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 is conducting this meeting from the City Council Chamber.
This meeting is being video streamed and can be viewed live or later on the City's website.
As some attendees may be participating in their first Walnut Creek City Council meeting,
I wanted to welcome everyone and talk briefly about the public comment process.
For each agenda item, there will be an opportunity for public comment on 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.
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.
Pursuant to California Government Code
section 54953.4 SB 707,
members of the public may also participate remotely via Zoom.
If you are participating via Zoom
and would like to make a public comment,
please use the raise hand feature
or press star nine if you're calling by phone
during the agenda item on which you wish to comment.
Again, 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 decorum expected in the Council Chamber and can be
found on our website.
All remarks should be addressed to the City Council.
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.
Well, good evening.
I'm Kevin Wilk, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the Tuesday, August
18th, 2026 regular meeting of the Walnut Creek City Council.
And if you would all now please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the face of America and to the republic for which it
stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
And City Clerk Susie Martinez, would you please call the roll?
Councilmember Darling?
Here.
Councilmember Silva? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Here. Mayor Welk? Here.
All right first we have we have a recognition of the Diablo Valley of the
excuse me Diablo Vista Chorus so I invite members of the Diablo Vista
Chorus to the to come up for a certificate of recognition. The Diablo
Vista Chorus recently earned an outstanding score of 701 at their May
regional competition an achievement reached by fewer than 30 choruses in
the Singh United International Organization. This milestone not only
earned them the title of regional champions and a place of the
international competition in Seattle in 2027 but also made them the first course
in our Pacific shores region to ever surpass the 700 mark. You're gonna sing
for us right? Both the directors and singers have now earned the distinguished
master 700 designation. Earlier this summer the course also celebrated its
70th anniversary, marking seven decades of musical excellence. Congratulations on this remarkable
milestone and win, and we have a certificate. Thank you for this recognition. We're very
pleased to have Walnut Creek be our home and represent this wonderful city in international
competition next year. I hope that as we have shows leading up to it, everybody comes to them.
Great, and why don't you introduce yourself as well. Oh, sorry. I'm Laura Pat, she, her pronouns,
I sing lead, which is the part that has melody for our chorus, which is a barbershop-style chorus.
And this is Kim, who's one of our leaders, and she sings bass. Yeah, I do the oompas.
The oompas. Okay, well, let's get a picture together.
Okay, and our next item is a presentation of Center Rep's season update, and I invite Matt
Matt Morrow, Artistic Director for Center-Rep to provide the season update.
Hi there, Matt Morrow here, the Artistic Director of Center-Rep.
We are the resident professional theater of the Lesher Arts Center.
Thank you for the opportunity to share more information with you on Center-Rep and our
plans for our 59th season.
But first, allow me to update you just very briefly on season 58, which was a banner year
for us as we celebrated the Lesher Center's 35th anniversary.
Our new production of A Christmas Carol was a resounding success with the San Francisco
Chronicle proclaiming it was like, quote, hearing the story for the first time and quotes
the most open hearted and genuinely Christmasy works of art acts of work of art can take.
We were very proud of it.
Our season finale of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill was the highest-grossing show in
recent history and we ended the season at 120 percent of our revenue goal. We're all very proud
of the work that we're accomplishing within the city and the larger community of Contra Costa
County. While I'm pleased that Center Rep is defying the headwinds the theater industry as a
whole is enduring right now. I'm going to acknowledge that we couldn't do it without the
city of Walnut Creek so thank you for your belief in the power of life theater. Now on to season 59
which is brazenly titled, Dreamers and Daredevils.
Bursting with theatricality and humanity,
Center Rep's 59th season pulls back the curtain
on what it means to live life to its fullest,
to dream big, and love like there's no tomorrow.
This maximally entertaining season
is filled with laughter, light, and visceral stories
that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
So we launched Dreamers and Daredevils
with the legacy revival of Tennessee Williams'
Masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie. This quintessential American classic graces
the Cinderup boards in a poetic look at family and longing. This modern
masterpiece redefined American theater when it premiered over 80 years ago by
conjuring a living memory on stage. Cinderup's legacy revival examines the
cost of personal freedom, the death of sibling bonds, and the consequences of
seeking the truth. So this classic made me fall in love with the theater when I
was a young person, and I know it did a lot of people feel the same way. So we
look forward to sharing this story, a family connection, lost and remembered, as
it's one of Tennessee Williams most personal plays. We follow this classic
with a rip-roaring revision of a spooky season staple, Dracula, a comedy, and
in terrors. This is written by Gordon Greenberg, yes, and Steve Rosen. This show straddles the
election season and begs the question, who needs a good belly laugh right about now?
Bram Stoker's legendary monster comes to titillating and skintillating life in this fast-paced,
outrageous adaptation that will leave you breathless with gasps and laughter. Told by only
five actors performing almost 20 characters,
Ridiculous is the name of the game,
and this gothic horror turned toward a force
of physical performance.
This unhinged madcap comedy beckons you
to come to the dark side for a raw, aching good time.
And then for the holidays, we're thrilled to welcome back
our new production of A Christmas Carol
by Harrison David Rivers, and we're proud to once again
partner with Access Dance Company,
the Berkeley-based dance troupe of neurodiverse
and disabled performers in bringing this joyful family
tradition to life.
And the new year brings a new work to our stage
with the Bay Area premiere of a new play called,
You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,
exclamation point.
That's the title.
It's a new play written by Kiko Green.
Welcome one and all to a sequence celebration of life,
family, and the profound connection we all share
just by being alive.
When Im's parents receive some life-shattering news,
their small yet mighty family of three must grapple
with the life they've lived
as well as the one that they haven't.
This hilarious and heartfelt joyride of a show
zooms through the waking and dream lives of its family,
guest starring child environmentalist Greta Thurnberg
on a journey of acceptance and deliverance.
So buckle up, who knew the end of the world
could be such a thrill?
And finally, we blow the cap off the season
with a rarely seen classic musical
that just had its first revival in New York City
after 25 years, and it's Bat Boy, The Musical.
Story and book by Keith Farley and Brian Fleming,
music and lyrics by Lawrence O'Keefe.
Deep in a cave in rural America,
a group of teenagers discover a creature living in the dark,
a half boy, half bat in need of a home,
and maybe just a little sip of blood.
When the local veterinarian's family takes him in,
they name him Edgar and teach him
how to live like a human, fangs and all.
However, gaining acceptance into their small town
beset by economic hardship is a bat of a different color.
Pinned by one of, quote,
one of the 21st century's finest musical theater talents,
that's the New York Times, quote,
and powered by a pulsating rock score,
this rarely produced cult favorite
whips together horror, heart, high-voltage humor
into a frothy, yet sharp satire about prejudice, fear,
and everyone's need to belong.
It's rumored that Bat Boy is heading to Broadway next season.
So you heard it in Walnut Creek first.
If there's one theme that is the through line to season 59,
Dreamers and Daredevils, it's courage.
Courage to dream, courage to change,
courage to love passionately, and courage
to find joy and humor even in the darkest of times.
That's season 59.
Just as a quick addendum, we're continuing our access
programs of free and discounted programs tickets
to make sure that our work is available for everyone who
cannot afford the price of a ticket.
And our wildly popular Pay What You Can previews
will also continue.
Our student matinee program serving over 1,000 kids
will also continue.
And we're adding a team ticket program
where parents and grandparents can bring their children
and grandchildren for the reduced rate of $30 a ticket.
and our arts education program, Young Rep Theater Lab,
will also continue next summer.
Now that's it for Center Rep.
Any questions?
Great, thank you Matt.
Do we have any questions about the upcoming season?
Thank you, now I already have my tickets,
but how can people get tickets?
Go to centerrep.org.
Don't look at me, look at me.
Centerrep.org, centerrep.org, check us out there.
You can find all the information right there.
Yeah, thank you.
Terrific, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
All right.
okay next on the item on the agenda is the consent calendar and does any
council member wish to pull any item for discussion or any member of the staff
wish to pull an item for discussion I don't see any here so does any member of
the public wish to provide public comment on the consent calendar everybody
just consents to this all right so do we have anybody online for the consent
calendar we do not have any in public okay so in that case I will move to
approve 2A through E. Second. We have a motion to second. Susie could you call
the roll please. Councilmember Darling. Aye. Councilmember Silva. Aye. Councilmember Davenny. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye.
All right moving right along. Next item 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. And 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. And at this time I'll
note that the time is 6 17 and so we'll take public comment on items not on the
agenda until approximately 6 47 and then the remainder of any such comments at
the end of the open session portion of the meeting. Please use the raised hand
feature or press star 9 if you're calling in if you'd like to provide a
remote public comment and at this time we'll take in-person comments and then
I'll ask the city clerk if there are any members of the public who would like to
provide remote comments after that.
So, let's start right here.
And if you are going to make a public comment,
please line up to the side here.
And if you have already filled out a yellow card,
great, please provide to the city clerk.
And if you haven't,
this is a good time to be able to take care of that.
Hi, Jan Warren from the Woodlands,
since I already turned in my card,
where I was going to ask about being able
to participate via Zoom that I found out about
the Antioch City Council meeting, I just want to say thank you.
You can thank the state legislation of California for enforcing that for every
city in the state now, so we're all doing it. Thanks, Jen. Hi, Council. Good evening,
thank you for your service. I'm a longtime resident of Walnut Creek family,
moved here in 1962. I'm also first graduating class from Northgate. We're
having our 50th year anniversary or reunion this year just FYI. And what's
your name? I'm Glenn McVee. Okay. I'm here to talk to you as a member of the
Walnut Creek Racquet Club. Long-time member of the tennis club there, past
president on the board of directors, city liaison, captain player, long time. We
have an incredible community at Heather Farm. We have the second largest public
club in the state. Largest one in northern California. We have over 1200
members at any given time. We have teams that we are a magnet for for players
that come to Heather Farm. Lifetime is our provider not speaking about them,
but they do a great job. We're very happy to have them. But what I do want
to talk to you about is lights for our tennis court. They are frequently going
out. They are outdated equipment. Bulbs and fixtures are difficult to find to
source. We can go months without lights. I mean not all of them mind you but
several enough that it really impairs our ability to play. Our standards are so
high that even when they find lights there's only like a couple of lifts
because our standards are so high that our vendor can even get. So we go a long
time and I just I want to urge you guys to keep that on the front plate. I know
there's a lighting initiative going on about the baseball field or a lifetime I
know I've talked with is also anxious to participate in that and I can't tell you
enough how much it would mean to us. So again thank you all. Thank you and can I
ask is would this be Public Works or our our director of Public Works Rich Payne
he can meet you in the back and just sure make sure gets any information on
you got it thank you okay next speaker please hi my name is Tristan Plakone
I've been a resident for about 15 years want to say I think you guys do a great
job I love living here I've never felt the need to express any concerns until
recently and that's about the flock cameras although I trust our police
department flock cameras can be accessed our flock cameras by departments and
agencies from all over the country so it's incredibly prone to abuse we've
We've been seeing it this whole year already.
A woman traveling to get an abortion outside of Texas
was tracked by Texas in other states arrested
when she got home.
There have been officers and agencies and departments
arrested for stalking, or not arrested, sorry,
fired first using flock cameras to stalk their wives,
ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, in other cities
serviced by other departments.
I can go on and on.
Even the LAPD is now canceling their flock contract
due to its abuse potential.
And so my biggest concern is imagine if the DOJ then starts deciding they want to see who attends the next No Kings protest here
Or who votes where on election days, etc. The abuse potential is crazy
There's other alternatives we can do that can't be access accessed
Outside of our department or our county depending on who you choose
So I would like for you guys to add as an agenda item on a future City Council meeting
Discussing possibly changing from flock to something else and also getting a presentation from the police department and city manager about flock
Thank you. Thank you Tristan and I don't know if anybody else is speaking on this issue
But if you stick around toward the end of public comment
I'm gonna we're gonna have some questions for our police officer and police chief who can potentially answer some of this
Hello, I'm Josh out of there lived here for three years now
I'm also talking about, I'm here to talk about the flock cameras, the 40 flock
cameras that are here in Walnut Creek. I don't have a grand presentation for it, I
would just like to raise the issue as a concerned citizen who doesn't want mass
surveillance and who thinks that there could be a better way to get what
everybody wants. You know, we want, obviously we want to be able to find
people that are committing crimes, but at the cost of what innocent people do not
want their movements tracked and stored for like weeks potentially and used
across you know counties and states. So yeah. Thank you. Hi, I'm William Painter.
I am a lifelong resident of Walnut Creek. I'm also here to talk to you about Flock
and my concerns with it. I was recently talking with some friends who described
a scenario where they were looking to avoid flock cameras on their journey
across Colorado and found it impossible to go from one part of the state to the
other part of the state without crossing a flock camera. That is what these
systems now represent. They are an unavoidable fact of life, especially here
in the Bay Area. These are public spaces, places where people live, where they
eat lunch, where they pass by on their mandatory path to work, cannot be avoided in a place
where they call home. This is my home. And I would invite the council and everyone in
this room to imagine for a second what it would feel like to have someone point a camera
into your living room window or into your kitchen. And when you raise your voice in
concern to be told don't worry we are just looking for criminals such an
invasion of privacy cannot be taken without I think the maximum amount of
public comment and so I would ask the council before reviewing all of these
that you create an agenda item about this issue and you seek the maximum
possible public comment on these questions because I think they are
incredibly important to my sense of safety in my community and in my home as
As well as everyone else's thank you. Thank you
Good evening mayor and City Council members. I'm Angela Ashley. I'm chair of the Chamber of Commerce in Walnut Creek
And I'm here to introduce our amazing new CEO Katie Burrows
Katie came to us with an incredible resume after a rigorous interview process
She just has an amazing background went to Duke MBA from Kellogg School of Management and an amazing work history
history, but what really stood out was her even nature, her friendly manner, her intelligence,
her finance history, and she has really hit the ground running and is doing an incredible
job.
So with that, Katie.
Thank you, Angela.
Good evening, mayor, council members.
I guess I have to be friendly here because she just said I was, but it's an honor to
be here tonight and it was an honor and is an honor to be selected by the Chamber Board
to serve as the president and CEO of the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and to join you
as a partner in thoughtfully planning and managing Walnut Creek's continued growth
and success.
Angela told you a little bit about me.
I'm originally from the Boston area, came out here in 1998, lived in San Francisco,
out to the East Bay in 2004 and have from Lafayette where I live watched
Walnut Creek grow and just become this vibrant wonderful city and I know that
takes a lot of work and I commend you and the people who came before you for
all of your work to make this place the place we enjoy today to live and to
work and to play and all the things. So moving forward, I look forward to
strengthening the already strong relationship between the Chamber and the
City Council, and I look forward to helping to grow Walnut Creek into a
strong community and into the future. So thank you so much for your time,
for your leadership and for your dedication to this community. Just a plug,
we do have a candidate forum on September 1st in the morning, so please
look for that. We will have the candidates there, though we know they're
uncontested, opportunity to meet them, and we're celebrating our 100th year
anniversary this year. Do you want to tell, so you've said September 1st, and
What time and where?
It's at 8 a.m. and it'll be in the Walnut Creek Library.
The Oak Room, I take it.
Oak Room.
Yeah, only thing open.
I found after I circled the library this morning.
Well, thank you, Katie.
Nice to meet you.
Thanks for coming here and introducing yourself.
We look forward to having you.
And we do have a great relationship with the Chamber of Commerce.
And Angela, thank you as chair, of course.
And our liaison to the Chamber of Commerce is Councilmember Cindy Darling.
And so you may have a question or comment to make, too.
Just wanted to say welcome. I know we've had a chance to meet and talk about what your plans are
And I wanted you to just describe to the the council chamber
What you think the the biggest things that you want to get done in this upcoming year are?
Yeah, I there is so much to do the
Walnut Creek Chamber has several different parts of the organization as you know
so one of the main things is
Focusing on the events that we we have and making sure that those are really top-notch
And attracting the communities from far and wide as well as here
also wanting to make sure that
the relationships that we have
are strong and
That we continue to attract new businesses into the area
I think there's so much wonderful work going on already
But I think there's opportunities to grow, also trying to get youth, not youth but young
professionals more involved in the city and in the chamber.
So that's something else that we'll be looking at doing.
Yeah, great.
No, I really enjoyed working with you as you've come into the chamber, and I think we all
look forward to being in partnership as you go forward with your new job.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Looking forward to working with you.
Thank you for coming.
And now I will mention that I know that we have some representatives from Kita City in
Japan that are here, and of course, as many people know, we had a delegation of myself,
council members, Cindy Darling and Cindy Silva, that went to our partner, Kita City, just
this past March.
And with students from Kita City that are here this week, we have representatives from
the government here.
And would you like to come up and speak now?
And welcome.
Hello everyone. My name is Maki Sato, and I'm the manager of the International Exchange
Section at Kita State Office in Tokyo, Japan. It will soon be 10 years since the Walnut Creek
and the Kita State signed our partner's agreement. I hope that the exchange between our two states
We continue to grow and flourish.
It is an honor to be here at the State Council today.
I look forward to learning more about your state.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
And again, we appreciate you all coming.
And as you mentioned, next year will be 10 years.
And we understand that Mayor Yamada will be coming out
next year with some people from Key to City
to celebrate that 10-year signing.
and we look forward to that.
Thank you very much.
Adagato.
Do we have anybody public communication online?
No, public commenters online.
