinez,
part-time transit they're exploring,
buses on the shoulder,
and advanced technology implementing metering systems
such all to work on improving traffic flow along the 680. The phase that they're currently
working on is improving the interchange between 4 and 680. It's going to involve a number
of widening projects as well as overpasses, some over waterways. The waterways can only
be worked on when it's dry, so that will extend the project out a little bit. It's estimated
to be completed in 2029.
I had the opportunity with I believe Mayor Wilk and Council Member Silva to attend the
Mayor's Conference where we recognized Black History Month in Richmond.
I had to sit down with our new arts and rec director, Chris Faro, and learned that not
only did she grow up down the street from my wife, but we went to the same high school.
Small world.
And I also participated in the press release, as mentioned by Mayor Wilke, I covered that
very well.
I would just say that personally, I found that to be a very rewarding experience, because
it's probably the first issue that I've seen that's come up while I've been on the council
that has arisen in the community and, you know, made its way up to the legislature.
They listened.
Now they're passing laws to, or working on passing laws to change that.
it's really watching that process take place from from its infancy and so being
a part of that was was a very rewarding experience so hopefully that that
legislation passes. All right thank you all. Next on the agenda is our
consideration item of the update on 2025-2026 City Council priorities and I
invite the Assistant City Manager Charles Ching to come forward to provide
the presentation. Mayor Member City Council good evening Charles Ching and
assistant city manager. And tonight's staff will be providing city council with updates on the
five adopted strategic priorities that city council adopted in February of 2025 for calendar year
calendar years 25 and 26. So the five council priorities that were adopted is on your screen
and the staff that will be presenting updates on these priorities are just specific leads.
So for economic development and downtown vitality, the updates will be provided by Mike Neiman, your
economic development manager. For environmental sustainability and climate action, it will be
Candace Rankin-Mumby, your sustainability manager. For general plan update, it will be Erica Vandenbrandt,
your community development director. Park and Rec facilities will be Rich Payne, your public works
director. And public safety and social wellness will be presented by your chief Ryan Hibbs.
So with that, as part of this presentation, we will be stopping for questions every,
for each strategic priority. And so you'll be able to ask questions after each section.
So with that, I'll hand it off to Mike Nieman, your economic development manager.
Good evening, Mayor, Council members of the public. Mike Nieman, your economic development manager.
And the economic development strategy for the city continues to focus on making the economy
diverse and resilient. We focus on business attraction, retention, streamlining, permitting.
We're focused on downtown as the unique place and the epicenter for the community.
Flexible zoning, focus on creation and attraction of higher paying jobs,
tracking progress and forming partnerships.
And we do this through the four Strategic Council objectives
that we'll go through and we'll highlight our accomplishments
and each since the last time that we presented this to you last fall.
So the first objective is building a resilient, inclusive, and diverse economy.
We have conducted a mayor visit.
The last one was in the fall to Madsen,
one of our newest large office tenants
that we're very happy to have attracted
from Oakland last year.
We would do a lot more than just that one mayor visits
and we are on track to do four more as we do every year.
But in addition, our staff does a lot
of less formal business retention visits
and the cultivating relationships with businesses,
large and small is really the bread and butter
of economic development.
We also conducted outreach to technology startups.
That is one of the focus industries in the local economy.
One of the efforts was through the collaboration
with the chamber on the funders and founders event.
The last one and second one that was held last year
was in November in shade lands with another one being planned
later in this year.
We also co-host that I meet the funders event.
And that was done through a partnership
with Diablo Valley Tech Initiative, DVTI,
and that was an event that we held here
in the end of January on the third floor.
And that also facilitated a conversation
between some of the local tech startups
and some of the funders and brought a community together
to Walnut Creek.
We also continue offering size up.
That is a data tool for site selection,
and we market it to local businesses
and entrepreneurs who may want to be in this community.
and that offers access to data that looks at operating costs,
it looks at the cost of doing business in the community,
their market analysis insights as to market penetration
of a certain business, and a lot of other valuable tools
for enhancing decision making for a business entrepreneur
who may be interested in opening one.
And we also conducted meetings with Kaiser
and with John Muir as we continue
learning about their growth needs,
understanding their strategies, and seeing ways
that we can support them through policy.
Here's a photo of the DVTI event that I mentioned earlier.
The second objective is creation of business-friendly
environment.
I'm excited to share with you that last about three months
ago, we kicked off a lean process that
was done through a consultant partnership
on public innovation, PPI.
And we had since had workshops and a lot of work and effort
has been invested with city staff.
And you could see a picture here.
And I love this picture because this
is the city's economic development team.
And this was the participation that the kickoff,
and this includes not just economic development division,
which is the staff of two, but also planning, building,
engineering staff, all of which are involved and committed
in enhancing customer service.
One of the most exciting things that has come out of it so far
is what was called the customer voice, where we have interviewed
and heard from some of the prominent business owners
who were really encouraged to share some of their feedback
with us that is being incorporated
to improve the permitting process going forward.
There's also a development services dashboard
that's being developed through a prototype
and that will be forthcoming later in this year.
Our staff continues to serve as a single point of contact
and that is done for strategic projects with permitting
as well as for outdoor dining
and we continue looking at ways to enhance that experience
for some of our customers through this lean process.
And we continue engaging property and business owners
and brokers as we continue building relationships,
seeking feedback, looking for various ways
that the city's economic development efforts
could be enhanced.
The third objective is enhancing the downtown experience
and tourism attraction.
I want to thank this council again
for adopting a outdoor dining grant program last year
and extending it through March of this year.
This program has been successful in creating
six new pods in downtown.
To date, we're still working with several more
in the pipeline who we encourage to move forward.