Okay, so we'll close public comment now
and we will move on to, oh, you're right, thank you.
Thank you, okay.
Thankfully, we have five of us up here
to keep the mayor in line when I say I'll do something
and make sure I follow through with that.
So, we had some questions about flock cameras, and I'd like to invite Police Chief Ryan Hibbs
to come and, well, let's do it this way.
You heard what some of the concerns were, so why don't, if you're able to address those,
then I have some questions that I was able to take as well,
and we can see if there's any responses on those as well.
So, the floor is yours, Chief Hibbs.
Thank you, Mayor.
Well, good evening, Ryan Hibbs, Chief of Police.
I did appreciate here the comments made by the public in regard
to flock cameras and privacy concerns.
What I'll offer, I did hear a couple of things that were maybe need some addressing.
So, the first is that outside agencies cannot access our flock data
without us giving them permissions.
And so that's by both state law and by policy.
Additionally, we are barred from sharing any information from flock cameras or LPR data
with the federal government, and just recently Flock actually closed their network entirely
to the federal government.
So at least for now they've locked down their data.
And I guess the best way to kind of think of Flock isn't as a large surveillance network
because either they're still photographs or not, it's not continuous video, and we're
not tracking the movements of general citizenry.
What we're doing is we're, you know, any time there's a crime, a criminal investigation
and a plate has been given to us or we get information of a vehicle that we're conducting
a search on meaning that we've got like a vehicle description.
That is always part of a criminal investigation.
It's a right to know, need to know database, which means we actually have to have a criminal
investigation to conduct a search, a search of the flock database and not a vehicle search.
I should clarify there.
But any agency that wants access to our flock data must ask us first, and we operate within
the state law and policy guidelines, which prohibit us from sharing with any out-of-state
agencies and any federal government agencies.
I've heard the comments about the officer in Texas.
I know that that's happened.
Again, we don't share that information with outside agencies, so they wouldn't have access
to it.
And the police personnel that are searching databases trying to stalk people, that's criminal
offense.
And so we take that very seriously.
And what I would offer is that the reason you're hearing about those stories is because
the guardrails in place are working.
So all of that to say, I certainly appreciate the comments about trusting the police department.
I think that we've earned that trust.
And I think that we take that trust very seriously and we wouldn't want to violate it.
With respect to the, with respect to this sort of overarching surveillance network,
I would kind of offer that we should look at the cameras more as checkpoints rather
than a continuous surveillance network.
Okay.
Thank you.
So, if you'll indulge me with a few questions, and then we'll –
Fire away.
– get you some other questions from the council as well.
So how many – currently, how many license plate readers do we have?
And just to confirm, Flock is a technology, right?
So license plate readers are a hardware.
Yes, so what Flock generally does
is it captures a license plate.
It's still photograph of a license plate,
and then it uses the technology to read the plate
and then compare it against the,
whatever California typically,
or sorry, license plate databases.
So it can run out of state plates
if the plate is out of state.
But generally speaking, what it does
is it runs it against the California DMV
and compares it against that database
to confirm whether the car is a criminal vehicle
it's been stolen. And how many LPRs do we have? We have a total of 37, 35 fixed
cameras and two mobile trailer cameras. Okay and have they helped in
catching criminals? They have in fact recently we we saw the human
trafficking case involving a woman in broad daylight that we wouldn't have
been able to generate a lead on other than having a partial plate. So our Walnut
Creek Police Department is excellent.
We've heard that from our residents.
I think we all believe this certainly here at the dais.
But are you able to prevent every crime?
No.
And so in your experience as a long-term police officer
and now police leadership,
is the likelihood of criminals
who are not caught likely to commit a crime again?
I'm sorry, you lost me there.
Is there a preponderance of likelihood
that somebody who commits a crime and is not caught
could likely commit a crime again?
Yes.
And what kind of tools then does the Walnut Creek Police
Department use to catch criminals
after crimes have been committed?
Surveillance, video cameras from businesses, traffic cameras.
We do have to write warrants if we're going.
And I totally understand the concerns about safety
and tracking movements in the same boat as well.
I have all kinds of VPNs and things like that.
I don't want my data sold to data brokers either.
What I'll offer is that the pieces of technology
that we've used have been in place for a long time.
And again, this is a right to no, need to no database.
So the abuse of it is a criminal offense and fireable.
So if an officer under my purview violates that,
it's a no brainer, then we're firing that officer.
The other thing I'll offer is that we audit this system
weekly to ensure that we're not sharing data inadvertently
with other agencies outside the parameters of what state law
and policy allow, and we receive a report from FLOC
on a monthly basis, I think, correct, Captain Slater,
to let us know if we've shared any data-
if we've shared any license plate data
with out-of-state agencies inadvertently.
And to date, we have not shared that data
with any outside agencies at this point.
And so it sounds like since it's against the law for an officer
to access flock data to stalk or harass anybody,
it would seem to reason that they also cannot use databases
and any other tools in the police department
to also stalk and harass.
I mean, they have the capability to do that,
but it would be against the law for them to do that.
Correct? That is correct.
So, thank you, those are my questions.
We have, I guess, Council Member Davini.
So you've been clear about the fact
that you don't share the data.
There might be a concern that Flock or Flock's leadership
could hack our system, could extract the data if they wanted
it, would say you'd say that.
That would be a violation of our contract,
and I would terminate it immediately.
And you would know if that's happening?
That is correct.
because that's audited on a weekly basis.
We audit it, and they send us a report as well as to agencies
that we've sent data to.
Again, they need our permission to access that.
This is not an unfettered gateway into our database.
Did you look at other LPR, license plate reader technologies
besides Flock?
We did.
And what are the decisions when making that decision
to choose FLOC, YA versus these other companies?
We were actually in contract with another company
up until last year, as I recall, last July.
And that company's technology wasn't, A, as secure,
and B, the pictures that the cameras generated
were outdated as well.
So the issue was that the clarity on the photographs
wasn't as good.
But with FLOC, we could also search something
is seemingly benign on a vehicle description
is like a lumber rack on a truck.
So we get, it narrows down the filter.
So if we don't have, if we either have a partial plate
or no plate, but we have a pickup truck with a lumber rack,
it can filter that all of the other vehicles
out and narrow our search.
And I think you addressed this with that answer,
but when you looked at the other companies,
were there other companies where you thought,
oh, this company might be more secure.
like they might have mechanisms in place to prevent data hacking
or data sharing, other things.
Did you compare them on those fronts?
That was one component, but in addition to us evaluating the vendors that were out there,
we ran this through our city's camera committee as well, which is comprised of a number
of different members of the city as well.
So it's not just a law enforcement view on this, it's a more holistic approach to it.
Thank you.
Mayor Pro Tem.
Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Chief.
Appreciate the update.
One of the speakers, I think this was meant just as maybe
an extreme example, was talking about cameras focused
in people's living rooms.
Just to clarify, for the record, the license plate readers,
my understanding is they're generally in public locations
on public roads centered in and around the downtown area.
That is correct.
So no cameras focused in people's private areas,
their backyards, their bedrooms, their living rooms,
nothing like that.
That's correct.
And to give some context to the photograph
that a flock reader will generate,
it's the vehicle itself and the plate,
but there's very little captured around it.
So it doesn't even capture the driver.
They're typically rear plates.
And again, once the information is captured,
What ends up happening is there's a photograph
and then there's a readout of the numbers
as the system read it.
So then when that alert comes through,
if we're alerted to the presence of a stolen vehicle
or a crime vehicle in our city,
that alert goes to our dispatch center
who then with their own eyes,
they look at the comparison to note one of two,
well, to note whether the plate number
is actually as captured as accurate
and is actually the plate that's on the car.
Once that happens, then they run the plate themselves
through DMV in the database there
to make sure that the plate is still,
whatever the crime is, whether it's a stolen car
or it's otherwise associated with a felony crime,
they confirm that the plate is accurate,
it's on that car and that it still shows
as an alert within the DMV database
and that the information Flock has isn't outdated.
Then we call the agency that entered the vehicle
as a crime vehicle in the first place
to make sure that the vehicle is still outstanding
before we even consider making a stop on it.
So in over 10 years of having LPR technology,
I'm pleased to report we've never made a stop
on somebody strictly on an LPR read for that reason.
And that's why we have the guardrails in place that we do.
Okay.
I'm wondering too, you mentioned that the outside agencies
can only access our readers with our permission.
Can you give an example when that's been done?
So not a specific case example,
but generally speaking, the more common searches
things involved with or if the vehicle was involved with like hit run, you know, so if
somebody captured a license plate on the cell phone or they were able to jot down the plate
before they called us, we can run it but we can also we also can search that plate through
flock to make sure that they were in our city and at the location that the hit run occurred.
So they wouldn't they wouldn't necessarily call us on R and hit run but but, you know,
if they have a plate number, they can access the DMV database themselves.
So it's pretty rare, but I'll point one thing out about information sharing.
So the best example I can give is when we had a homicide back in 2021, even though this
wasn't the flock system, we would not have been able to solve that crime without the
LPR camera because there were no witnesses to this crime other than the victim who obviously
wasn't able to provide a plate.
we accessed the county-wide system to find the right car and the right plate
and then we were able to follow up on on that case and solve that homicide.
Thank you. Councilmember Darling. And I know that when the the license plate is
into the system that it's only retained there for a certain amount of time. Like
how long do you guys keep track of that license plate once it's read? So currently
the system is set to retain that information for 30 days. That is in line with the Governor's
guideline on data keeping with respect to license plate readers. FLOC's current recommendation
is to narrow that down to seven days, which would give us enough time to follow up on
a cold report, but typically speaking, most FLOC searches occur specific to crime vehicles
occur within that time frame, which is why they decided that was the way to go.
And we're looking at that right now?
are evaluating changing our data share our data holding policy yes thank you
it's remember Silva thank you very much so a couple of times you've used the
phrase we don't share data or we have restrictions where is the data stored is
it in a cloud or is it in hard drives here in the police department it's in a
secure cloud that is unique to us and do you have to authorize somebody to get
access to it or do, is this sharing with Concord?
We do have to authorize somebody, but typically how we would handle that is we would access
it and send the information that we have provided that they've met the parameters of right to
no need to know.
Okay, so our data is not floating around in cyberspace?
That is correct.
For everybody to get a hold of?
That is correct.
Thank you.
All right, well, I appreciate you coming forward,
answering the questions and some of the concerns.
And, of course, we've been hearing about this in the media.
We've been hearing about this just in general other cities.
I appreciate you providing that information
to us and the community.
Well, and one thing I'll offer, too, is I know I said it before,
but I've been very public about this as well,
is if the contract is broken by, through any means, by flock
and our data is shared with agencies
that is not meant to be shared with
and is not allowed by law to be shared with,
we will break that contract immediately great thank you chief okay well does any
council member wish to make any further comments a motion or anything else all
right thank you very much chief one more question about the chief it's like
Colombo one more thing I think the public is there's a heightened awareness
of this in the public across many spheres, how hard would it be to give us an update
in three or four months on what you're learning, and because this has been almost only about
a year that we've been using this particular technology by this particular vendor?
Absolutely.
So to put the contract into context, we're under contract with them for two years, so
it expires next July.
That is something that is constantly under evaluation
and as part of our ongoing technology audit,
when I took the job, I wanted to make sure
that we weren't overspending on technology specifically
and that includes overlapping technologies
or technologies that would better serve us in the community.
So one thing we're committed to
is continually evaluating floc,
but also creating a public portal
so that the public knows how many agencies
we've shared with outside of Walnut Creek
and to assure the public that we are not sharing
with agencies out of state or the federal government.
So would we perhaps might have the chief come back
maybe in early January and give us just an update
on what's happening because if we're making it available
to the public you can tell us in a public arena too.
Positively.
And you give updates usually at least once,
sometimes twice a year anyway,
so maybe we can just include this into future updates.
Happy to in any forum you'd like.
I just, I have one other question
maybe for the city manager.
recall when the contract came up it it's not done by staff kind of in a back
room it comes before the City Council for approval at a noticed public hearing
it's listed on the agenda there's public comment period provided and so that will
happen next July it sounds like yes there's certainly a dollar threshold
for contracts that come to the council I assume any contract for license plate
reader would meet that threshold. And if it did, we would certainly bring that forward.
Okay. Very good. And if the people that came to talk tonight wanted to follow up with you
or with the gentleman sitting in the back of the room that knows a lot about this,
they will have our contact information. We're happy to address it before they leave,
but they will have our contact information before they leave. Thank you. Certainly.
Great. Thank you. So on that point, our police chief and captains will be in the back if
anybody from the public would like to speak with them in the next few minutes
because we have closed public comment prior to the questioning here and we'll
bring it back to council for our next agenda item. Thank you, Chief. Thank you.
Alright, so next is council member and staff announcements and reports on
activities or requests. Do we have any closed session announcements? Mayor, this
evening the council had two closed session items. One was involving real
property negotiations the council provided direction to your real property
negotiators on that matter and there's no further reportable action on that and
the second item was related to anticipated litigation and there's no
reportable action on that as well all right city manager I do not have an
update this evening mayor okay next we'll move to council members and
comes over to any why don't we start over here okay all right good evening my
glasses on. So over the past few weeks I attended a few events from the city. I
was at the pleasure of attending a fundraiser at the Trinity Center with
Mayor Pro Tem Francois. It was a fundraiser poker tournament. I've
realized I'm an average poker player. Made it about halfway through the event
but had a good time and we you know raised money for Trinity and that's a
great cause. I on a personal note had the pleasure of taking an extended
backpacking trip with my my kids and so I did miss some events here in the city
I would have liked to have attended. I finished a national night out but I'm
sure we'll hear about that from other council members that were able to make
it. This past Sunday I staffed our booth at the farmers market and I'm always I
I think as it's been mentioned impressed with the engagement from the community, the intelligence
items that are brought up and we'll be following up with those community members that I met
and we'll continue those discussions.
We had a meeting for Visit Walnut Creek, our tourism board meeting and I'm the liaison
to Visit Walnut Creek.
This was held at Ruby Lou's which if you haven't had the opportunity to visit is a restaurant
here in Walnut Creek that has a very unique decor and a really great fun vibe.
So if you get a chance go check out Ruby Lou's.
We had some great news come out of that meeting.
I think it's next April.
We're going to have two events here in Walnut Creek.
There are two events that will run for three years.
We signed a three-year contract.
The first is with a premier global cycling series
that tours.
And we secured that race to take place here in Walnut Creek.
It's going to start out at the sports mall.
It will wrap around Morgan territory,
and the finish line will be the top of Mount Diablo.
So 64 miles, 7,000 feet of elevation gain.
That should bring a lot of attention, tourism to the city
and will also just be a super fun event.
So I'm looking forward to that.
Next April, we're also hosting a half marathon here,
which we did sign that for the next three years as well.
So that will be a fun event as well.
Some good news to report as far as hotel occupancy,
our hotel occupancy is up 10 to 20%
from this time last year.
I asked the group of hoteliers,
I think I said that correctly,
what they attribute that to,
and the answers were they're doing a great job
with marketing, the return from COVID,
the COVID recession is sort of the return
to hotel visits is just, we're just sort of recovering
that we're actually just seeing it this year.
That there's spillover from Oakland and San Francisco
for events that are taking place in the Bay area
that folks are wanting to come stay here in Walnut Creek.
And that the stability of our hotels
that our hotels have maintained a good standing
and been around for awhile and done a good job advertising
and they're attractive places to stay.
So that is starting to take hold
and that Walnut Creek's reputation as a place to stay,
a place to visit continues to grow.
And so that was a great thing to hear.
And it's my report.
Great.
Mayor Pro Tem.
Okay, thanks, Mayor.
As Council Member Davini mentioned,
I too am an average poker player, I've discovered.
But the it was a fun event the tournament at the Trinity Center. I want to give a shout out to Molly Klopp
Who's the chair of the board of the Trinity Center and also a planning commissioner here in the city?
Had they had a good turnout and the thing that I learned which I'll forget the next time I go to a poker tournament
Is that you're supposed to fold?
80 to 90 percent of the time
Instead of playing 80 or 90 percent of the time so but glad glad to attend and glad you came as well
Did staff the farmers market booth a few times since our last meeting in case you don't know
One of us on the council will be at the farmers market on Sunday on Locust Street
Generally from about 10 to 12 and I I agree. It's a fun
it's a it's a nice opportunity to be able to to engage with the community to
answer questions to hand you know find out where people live where the closest
park is kind of where the neck you know show them trails on in the open space
area that they might want to hike at and so always enjoy that and I want to give
a also a shout out to staff because I generally on Monday morning or Sunday
afternoon I'm firing off a couple of emails about questions that I've
received and generally getting responses back by the next day and getting that
information to the the residents so it works and and keep up keep it up enjoy
enjoy doing that along with the mayor attended the quarterly meeting of the
mayor the mayor pro tem the city manager and the commission chairs and vice
chairs which is always a great opportunity to learn about all the hard
work that our commissioners are doing and how grateful we are for how much
time and energy they put into their activities. A couple of highlights for me
our library commissioner Heather Lurby mentioned the four extra hours that the
council voted to fund for the downtown library in light of the Ignacio Library
being closed this fall until likely mid next year for some serious renovations.
So we've already got that lined up, the downtown library is open, the maximum number of hours
that are offered and it's in place before Ignacio is closed.
Some of the other items, the EV chargers we'll be talking about tonight, the Transportation
Commission mentioned that.
The Arts Commission mentioned the great mural program that the city helped fund in and around
kind of zebra tattoo and on Main Street if you haven't checked out those murals make
sure you do, it's they're pretty they enliven the downtown experience and our
pros commissioners mentioned staff took them on some tours of the parks so that
they can get familiar with that and planning for the next phase of I guess
it's phase three of the Heather Farm Project after the new pool and the
community center are constructed you know what's next for the Clark Swim
Center. And then I'll just close it out that I was honored to attend with
several of my colleagues the memorial service for Sue Rainey on Sunday at the
Lesher who was not only a mayor and a presence in Walnut Creek for 12 years,
was one of the first council members elected to the Moraga City
Council helped get that city incorporated. And the thing, one of many
things I admired about Sue but she was just a super classy lady and a
approachable person but her sense of humor how she put people at ease and she
always stayed involved in Walnut Creek even when she wasn't elected and when
she was elected she didn't just treat her job as ending when the the gavel goes
down she you know she would call up people she would get donations she would
make things happen and she was committed to the city so miss her and miss her
presence and great grateful for her service and that's my thank you mayor
pretend and I guess I'll go next and we'll just make our way down the line
here but it was a very nice memorial and one thing that will always stick with me
with Sue Rainey is how she respected whoever she spoke with she dressed to
respect she was respectful whether she was meeting somebody on council and she
wasn't or whether she was meeting somebody from the public, she was just a
presence and will indeed be missed. A few other things that I do, when you're in
town for the two weeks there's a lot of going on but so while I wasn't able to
be at the Trinity Center fundraising poker tournament where I would have had
a full 90% of the time, I was serving at the Trinity Center auction winner for
their big fundraiser, and it was at a private home, a gourmet meal, and I was one of the
servers along with Molly Klopp, who's on our planning commission and chair of the Trinity
Center, and it was fun, and what an evening out. It was like being at the French Laundry
right here in Walnut Creek. I was also at the Festival Opera, Opera in the Park, and
they had their big Opera in the Park event, great turnout there. There was the mural ribbon-cutting
and kickoff that happened a couple of weeks ago and we had that in a few different places but if
you haven't seen the murals yet around Walnut Creek, check it out. It's on our city website.
We just put out an update on the mayor's minute through at the city website as well
and mentioned where you can find them around town. Our congressman Mark Desaulnier did a town hall
at Joybound, talking about the importance of our four-legged friends and all that he
does in Congress for that as well.
And so there was a terrific turnout at that town hall.
There was the Walnut Creek PD National Lightout, it was the biggest one that I had seen yet.
It was really a phenomenal turnout, and also wasn't 100 degrees, so maybe that helped with
the turnout as well.
So of course that's national, and it's the same night all across the country when that
happens.
year if you didn't make it come check it out and bring bring your small kids
because there are the fire trucks and public works trucks it's just a great
experience. We had another Locust street festival a couple of weeks ago on the
first Wednesday of August and again I think that was the biggest one ever it
was there was at least five I've heard as many as six or seven thousand people
that came but it was certainly at least five thousand people like a perfect
weather evening, and next year I look forward to even more success on those
on those Locust Street festivals. And I am noticing a trend around town that are
that I thought people were calling Walnut Creek the creek for short, but I'm
seeing more and more the nut, and there was there was a booth that was selling
hats and shirts called the nut, and next thing I know I'm walking around the
streets downtown and there is people with the nut paraphernalia on, so we'll
Keep an eye on that trend.
Thank you to the economic development team
in Walnut Creek downtown for being and helping
to shepherd in our visit with Matson.
Matson is the big shipping cargo liners,
and they have their headquarters now in Walnut Creek,
just maybe a quarter mile this way.
In fact, their whole office looks like a ship.
It's really amazing.
Beautiful though.
We had an opportunity to meet and greet the CEO,
And we welcome Matson being right in downtown Walnut Creek
now and this is of course a global company.
Continuing on, Rotator Taproom had their anniversary
and there was a big event over there as well.
In fact, seeing that along with Calicraft
and some of the microbrews, it really is a renaissance
going on in this particular area.
Council member Sylvan and I went on a tour of Heather Farm,
check out the progress there and thank you to Public Works
and public work director, Rich Payne,
for helping lead that tour.
If you haven't gone by Heather Farm, check it out.
There is now the footprint for the pools
that have been excavated, and it looks like a city
that's happening around in that area.
So there were at least 40 or 50 people
that were working that day.
It is coming right along, and right now,
we expected to be finishing on time at the end of next year.
So, thank you again for that particular tour.
There was a Lindsay Wildlife Experience Fundraiser
for their big fundraiser of the year.
That happened last week.
Everything seemed to happen the last couple of weeks.
I guess kids are back in school and families are here.
So, all of that continued.
In fact, the farmer's market in Shadelands asked
if I would be present there for this last Saturday.
So while we are present at the Sunday farmer's markets down.
excuse me, downtown every week,
I was at the Saturday one on this last Saturday
and there's all sorts of different questions
that come on over there.
Quickly, I was part of the lobby day
with the East Bay Division of Cal Cities.
We went up to Sacramento last week
to lobby for Walnut Creek's position
and Cal City's position on some important bills
that have been considered now in State Assembly
and State Senate, including pension, wildfire,
and how much PG&E is going to be held responsible for that,
and for some of the mitigation there
that the energy companies, public safety, and housing.
These are all topics that we were discussing
with about a half a dozen different legislators
that were up there prior to, of course,
coming out of committee and being voted on that
by the Assembly and the Senate.
And then lastly, I will talk about county connection
on the liaison to our county connection board.
There's upgrades that are happening at our bus stops,
shelters, and carve outs.
We're gonna be seeing that occurring over the next year.
And as an update to the youth ride free program,
in June of this year, we are up over June of last year.
You have an idea that we had about 11,600 riders
that were used that rode free a year ago in June.
This last June, 13,700, it's about an 18% increase.
July is already looking more than that.
And while CCTA took over the outreach to schools
and local government, their focus on the social media ads
and it has obviously done a great job
because people are aware of this.
And of course the use that ride free today,
we are hoping that they ride free as adults,
or I'm not right free as adults,
that they ride as adults and they don't necessarily
have to bring their cars everywhere they go.
So long update, I apologize for that,
but it was a busy month.
Mine was not quite as busy as these guys.
They wear me out.
I did make it a national night out.
I was coming down from the cabin,
so I was undercover as a cabin person.
I always loved visiting with all,
I mean, Joy Bound was there.
And I think there were some people here
that almost took dogs home.
They were on the phone to their spouse.
He's really cute.
But also mom's demand action.
A lot of other groups that are interested
in public safety were there.
And it was really a great night to visit with folks
and catch up even if I was undercover.
This morning, Chief Hibbs came to talk to the Civic Affairs Committee of the Chamber
and really rolled out a lot of the good news that he's been able to share with us about
how close they are to being fully staffed, how the crime statistics in Walnut Creek have
continued a downward trend and really did a great job answering questions.
I also had a chance to have lunch with Angela Ashley and Katie Burroughs to welcome her
to this to the city and I think she'll be a great addition to the Chamber of Commerce.
Everything else is all things MCE. As I explained last time we were together, our CEO, we are
in the process of looking for a new CEO. We have a committee that is in charge of recruitment. They
expect to have a recruitment firm on board by September and they will also be coming
back to us to report in on who we have as the interim CEO.
We had our COO, Vic and Cassagian acting and they are deciding what they're going to do
about that.
In addition, we have the civil grand jury, Marin's civil grand jury report that MCE is
responding to.
been sitting on that committee and we have a relatively complete report that
is going to go to the MCE full board as a draft this Thursday night answering a
lot of the questions that the grand jury asked and it's our chance as the board
for MCE to say here's where we agree here's where some things are a little
different and help get our message out to people. One of the other things and
This had been in progress prior to all the other changes.
But MCE has really grown tremendously in the last 15 years.
It now represents four separate counties.
We'll have 38 member agencies.
More than half of the demand is actually here
in Contra Costa County.
More than half the board is actually Contra Costa.
It's not marine clean energy anymore.
And so we have an outside governance consultant
that is come in and he's working with the board
to talk to us about what are some things
that we should think about at this 15 year milestone
to make our governance more efficient.
As you can imagine with 30,
I think we have 34 board members
because there was some consolidation in Napa.
But 34 board members, it's hard, it's a hard lift.
And so we're looking at different ways
To make it more efficient, give us the right oversight tools and ensure that the agency
works well.
So those things together are kind of getting the agency reset.
There is some good news with all the heatwave that we've had.
For those of you who remember, I think it was 2022, we had a big heatwave in October
and everybody, I mean, we all got the little thing on our phone from the governor, turn
the hair conditioner down. The system has held up really well in the heat dome that we've had recently,
never even getting close to the maximum amount that could be fed into the grid,
and that in many respects is the batteries that we've brought online, the additional fixed
things like wind energy and geothermal energy and the the emphasis that we've put on helping
our biggest clients our biggest power users find ways to adjust away from high power use from four
to nine in the afternoon that's when the system gets most stressed that's the message we want
to get out when we were younger it was two to four two to five now it's four to nine so figure
out a way to reduce your electricity use from four to nine at night and the
system is holding up really well. I'm looking forward I as the co-chair of the
MCE board it's been a busy couple months and I've talked to a lot of my staff
about feelings and emotions and we're working through things but I think we're
as an agency going to come out of it stronger and better able to serve our
customers. So that's my update. Great. Council Member Silva. Thank you very much mayor. I will start by
mentioning one important item that's related to trash and recycling and the
pickups. Happy to report that SB 922 is sitting on the Governor's desk to be
signed. This is the bill that will give cities the right to recover the costs of
of the impacts that garbage trucks, these hauling trucks are the heaviest things on
the road and they damaged the roads and there was a court case that said you can't collect
the funds but it looks like the fix is on the governor's desk and ready to be signed
and so we're all encouraged to send a note to the governor, hey Gavin sign, sign so that
we can secure and fix our roads.
we've sent that letter great the mayor said yes we did yes the mayor's
conference this month we were in Oakley and the mayor was there and I was there
and we received a report from Contra Costa water district which serves half
of our community on the pipeline rebuilding project that they have going
on and that was informative but of course it happened the same night that
there was a water main break, well it was a 10-inch pipe that broke at North
Main and Sunnyvale. How's that road looking? It wasn't a garbage truck that
damaged it, it was water. It's amazing what a water surge can do to a road in
just a few hours. I was honored to be able to attend the Gardens of Heather
Farm last Thursday evening, the reception they held for the retirement of their
executive director Joan Lucchese. She put 10 years in as the executive director
and was guiding them through some really interesting times including a flood in
the building out there but all as all's well that ends well Jeremy Peck who's
been the general manager and the garden manager is now the executive director
and Joan is going back on the board of directors so it was a it was a lovely
evening in her honor and I too was at the Locust Street Festival and I think
And that format is really working well, the way it's stretched along Locust and a little
bit onto Bonanza and Cypress.
And so I look forward to seeing it continue in that format in the future.
And I will finally mention as the end of this that just a few more weeks left, but we had
the filing period for city council election closed last Wednesday and we have two candidates
who filed to fill the seats that Mayor Pro Tem and I are leaving and they will be on
the ballot but they're the only two contenders on the ballot for the two seats.
So congratulations to both Brendan Moran and Cherise Count.
Thank you and yes obviously you're being on the council for these last 20 years and Matt
for the last eight will not go unrecognized, we'll have a lot more to talk about that.
We're going to embarrass it.
We'll have a lot more talk about that in the months ahead.
It's 7.15.
We've been meeting since 4 o'clock,
so why don't we take about a 10-minute break?
We'll be back at 7.25.
All right.
Welcome back.
And the next item on the agenda is a consideration item
titled Presentation of the Draft Electric Vehicle Strategic
Plan.
And I invite sustainability manager Candace Rankin-Mumby
forward to provide the presentation.
evening Mayor and Council members I'm Candace Rankin-Mumby the city's sustainability manager
and I'm joined here tonight by staff from our public works department and our consultant Black
and Beach to provide you an update on the electric vehicle strategic plan that we put together and
to get your feedback on direction for our public charger program. So tonight we're going to start
by just giving a bit of overview on the background as to why we decide to put this plan together
And then we'll go through the results starting with our fleet analysis, which includes the practicalities and the charging needs of electrifying the city's fleet.
And it also includes an analysis of the cost comparison between an internal combustion engine fleet to a partially electrified fleet.
And then we'll take a break for questions then, and then we'll finish off by talking about our public charging program and some proposed changes to make it more successful.
So as you are well aware, one of our city council priorities is to remain a recognized leader in
reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving other sustainability goals through our sustainability
action plan. That plan was adopted in 2023 and the analysis that put that plan together
found that 60 percent of the greenhouse gas, so climate-causing emissions,
and want to create carbon in the transportation sector and that's really primarily from driving
in gas powered cars. So encouraging members of our community to take county connection more and
or electrify their cars is one of the biggest actions that we can take to really impact our
impact on the climate. Because of that we have these three high level goals
in the Sustainability Action Plan to expand adoption and electrification of EVs,
to increase the availability of EV charging and then to electrify our fleet. And so the direction
Even in the stable action plan is really high level, and so this electric vehicle strategic
plan is really intended more internally for staff to give us those details into how to
implement that direction that we've gotten from you, particularly for our fleet and then
the chargers that we manage.
And so with that, I'll turn it over to Gina Eicher to give some context on our fleet.
Good evening, Gina Eicher, Public Works Manager.
One component of the EV strategic plan was to really take a look and assess our existing
fleet and determine where there is potential for converting to zero emissions vehicles.
The city uses a fleet replacement policy that guides when to assess vehicles for replacement.
An example of that is our public works non-safety vehicles, so trucks and then city pool car
vehicles.
These are assessed at about 10 to 12 years, and or 100,000 miles.
One thing I wanted to note that over the last few years, like the last five years, due to
budgetary constraints and some regulatory uncertainties, we've done quite a bit of extending
the life of our vehicles and you're going to see some of these results of the extension
of these vehicle life use in the report that Black & Beach is going to be presenting tonight.
That being said, we have already began to transition our vehicles.
And so in our current fleet, we have 12 fully electric vehicles.
We have three plug-in hybrids and then 25 non-plug-in hybrid cars as well.
With that being said, in order to give you guys more actual details about the analysis
that was done, I'll turn it over to Will Einstein with Black & Veatch.
Good evening, Mayor and Council members.
Will Einstein with Black & Veatch.
I'm very proud to be here tonight to share some of the results of the report and the
analysis that we did for your team.
Black & Veatch is its largest office in Northern California in Walnut Creek, and many of our
employees live and work in the community, and we're really pleased to be part of your
community and able to help you with this important study as you assess how you're going to transfer
your fleet to a greater number of electrified vehicles. When we do these
kinds of studies and help cities like yourselves through the analysis of what
it takes to electrify your fleet, we often start with, and in this case start
with, a full analysis of the fleet working with your team. It's been a true
pleasure to work with Candace and Gina and Eddie on the team in particular and
really the amount of knowledge and understanding they have about your fleet
and how you work is tremendous, and we really appreciate that because it makes our job a lot
easier to help you do the analysis. We start walking through that fleet analysis and really
understanding where things are at. We then go through, and I'll walk you through each of these
stages as we do this, we go through the analysis of the costs and the infrastructure that it will
take in order to begin that fleet electrification, usually on city property and facilities like you
you have and then the costs associated with what it would take to make that investment
and start to make that transition.
A question that often comes up and I think is really important here is why in California
in particular are you making this transition a big chunk of the reason that you're thinking
about is certainly the goals that you have set forward as a community.
Another big piece is the state of California through the California resources board in
2023 implemented the advanced clean fleet rule.
While that rule was pretty wide and broad at the time, it's been narrowed down substantially
since then, but still very much in effect for jurisdictions like yourself and the state
working with its local jurisdictions to continue the progress of transitioning fleets to electrified
vehicles.
One of the key elements in this transition and some of the changes that have happened
And since CARB made its core setting of the policy was the transition from 50 percent
of your vehicles purchased have to be zero emission.
It used to be, say, through the end of 2026, so beginning next year you would have had
to go to 100 percent of your vehicles would have had to be fully electric and meet those
requirements.
In this case, the CARB recently extended that timeframe so that you now have until 2030
order to make that we'll talk more about how that flexibility helps modify some
of your plans and provide you more flexibility as you do that over the next
couple years. ACF covers the medium and heavy duty vehicles associated with your
fleet so we're talking about vehicles that have a gross weight larger than 8,500
pounds so you're thinking extremely heavy pickup trucks in that case and
everything up through street sweepers dump trucks those kinds of vehicles in
in the medium and heavy duty space.
Public safety vehicles are exempt from the regulation
and it doesn't apply to the light duty vehicles
and we'll talk a little bit about what that looks like
in this sense.
When we talk about the fleet that you have,
in our analysis, 175 vehicles in the fleet in total,
66 of those somehow fit into the ACF regulation
and fit under that category of having to match
or factor in the procurement when you go to replace
vehicle of whether it's going to be a battery electric or a EV of some sort
into the space. There are 109 vehicles that are not regulated by ACF
regulations, 69 of those are police vehicles, and then the remaining 40 are
light-duty vehicles usually in some case that is not part of the ACF definition.
So when we talk about, as Gina mentioned, the City of Walnut Creek
is set forward a very well benchmarked, very strong fleet replacement policy.