And the beauty of this program is through a $10,000 grant
where we're able to leverage a lot of private funding upwards
of $40,000 per grant, which really
enhances the experience and feel in downtown,
especially as summer comes.
And we'll see some of these newly developed pods
being heavily utilized, and really creating
what's the most unique about our downtown
is enhancing that quality of life that's hard to describe,
yet it's very experiential in nature.
And also continue collaborating with organizations
like Downtown, Walnut Creek, Visit Walnut Creek,
various hotels, and other stakeholders.
Because starting with downtown, that
creates momentum for other tourism attraction efforts,
retail, food and beverage, wellness events,
and other events.
Here are some of the photos of the newly developed parts
that we're really excited to share with you.
And lastly, the fourth objective is promotion
of the city's brand and telling stories
about the quality of life that this community is known for.
We completed an annual community snapshot
and that's an annual data
that I'll share with you in a second.
We're also developing an interactive performance indicator
dashboard that will be a more enhanced look and provide the opportunity at looking at
various data sources where it could look backwards and look at various performance indicators
over time.
We'll also continue operating the city's website as well as the LinkedIn platform that
has more of a business focus in mind.
We nominated two local businesses for the upcoming East Bay Economic Development Alliance
Innovation Awards, that's coming up in March,
and I am happy to announce that one of them
were cautiously optimistic that they will win
because there's only one in their respective category,
so fingers crossed.
And we're also updating the city's
Economic Development Action Plan.
As you know, it's a two-year document,
and we had one for the last two years through 24-25.
We're making marginal changes.
For the 26 27 action plan and we're starting to roll out public input before we bring this item forward
To you in the next few months or so
So I mentioned the community snapshot you could see it here
Some of the things to highlight is population has increased slightly and we have exceeded the 70,000 population threshold
our daytime population
continues to be much higher than population, which
shows that we have the most people here
during the daytime and a lot of employees
that come in town during the day.
And then our average household incomes also continue,
increasing up to 191,000.
And you can see on the right side
that our industry clusters continue
to be in professional and financial services.
We have a number of healthcare, of engineering firms,
and you could see other sales,
and business and financial services.
And you could see that the business license activity
has continued growing, and the last number is 2024,
because there's a little bit of a lag.
But you can certainly see that over the last six years,
it has increasingly gone up.
I also wanna share some of the vacancies with you,
and generally good news and retail.
You could see that by the end of 2025,
certainly downtown vacancies have reduced
relative to a year before.
There was a shorter term increase
in the neighborhood shopping center vacancies,
and that's because of two large vacancies
that we have had in the end of 2025.
Stein, Mart, and Macales, predominantly.
And you could see that on average citywide vacancies
and retail have reduced despite the slight increase
statewide on a much broader basis.
On the office side, though, as you may know,
office continues to underperform broadly
as the return to workspace has highly not been determined
the future of, and various companies are still looking
at different ways to consolidate.
So we continue to see that, although we have had
some successes, as I mentioned earlier,
we're able to attract Matson, as well as Five Star Bank,
has come to occupy some of the larger office leases.
Office continues to be a challenge.
And some of the other leases are smaller in nature,
as many companies are consolidating.
They're looking for different shared options
for different part time in office workspace, which
affects us and that affects our retail boost,
particularly with the downtown crowd
that we have experienced during lunch prior to COVID.
So you could see here that office vacancies
have been slightly higher over the last year,
relative to the end of 2024.
And we'll continue looking at different strategies
to enhance those going forward, and looking at clusters
that we can enhance that will occupy more office
space in the city.
And lastly, this is an example of the design
for the data dashboard that we're currently developing,
and that will be forthcoming and live on our website
towards the summer of this year,
and will be a resource to residents, to businesses,
and to prospective businesses
as we are becoming increasingly,
as we live in a data-heavy environment,
it will just add and enhance the data ability
that we already have on our website.
And with that, I will pause for questions.
Thank you very much, Mike.
Council have any questions on economic development strategy? Yes, council member
Davini. Yeah downtown right where we've got the outdoor dining spaces and the
the comments that I hear from the community is it's always like more and
more you know so we love that broad you know many residents love that the
Broadway Road is closed we love this outdoor dining I know we've looked at
this before but they're gonna is there gonna be opportunity to look at it again
to do strategic road closures downtown or perhaps to re-explore the idea of making main
and locust both one-way roads to sort of open up more walkable space and more kind of outdoor
accessible space for folks downtown.
I can speak to that.
Many of those ideas you mentioned, those had been vetted a few years ago coming out of
COVID.
There was feedback provided by council if the council's desire to revisit that at some
point. We certainly could. In terms of road closures, there was a lot of mixed
feedback on closing some of the streets downtown. Some liked it, some really did
not because they were worried about foot traffic and car traffic to their
businesses. So there was a lot of mixed feedback that said it could be
revisited at some point if that's the interest of the council. As I recall,
actually one of the issues was increased traffic by 10 to 15 minutes during
commute times, and that was one of the things that was overriding as well, but
something to, you know, always keep on an idea. So I was just going to say we're
starting a general plan update process, and I think conversations like that are
really appropriate in that framework, not in a shotgun approach, but a really a
long-range approach, because California and Broadway are designed to carry the
extra traffic and they may not be at the ability to carry much more if Maine and
locusts turn into one-way streets so you have to look at a 25 year outlook I
think on that so the general plan process would be a perfect time to do
that. Yeah no excellent. Then the other the other more of a comment it was
again something from someone in the community and it seemed like oh it
seems like a great idea. When you drive into Walnut Creek and you get off the
to Diablo exit and you're going under those underpasses
before you kind of emerge onto Diablo
and head to downtown.
That's not the most sightly area of the city.
There's Chainlink and some garbage that I'm here.
I heard some got picked up, so that's excellent.