Gina rattled off the numbers, which are great, which is 10 to 12 years of use.
You go through the process of replacing, analyzing the replacement of those vehicles or when
they hit 100,000 miles.
The charts on this slide outline the sort of the state of the vehicles, both that are
covered by ACF as well as that are not covered by ACF regulations in this space.
As you can see here, the bulk of your vehicles are low mileage. We tend to find
that with cities like yourselves because your vehicles just don't have that far
to travel within the city, but more importantly the age of the vehicles and
how long they've been in operation in your fleet when you think about
replacing them and how that fits in. In the case of Walnut Creek, both your
vehicles are of low mileage as well as the majority of them are well within the
the younger end of your fleet replacement policy age.
And so that provides the city with some of the flexibility
that Gina mentioned as far as working to provide flexibility
and analyze when you're gonna make the decision
to replace a particular vehicle.
The vehicles that sit in that space of being 11 plus
or more years old are some of the ones that we analyzed
as far as how they would be impacted by this, by ACF,
if it were to, at the time it was going into effect,
that we did the analysis, many of them were gonna have to start getting replaced in 2026.
So what you see here is a lot of the vehicles that were slated for 2026 can now be stretched
into the phase of the 2030 timeframe, between now and 2030 essentially.
And so that process will begin.
We do this analysis over essentially working with your staff.
We identify what year you would like to have the ending of the analysis.
So in this case, 2040.
And this assumes that essentially every vehicle
is going to get replaced at least once over that time frame.
So this maps out how that occurs.
So once we're done analyzing the fleet and what it takes,
we go through the process of analyzing the number of chargers
that you will need in order to do that.
In the case of Walnut Creek, your team
identified not one but two different locations in which they wanted to put charging one being your core
Fleet and corporate yard on Lawrence way and then the second being at Heather farm on the piece of the public works property
at the Heather farm complex
Where they would like to install
Faster charging to enable vehicles that are out and about in the city to be able to access higher speed charging
If they're not going if they needed to or if they're not going home
back to the Lawrence Way base to be charged in the evening.
So four DC, basically when we worked through that plan,
we determined that four DC fast charging ports
would make sense for the Heather Farm corporate yard.
And that would cost roughly $500,000
to put in a big chunk of that is being planned for
and coordinated with PG&E now.
And so that process is well underway.
And then the 10 DC fast charging ports and 24 level twos
that are identified for Lawrence Way have been laid out
and conceptually designed with your team.
And then really at this point, it's
a matter of determining when the best time is
to start investing in the infrastructure
to put those chargers in.
The nice thing about the phasing of the chargers
and the investment of the infrastructure for this
is you can make the investment of the charging infrastructure,
but you don't necessarily have to put the actual chargers in
at the time if you don't have the vehicles to need them.
So, making one investment for infrastructure and then making a second or phased investment
to go with the chargers that support the vehicles is, you know, a often good way to phase it
in to accommodate any budget concerns in those things.
So after we get through the process of identifying the cost, doing the layout, the conceptual
diagrams for where things are going to go in the process of setting up the strategic
plan. We then sit down and talk about the total cost of ownership analysis. Total cost
of ownership analysis or TCO as it is an industry jargon, the acronym for it I guess is the
best way to say it, it's an analysis that really tries to apples to apples compare the
cost of owning a vehicle of different types of fuel and different types of infrastructure
for doing it. So it takes those total costs of running that vehicle, in this case over
over the time period from 2026 through 2040 and how that evaluation of those costs occurs
for you.
In this particular case, we analyzed that scenario on a—under three—we analyzed
three different scenarios.
One was a non-transition scenario, not necessarily feasible because you do have still a requirement
to begin the transition because of ACF, but it gives you a sort of what I would call a
business as usual case to compare costs to from the standpoint of absent regulations
what would occur.
Then the second case we analyzed was transitioning all the ACF core vehicles, as we called them,
so those are the vehicles that are immediately required – not immediately – they're
required properly to be transitioned over time by ACF and the regulations.
And then a case that we came up with with your team called ACF Plus, which is looking
at that core element of cost for transitioning the vehicles and then analyzing if you did
some additional light duty vehicles as it made sense on top of that, which aren't necessarily
covered by ACF, what would you do and what do the costs look like for doing that transition
in that sense.
Under total cost of ownership, we'll talk about this a little more in the next slide,
but really you're looking at the fuel costs, you're trying to compare replacement costs,
costs, purchase costs, and then the infrastructure costs associated with
serving them. So when we look at the costs associated with serving them, it's
important to remember, and I like to think of these slides as a transition,
sort of transition and directional slide because all of these are snapshots in
time and using data that in some cases is data from the end of last year as we
We did the study, and so a lot of things are not necessarily captured an influence in this,
one of them being recent increases in fuel costs associated with this.
So some of these fuel costs are costs that don't reflect and were calculated prior to
the most recent run-up in gas prices in the state of California.
But it's important to take a look at this and say, okay, total costs over the period
of time, you can see the numbers there.
ACF plus numbers from the total cost standpoint reflect the fact that you're
putting in more vehicles but essentially we held the amount of charging constant
for that so you have more vehicles utilizing the same amount of charging
and investment infrastructure and so there's a bit of a lower cost there
associated with doing that. Another important element to this is that
you'll notice that on the infrastructure side there is no black bar
associated with the fuel in the essentially the no transition case and
the fuel associated with liquid and fossil fuels because that infrastructure is already
in place.
And so if you took what is in some of those cases that infrastructure or the cost of putting
in liquid fueling infrastructure today, that would sit on top of the black bar to the right,
which would narrow the gap between the blue and the green bars associated with the total
costs.
As it relates to vehicles and O&M, the vehicle O&M maintenance costs certainly have been
falling as an owner of two electric vehicles myself.
Maintenance for electric vehicles is substantially less on the daily basis or the yearly basis
than it is in owning a combustion vehicle, for those of you who may own them.
And then the other element in this that's important is the vehicle price and cost of
ownership.
price and cost of goods on a manufactured basis going up and down.
In some cases, light duty vehicles from the standpoint of pricing, when you compare battery
electric vehicles to combustion engine vehicles, they're getting a lot closer in some cases.
But then for specialty vehicles like you may buy, they're harder to get.
There aren't as many of them being made.
And so in some cases, you see those cost premiums still occur.
So as we look at the findings in that space, I would say that that is one area where should
there be more vehicles made, particularly in the medium and heavy duty space, that those
costs will become more competitive over time.
But again, it will come back to the manufacturers starting to manufacture in total quantity
a lot more of those vehicles.
So then as we look at trends associated with cost components, and I touched a little bit
on it on these the cost premiums I think are going to continue to evolve over
that time period and that's why I say the the total cost of ownership gives
you a good indication of where you're at today but it's a 40-year excuse me it's
an analysis through 2040 it's a 15-year analysis and so a lot can continue to
change in that space both with the cost of the vehicles but also seeing the cost
of batteries I would say this is the one space associated with EVs that is
is coming down in sort of their representation
of the total cost of the vehicle.
The battery is the most expensive element in the vehicle,
but battery prices all over the place are continuing to fall.
And so hopefully those will continue to bring down
the prices of the vehicles that go with them,
or at least help offset some of the increases.
We talked a bit about EV fuel costs less.
As from an electric standpoint,
it's certainly more stable from a pricing standpoint.
utility rates don't change as often as the price of gasoline that the pump does, and
so you certainly get stability in addition to a little bit more predictability over time.
Another important element to remind you of in here is that we took-wherever we could,
we take a conservative approach to how we do these analyses so that you understand from
a budgeting standpoint sort of where your-what I would say your maximum cost could lie.
What we didn't include in here is significant incentives and rebates, partly because most
of the, some of the major federal incentives and rebates have changed over the last several
years.
Some of the California ones have changed.
Some of them have come back.
But what's important here is that they're not in this analysis.
What this study will do is provide your staff and you with the information to begin working
on the plan to start getting shovel ready at some of your sites, because getting shovel
already, your sites makes you much more eligible for grants that help support infrastructure
when they do come back or rebates that might be available for purchasing vehicles.
And so those incentives and rebates are not in here, so they would certainly help improve
the financials in certain situations.
And I think that is all the comments I have in this portion.
I know we're going to take questions if you had them.
Again, super, I have to say your team's fabulous to work with really enjoyed working with them. They've been thinking about and asking all the right questions
Um, and really appreciate the opportunity to work with city walnut creek. Okay. Well, thank you and thank you for the presentation
Council that's council member dirling
It's gonna sound like a you might not know the answer to this, but I was always been curious
the focus on
converting the heavier vehicles over to electric
and not the lighter vehicles.
It seems like the lighter vehicles would probably be
a much easier type of vehicle to transition.
Do you know what the thought process is?
I mean the-
My, excuse me, my understanding at the time
that ACF was put in place because ACF,
that's one of the state consistent is,
it's focused on medium heavy duty vehicles,
is that you have to remember that it was coupled with ACT,
was the advanced clean transportation rule, that was much more focused on light duty vehicles.
And so I think from a carbon, a state policy standpoint, they were looking at ways to influence
two different things, two different markets in two different progressions of where they're
at.
Unfortunately, some elements of all those regulations have been changed over the last several years.
And so it's a little less clear where those rules will lie and particularly into the future.
But they were thinking about them more as a package.
I guess it's the best way to think about it.
And that's my understanding of how-
And then from an operational standpoint,
it sounds like we are focusing on the heavier duty vehicles.
Have we looked at whether or not there is cost savings
on the lower, the lower, the lighter weight vehicles?
So part of what was in the comparison
between ACF and ACF Plus was that opportunistic approach
of looking at late duty vehicles when it made sense
for your fleet team to procure them.
So working through at each opportunity of saying,
okay, we now need to replace this vehicle,
which ones doesn't make sense?
And certainly when you're doing the pairings
of other vehicles,
if you do have to buy an internal combustion engine vehicle
in this timeframe between now and 2030,
you have to pair that with a non EV, with an EV.
And so in order to do that, you start to add in some of those vehicles that you might not
have otherwise replaced.
Okay.
And then I know when we adopted the Sustainability Action Plan, we had a big discussion about
law enforcement vehicles and whether or not they were included.
And at the time, it was felt that the batteries couldn't withstand the rapid charging and
the constant deployment.
Is that still the general conclusion as far as law enforcement?
I would say that there's a lot of law enforcement agencies
I've seen testing out more and more of the new types
of light duty vehicles and how they fit in.
The range of light duty vehicles has got longer.
The challenge for a lot of other jurisdictions
we've worked with have tend to start with
emergency vehicles that are not necessarily used
for pursuit or other types of activities,
support vehicles, those kinds of things to start and learn.
I mean, a lot of this is learning range, et cetera,
and understanding that.
The other element is, is they drive a lot of miles.
And so you really have to kind of think
through the charging cycles
and how they manage the use of the vehicle
on a day-to-day basis.
And so that's part of the conversations we usually have
with representatives of law enforcement teams
and jurisdictions as that happens.
In this particular case,
we decided that the city didn't want to include those yet.
So that part of the study could happen.
But it sounds like for the most part,
everybody's still looking at pilot level projects
There's nobody said, the city of Fremont hasn't-
The only cities, and I can't think of one off top my head,
but I know that there are some cities
who have made declarations and gone all in,
but they tend to be very small jurisdictions.
Yeah, okay, thank you, I appreciate it.
I appreciate all the effort, thank you so much.
Council Member Silva?
Thank you for the presentation.
Just out of curiosity, in case somebody in the audience does,
I can interpret what heavy duty, medium duty,
light-duty are by the way you talked but perhaps you could give a couple of
examples of each of the categories. So light-duty vehicle would be a normal
passenger vehicle under 8,000 pounds. Kind of simple way to think about it is
is everything up to a basic pickup truck. Okay. There are some pickup trucks that
straddle the line so then when you get into pickup trucks like your jurisdiction
uses for parks and other utility type of activities when you put a lot of weight
on them. They get to be heavier vehicles and so heavy pickup trucks and then box trucks are in the
medium duty category and then to certain degree delivery trucks those kinds of vehicles you start
to see like all of the UPS, FedEx type of trucks are medium duty and then heavy duty trucks
certainly anything that is a tractor trailer type of vehicle but heavy dump trucks,
cranes, other things that that have many axles fit into the heavy duty category.
I have a series of questions not necessarily in any order battery life what is it when you look at
the continuum of age odometer readings and number of miles on the vehicle what about how do you
calculate battery life expectancy on the vehicles in this electric environment so in an electric
space not too dissimilar from maybe if you own a boat you think about runtime of your engine when
when you own a boat, in that case.
In the case of electric vehicles-
I don't think about that
other than it's a boat floating in my bathtub.
There you go, there you go.
In the case of electric vehicles,
you think about charge cycles.
So it's not so much how far it's gone,
it's how many times the battery has been charged that matters.
And so as you're looking at that,
it's the type of charging it goes through.
Slower charging over a longer period of time
tends to be better for the battery
than lots and lots and lots of fast charging.
The plan that we've worked with your team on
is much more focused on the lower end of slow charging
that meets the needs of charging vehicles overnight,
as opposed to enduring in-between shifts
and those kinds of things,
as opposed to constantly fast charging a vehicle,
which can be harder on the battery.
So what are we talking about in terms of battery disposal?
Because I know that was an issue
in terms of the environmental consequence
of stockpiles of batteries.
I am not an expert on the end of the life cycle of batteries.
Oh, you're just at the beginning, huh?
Alright, I'll ask somebody else that question, but you do mention overnight charging.
And one of the things Mayor Pro Tem Francois and I serve on the board of Recycle Smart,
and we were just negotiating a new contract for 15 years.
And one of the questions was where would, if we had to go to electric garbage trucks,
where would they park them in the corp yards when you still have fueling trucks that are
taking fuel, petroleum. Right. The danger of putting one too close to the other.
What are the issues at our own courtyards that you've encountered when
you talk about the layout, etc., of the courtyard and both courtyards? Well, in
general, you want to keep the two fuels separate, but it doesn't mean that, you
know, I mean we're not talking two totally separate locations in that case.
Is it between from here to that door or is it further than that?
I don't know that I know exactly where your liquid fuel charging it's on your site.
Good evening, Mayor, council members.
So I can answer.
I'm Eddie, the fleet supervisor for the city.
So at the Lawrence location, we've identified that the best location would be on the east side of our lot.
So parallel with the BART station.
Right. I could see it on the diagram.
Correct.
I just don't remember.
I know there's one fuel, a couple of tanks next to the major doors and the offices.
Correct. So just to lay it out, it's probably between the first charging station and the fuel
island. I would say it's probably about 150 yards, 100 yards, somewhere around there. So it's got a
safe distance. The good thing is our tanks are underground, so they're not exposed. The only
thing that would be potential, you know, the potential of catching fire would be
the fuel island itself, but again you're pretty far away from that so. So then
overnight charging, you've got things plugged in, how do we maintain the
safety of it overnight if there's, you hear about this all the time now,
batteries, explosions, etc. I know it's dramatic, how do you keep, what safety
precautions do we? Yeah so I can speak from experience so typically with
battery fires themselves when you're charging it's it's what typically
happens is there are fast chargers that are being utilized and when you use fast
chargers it creates a lot of heat as it's charging and sometimes what happens
is there's voids in the battery pack it's supposed to be a completely sealed
system and sometimes those voids will occur which introduces oxygen and the
heat builds up and it basically self-combusts. So in our case with the
level two chargers that we'll be utilizing there it is it's not a slow
charger per se but it's not charging at a rate that is similar to like a DC DC
fast charger or the Tesla superchargers as you see they don't recharge at a
high rate such as that so that the heating and the charging won't be as
hot as if we were to do fast charging. So is it safe to say that we don't need to
fast charge overnight? No so the the intent behind fast chargers and this
goes back to us identifying Heather Farm was that Heather Farm was central so in
the case that when the time comes if we were forced to purchase electric dump
trucks per se, duty cycle is a big thing right now and you can imagine just to
things in perspective. A dump truck right now typically hauls about 30 tons of asphalt,
and when you have that much weight, the battery won't last as long. So the idea was that, hey,
let's have a central point, and we have identified Heather Farm as being the best central point,
if you will. We can have that dump truck go in, plug, and it'll fast charge for about 45 minutes,
it's maybe to an hour, get us to about 80%
and then we can continue on.
So again, we wouldn't use the fast charger
for overnight per se.
It is something that we would like to use
throughout the day when people are around
and we can keep an eye on that.
And my last question, you're the person to answer.
Operations and maintenance of electric vehicles
and that high tech vehicles is much different
than internal combustion engine.
what are we doing for training of staff, et cetera?
Yes, so I will say that my team, including myself,
we are trained and certified on high-voltage isolation.
So anything that has 600 volts or more
is supposed to have a secondary isolation mechanism.
So for instance, firefighters are trained
on how to isolate high-voltage systems
from the vehicle as well.
So staff is continually trained on the technologies
as they change and come along.
My last question, I apologize for having so many,
but maybe these were questions you all had too.
What if the power grid goes out and we're using,
I mean, how do we, how do, public works and public safety,
if the power goes out, they're on call.
How do we get them on call if you can't use the vehicles?
It's a, that's a good question.
It has been a challenge for those of us that were here,
New Year's Eve of 22 into 23.
it was a long, long stretch.
And that is probably the biggest concern
that we have as a public agency.
And this is, we don't share this concern.
There's a lot of problems that other agencies are seeing.