But I was wondering if there's an opportunity
in that space to sort of have a welcome to Walnut Creek
as we've seen in some cities, something like maybe overhead
or some beautification project for that area,
that entrance into sort of like the tunnel
into downtown Walnut Creek.
Yeah, absolutely.
I know that we have a lot of logos for Walnut Creek
at a lot of entrances,
but certainly as we look into branding
and that's part of the new action plan
that I mentioned earlier,
that's something that could be looked at
as part of the enhanced branding strategy.
Thank you.
I mean, just to add on to that point,
even something relatively simple,
like what we do have those monument signs
where you come into town on South Main
and during the holidays, they're decorated.
That's a nice touch.
I mean, I think there could be a way
to be more inviting and welcoming
through kind of relatively simple things
to what we already have.
You have a question?
No question.
I just wanna say thanks.
Last year when I was mayor,
you guys answered every silly question
that I brought you and I really,
and the number of people that called
and said, where is my blah, blah, blah.
I really appreciated that you guys were able
to find all the blah, blah, blahs.
Appreciate the thoroughness, Mike,
and a good update on the economic development part.
Thanks very much.
Thank you, I appreciate your comments.
And next, I would like to invite Candice
to tell us about sustainability.
Good evening, Mayor, Council Members.
My name is Candice Rankin-Mumby.
I'm the City Sustainability Manager.
And tonight, I'll be providing an update
on the Environmental Sustainability
and Climate Action Priority.
This action really focuses on implementing
the City Sustainability Action Plan,
which was adopted by the City Council
in the summer of 2023.
So tonight, I'm just gonna give a brief highlight
on a few areas that we're working on,
in the interest of time,
but I'm happy to go in more detail during the questions.
So first, the biggest update we've had
since we were last doing priority updates in September
is that we came to you in November
to adopt the gas-powered leaf blower ban,
which will be implemented starting April 1st,
so it's just a couple months away.
So since that time, we've been working internally
to make sure that we're prepared
for the processes from the staff side,
and then we're also working very heavily
on community outreach on this topic.
So we shared information on our website,
on social media, and at in-person events,
and we're continuing to work on different ways
to get the word out.
Staff is working on developing a video right now.
And hot off the presses today,
we have two new flyers that are translated
into both English and Spanish.
One of them is just a general update flyer,
and one is really targeted at landscapers
so that residents can take that flyer
and share it with someone who might work on their property
make sure they will be able to implement the policy properly. Those are both
available today on our website on walnutcreeksa.gov slash leaf blowers along
with a bunch of other resources and if you're here in the room today there's
also some copies in the back that you're welcome to take with you on the
way out. Lastly on this topic we were asked when we were here in November to
come back with an update on rebates that might be available for the transition to
leaf blowers. At the time staff weren't aware of any that were available in the
area. So actually since then one has become available in the Bay Area through
the Bay Area Air District formerly back mud. However right now it's in a pilot
form. It only launched in December and it's currently only available in 18
zip codes of the hundreds of zip codes in Bay Area Air District. It's for
commercial rebates and that's where the business would have to be headquartered.
So we've been communicating with bad staff. I don't know if it's bad or B-A-A-D
now but their staff to tell them our interest in trying to expand it into
areas where cities have taken leadership and policies to ban so we're continuing
to see what updates we can get on that and we'll update the website and our
interest list more information becomes available there's a potential since it
is very mobile business that the current structure might apply to some businesses
that do work out here so we're also trying to get the word out about that
just in case. Next, we'll provide an update on our EV or electric vehicle
efforts. So staff are finalizing an EV strategic plan to really go into more
detail about our own fleet transition and then the transition of our chargers
for the public for both the operation maintenance and expansion of them. That
is something that we've been working on for a while now. We're putting the final
touches on and we're hoping to have that back to you this spring to be reviewed
the final draft of that. While we're continuing to update that policy, we're still implementing
the goals that we have. So one update here is that we came late last year with some funding
requests through PG&E to help assist to put in some chargers for our fleet at a secondary
courtyard at Heather Farm. And this will be our first level three fast charger. So we're excited
about that opportunity that's moving forward and it will be a new experience that we'll hopefully
learn a lot from through that process. And then the last update on here is that
last year the city was recognized with a gold level recognition from Charging
Smart which is a Department of Energy national program that recognizes cities
and communities that are doing their part to implement best practices around
excuse me around advancing EV charger implementation in the community so we
were honored to be recognized with that and we're looking forward to continuing
to implement best practices when we have a new plan come out.
The next topic that we'll cover is all-electric buildings and efforts that we're doing around
here.
A big focus of our staff this year so far has been looking at how to implement, again,
another Bay Area Air District program, which will be limiting the sale of gas-powered water
heaters for residential and commercial, small commercial properties starting in 2027.
This is sometimes referred to as Rule 9-6.
The details of exactly how this is going to be implemented is still being finalized by
the air district. So we're following that very closely, figuring out how we can
play our part to implement it. But we've also, cities across the Bay Area, have
recognized this will be a really big change for our communities. So we've
come together in a working group that's focusing on several different areas of
how we can coordinate and better, you know, scale across the Bay Area to make
it clearer for both residents, but also for installers and manufacturers and
retailers that will have to implement this new policy. So we've been
participating most directly in the outreach subgroup and the hope there is
that we'll have more coordinated messaging across the whole Bay Area. We'll
be able to benefit from the work that all the other subgroups are doing as well.
The outreach subgroup one example this image on the slide is was developed by
San Mateo County. They did a lot of research on positive messaging that you
know talks about benefits you can get from all electric and makes it fun and
engaging so you might get to see more messaging like that that we could
benefit from here as well. And then the last area that I just wanted to update is
a little bit more broad in general. It's on the communication efforts that the
division is doing, kind of going off of what we were just talking about. So
communication is super an outreach, super important for our sustainability goals.