And to answer your question,
we do have a backup generator at the corporation yard.
How much that can sustain or keep us going
during an emergency event, that's the unknown.
And that's, I think that's the big variable on,
You know, why we haven't gone electric 100% as of yet,
it's just the duty cycle is the big factor there
that we're trying to figure out
and how we can work around that when that time comes.
Thank you, thank you for your help.
Thank you, other questions?
I had a few, Eddie, you've done the analysis
and we're confident that the 14 chargers
is the right amount to serve our fleet now
in the future yes so it would never be a one-for-one and the thought process is
there is that we would develop or create some kind of charging schedule if you
will as an example with our current vehicles now that we have in our fleet
that are electric they don't charge every day the users will probably use
the charger you know for instance a Monday and then they may not use a
charger again until Wednesday again it is that is a variable component if there
are you know cases where this truck is being heavily used and you know
situations change but for the most part what we will do is develop a charging
schedule or strategy if you will so staff there always be some kind of
charger available and in terms of how long the contract to do the the chargers
will come back to the council at some point I imagine how long from
authorization of that contract to installation are you anticipating? Yes so
the public charging is going to be a separate contract and I could probably
have Gina speak on that because the the city owned chargers will be would be
separate from from the public. Yeah the city the city one though in terms of how
what's your lead time in order to get those. Oh I'm sorry I misunderstood the
question so it that's a it's it's it's a variable right now it I the last time I
did that study was probably about six months ago and at that point the
Chargers were about a three-month lead time I don't know what it is now it
could it could have improved a lot of it was pandemic you know post pandemic
recovery with with hard goods and whatnot so that could have improved
over time. And then kind of following up on one of council members Silva's
questions is there a scenario where we would build in battery storage with the
chargers? Let's come up in discussion I think right now we're kind of taking
baby steps and we're trying to focus on getting the infrastructure in place and
then when that time comes with that capability we may expand that out but
that is something that we haven't had deeper discussions on but it goes back
to again emergency response we won't be able to make sure that our crews are
ready to go if we need to and so that's one of the only ways that we could
potentially have that readiness there. The mid-range they're not the fast not
the Tesla fast chargers. The mid-range ones are they comparable to like what's
in the library? Yes okay yes and then the household chargers that you'd plug
into a 120 outlet is something that would take you know pretty long to
charge overnight. And then last one from me and I'm not sure who probably not
Eddie, but on the ACF core versus the ACF plus, if I'm understanding it correctly, we're
not required, we're not mandated every new purchase to be 100 percent EV until 2030.
But we have vehicles now that are ending, they're reaching the end of their useful life
and that will need to be replaced between now and 2030.
And if I'm reading the analysis correct, if the ACF plus scenario where we would swap
those out with zero emission now would result in the cost savings comparative
to if we waited until if we replaced them with a combustion engine and they
waited to that for them to reach the end of their useful life then and replace
them in 2035 or something yeah so I think the important thing about the ACF
plus scenario is is you're opportunistically looking at okay
replacements coming up if we go with an EV and the premiums make sense for the
purchase the vehicle but the maintenance and the and the lower fuel costs offset
some of that plus you've already invested in the infrastructure and so
you're really in a place of making that transition and starting to do that and
so that's where any savings. When do we make that decision or is that a staff to
case-by-case decision based on what your staff tells me? Not every type of vehicle
is available and so it's really that's probably one of the biggest challenges
because you know just to throw out some stats since 2023 there have been 12
failed EV companies that have started and never they never launched and so to
answer your question it's very contingent on what for instance if I had
to replace a street sweeper today I may not be able to find a full electric one
so it's just it's it's a very case-by-case it's not a there's not a
one-all cure all if you will with with purchasing vehicles or equipment yeah it
was more related to light duty. In the case of the light duty you're really
looking at the opportunity to add that in in order to at the time of the
decision so it has to do with the age of the life of the vehicle at that point
and deciding whether that vehicle can be extended and whether it makes sense to
purchase it as an EV because there are more EV options in the light duty space
and there are in the medium heavy duty space at this point. So we don't
necessarily have a policy on it it's a it's a case-by-case decision sort of
made by staff as the vehicle reaches the end of its useful life okay and then
just I have one last question too on the incentives or is that something that
cities are generally eligible for even if they were available kind of at the
federal level could we so at the federal level for the purchase incentives yes
and there were credits available against the purchase price of the vehicles and
in the case that's part of what went away through previous federal legislation, there's
also there has been in the past charging infrastructure grants as well as incentives those have been
modified and changed California as a state has kept some grant funds in place and is
working to try and continue that but it's it's every month that changes let's just say
it that way.
Yeah thank you.
You do? Okay.
Most of my questions were answered, but the replacement policy, is that like when we do it 10 to 12 years or 100,000 miles, is that just purely a fiscal analysis of when we should replace vehicles based on cost of ownership and things?
No, so we look at the in-service date, and it's not a... we don't just replace the vehicle, so myself or my team will analyze the vehicle and figure out, okay,
Though it's hit its 12-year mark,
is it really necessary to replace the vehicle?
So it's, for the most part,
we've extended a lot of our vehicles
because, you know, just being within city limits,
there really is no need to replace a 12-year-old vehicle.
Sometimes we'll get it in the shop and we'll look at it
and say, oh, this can go another three or four years,
and that's what we'll do.
So it has no ties with fiscal year or calendar year,
it's just from the date of in-service date.
But okay, so you'll make that that that seems like a good policy because of environmentally right you reuse is the first first mantra
So that's good
The the current layout that for the chargers does that include what would be needed if we transitioned all the light-duty vehicles
trying to think here, um
Yes, and that's you know with the light-duty vehicles
We're we're a lot heavier on the the the trucks that are larger if you will
So to put things in perspective, I mean, we're talking anything from an f-250 or higher would be required to have a charger with the ACF
As it relates to smaller vehicles. We don't have too many smaller vehicles per se. So
sedans
We don't yet. Yeah, if we don't vision all those vehicles will the proposed infrastructure?
Cover that yes, so the again, it's really going to be contingent on how we strategize a charging
calendar if you will or schedule.
Okay.
I just requested if we are going to make this investment that we anticipate transitioning
all the light vehicles as well.
So we plan for that eventuality.
Yes.
So, you know, again, there is another state requirement that we will be mandated to purchase
all electric vehicles.
So we will be ready for that.
And this is accounting for that as well.
Okay.
And then a follow-up to that, because I've gone through it personally, as you transition
and more and more things to electric
as PG&E bills get bigger and bigger and bigger.
And then are we looking at our generation capacity
as a city and what the cost over time would be
for that as well?
Is that something that we're sort of parallel
looking at that as well?
Yeah, I could speak on the Corpyard.
I know that we've had discussions
about expanding our solar capabilities
at the Corporation Yard.
There is opportunity for us to do so.
But again, we've started with just focusing
on the infrastructure needs that we need now,
and then 10, 20 years from now,
then we can start adding more solar arrays
to kind of offset that cost.
Yeah, I think some of the analysis is like the sooner
you get them, the quicker they pay for themselves
type thing, but anyway.
Okay, thank you.
All right, let's open up any questions
to the public that might have any questions.
If anybody would like, oh, one more presentation.
Sorry about that.
Right.
I saw the questions.
Sorry, I'm coming back so now we're gonna talk about the public charger piece and then and then we'll wrap up
So the city has provided charging to the public since 2017 and
at that time we had a very small number of chargers and then we've added to it opportunistically as
Opportunities have become available and we've really assessed this program with these four main goals
So our first goal is to ensure that we're offering sustainable infrastructure and that's from the definition of sustainable
We've been talking about tonight
But then also making sure that we can maintain and keep our infrastructure operable and then once we put it
And make it available. We want to make sure that it's highly utilized and that the public's taking advantage of this offering that the city has
Somewhat really leads that we really want to increase community access to EV charging
so that's where we get the emissions reduction potential, right, making sure people are using
these and encouraging them to transition from an internal combustion engine vehicle. And then
lastly, as with all of our city programs, we really strive to provide a superior customer experience.
So currently, over those last nine years, we are up to having 40 public charging ports on 23
different chargers. And on the next slide, we'll show a map, but those are mostly
in our garages downtown, and a future phase is to do more detailed analysis on the private
chargers that are in the community and you know future development opportunities and
expansion, but at a high level our understanding right now is that there's anywhere between 150
to 250 publicly available chargers either in the city or right outside of it. So that means that
our 40 ports are no longer the biggest game in town, but they do still make up a pretty significant
amount of the network that's available. So there's two maps on this slide, the one on
the left shows where those publicly available chargers are that we provide. And so they're
mostly in downtown our garages. We've got a couple in the surface slot here. And then
we have some out at our Sheelens Art Center. And the map on the right shows with some U.S.
Department of Energy data on where there are chargers in the city. And the ones labeled
as orange are the ones that the city operates. You'll note that there's an additional orange
dot on the right that's not on the left and that's our Lawrence Way courtyard. So those are city-owned
chargers but they're not available to the public, they're just for our fleet charging. We do have
some fleet specific chargers in downtown as well and that's where a lot of our light duty vehicles
charge in the Broadway parking garage and in the library garage as well. So taking a level back,
what do you need to run a successful charging network?
And what's shown on the slide right now
is how it was kind of envisioned back
when the market was really starting to develop
and when we first got into this game
and when a lot of city grants were available
for cities to receive chargers.
And the thought was really we put a charger
somewhere people park and the cars will come.
But now that we've been doing this for a long time
it's actually a lot more complicated than that
in order to have a successful network
that can provide that customer experience.
And so there's a lot more information on the slide here now
and you don't necessarily need to absorb all of it,
but it's kind of highlighting that complicated network
of pieces that fit together.
The two biggest pieces that you need to add in
are proactive and responsive maintenance
and customer support.
And having that customer support really match the hours
of operations of the charger.
So if anyone has an issue there,
they can easily get a hold of somebody,
help them maintain that.
And so as this market's matured and we've understood
what you need to really manage it properly,
our management is a little bit closer
to the first version of this chart
than the one that's here now.
So go a little more detail on that current status.
For our charger program, we don't necessarily have
one staff person who's focused on it.
Different pieces of it are spread
across several different staff.
And that works well when everything's working well,
but they have competing priorities
And so sometimes it's kind of in the mix of everything else.
We currently spend about $250,000 a year on this program.
And about 60% of that is the cost of electricity.
And then the rest is the maintenance and networking
of the program.
Some of the chargers do require a significant amount
of maintenance, especially because some of them
are original, and so they are reaching 10 years in service.
And so that's something that we are keeping on top of.
and some charters have had to have been replaced over time.
And with the management that we have right now,
we don't have very detailed data,
and certainly not a structure to monitor
the uses of the charger, if it's repeated users,
how long they're domiciling.
Some other, the more robust networks
have all that kind of data and can make decisions
on management based off of that,
and we are a little bit in the dark there.
And because of that, and some of the maintenance challenges
we mentioned, we do hear from customers who get frustrated if they come to the
chargers that are not operable or they come to them when they're full and you
know they didn't have the data available to know if they're being used so that
we're starting to see that from the customers at certain points in time. So
also just want to talk a little bit about EV charging fees. I can see you one second.
So in the 2018 rethinking mobility plan, one of the recommendations in there was
to establish a fee range to consider collecting fees from EV chargers in the
future. We currently do not charge a fee to the usage of our EV chargers, but
there is an adopted fee range that was not updated in the most recent fee
study, and that's between 16 cents to a dollar per kilowatt hour. And regionally
our research is that most of the other cities in our area are charging a fee for
their chargers, and its average is right now around 36 cents per kilowatt hour
with some of our neighbors looking at potentially increasing that soon.
And just for comparison if you're not an EV driver and you're like what the heck
is a kilowatt hour, that rate is roughly equivalent to $2.50 per
gallon of gas for a vehicle with a 25 mile per gallon fuel efficiency. So it is
a lot more affordable than compared to gas out there but that's kind of where
the rates are at the moment.
So going back to the goals that we talked about
at the beginning of this portion,
as part of this assessment, we looked at how we're doing
on each of those four, and we have them here
in a bit of a traffic life sort of chart.
So the goal that we're doing the best on
is the utilization.
We see it every day.
The chargers are very often being used by folks.
It's, we're not entirely sure if this is a small group
of people who know about the free charging
and are taking advantage of it over and over again,
or if it's general to the public
but they're definitely being used.
But so that's why the community access
is more in that yellow orange category
because right now, anecdotally our understanding
is some folks, they really know about these free charters
and they're using them.
We don't really advertise it right now
because they are so highly utilized
that there isn't really capacity sometimes.
And really we're trying to target individuals
who can't charge at home or at work.
Those are the people
who we're trying to really encourage the most,
to see the most barrier to transitioning to an EV.
And so if somebody could charge at home,
but they have free charging available
and the Walnut Creek charger's a little just charge there
instead, they're taking up the space
from somebody who might not be able to charge at home.
So that's why we're not quite sure
if we're as successful there as we could be.
We already talked quite a bit
about the infrastructure challenges that we're having.
And it can take a little while between replacements
as we're trying to get parts internally.
So that is an area that there's definitely room for improvement,
and all of that leads to the customer experience.
Peace is definitely an area we would like to improve.
So looking at the options of what
we could do to improve the situation,
a lot of networks of our size contract with a third party
provider who does that maintenance and operation
and customer service.
And so these are companies that are doing this all the time.
In a larger network, they have a back stock of parts.
They have a lot of trained staff who
can be dispatched out to respond very quickly.
And then they have staffed call centers.
So there's a lot of different structures
that you can set up with these companies,
and you can put in requirements for an uptime
that the charges are available for customer response.
So this is something where we'd really
have to put out there that we're interested in this service
and see what proposals we get back to know exactly
what it would look like, but from our research,
there's a lot of opportunity for improved maintenance,
customer service, and data that we currently don't have.
In order to make that happen, we would recommend
to begin taking advantage of the fee range
and charging a fee on the public-facing chargers.
We would want to still keep it very affordable
and leave out the new fee justification study
that structure that you'll be talking about next.
We do see this, this is a different type of fee than that,
but it does have that same public and individual benefit.
The individual's getting their fueling for their car,
but the public, it's getting that help
to meet our emissions goals
and also our local air pollution goals.
So we would aim to be in that kind
of middle cost recovery area,
understanding that there is a reason
to subsidize part of it.
And also, we would need to see how starting to charge a fee
affected usage and behavior.
And because EV charging has certain fixed costs,
but has a lot of variable costs too, the amount of users
that really affects the cost recovery ratio.
So we would have to follow that data very closely to see
how we're hitting that.
It's not something that we can necessarily project very well
with the information that we have right now.
So we'd plan to really closely monitor that, especially
at the beginning.
So that's the end of the content that we have for you.
I'm happy to take questions on that portion
and then just a reminder here
when we get to the point of the recommended actions
or to review this plan and provide any feedback
and then to offer staff to take the appropriate actions
to solicit proposals for a third-party vendor
for maintenance and operations of the chargers.
Great, thanks Candice.
Do we have any questions on this portion?
Yes, yeah, questions right now.
Thanks, and thanks for all this, Candace.
In looking at this,
it sounds like you've talked to the other cities.
Have you talked to them about whether any of them
are going out at a similar timeframe?
And have you thought about whether or not
you would want to do the quest for a third-party vendor
as more of a JPA type arrangement
or a sharing with other cities?
Will you coordinate quite a bit with the other cities?
And there is actually a quarterly meeting
between the counties and the cities in it
that are interested in the fleet and public charging.
So we've heard a lot about their experiences.
We haven't gone so far as to talking about
doing a joint effort like this,
but depending on these kinds of contracts
can sometimes have like piggyback language in them
where you can join someone else's.
So that is something we could explore,
but it's not something that we've looked into yet.
Okay, thank you.
I have a hybrid vehicle.
I do not have an all-electric vehicle.
So can you explain to me how much it costs,
and Mayor Pro Tem has a Tesla,
so maybe even he will answer the question.
What is the cost per kilowatt hour to go 250 miles?
I don't even know, you're not filling a tank, so.
Yeah, so it is a challenging one to do an equivalency on,
and so that's why I tried to give it
the $2.50 per gallon if you have
kind of a relatively light fuel efficiency vehicle.
It's kind of the equivalent of that.
But let's say you're charging at home on your,
what are you paying PG&E?
That rate, so MC,
yeah, MC does, I don't have that number exactly on me
because MC has a couple of different plans that can help.
If you have charging, you can get an EV charging plan.
You're charging overnight.
You're getting the cheaper rate.
If you're charging for four to nine, you're paying the most.
But our understanding is it's somewhere
between that 15 to 20 cents per hour.
Wouldn't quote me on that,
but that's kind of the window I would estimate.
So it's a little bit more affordable
than the average rate for the public chargers,
but not significantly so.
So why is the assumption that we are going to increase usage
of electric vehicles by not charging for power?
The cost of the vehicle itself is the primary barrier
to begin with, not where I'm going to fill my tank,
for lack of a phrase.
So there are other incentives for EVs.
There's used EV markets.
So there are ways to get an EV affordably,
if that's something that you are interested in targeting.
What we hear the most from the public
is the biggest barrier to transitioning to an EV
is not having a reliable place to charge it.
So as folks who don't have a garage
or necessarily access at home,
that's our understanding that the cost of the vehicle
is definitely a big upfront cost.
But for folks kind of thinking about
getting a new vehicle anyway
and thinking about how to work it into their life,
it's really the charging access
is the biggest anxiety in this area.