Everything that we do in the plan to meet our goals, we really need the
community to come along with us. Everything we talked about this evening,
leaf blowers, EVs, you know, all extra combs. We need residents to take actions
and make changes in their lives so that we can meet our climate reduction goals, and
so we want to make sure that the community knows about the benefits of all these changes
and also the resources that are available to help them make those transitions.
So recognition of that in our Sustainability Action Plan, a quarter of the actions are
actually outreach specific, and so that's a big area of focus for us.
So I just, on the slide here, there's a list of some of the topics that we've been working
on doing outreach about recently.
It's everything that we talked about tonight, including some transportation, food and water
topics, and we continue to do that through some of the digital channels that we talked
about earlier.
Our sustainability web pages on our website got 17,000 views in 2025, and we have a sustainability-focused
newsletter that has two and a half thousand subscribers, and almost half of those open
the newsletter every week.
Those are really targeted though, folks who already are engaging with the city or have
some level of interest in sustainability.
So we really appreciate our opportunities to get out in the community in person and
have talked with a broader audience.
The weather outside today might not reflect it, but we are just around the corner from
our spring and summer outreach season, so our staff are actively working on finding
the opportunities for what we can do in the community and the messaging we have for that.
And we're always looking for new opportunities for events that we might not already be connected
to.
So with that, I'm happy to take any questions.
Thank you, Candace.
Yes, city.
Thank you for all you do, Candace.
So on the EV charging side, I know
we've seen a fair number of people talking
about maintenance of the chargers.
Are we kind of in a coordinated effort
to make sure that as we add new chargers,
I know that the technology is evolving quickly,
and they're probably keeping them up to working as hard.
but what are we doing in that space?
Yes, so maintenance of the chargers is a known issue
for both PARCITY and a lot of other cities
that are managing their own chargers.
And I know we have Rich Payne here who can expand
after this, but that is gonna be a big topic
in this EV strategic plan that we're working on.
And there's a lot of different pieces
between the technology, the funding,
and how to have a good quality network
at the size it is now before we look to expand it, so.
And that's fine, if it's part,
When I saw the strategic plan, I thought,
okay, if it's in there, that's good.
Right, yes, yeah.
Do you want to add anything, Rich?
Yes, Council Member Silva.
Oh, and I'm gonna ask another question,
which is, it would be very helpful
to know where people can find the locations
of public available EV chargers,
and if that's part of the strategic plan, good on you.
Yes, we will be outlining that in there.
We do have on our website and the sustainability pages
a link to a map of the public chargers,
as well as information on where our city owned chargers are,
but we can always highlight that information more.
Maybe think through with the communications
and outreach team, where do you put in,
where do you put the,
where do people look for something like that?
They may not look under the word sustainability.
They might look under chargers or something like that.
So that's part of the problem.
And Mayor, I think your question was largely asked,
wasn't it council member Darling on maintenance?
We think we're good on the charger maintenance and sake of time.
I know we have some deadlines here.
Okay.
Good.
Any other questions?
Yeah, not a question, but a comment.
I'm very appreciative for the work that you do.
I wanted to let you know that your work is also very well-appreciated and recognized
from the public.
I get a lot of comments about the good work you're doing, so thank you for that.
I also was very impressed with the website on reviewing it just recently sort of brainstorming
on different sustainable ideas.
And some of the comments I got seems like they're very in line with what you're talking
about trying to get the word out because some feedback I've gotten is that they don't always
see where the things are on our website or, you know, 2500 Jalapa, like how do we grow
that?
So I'm so happy to hear that that's what you're working on.
And one of the suggestions I got was that on the website, maybe putting sustainability
in an area that's not inside of government because it's not intuitive.
But thanks.
Yeah, right now you can access our pages, and there's a lot of details on how you find
things in the website, how you get to it, and our communication staff are definitely
experts on that.
You can either get to it through the government path.
There's also a path under the I want to learn more about, and then there's clean energy
incentive so the goal there is to hope to catch folks who are looking for how to save
money but we could definitely work on burying that more.
Great.
So we're good.
Thank you very much, Candace.
Thank you very much.
I'll pass it over to Erika Vandenbrandt for our general plan update.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor, Council, members of the community, Erika Vandenbrandt, Community Development
Director.
So this is going to be the biggest non-update update that you can imagine because in just
a little bit next month you'll be having an item before you for the update to approve a
consultant contract. But so what we have been doing the safety element that started
prior to COVID and then it had a little bit of an interim period and then we took the
safety element up again after we were done with the housing element. Currently it is out for review
and with a deadline of the 11th of March and then looking to go to Planning Commission
in March and then tentatively come to council in April. It is also one of the biggest
or lowest lifts because much of the lift has already been done previously because the outreach
occurred prior to COVID. But then subsequent to that, there was the local hazard mitigation plan.
And then you just heard about the sustainability action plan, which cover a lot of the same areas
of geological and seismic hazards, flood hazards, and hazardous materials. And ironically, in the
late, you know, sort of the glacial movement of our physical geological space, things don't change
so rapidly in just a couple of years, so that much of the existing basis for a safety element
remains, so it has a strong foundation.
For those of you that are missing your Olympic highlights, we have one tonight.
We're off to the races, and we've just passed the starting gate.
We have issued a request for proposals.
responses were received and evaluated, and that the pre-counsel approval for the contracting
process is underway, and with a recommendation coming to council scheduled for the March
17th council meeting.
And there you will have an opportunity to quiz to your heart's content, both staff
and the proposed consultant.
What I can share with you is that we will already have had the safety element well underway.
We have the housing element done.
It's not going to come back until the end of 2028, 2029.
And that we have a very strong foundation in our existing general plan.
And the primary focus for the general plan update is going to be the community outreach,
finding new ideas, new desires for the next 20, 25 years and as well as the land uses
transportation and transportation system, and economic vitality to put those pieces
together to serve as the foundation.
So with that, if you have any questions, I'm here to help answer them.
Thank you, Erica.
Mayor Pertin.
Thank you.
Thanks, Erica.
That was a good update.
How many proposals do we receive for the general plan update?
We receive three from highly qualified, so three of them, and all were highly qualified
as the consultants in doing this work.
And is the idea that it would be the same consultant that would do the general plan
update that will do the CEQA document for the general plan?
Yes, they have teams of the best of the best they put together.
Okay.
And then just if you can, I know it's related, but it's not on the agenda, on the housing
element. We'll be receiving an update on our numbers from last year at some
point this spring. That too is coming imminently and we'll be giving you a
very intense update in March because we you need to approve it so we can send
the annual progress report on to the state. Is it more active than the
previous year about the same level of activity? Yes I feel like I'm giving you
trailer to you know coming events but yes there has been you know there has
been more activity are we knocking out of the park yet not yet but we're
working on it thank you Erica appreciate that look forward to going through the
process on this thank you very much and so we have the highly effective and
knowledgeable Rich Payne coming now. Highly effective and knowledgeable it's
both. That's a lot of pressure. Good evening Mayor, members of the Council. My
name is Rich Payne, I'm the Public Works Director and tonight I'll give you an
update on the Parks and Recreation facilities and summarize all the
projects that are in this summer, that you see in that summary. Oh, already started off, great.
So I talked about this and I'll touch on all of these objectives as I work through this.
So first of all, we've made a lot of progress on the different priorities,
specifically in our existing park and facility improvements and those projects that you've
we've identified as being some of the top projects in our CIP.
The first one is the playground upgrade at Civic Park and also Walden.
There's been extensive outreach to the public, we've had pop-ups downtown and in different
city venues to receive feedback on the design and different features that the public wants
in their parks.
And we landed on a really good design, I know staff has spent extensive time on this.
And unfortunately, when you start projects like this, we only have enough funding to
focus on Civic Park.
And so that doesn't, you know, sort of ignore all the work that has been done in Walden.
But Walden will probably go back into the CIP until we have funding available.
Our goal is to start that this next month and that should be done this this spring.
In terms of the projects that are completed, the ball field lighting project at Tice Valley Park has been a success.
Some, you know, not to mention just the lighting, but there's cool features like being able to program it remotely and so that's really saved some staff time.
This synthetic turf project is also complete and actually with all the rain we'd still
be able to play on that field so mission accomplished and then if you've been at Arbalato and Red
Gear Parks those amenities look great, the basketball court and the tenants, very colorful
and really a nice addition to those parks.
Next here I'm happy to give an update on this project.
really things have been moving forward in this on the new aquatics and community
center we've made you know the phase one went as planned and in fact you
accepted it tonight and there's you know if you've been out there this rain has
really helped fill the both the pond and the natural lake you know it's it's if
you look at the natural environment out there the plants are coming along the
newly, the plants and also the wildlife.
It's really a thriving area.
So another success that phase one,
I know as part of the community service day,
council member Francois was telling me
that he signed up for replanting trees out there.
So we're looking at probably a good 50 trees.
So there's a lot of work out there to be done.
Phase two is in, is moving forward.
Excited tomorrow is groundbreaking.
so hopefully we'll see you all there.
And, you know, they're currently,
as you go out there, the construction fence is up,
the trees have been cut down,
and we had a milestone that we needed to meet
with regard to nesting and stuff,
so that is, that we've received a lot of feedback
from the public, but I assure the public
that we have twice as many trees going back in
as being removed, so.
but sometimes this is the result of progress
and to make room for this project.
Currently, they're doing the abatement
and also some other work,
so you'll see the result of some of that
when we're out there.
So again, we talked about that.
Jumped ahead there.
Along that same line is the pedestrian
and bike-friendly development throughout the city.
That's moving forward.
a lot of these projects are in design.
Specifically, the trail crossing enhancement though,
is gonna begin construction this next month.
And so that'll start and that involves
just making these crosswalks at all the pedestrian pathways
more safe for the public.
And so that's a great improvement
in terms of the bike facilities,
those are currently in design,
and we are planning, well hopefully if all goes well,
those will start construction in 2027.
And then also our pedestrian walkways.
All of these projects are in design
except for the Walker Avenue,
which is getting close to beginning construction this spring.
And then also part of the priority is the,
and it's been discussed tonight on what the next steps
will be for the existing clerk pool.
As directed by council and shared with you a few months ago,
the public outreach will begin late this year in the fall.
And we'll get feedback from the community
on what they would like to see in that space.
And so we're excited to see what our next steps will be
once we've demolished the Clark pool.
So that will be phase three,
and that work will probably start after phase two is complete.
And we make that move from the pool,
from the old pool to the new pool.
But at least the design phase will be well ahead of the game
and know exactly what we wanna do with that space.
And with that, I have open to questions.
It's rich, exciting, exciting stuff.
All right, the most visible things
going on while in the creek.
Any questions?
Question?
Thank you so much for the update.
And I really enjoyed reading all of the pages
about all of the great things that are going on in Parks
and Rec and the bike and pedestrian facilities as well.
On the bike and pedestrian facilities, is it possible?
And I spoke to the city manager a little bit about this
this morning to get a more dedicated time on our agenda so that we can hear
which ones we're doing because you get asked about it all the time and I'm
afraid it's not always easy to remember oh it's a long list. Anytime we get to
brag about what we're doing until you give you more information that's
certainly something that we can put in the future. So as we heard the
groundbreaking is tomorrow at 4 o'clock at Heather Farm public is invited and
I hope to see you there.