So access is different than price?
Yes, yes.
So this would be a comment for later,
I just wanted clarification, thank you.
Is part of the plan to expand the program
or is it just trying, is the goal
to just maintain what we have?
So right now the way we're thinking about it
is to stabilize the program we have right now.
We wanna get it to a point where our customers are happy
and that we feel like we can maintain the program.
And then when we look at expanding in the SAP,
the goal is to have 70 charging points by 2030.
And if we consider our fleet chargers in that,
we're up to 52 total ports now.
And with the expansion plans we talked about
for our fleet charging, we feel pretty confident
we can get to that 2030 goal.
There'll probably be a lot of fleet facing chargers.
And then the longer term goals in the plan
kind of extend out from there.
But by 2030, the goal for these chargers,
the public chargers is to go from 40 to 70.
For all of our chargers.
We don't have a goal specifically for the public.
So with the charges we own as a city,
including about our public facing ones and our fleet,
total, we have 52 right now
and we'd wanna add 18 more by 2030.
Can you speak directly then to the public facing ones?
Do we have goals related specifically to those
as far as expanding that program?
Not specifically.
I believe our 2045 goal is 90 ports and-
For the public.
For all of it together.
we don't have it broken down by public versus fleet.
But to get to that point,
we would have met our fleet charging by then, so.
Okay, I don't think we have more questions from our end.
Let's open it up to the public
and see if they have any questions
or comments from the public.
And if so, step on up.
Hi, Jan Warren, Woodlands.
I just have a hybrid.
I'm curious, I always assumed,
when I go into the garage on Saturdays for rallies,
that people were paying for them.
You paid to go in the garage,
you paid to park by the meters.
I just assumed, you know,
cost money to buy them and put them in,
and this is Walnut Creek.
So, I would suggest some sort of a survey.
Put cards on people's windshield with a QR code,
And just a quickie thing, do you predominantly charge at home?
I mean, I assume it's just a convenience if it's free.
You're going to just plug in when you're here.
When you go home, it's less to plug.
But I mean, I just I certainly don't
want to discourage people not to come down and eat and so forth
because they don't have free.
But I don't think that that's a real impact.
it's just a curious sort of a thing,
and we're gonna need to spend money
on the actual installations.
And the maintenance, you're taking staff time,
which, how do you figure out what is staff time costing us
for the repairs and finding the little whatever you need
to fix it and get it?
It's hard to get things,
and they send you the wrong thing that you ordered.
So, you know, I think that, yeah,
I appreciate all of this tonight.
It's very informative.
Thank you. If we have any other public comment in the chamber, please come forward. You have
two minutes. And if you would like to provide a remote public comment, you can raise the hand
feature or press star nine if you're calling. You'll have two minutes to speak on this particular
item and this item only. And if you have a comment, please come forward.
Hi, my name is Ellen Lang. I came specifically for this, but I didn't really expect to speak.
I appreciate the sustainability portion, the first portion in terms of the fleet management
and want to applaud the Walnut Creek Sustainability Program for reaching for the ACF Plus goal.
I think that what Council Member Davini said is completely true, that the earlier you adopt
these strategies, the more money you save.
And so on that, I'd also like to ask that there be consideration for earlier renewable
energy and potentially battery storage to help to defray the cost of charging for your,
apparently medium and heavy duty vehicles,
because I think those will have much larger batteries.
And even with the DC fast chargers,
they will take a lot of energy and having a strategy
for rotating the charging will be quite the calendar option.
In terms of the public charging,
while I think it's laudable that Walnut Creek
provides charging and is interested
in providing lower cost charging,
I think third party vendors are probably better at it
and maybe we could work on having third party vendors
put chargers in places that are more accessible
to multifamily housing in parks where people are.
don't know that there's more room downtown for further charging because
they tend to want to have larger spaces for it I I understand the the push two
seconds no done thank you thank you do we have any more public comment from the
room here all right then we'll go to remote comments and again you'll have
two minutes to speak please give your name and location and this will be on
this item only. I'm bringing in call in user three please press star six to
unmute yourself. Kevin Welk is a dirty case of something. Okay please please cut
okay this this was not regarding this comment this agenda item and so we will
cut that comment. Do we have any further remote callers? No additional remote. Okay
Then we will close public comment bring it back to the dais any further comments here
all right, um
so I
Thank you for the report. These are these are great
Topics they're they're
exciting to talk about and
it's
It's a it's a great like future to look forward to when we can we can implement this
It's the 40 to 70 by 2030, I know it sounds like it's not specified in our sustainable
action plan.
I think we sort of have to do some of this from a legal or regulatory standpoint.
As far as the benefit of the general population converting to EV vehicles, those public-facing
chargers are you know I think the most impactful and I agree with a few of the
comments that were made councilmember Silva and Ellen Lang's comments getting
more more of those chargers in locations that aren't in like garages or downtown
and out into the community where you know multifamily units are and those
Those perhaps are the places where they don't have easy access to the chargers and might
have the greatest impact.
I don't feel that the cost is the prohibitive factor for EV adopters of the electricity,
and therefore I don't see great benefit of sacrificing infrastructure and growing the
program to save, you know, 50 cents or a dollar on the charging side on to the
to the user because I think when you talk to people who are looking to buy
an EV the most common thing you hear is well you know it's gonna be a pain where
am I gonna charge it that type of thing it's not well when I went to there it
was 250 and this place was three and you know that's too much I don't think
that's really the mentality.
So I would say that on that range,
that 20% to 40% to 80% cost recovery,
I would think of it more from the standpoint of what's
needed to grow the program, to provide good service,
to provide additional funding so that we can expand the program
and have the greatest impact from that standpoint.
And I think that will have then the greatest public benefit
by promoting the use of the technology.
And then, yeah, so those are the two things.
I'm hoping that we can have goals for public-facing chargers
and looking at the cost model as what's needed
to grow the program to the best that it can be.
Okay, Mayor Pro Tem.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you for the report.
Thank you for all the hard work that went into this.
It's kind of fascinating to learn about the fleet
and how it's managed extremely well.
As an EV owner, I would say cut the cord,
don't get a hybrid, just go all-electric.
And I think the charging network is there now,
it's continuing to grow,
and I'm glad to see the city as part of that.
I think in new multifamily,
it's required that there be EV chargers as part of that.
that is probably our existing older.
We have a fair amount of multifamily residential in town
that doesn't have access to it.
So I think that that makes sense,
but I also have had the experience
of trying to use some of our chargers here,
especially in the city hall parking lot.
And they're not being well maintained, not as a result.
I just think it's not less of a priority.
and because we're not recouping our costs for it
and we don't have a vendor that's staying on that,
I don't think we're keeping up,
and we've had public comments about that
in the shadlands as well.
So I think it is the right decision to start charging,
maybe not the full cost recovery for it,
because I think we still want to incentivize the behavior
and provide an option for people
that aren't able to do it at home.
But I also think it's important that they be well-maintained
so that when someone goes to the charger, it's there,
it's ready to operate and plug in and be charged.
So yeah, that's basically all I got.
All right, Council Member Darling.
Thank you, and thank you guys for all this.
It's fun, I got to drive a full electric car in Norway,
which was really fascinating.
A couple things to think about,
I agree with my fellow council members.
When we think about expanding our charging network,
I think right now what we really need to do
is expand the amount of time that it is up
and expand the amount of time that people know
that they can get there and get the charge
that they're looking for,
and that means moving to a vendor.
And I think as we move to a vendor,
let's look for opportunities to work in partnership
with our neighboring cities,
either piggybacking off of something they're doing
or putting it together,
because I know it's the more that you bring to the table,
the better deal you'll probably be able to get from them.
Thinking about overall strategies with the fleet charging,
finding ways to move that charging
out of the four to nine timeframe
is gonna be a good strategy to incorporate
because that's when the cost of electricity
is going to be highest,
and it's when it puts the most strain on the grid.
So if there's a way to put timers on the chargers when,
I mean, they're gonna be there all night.
So I know it's something that MCE offers as a program
to people at home, but if there's a way we could do it
with our chargers, that'd be great.
And then I know the battery technology
is something that is slowly maturing.
So let's keep an eye on it and see if we get to a point
where it makes sense to have a battery there
because I think New Year's Day,
if we have all electric vehicles,
I don't wanna think about how big a generator
you're gonna have to have to keep those vehicles going,
and that really defeats the whole purpose
of having an electric vehicle.
But overall, I think we're in a good place.
I like the idea of making the ACF plus
kind of a stretch goal and something
that we need to move towards,
because I think the whole technology is getting to the point,
not so much street sweepers, but the other trucks,
it's getting to the point where it makes sense
to have them wherever we can.
And especially if we already have
the charging infrastructure.
So I appreciate all the work you guys have put into this
and look forward to seeing some great results out of it.
Council member Silva.
Thank you very much for all of the work on this,
both from the consultant, but also from the staff.
And Eddie, thank you for being here tonight.
We don't often get to see the guy who's taking care
of all of the vehicles, so thank you for you and your team.
My takeaway from this report and presentation
is that there's, we aspire to do more,
but we have a constraint of cost
because the infrastructure is very expensive.
and charging for per kilowatt hour, 36 cents,
is not going to get us another charger.
I mean, they're not coterminous.
But I think we should be charging
for the use of the electricity.
There's another aspect to this.
It's not just because,
I don't think that's what encourages people
to come use our public chargers.
I think that what encourages people to take advantage,
and what these electric vehicles are doing,
they're using our roads and they're not,
when you're not using fuel,
the gas tax that we use to repair our roads is not there.
So we do have a consequence of that as well in this.
I'm not sure the 40 to 80% cost recovery is correct.
I think it needs to be higher
because it's really the personal benefit of the access is,
and I think a third party vendor
is going to be very important to this.
I like Council Member Darling's idea
that if four or five agencies that are in Central County
are all gonna be looking for third party vendors,
at least look together and vet them together
as opposed to because just capitalize on the issues
and the expertise across the various agencies.
thank you and and thank you for your comments I tend to agree as well and I
at this point I don't think that the cost of EV charging is keep is
preventing people or encouraging people to get cars right now the fact is that
five and six dollars a gallon gas right now is incentivizing them to get TVs
and I do think that having a third-party vendor probably keeps more
consistency, what I hear more from anybody else, including my son who has an EV and people
in the neighborhood who have them, is inconsistency in when the chargers are working.
And so if a third-party vendor is going to be able to have a better maintenance schedule
and keep them up to speed, then I say that makes the most sense of all.
But I love the fact that we are continuing to move in the right direction in having an
ED fleet.
I think, yeah, I think it's all in the right path.
So I don't think we're providing any kind of a motion here, it's just the recommendations
and hearing from us, right?
Well, it's general feedback.
I think a motion would be helpful with respect to the third-party vendor and the process.
And I would add what I heard in terms of comments, if you want to weave it into the motion to
target a higher level of cost recovery,
based upon the comments, what I heard was between,
likely between 80 and 100% cost recovery target
if we're thinking about levels relative to our fee schedule,
and then also to look to use that money
to expand our public facing chargers
as warranted per planning.
All right.
Okay, so let me try this.
Move to authorize the staff to pursue a third party vendor,
potentially in partnership with adjoining cities,
Authorize them to pursue a cost recovery goal in the roughly 80 80 percent
80 to 90 percent. I still think there is a public benefit in attaining our sustainability action plan goals and
Redirect the money that comes from that back into expanding the
Charging supply the charging points I miss anything
Second. All right we have a motion and a second.
Could you call the roll please? Councilmember Darling. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. Councilmember
Davini. Aye. Councilmember Silva. Aye. Mayor Wilk. Aye. All right thank you very much. Next we have a
on the agenda is a public hearing for the consideration of adoption of resolution
approving the user fee cost recovery policy and authorizing updates of the fiscal year
2027 master fee schedule and I invite Administrative Services Director Kirsten
LaCaste forward to provide the presentation. Good evening Mayor Wilk
and members of the Council, Kirsten LaCaste Administrative Services Director
and I'm here this evening to present the user fee cost recovery policy and the
updates to the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule for your consideration and
adoption. So tonight I'll begin by providing some background information
information and recap the process for the policy and fee updates then I'll highlight the key elements of both the user fee cost recovery
policy and
proposed fiscal year 27 master fee schedule followed by the changes made since we last met on July 21st and
That will all include councils direction from that meeting
So we are you are conducting a public hearing regarding the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule this evening
and we are requesting that you move to adopt a resolution approving the user fee cost recovery
policy and authorizing updates to the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule incorporating the
amendments from the addendum this evening. So back in October of 2025 the city awarded
the comprehensive fee, comprehensive user fee study contract to matrix consulting group. Over
the next several months staff worked with the consultants and we had staff from all departments
working closely to identify the full cost of providing city supported services and evaluating
the existing fees compared to those costs. In early June, we brought the results of that
work back to the City Council and began the policy discussion around how much those costs
should be recovered through fees and how much should continue to be supported through other
city revenues. Staff incorporated that direction into draft cost recovery policy and proposed
master fee schedule documents which were presented to the finance committee on June 23rd for
additional feedback.
We then returned to City Council on July 21st to review the draft policy and master fee
schedule and receive additional direction before adoption.
And that brings us here tonight with the final policy and proposed fee updates for consideration
and adoption.
So as I mentioned, on June 2nd, staff presented the fee study results and recommendations
and receive direction on several key areas,
adopt a citywide cost recovery framework based on the level
of benefit provided, include resident discounts
where appropriate, phase in significant fee increases
to help manage customer impacts,
provide for annual fee adjustments to keep pace
with service delivery costs,
continue market-based pricing where appropriate,
and evaluate housing division service fees separately
from other development related fees.
So next I will go through some of the proposed use of fee cost recovery highlights as well
as council direction from July 21st.
So the cost recovery policy gives the city a consistent framework for making fee decisions
going forward.
One of the key principles is that not every city service should recover costs in the same
way or at the same level.
When evaluating fees cost of service is an important starting point but it isn't the
only consideration.
The framework allows us to consider community and individual benefit, legal requirements,
affordability, market conditions and council policy objectives.
And importantly, the policy does not establish mandatory cost recovery percentages.
It preserves council discretion to adjust fees, establish future fees or eliminate fees
when appropriate.
So this next slide outlines updates and direction from the July 21st council meeting.
first two items are the more substantive adjustments to the policy. The policy now defines a resident
as someone who resides within the incorporated boundaries of the City of Walnut Creek.
The resident pricing is intended to recognize that city residents already support city services
through local tax revenues. The term resident discount is now used consistently throughout
the policy. The policy does include some administrative cleanup to the document including
formatting, updating section numbering, and the table of contents to improve consistency
and readability.
And finally, rather than establishing a single citywide cost recovery target within this
policy, council directed that an overall goal or an alternative approach for setting cost
recovery goals be considered as part of the biennial budget process.
So next I will go through some of the proposed master fee schedule highlights and feedback
from the July 21st council meeting.
The proposed fees reflect the cost of service analysis and council policy direction.
The largest adjustments are concentrated in building and planning, and this is where the
study had identified the largest gaps between current fees and the cost of service.
Other departments have targeted adjustments balancing affordability, community benefit,
and customer impacts.
Selected housing division services continue to be subsidized.
based pricing and resident discounts are used for fee setting where appropriate.
Proposed fees would become effective January 1st of 2027 allowing for stakeholder outreach
and implementation.
So no changes were made to the proposed fee amounts presented to council on July 21st.
The proposed fee schedule provided at that meeting included a detailed comparison of
the previously adopted fiscal year 27 fees.
The version before you tonight has been prepared in the format that will be published as the
final master fee schedule if adopted.
The July 21st schedule also focused on fees that were part of the user fee study.
So in preparing this final complete document of the master fee schedule, we did incorporate
other previously adopted fees that were outside of the scope of the study.
These include pickleball, golf, tennis, and the parking rates.
We also added footnotes to clarify fee application as well as an appendix that identifies the
special event rental locations.
Open space rental fees are now cross listed in public works and arts and recreation for
ease of reference for the public.
An addendum was issued for tonight's item that restores two public works fees that were
inadvertently omitted and changes terminology from actual costs to pass through.
This is where services are provided by a third party provider so the correct terminology
would be passed through.
So what we are asking of you this evening is to move to adopt a resolution approving
the user fee cost recovery policy and authorizing updates to the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule
incorporating the amendments from the addendum.
And we do have staff here as well as our consultants joining us remotely to answer any questions
you may have.
Thank you.
Alright let's start on the right this time. Any questions? No I think we've
we've really discussed this topic and given a lot of feedback and we appreciate
you incorporating that feedback and the changes that have been made so I
appreciate the work you've done on it. Thank you. May I pretend? Ditto. I have a quick
question actually and how will that appear when we see a resident discount?
Will it show like City of Walnut Creek resident discount or is just gonna say
resident discount. In the fee schedule it says resident discount in terms of the
other documents that we publish for activity guides and that type of thing I
would need to defer to Chris Farrow our Arts and Recreation Director on how that
will be shown in our current fee schedule though we do have that shaded
and we do have a note that that denotes that it is eligible for the resident
discount. Okay and I guess the question would be then is there any place that is
a qualifier of what that exactly means because to the point that we are making
at the last meeting that there will be people
that live in Walnut Creek and think
that they are there for a resident.
That's an excellent point.
It is referenced in the policy, however, to your point,
most people will be looking at the fee schedule,
so we can add that as a footnote
for the final published document.