And toes are going to be in the water in 2027.
With that, I'll turn the time over to our chief.
Thank you, Rich.
Good evening, city council members.
Ryan Hibbs, chief of police.
And I'm here to provide an update on the public safety
priority.
So as a reminder, within the priority of public safety,
we identified six strategic objectives
to accomplish this goal.
they were to maintain an effective and innovative
police department continue.
Chief, could you just speak up a little bit
just to make sure everybody can hear you okay?
How's that?
Perfect.
Okay, that's much better.
How's that?
Perfect, all right.
As a reminder, they were to maintain an effective
and innovative police department, continue proactive
response to crime trends, coordinate joint agency response
to homelessness and mental health challenges,
develop crime prevention partnerships and programs,
improve traffic, transit, pedestrian and bicycle safety,
enhanced community and regional disaster preparation.
So strategic objective number one,
the last update I mentioned,
we were testing AI applications for report writing.
We're continuing to do that with different vendors now
to try to find the one that's most suitable for us.
We're also evaluating additional AI tools for dispatch.
We have received word that we've been awarded $1 million
to put toward our body-worn camera upgrade,
which is welcome news.
I'm not sure when that's gonna be funded,
but it should be funded soon.
And then we started an evaluation of all of our technology
across the police department to ensure
that we're most efficient, as efficient as we can be.
If we can save some money along the way,
certainly that's a benefit,
but we're really looking to condense
some of the overlapping technologies that we have
and to become more efficient in our service to the community.
And then with respect to social media,
we've gotten additional 10,000 followers
across all of our social media platforms in 2025.
We're pleased with that.
We're more pleased with the fact
that we've doubled our engagement.
So we look to continue to grow that
with our crime prevention specialists and social media team.
As far as automated license plate reader cameras,
so in August we installed and implemented flock cameras.
That was a new and upgraded camera system.
Since that time, we've had over 8 million plate reads
since integration in August of 2025.
Now, to give some context for most of those are commuters and repeat reads, but in the
last, I want to say 30 days, is that right, Captain Slater?
We've had 31 alerts for stolen vehicles, 12 of which were for vehicles involved in other
felony criminal activity and over 7,000 stolen plates were read.
So in continuing the proactive response to crime trends, really this is based around
technology and information sharing, so we now use a lot of the same systems as some
of our allied agencies, which has made information sharing
that much easier between departments.
And the good news is that I'm going to knock on some wood here.
We didn't really note any crime trends
over the last half of 2025,
but usually two typical crime trends we see during the
holiday season are residential burglaries
and downtown robberies.
We saw four residential burglaries in the month
of December, which was a significant drop from the previous year. And then we had three robberies in
December of 25, one of which was actually just a meetup, not downtown. So it was a planned
meetup to sell some personal property that our robbers or our suspects planned to rob our victim.
regionally catalytic converter thefts are up again, but again, I'm gonna knock on some wood.
We're not seeing that in our city. So we are continuing to develop information with our
allied agencies to make sure that that doesn't come here and if it does that we can we can
respond to it. And then overall our crime rate dropped 20% from 2024 to 2025 and we
had a historic low in January. We're still gathering those numbers, but we had a historical
low from the month or from January of 2025. In coordinating joint agency responses to homelessness
and mental health challenges, we continue to collaborate with city and community partners
in response to issues arising from Homelessness Corps. It continues to work in Walnut Creek
five days a week. They, on average, contact approximately 30 unhoused individuals per month.
A lot of those are repeat clients, so to speak, and their goal is really to get folks into housing,
but sometimes that just simply takes time. And then we're continuing to work with the
Trinity Center as well. Our calls for service regarding the unhoused went from 282 calls in
2024 to 317 in 2025 due to changes in legislation that allowed for encampment cleanup. I am pleased
to announce that we don't have any known encampments within our jurisdiction though. So,
council member diviny i know you had asked and i'm happy to provide you more data as we get it but
right now there aren't any homeless encampments in in the city of walnut creek we saw the
presentation from a3 earlier this is a big number so our we've this is this is what the co-response
model is for so since a3's inception we've had a 40 drop in police response to people suffering
for mental health crises but the their response a3's response to people in crisis in walnut creek
has increased 47 from 2024 to 2025 which is a a big number probably due to the fact that they've
increased their staffing they've been really good in working with us to ensure that the co-response
model is working but our response to people in mental health crisis continues to drop so
That's a 40% drop since A3's inception in Walnut Creek. However, from 24 to 25,
we had another 20% drop. So this is, the model is working in other words, and we're happy to
continue collaborating with them. In developing crime prevention partnerships and programs,
I am pleased to announce that we've branded our crime-free business program. I did give a brief
teaser to this crime-free business program that we've set up in our last update. We've
We've branded that Walnut Creek Business Watch.
So we hosted the first webinar
to announce the program in December
and the program launch event is February 24th
from 9 a.m. to 10 30 a.m. right here
in the council chamber.
So we did receive good attendance on the webinar
in December, we're hoping to get even better attendance
in February for the launch event.
And the purpose of Walnut Creek Business Watch
is to build a strong partnership between local businesses
and the police department to provide a direct access
to resources including safety tips
and crime prevention strategies,
enhance the consumer and business experience
and to establish open lines of communication.
I will note that this program is in partnership
with Walnut Creek Downtown,
the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce,
and it is free to attend.
So for strategic objective number five,
improving traffic transit, pedestrian, bicycle safety,
the biggest sort of announcement here
is that over the last half of 2025,
we conducted high visibility enforcement
for the second half of the year and those overtime assign- the operations were mostly
overtime assignments, so basically an officer wasn't beholden to calls for service.
This was their mission, was simple traffic enforcement.