Okay, I think that would be helpful.
All right, those are our questions here, evidently.
So let's open it up to the public.
If there's any questions from the public,
you've got two minutes.
If you're in the chamber here, we'll start there
please come forward and if since this is now opening the public hearing if you
are calling in person please raise your hand feature or press star 9 if you're
calling and we'll start in here I don't see anybody coming up here do we have
anybody online and there's nobody online okay so let's bring it back to the
council and if there's any further comments beyond what the questions are
those are minimal as it was. I'm not seeing any mayor so I'll move to adopt
the resolution approving the user fee cost recovery policy and authorizing
updates to the fiscal year 27 master fee schedule. Second. We have a motion a
second soon as you call the roll please. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. Council member
Darling. Aye. Council member Davenny. Aye. Council member Silva. Aye. Mayor Wilk. Aye.
All right. How are we doing here? Need a break? Good to go? All right. All right,
carry on here. So, next on the agenda is a public hearing for the consideration
of an appeal of the Planning Commission's denial of a conditional use
permit to allow the establishment of a short-term rental within an existing
single-family residence located at 635 Mandarin Lane. And this item is a
public hearing. Finding the existing operations did not satisfy the required
conditional use permit and bed and breakfast in findings. The Commission
directed staff to prepare a resolution memorializing its action. Resolution
number 4014 denying the conditional use permit for the project was subsequently
adopted at the Planning Commission's June 11th, 2026 meeting and the public
hearing procedure as follows. These rules are designed to provide the
appellant and applicant the ability to present their arguments, provide
rebuttals, and be heard at this hearing as well as to give everyone a full voice
in these proceedings. So I will open the public hearing now and we'll start with
the staff presentation. Good evening Mayor and members of the City Council. My
name is Stephen Cook, assistant planner with the City's Community Development
Department. Before you this evening is an appeal of Planning Commission's decision
to deny a conditional use permit for the establishment of a short-term rental
at 635 Mandarin Lane. The City Council is being asked to hold a public hearing and
consider Hector Krause's appeal of the Planning Commission's decision to deny
the CUP. Tonight's hearing is de novo, which means the Council will consider the
application anew and independently determine whether the project satisfies
the required findings. To quickly orient you at the site, the project is located
located at the corner of Mandarin Lane and Sugarberry Court.
As shown on the aerial, the lot contains a single-family home with an attached two-car garage.
The surrounding area consists primarily of other single-family homes.
Now moving on to the project proposal.
The property is advertised online as an unhosted short-term rental.
The proposed operation would accommodate one party at a time with up to 10 overnight guests
and stays ranging from 3 to 30 days.
This must also be at least 21 years old to make a reservation.
The slide illustrates the existing floor plan and access to the property.
No physical modifications are proposed.
The residence contains four bedrooms highlighted in red and three points of entry and exit
highlighted in blue.
The residence is accessed from Andrew Lane while the garage and onsite parking are accessed
from Sugar Berry Court.
To summarize the background, in August of 2025, the city opened a code enforcement case
after receiving reports that the home was operating
as an unpermitted short-term rental.
The applicant later submitted a CUP application
with written authorization from the property owner.
During the city's review,
staff continued to observe online advertisements
and receive reports of short-term rental activity.
Staff notified the applicant several times
that operating without an approved CUP
violated the municipal code.
The applicant acknowledged these notices.
On May 28th, 2026,
the Planning Commission denied the CUP.
The applicant appealed the decision on June 4th,
resulting in tonight's meeting.
Since the May 28th Planning Commission hearing,
staff has continued to observe the property advertised online
as a short-term rental.
As recently as this afternoon, the listing remained active
and included 22 verified guest reviews.
The most recent review describes an eight-day stay in June
following the Planning Commission's denial of the CUP.
The listing also advertises up to 14 guests
stays as short as two nights and availability beginning
as early this upcoming Friday.
Staff was also able to proceed to the payment stage
of the booking process.
Please refer to the slide for screenshots of such observances.
In the next two slides, I'll go over the required findings
for a short-term rental.
Summarized here are the bed and breakfast end requirements
that apply to this project.
A green check mark indicates that the project meets
this standard.
The item in red identifies the one standard the project does
not meet and for which the applicant is requesting an exception. This includes
extending the proposed rental period up to 30 days. In addition to the bed and
breakfast ordinance, the project must satisfy the findings required for the
approval of a conditional use permit. The Planning Commission determined that
finding number two concerning public health, safety, and welfare cannot be made.
The Commission cited the continued unpermitted operation despite staff
notices as well as public testimony regarding noise and frequency of
unfamiliar guests. Because tonight's hearings de novo the council will
independently consider all required findings. Now moving on to the points of
appeal the appellant has raised four claims. In the following slides I'll
summarize each claim with staff's response. First the appellant cites SB 60
and SB 345 and notes that the city has not adopted specific regulations
implementing these laws. These laws provide additional tools for the cities
to regulate short-term rentals, but they do not change the city's land use
regulations or eliminate the CUP requirement. Second, the appellant argues
that the city does not have an ordinance specifically regulating unhosted
short-term rentals. The city's existing bed and breakfast in regulations apply
to this project and do not require owner occupancy. A separate short-term rental
Ordinance is therefore not necessary for the city to apply its existing regulations, which requires the approval of a cup
Third the appellant references another approved short-term rental and questions whether that property complies with the municipal code
Each cup is evaluated on its own facts and evidence
The approval or compliance history of another property does not determine whether the required findings can be made for this project
Fourth the appellant argues that the city has applied its bed-and-breakfast in regulations
Inconsistently because other short-term rentals have been approved
Although the same regulations apply each CUP is evaluated based on the proposed use the project site the surrounding land uses and the evidence
in the record
Approval of another short-term rental does not require approval of this project if the required findings cannot be made
For CEQA the project qualifies for a categorical exemption under CEQA section 15 301
Existing facilities, however if denied then CEQA would not apply
Based on the staff report and the evidence of the record staff recommends that the City Council moved to deny the appeal and
Uphold the Planning Commission's denial of the conditional use permit
Okay, that concludes staff's presentation staff is available for any questions that the council may have. Thank you
thank you very much Stephen and
So we have several different processes here.
We will have the Appellant Presentation.
There will be public testimony.
So let me ask, is there any questions
that want to be asked right now?
Or you can also save them toward the end
so that we have public allowance
to be able to ask as well afterwards.
I mean, if there's any questions we want to ask right now,
we can, but, or we can wait, but hang tight.
Great, all right, thank you.
Thank you.
So then let's move to the appellant
or applicant presentation.
You'll have 15 minutes total to speak
and please come forward.
Mayor, City Council, thanks for having me tonight.
So yeah, I operate the short-term rental on Mandarin Lane.
And can you please state your name for the record?
Oh, sorry, Hector Krause with authorization
from the property owner.
I'm here to follow up on my appeal
on the denial decision from the Planning Commission
that did either a single finding that they use
without detrimental to the public health,
safety, and welfare.
And I went through the findings as well as talk
about the due process for the denial,
the proposed path forward.
But before that, I'm actually kind of following
what I heard earlier today about how hotel occupancy
and marketing of Walnut Creek City is relevant
and is working.
Walnut Creek today has 198 short-term rentals, out of which only three are approved.
Unfortunately, the city lacks ordinances to oversee short-term rentals.
As I said, only three or four, because two of them are in one APN, all are managed by
insiders, three by policemen, one for an expanding commissioner. As
reference, California has a hundred thousand short-term rentals, generating
seven billion in annual revenue, there's two and a half million
fundamentals in the US, and 19 million worldwide. My property is just one of our
existing well-understood world-wide industry.
Why Walden Creek? Why short-term rental versus a hotel?
Well Walden Creek obviously because of its shopping, dining, hospitals,
hospital services, weddings, heather farms, hacienda Los Morales in Moraga,
Banker of Gardens, graduations at St. Mary's, UC Berkeley, as well as
and been pretty well located to Gocto San Francisco or Goctunep.
Short-term rental service a market that is not all the way served.
Two guests of mine were five siblings that live all over the U.S.
Grew up in Walnut Creek. Their mom was in hospice.
They didn't know if she was going to die the afternoon tomorrow or in two weeks.
They wanted their own bedrooms, but they wanted a place to mourn, to gather, to share pictures,
to cry.
They're not going to do that at the lobby of the Marriott.
Another factual guest was a family whose wife had a major seizure at John Muir.
She needed to be here for two weeks to do the post-op sessions.
The kids need to be there to attend school online.
The husband had a place to work.
They actually brought, rented a hospital bed over to the house for two weeks.
Again, a hotel could not accommodate that.
So short-term rentals being close to 800 people to Walnut Creek every single month.
Just people eat out, shop, go to Robby Plaza, buy groceries, et cetera.
So this means that the short-term rentals bring $8.8 million in the short-term rental
alone, which could be taxed by TOT if all of them were regulated and never seen.
Assuming that is one of those 800 guests spending $100 a day, that would mean $920,000 in sales
within the city.
and shopping, gas station, whatever.
So, I was denied based on one factor,
health, safety, and welfare.
A city staff member stated in an email to me
that public health, safety, and general welfare
is not defined, is not a defined term in the code.
In summary, the Planning Commission identifies impacts
to public health, safety, and general welfare
on a case-by-case basis.
Yet the city has no definitions of this.
There's no examples, no way to measure them.
In the next 10 minutes or so, I will talk about the three areas where due process was
violated.
The city's own resolution says, and I quote, the bed and breakfast ordinance, WCM section
10.3.9, does not feed this issue.
In resolution 2014, the Commission states that that vulnerable code does not meet my
operation, yet still they require me to meet that ordinance anyway, before denying it based
on the single factor of health and safety.
So there are five codes that are relevant to my project and that should be addressed.
Hotel means a commercial-operated hotel, motel, a bed and breakfast inn, or a similar transient
lodging, and states that for the purpose of that chapter, hotel shall not include a short-term
facilitator.
So after reading SB 346, I am a short-term rental facilitator under approval by the owner
of the house.
Walnut Creek has no short-term rental ordinance.
The city has not adopted SB 60 or 346 or reflected the provisions in the municipal code.
I challenge what Stephen said because SB 6 and SB 346 do not mention short-term rentals
or via B&Bs.
Well, in a quick 102319 governs bed and breakfast needs only and requires it to be the primary
the residents of the owner, which in this case is not.
A vellum breakfast has to be owned by the person
that operates a vellum breakfast from that location.
On hosted rentals, I completely prohibited
under this ordinance, which is a Walnut Creek ordinance.
Former planner commission, Steve Reiser and his wife
advertise the shoe, Avenue properties as bed and breakfast.
But the CUP is for a short-term rental,
not for a bed and breakfast.
There are three doing the solution for 2014.
Three times my operation is called by the commission
as bed and breakfast.
Three times is called a short-term rental.
And once is called bed and breakfast
while describing a short-term rental.
So Wonder Kixe lacks a short-term rental ordinance.
Here's just a few examples of other locations in California,
as close as San Francisco and Marry County,
that have approved ordinances for short-term rentals
completely separate for bed and breakfast.
Copy paste from resolution 4014.
In the first one, the commission contradicts itself.
The commission is saying that it does not appear
that bed and breakfast use feeds my operation.
The commission itself is saying the Brethren Breakfast Ordinance doesn't fit a short term
parental in their own denial document.
The commission is admitting in writing that the box they put me in is actually not a box
for me.
That's a self-defeating admission using the Brethren Breakfast Ordinance to deny me while
seeing you step simultaneously stating that the Brethren Breakfast Ordinance doesn't apply
my operation.
So throughout Resolution 414, the Commission uses indiscriminately the use of terms of
a meditation as bed and breakfast, short-term rentals, even refers to as bed and breakfast,
also known as a short-term rental.
But under California law, Business and Professional Code 2404512, SB 60 and SB 346, these are
two separated, mutually exclusive categories.
State law doesn't recognize a bed and breakfast also known as a short-term rental.
one or the other. There are more inconsistencies in their use. This slide is summary from the
appeal. However, there is no ordinance that exists for walnut creek. Walnut creek has
is not adopted as we see since 1946.
The wrong ordinance was used.
The decision was arbitrary or capacious
because approving permits under an ordinance
for short-term rentals
don't actually satisfy a bed and breakfast.
A permit process bill for a bed and breakfast,
really a small hotel,
shouldn't govern a short-term rental,
so it should be void as applied in my case.
Okay, the second reason that I'm talking about tonight
is that there's no validated incident
supporting health, safety, or welfare.
Resolution
4014, the Notice of Planning Commission.
This is the commission denial in the sense of words.
But they were insufficient facts
and cannot reasonably conclude.
Yet, I point that there is no backup documents.
there's no photography, no dates, no videos,
no documented timeframes or whatever incidents
are stated or complain about.
I check the recordings of my ring camera and then to,
and nobody arrived to the house in August
prior to like 10.30 at night,
and they were complaining
that somebody knocked her door at two in the morning.
So, finding two from Brazil,
staff recommended approval with conditions. The record contains no
analysis of why those conditions could not cure their concerns. The agency
responsible for public safety in the city reviewed the proposal that had no
concerns and support the approval. Yet the Commission denied it on public safety.
And as I said, there's no records of any other complaints.
The third one is due process, and lack of evidence.
So the denial raised on public health, safety, and welfare.
Yet the city has no definition of this, as I just said, right?
They also talk about compliance history.
But there was nothing to comply with,
because there's no ordinance to oversee a short term rental.
And also, we made denial, predicting future conduct.
The commission also relied on predictive future,
which is just a speculation.
Did your process fail?
Did the process was violated when the low return
for vaccine was applied to short term rental?
There is no evidence of harm.
So it was violated on applying the law that applies to bed and breakfast, but was used
for short-term rental.
Due process was violated when not violated, the complaints were used.
A due process was violated during the hearing on May 28.
So my request to you tonight with all respect is that you grant the appeal based on those
three facts.
That there's no evidence of harm or health, the staff finds that all 13 findings requested
in the business plan and the CUP submission were taken care of, were done even before
approving a request on the COP. And so I'm not asking council to bend the rules.
I'm asking you to approve me under the only permit and process available today
and to let me help the city in building an ordinance for short-term rentals. I
have the experience on both sides being a facility operator as well as I've
going to two hearings now so I'm proposing to your requesting okay thank
you sure all right you'll have a chance for rebuttal after questions of public
comment thank you I would like to recommend that we just move to public
comment right now unless you have a pressing question because we're going to
be able to ask the appellant afterwards as well as ask staff members too so we
We can go to the public on that and then we'll come back.
Save your question, write it down,
we'll remember what they are.
I think we all have some.
There you go.
You can just take a seat for now.
We'll call you back up in a few minutes.
All right, so now we will have public testimony
and if any member of the public would like to come speak,
you have up to two minutes for any individual.
I'm assuming we're looking at individual speakers
as opposed to a group spokesperson.
So you'll each have two minutes
and if you haven't filled out a card, please do.
you can do that afterwards though,
you can speak first then we'll trust
that you're gonna fill it out afterwards
and then come forward and you'll have, yeah, thank you.
Thank you and ooh, it's late,
but good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members.
I'm Lisa Blanco of the Woodlands
and despite what you just said to me,
I'm gonna say that picture, if you will,
About a dozen other households from the Woodlands
who I am here as a voice for.
I know what you just said, but anyway,
that wasn't my little speech.
So these, the crowd behind me of neighbors
who feel very strongly that the 6B appeal not be allowed.
I think the council will be familiar
with the plethora of letters and communications
from Woodlands neighbors residents over the past year
or so that are clearly against the short term rental
at 635 Mandarin.
We hope that in addition to current letters
and commentary for this appeal council
we'll still take previous information and commentary
into account as well, those many letters
and the strong pushback against the STR.
The planning commission meeting last May was very thorough.
The STR manager, the appellant received about 20 minutes
all told to make his case, and even
with more of Stephen Cook's additional information,
and then tonight, also more.
So given the commission's thoroughness and thoughtfulness
and denial of the cup, myself and our Woodlands neighbors
encourage councils to allow the denial to stand.
Folks in the Woodlands are frustrated
that this has been a long and ongoing issue that's
been allowed to continue for many months, despite the city's communications with the
owner and STR manager to stop and to take down Airbnb verbo bookings.com ads.
So not to get ahead of ourselves, but a common question I've been asked by other neighbors
is what happens if council votes with the planning commission's denial of the cup?
How does the city enforce that cup denial?
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you, Judy.
And next speaker?
No?
All right.
Okay, so we have nobody else here in the chamber.
So let's, do we have anybody online?
No remote public comment.
No remote public comment.
Okay, then we will bring it now back to council.
And right, I will.
So bring out council and, well, you have any more rebuttal
that you would like to speak?
You have five minutes as the appellant.
We've had one public comment, but you just heard that.
If you'd like to come forward,
you have five more minutes, you can speak.
Well, we'll be asking questions,
but right now it's just a rebuttal for the public comment.
Okay, so your questions don't have a time limit.
They will be coming.
Okay, but there's nothing limit for them.
Correct.
Okay.
Correct.
I just wanna clarify.
I'm familiar with all the letters that were sent
by only six neighbors.
One of them sent 14 letters
and sent one regarding their last hearing
that was nine pages long.
So I have group their statements or complaints
and I want to just address them in a prepared statement.
I keep listing their Airbnb and VRBO
after I direct this to stop and listening still active.