This initiative resulted in nearly 40 percent increase of both stops and citations issued
and a 23 percent decrease in total reported collisions from 2024 to 2025.
on everybody's favorite topic, e-bikes.
We've taken essentially an educational approach
to e-bike safety.
We did host an e-bike education webinar in November,
which was directed at high school students and their parents
to alert them about the rules surrounding e-bikes,
specifically regarding the use of specific classes of e-bikes
and the proper safety equipment.
We conducted another e-bike safety presentation in December,
this one aimed at middle school parents,
that are middle school students and their parents.
And then during the last update,
I mentioned an enforcement operation in August of 25,
which resulted in nine stops of e-bike riders,
which were all under the age of 16, I believe.
So those riders were stopped, they were educated,
their parents were contacted and educated as well.
We did issue one citation for an e-motorcycle rider
for essentially riding without a license,
and then we towed that e-motorcycle.
More of those operations are planned for later this year,
we're aiming for one per quarter.
Onto DUIs, we conducted two DUI checkpoints
with allied agencies in the second half of 2025,
along with several DUI and traffic enforcement operations.
So essentially monitoring and controlling downtown
and making traffic stops of suspected impaired drivers,
which resulted in 13 DUI arrests.
Continuing on at strategic deductive number five,
we did apply for an Office of Traffic Safety Grant,
as I mentioned during the last Council meeting,
we'll know probably closer to June,
is that correct, Captain Slater?
We'll know if it's, if we've been accepted,
if it'll be awarded, if it's awarded,
it will be funded in October of 2026.
And the goal there is to conduct
more high visibility traffic enforcement
with the aim to drive down traffic collisions.
The Traffic Safety Working Group is comprised
of two traffic commissioners and representatives
from the police department, public works,
and traffic engineering, they meet once per quarter
to discuss engineering and traffic issues.
And then we have a new protocol
to notify traffic engineering of serious and fatal collisions.
So quarterly meetings to ensure alignment
and provide updates on project and outreach there.
Strategic objective number six, which is to enhance community
and regional disaster preparation and resiliency.
Biggest piece here is that we're on the,
we're participating in ongoing citywide
facilitated emergency operations center trainings.
And we do have one upcoming in, I believe it's April,
which will include practical scenarios.
So every city department is included there.
Those are facilitated and the scenarios are very interactive.
I'll put it that way.
And then big news is we have a police department lieutenant
that is now assigned to manage our CERT team.
So that is Lieutenant Mike Watson.
We have had some challenges in identifying
a member of CERT to act as a leader there in a liaison
with the Police Department, but we are continuing to work
to find that person and identify them.
And then, not in the slide deck, but shameless plug,
Police Department's annual report is coming this summer.
With that, I'm happy to take any questions.
A lot of information, thank you, Chief.
Felling me.
Do we have any questions for our Police Chief Hibbs?
Yes, Mayor Borden.
Thanks, Chief.
Great report, and congratulations to you
and the whole department on very noticeable results
in terms of drops in crime.
I appreciate that very much.
On the traffic patrols,
I noticed that it was,
you had the high enforcement late last year
and you some overtime.
Do you feel like you have what you need
in terms of the staffing levels
or what can we expect in terms
of additional traffic safety patrols?
It's a great question.
So we did roll back over time as everyone knows,
but we are well staffed on patrol
to be able to handle additional traffic duties.
So outside of responding to calls for service
and outside of responding to beat responsibilities,
part of our mission overall
is traffic enforcement and safety.
Excellent.
And then in terms of the license plate readers,
I know we've heard from some of our other
Bay Area communities,
just want your information and assurances
that this information stays within Walnut Creek
and maybe our software provider
and can't be used by federal agencies
or others for unauthorized purposes.
That is correct.
So to assure not only the council but the public, we conduct regular audits of our settings
to make sure that we are not sharing with federal agencies, I'll say that.
We're actually bound by state law and our department policy from sharing information
with federal agencies.
So if we don't- if there's an issue with our settings, we could actually be in violation
of that.
So we take that very seriously.
Okay.
And that's the state law that we have to complete?
That is state law, and it's- and it's our city and department policy, yes.
excellent. How many license plate readers do we have in the city? Oh goodness. 31. 31.
Well and you know I do understand there's a big concern around big brother and technology
related to personal information and what I'd like to assure the public is that those eight
million plus license plate reads are confirmed by human eyes before they reach a police officer
and then we confirm with the entering agency.
So, if another agency were to enter a stolen license plate
or a stolen vehicle or a crime vehicle
into the California stolen vehicle database, let's say,
it's incumbent upon us to confirm
that that vehicle remains out.
For one, that the license plate read is actually correct,
that it is on the vehicle as described in the registration
hit and that the vehicle is still outstanding
and still wanted for a crime
before we initiate a traffic stop.
So, there are a number of different steps
that we take to ensure that we're A, stopping the right person and B, that we're stopping
the right person for the right reason.
Thank you, Chief.
Councilmember Davini.
Yes.
Thank you for the report.
My question is also about the license plate readers that seem like there's a lot of data
and it was something like 150 or something stolen cars were noticed.
How difficult is it you get the information off of the license plate reader, but then
that, you know, the car has to go out and apprehend them, is it, is that a, is that
challenging or how do you address the delay there and where's the car gone
after you've identified it in that spot? Well, it's not a significant delay so it
just depends on where our officers are positioned. If, you know, so let's say we
get an alert, I'll just use a main thoroughfare, say, Ganesha Valley Road,
anywhere on Ganesha Valley Road, when the alert is sent out, the plate is
given the direction of travel is given and the location is given.
So if we have an officer that can respond to check the area for that car after everything's
been confirmed then, you know, because we can confirm that information while the officer
is in route as well.
So it isn't, we're not going to delay our response just to confirm the information.
We can confirm the information while we're in route.
So the delay there isn't really significant.
It's really just depending on location, time of day, want, that type of thing.
So, you know, to broadly to answer that question, I'll say it's not that difficult, but at
five o'clock on, you know, a Thursday afternoon with commute traffic, it could be significantly
more difficult than it would be on, say, at, say, 3 a.m. on a, you know, Sunday morning.
And so that was sort of a lead-in question for the next one, which is the role for drones?
You know, we saw what happened in San Ramon with the break-ins there, and the drones led
to the apprehension of the criminals.
do we feel we have a robust drone program?
And it would seem to me like something like a license plate
reader might be easier to send a drone
and follow the car until you can get a vehicle there.
And I see an increasing goal for drones.
Do you also see that?
Or do you feel the program is fairly well
funded as far as drones ago at this point?
Or what are your thoughts on that one?
Well, we could always use more drones.
I mean, at this point, there are a lot of agencies
that are working toward drone as a first responder program.
That is one of our goals, eventually, to get to that.
We do have pieces of that program in place.
We do not have a full-time drone
as a first responder program.
But to answer your question, yes, I do see
that that is really the future of policing,
and there are a number of reasons behind that.
It's safer for everyone involved,
the ability to get video while you're responding,
and to get it sort of an eye in the sky
prior to a police officer responding in person.
All are very helpful.
The caveat is that we can't use drones
for general surveillance,
so we have to have a purpose behind it.
So a good sort of example of our usage of drones
was our e-bike traffic enforcement operation.
If an e-bike rider took off on us,
we were able to get a drone in the air
and follow them to wherever they ended up going
and meeting them there, which is obviously very helpful.
It's a much preferable alternative
to chasing them along city streets.
And obviously it's chasing any sort of violator
is a danger to public safety depending on the time of day.
And we have to weigh that out with what the offense is
and what the want is and all of that.
So, really to answer your question,
yes, we have enough now.
we are obviously going to work toward more of a not I'm not going to I'm not going to tease out
a drone as a first responder program in this moment right now but that is the ultimate goal
is to get to that point all right well thank you chief i think that brings us to the end of each
of the sections so i'll bring our assistant city manager back up thank you chief and before i wrap
up i wanted to give city council a few more updates on things that don't necessarily fall
within the five strategic priorities of the city.
First of all, the city was awarded a distinguished budget presentation award from GFOA for our
fiscal year 26-27 budget book.
This award is given to states and local agencies who adopt a budget that is not only used as
a planning tool, but it's also being used as an effective communication tool as well.
kudos to the work done by our administrative services department on that. I also want to
announce that the city is issuing its first annual report after a several year hiatus.
This will be a look back on the city's accomplishments for 2025 and that's expected to be out
late February early March of this year. Also, I want to share that back in November of 25,
we graduated our second cohort of Citizens Institute since the pandemic. It was a great
program, great success. We had tremendous interest in participation in the program.
So we will be coming back to, for our third cohort in the fall of 2026.
And then lastly, November of 2025, we graduated our second cohort for our Apex Group, which
is the Achieving Peak Employee and Customer Experience.
This is our city-run employee group where we look at, you know, educational experience
in projects for our employees.
So we've launched the 2026 program, and so we're looking forward to a good program this
year.
Then a couple of items that will be coming to City Council.
We are currently in the process of doing our comprehensive fee study.
That's been several months in the making.
We are getting close to the finish line.
We're hoping to bring that to City Council for review, comment and adoption in May of
this year.
We are also bringing our fiscal year 2027 budget update to City Council.
There are several finance committee meetings that will happen, but I think the two biggest
milestones for city council will be this uh in March we will be bringing back bringing
recommendations to city council and then final adoption of these recommendations in June of this
year. As part of the budget process we are also updating our 10-year financial forecast. We do
this every two years. We will be doing this in-house this year and we hope to bring this to city council
late this year or early 2027. And then finally, I think City Council has noticed the missing bricks
in front of City Hall. There's been some much needed repair that needs to be done in the front
facade of the building, so we will be working on that. And that will include some work here in
the council chambers as well. We're hoping to start that work late 2026 to early 2027.
And finally this is the last slide. A couple of updates on major projects. The Mitchell Town
Home project went to was approved by Planning Commission on February 12th. The EIR was certified
and the the design of the project was approved. The new Porsche dealership on North Main Street
was approved by Planning Commission
at the same Planning Commission meeting,
but that will need to come to City Council
for final approval because that includes
a rezone of the property,
and so that will come to City Council on March 3rd.
And then finally, the much awaited
Restoration Hardware Project will be going
to Design Review Committee tomorrow, so fingers crossed.
And that concludes our presentation.
Well, thank you, appreciate that, Charles,
and everybody on the team, the staff,
with all of your presentations.
We need to accept this, and that requires a motion.
Move to accept.
Mayor Fomare, yeah, public comment.
Oh, I'm sorry, public, you're right, public comment.
If anybody has any public comment to make
on this strategy update, please come to the dais.
Okay, seeing none, now, yes.
Move to accept.
Move to accept.
We have a motion.
Second.
Susan, could you go with the roll, please?
Council Member Darling.
Aye.
Council Member Silva.
Aye.
Council Member Diveny.
Aye.
Mayor Pro Tem Francois.
Aye.
Mayor Will.
Aye.
All right, now, we have next on the agenda
is the continuation of the interviews
of commission candidates and action appointments.
This is upstairs.
We had part one earlier before our open meeting.
Public comments will be received at this time
for that particular item.
After an opportunity for public comment,
City Council will conduct the Commission interviews. Commission interviews will
not be video recorded but can be viewed in person. If anybody has any public
comment for that please come forward now. Seeing none we'll go upstairs and
meeting adjourned.