Every operational condition the city would want
already in the record and already met through the application of CUP and the business plan.
Can you repeat that sentence? I couldn't hear you very well. Maybe just a
little closer to the microphone. Yeah, so every operational condition the city
wanted has been met, already been met. Every request or guidance on the
for the CUP was met and city staff recommended approval.
I lied about states being less than 31 days.
The CUP application was for a short-term rental
for states of seven days or less,
consistent with a bed and breakfast ordinance
of one with maximum.
Short states are the basis model I applied for.
I didn't conceal that.
There's no code enforcement citation or police report
in two and a half years reflecting any violation time at all.
Claim, up to 13 cars have been photographed on site.
Usually, there's three, four cars.
Most people actually Uber.
On one occasion, there were like eight or 10 cars.
When I was at home, my cameras and my monitoring device
kept ringing.
So I lived five miles from the house.
So I arrived, and yeah, there was a large group of people.
I kicked them out immediately.
They didn't even spend the night.
The evening that they arrived was evening
that I kicked them out.
So I'm very aware of whatever is happening on the house,
based on cameras and monitoring devices.
And I am very quick to respond.
I didn't pay transient occupancy, and tax was due.
The outside vendors, I think you guys use
for to manage that.
And I have been on email communication for several months.
I provided upon request the revenue for 2024,
yet there was no email, no follow up from them about,
okay, now you owe us this amount or anything like that.
I sent an email on October last year,
asking them if I need to provide 2025,
and if they needed by month, just by the year,
just an email and a spreadsheet,
scan copies of bank statements,
and I have no receiver reply from that email.
When I was doing my research about where to place my Airbnb,
I was debating between here, Mill Valley, and other locations,
I called CD Walnut Creek and I asked very specifically one question,
does Walnut Creek has any regulations or short-term rentals?
I was told no. So I rented a house and operated under that information,
which actually, it's true.
On Permita, short-term rental schools in Walnut Creek,
granting my appeal, sets a bad precedent.
Actually it's exactly the opposite.
I think I've shown that we're valuable for the city
to have a way to permit them and regulate them.
It actually proves my point.
and I offered to help on that.
Mandarin Lane, by definition, is a single-family home
and cannot be a business.
It's a short-term rentals, operating residential zoning,
which is not going to change.
Also, through this whole process,
my character and my persona have been attacked.
Several of the communications to the city
have said that I would wink at I should buy I'm gaming the system thank you
thank you quick question before we close the public hearing bring back counsel are
you the owner or the property manager you do not own the property all right
okay thank you thank you we'll have more questions for you I understand okay we're
gonna close the public hearing and bring it back to council we're gonna have some
questions you can take a seat right now and then actually you might want to take
a seat perhaps toward the front row because you may be asked to come up and
down a bit before I'm gonna pass it over to Mayor Pro Tem to ask questions
first but I'm gonna first ask Stephen if you can come back up for a minute and I
have one question maybe a part A and B and then we'll go straight to this and
by the way excellent presentation I understand it's your first time in front
of our City Council so thank you thank you was I'm just gonna call it the
property, whatever, the house.
Was it able to be listed as a short-term rental
prior to the Planning Commission presentation and discussion?
Was it allowed to be?
It was not.
Was it, did they have approval to be listed still
and be active between the Planning Commission denial
and tonight?
They did not.
Okay. So we'll start with there. Thank you. And, uh,
let's start with mayor for a demo question.
And thanks Steven. Really nice job tonight. Uh, appreciate the presentation.
I didn't quite, uh, get the appellants information.
I can ask him as well, but has the city collected any TOT from this property?
No, it has not.
So the entire, we received complaints in,
in August of 2025, noise number of vehicles.
Can you elaborate on kind of some of the other complaints
that were received from the city that led
to the city investigating whether or not this property owner
or manager had a permit to operate as a short-term rental?
Sure, so the reported complaints first began
with the city's code enforcement division.
The city's code enforcement division received complaints
from the public acknowledging that the property was being
listed online on Airbnb, on VRBO,
had reported instances of loud noise
at late night hours of unknown guests coming and going
at hours throughout the night, commercial vehicles being
parked in front of the residents,
as well as confirming with the applicant
that there was the operation of a short-term rental.
OK.
And then from the time that the appellant was first
notified of these violations and the need
that he was operating illegally and needed a permit in order
to list it as a short-term rental,
what transpired after that point?
Sure.
So on August 5, the code enforcement case was created.
On August 15, my understanding is that the city's code
enforcement sent a letter to the property, to the property
owner, acknowledging ongoing reports.
Between August 15 and November 6, the applicant tonight,
Hector Krause, did submit an application for a CUP
after corresponding with staff receiving
preliminary comments of what the entitlement process entails.
for a short-term rental request and between November 6th
and February 16th it undergone the standard 30-day review period
for completeness on February 16th the project was deemed complete but
following that initial deemed complete date
the city had not or the planning division had not received
the required fee for the conditional use permit to be
um scheduled for a public hearing and there were modifications to the operating plan following the
initial uh deemed complete status date so uh and then also the applicant had advised that they were
unable to attend a number of upcoming planning commission dates so staff had directed that may
28th would be the final date if not the application would be closed so and the mayor touched on this
But from the entire time, from August 5th, 2025, when staff first reached out to the
appellant and informed him that he was operating illegally and needed a permit, until the Planning
Commission denial of the permit, and even after that, today, this property continues
to be listed on short-term rental websites for rent after the appellant knows or should
have known that it was being operated illegally because he needed a permit.
That's correct. And the appellant mentioned that he's complied with every
condition. There was no conditions because there was no permit and no
approval given with conditions, right? That's correct. I think the city planning
Commission denied the conditional use permit so there are no conditions of
approval. And does the city treat this property any differently than it treats
any other short-term rental property they're all classified consistently as
bed-and-breakfast and regulated as such and require a conditional use permit
from the city? That's correct. Okay I think those are those are my questions
for now I may have some as we continue on and for the appellate. Okay if you
just follow up on that for a second Stephen so are all I have questions
later about bed and breakfast versus short-term rental but are every single
what we would consider a bed and breakfast under our policy do they all
have CUPs? Yes all approved all the three approved short-term rentals in the city
all have conditional use permits that are actively approved. And other bed and
breakfast or I'm getting a little confused between what we classify as a
bed and breakfast versus short-term rental? So the zoning code
classifies the use of how it operates although it's referred to as a short-term
rental rental periods less than 30 days are reviewed against the bed and
breakfast in ordinance which requires conditional East permit so the three
prior projects undergone the similar process entitlement process and were
approved under those conditional East permit findings okay thanks
That's member Silva. So the three prior ones that we approved, were they operating illegally
during the approval process? They were not. They began operations after receiving the
conditional use permit approval. So in November the CUP was filed. Can we put that slide back
back up, and then you said something about a 30-day period, but it says February 16th.
What happened between November 6th and February 16th?
There were, I believe, two rounds of incomplete status letters that were provided to the applicant
to address.
And typically, city staff does not issue a deemed complete status unless payment is received,
due to ongoing neighborhood concerns, we expedited the review and completed the review
and provided a status letter.
And you deemed it complete on February 16th, which means then it goes to the Planning Commission
for the conditional use permit.
The application was complete for that process.
That's correct.
Okay.
All right.
In that time, so from August 5th of the original letter that went out in May 28th when it was
denied, what types of enforcement, code enforcement activities have taken place?
I would refer that question to Community Development Director Erica Vanderbrandt.
Thank you.
So it is our habit and our process to try and encourage people to come into compliance
voluntarily.
And so there had been discussions with Mr. Krause about ceasing listing the property
on the various platforms.
And then in addition to that, I myself went out and spoke with him on May 31st and explicitly
asked him to please stop listing it because that did not demonstrate good faith in terms
of moving forward.
the advice of the city attorney's office. We have not gone through and done any
active enforcement during the time that this appeal was in place to be able to
ensure that Mr. Krause and everyone was given a fair, you know, basically that
there was nothing on the record that would identify that, you know, we've been
enforcement action but it is our intention always to try and encourage
whether it is this or any other type of code enforcement activity to help
support people coming into compliance. So can maybe for the city attorney can you
elaborate on the thinking behind not generating code enforcement or not not
trying to enforce the fact that there's a short-term rental operating out of
compliance that's received multiple notices. Yeah so it's not it's not that
the city isn't enforcing the city was sending notices out and they were
advising the property manager of the violations but since they had a pending
application for a CUP we suggested that they not for instance take the code
enforcement to the stage where we might have to go to court to get an order to
stop it from happening because it's a violation of our code they had an
application pending before the planning commission and the planning
commission heard it and now they're in an appeal process before you so the
activities that have taken place through today are illegal and the council can
consider that as part of the information you have before you but because they had
come in and applied to legalize the use we suggested that they not kind of take
the next step of actually getting a court order to stop them from operating
until the city had the chance to act on their CUP application.
Are there other measures that can be taken shy of getting a court order?
Are there lesser fines and so forth that would normally be issued?
Or is it just eviction?
Basically sort of like there's just the final well violations the code can result in fines
And the city could have attempted to impose the fines
but that was not
Considered again in part because they were applying the applicant was applying to legitimize the use
and I and I bring this up and I'm sort of wanting to hash it out a bit because
during the planning Commission meeting that was a big part of their conversation was that the
You know here's the see here's someone applying for a CUP, but they're they're still operating their business
Regardless so even if we don't grant to CUP
They're just going to keep operating so what are our they were I could see their sort of frustration with
with some with around
enforcement and that issue
That the the complaints that were generated
they were
It sounds like mostly in the regulatory
Category am I am I correct like it was it was sort of hey, this is operating out of compliance. This this this is an illegal operation
Can you sort of quantify how many of the complaints were were were like public nuisance disturbance complaints versus like compliance regulatory complaints?
So staff doesn't have that data, but we could certainly look into it
My understanding was that the complaints was sent to both code enforcement staff and planning staff as well as
Community development staff in general, so
some of those emails might have been sent from the
same person
reporting on multiple occasions
But there were several
Instances throughout the course of the project review
if it had been a legal operation
And so then the regulatory ones wouldn't be there.
What types of responses would have been initiated based on the sort of public nuisance complaints?
Like what was your assessment of those and what types of – I assume we take the sort
of action regardless of it's legal or illegal for hearing those types of complaints.
Correct.
So the information that was received by planning staff we had contacted the applicant on multiple
occasions advising that such or acknowledging that there were ongoing reports of unpermitted
activities at the home and acknowledging as well as such activities are unpermitted by
the municipal code and actually requested that such operations cease and that advertisements
be removed, but that was the correspondence that was exchanged between city staff and
the applicant.
I have a sense of concern.
If I can add to that a little bit too, there were, as we understand, there were also complaints
about noise generating from the use as well as the parking issues that even the applicant
has talked about tonight and the staff has talked about.
So it is a combination of both kind of regulatory noncompliance and also nuisance-based type
activities of the use and and I would just share for the council that the
structure of your municipal code the zoning code in particular says that
there are specific types of regulations that apply to specific types of uses
there's one category related to bed and breakfast and the code is very clear the
bed and breakfast and that is how the town the city has regulated kind of
short-term rentals before. That's what the planner talked about, the ones that
have been issued before. The town regulates those through the issuance of
a CUP for the property to ensure that the uses on the property meet the
finding requirements that are in the municipal code for bed and breakfast as
well as don't constitute a public nuisance. And so in this instance the
applicant came forward willfully violated the law by operating was put on
notice of that and continued to willfully violate the law and the
violations of the law were both regulatory and nuisance-based to the
to the neighbors if you because I mean when you the in the Planning Commission
meeting the recommendation by staff was to approve the CUP was it not that's
correct. And that was for the Planning Commission to consider if all applicable findings were made,
staff prepared a draft resolution if the Planning Commission did decide to approve the project.
Why did staff feel differently this time when it was presented to the Planning Commission,
the recommendations by staff were to approve the CUP, but tonight the recommendation by staff is
to approve the CUP?
Is there a?
So based on the public comments received and public testimony
received during the May 28 planning commission meeting,
those points were considered by the planning commission, which
resulted in, I believe, finding two of the conditional use
permit not being met.
And staff agrees with that assessment
as recommending the city council to uphold or deny the appeal
and uphold the planning commission's decision.
OK, thank you.
May I also offer that into the rec so into the record there was
Public in feedback or five like comment provided to the Planning Commission that documented, you know, many of the things that
Constitute those public nuisances. So that isn't as part of the Planning Commission's record and their decision-making
Thank you
Mayor if I may just add one to augment that response. I was just provided by the staff planner
the staff made a recommendation at the Planning Commission,
the Planning Commission made their own determination,
that's what you authorized them to do,
to come to their own independent decisions.
The action that is before the council tonight
is an appeal of that decision,
it is not an appeal of staff's recommendation,
and the council has de novo or complete authority,
so you can either, it's within your authority
to deny the appeal and uphold
the Planning Commission's determination,
It is equally within your authority to grant the appeal
and issue the CUP, if that's what you wish to do tonight.
Thank you.
Mr. Cross, I have a question for you.
Did you know that you were not able to operate this
as a short-term rental either up to the Planning Commission
time or after the Planning Commission meeting?
I said I called to see if you could.
Excuse me.
So I'm not asking your opinion on our policy
for short term rental, were you aware
that you were not able to operate it
based upon the planning commission decision?
So you're talking after the planning commission decision.
After the planning commission decision.
Were you aware that you were not able to operate it?
Were you told that you were not able to operate it?
Under an ordinance that doesn't exist for short term rental.
I'm not asking that.
Were you told by staff that you were not able to operate this
and this is why you filed an appeal
so that you could operate it.
So were you told by staff that you were not able to operate?
Yes.
You were.
Yes.
And you decided to continue to actively advertise it
and continue to operate it anyway.
Yes, because the code that is not relevant for my presentation,
that decision and that code is violating its law.
But you decided in violation that you were told specifically
to decide upon your own that you were going to violate the rule
because you didn't believe the rule applied to you,
is that right?
Not to me.
Well, to your property.
To state law.
To state law.
No, I gotta, I have to say, I am baffled.
Because you had the Planning Commission
recommending to approve it
if you followed the guidelines and you didn't.
And even after the Planning Commission meeting,
you could have followed the guidelines
of to get it into place and then come here and say you understood and now you have hit
all of the different obligations that were required and ask us to then deny the appeal.
But you didn't.
You continued to advertise it, continue to operate it in violation, knowing in violation,
and then came here and asked, what's the appeal in any way?
whether or not I believe there should be short-term rentals there, I mean, I was
prepared to ask the public, why don't you want the short-term rental there? But the
truth of the matter is, you have you have flouted the ordinance and our rules to
all of us. And now you're asking us to appeal. And based upon that alone,
regardless of anything else, there is no way that I can deny the appeal based
upon your flouting the violation of this and so I'm baffled at why you would take
that path to be honest. I guess I don't have a question for you now the
question that I had was did you know about this so what I would like to ask
our city attorney now is what kind of enforcement can we do to ensure this
does not happen continue to happen because I do not have faith that this property
manager will operate with what our direction is.
So if the council were to deny the appeal tonight,
and therefore there would be no conditional use permit approval
for that type of use short term rental, which we characterize
under our regulations as being within the bed and breakfast
category, then if we continue to see the violations,
then we would take enforcement action against them.
And if they continued to do it, we
would seek an injunction to stop them from doing it.
And we would also assess the issue of whether or not
fines would be imposed upon them for any future violations.
Could liens be put against the property if that happened?
Let me ask you.
May I ask the applicant a question?
Sure.
Sir, are you renting the property right now?
So you have a longer term rental agreement
with the property owner?
That's correct.
So they we've been advised that the property owner is
consented to this type of request.
And so if we had fines that were imposed against the property,
we could I would need to confirm this.
There is a strong potential that we could levy fines and lien
fines against the property if they were not enforced.
We may have to get a judicially ordered ability to be able to levy that, but that would also
may be necessary to compel them to stop operating and stop posting it on the websites, the short-term
rental websites.
Okay, thank you.
Could I go under?
Let me, excuse me, Steve, I had a follow-up question.
I had a previous, I know the Planning Commission has denied CUPs for other short-term rentals.
In the past, have we had a problem?
I think the short-term rentals have been denied to stopped operating, is that?
So we have had similar situations where someone has operated as a short-term rental.
We've sent notices, they've ceased operating as a short-term rental.
They came in and then the planning commission had granted them the CUP.
But then we have at least two instances where subsequent to the planning commission granting
them the approval for the COP that they then chose to withdraw it and chose not to operate
as a short-term rental.
So it was clear to them that if they, you know, what their status was and whether or
not they could operate.
Correct.
Thank you.
Do we, let me ask the city manager, do we need to get a short-term rental policy?
we need to do something more to just sort of cut off cut away everything staff
is planning to bring forward a discussion regarding short-term rental
policy for your council's consideration in September okay thank you I had just a
few more questions maybe for staff or the city attorney to close out the
record on have there been other complaints from short-term rentals that
that the city is not enforced?
No, so that in a post COVID period,
there had been, we'd received a couple of complaints
that were actually enforced by the police department.
And so people were renting their homes out,
having parties causing noise and excess alcohol and so forth.
And those other properties that were nuisance properties
when the police came out and then essentially, you know,
did whatever the police do and that stopped.
So there's nothing about the facts or circumstances
that indicate we're picking on this one applicant
or this property owner.
To the extent the city gets complaints about
how a property is being operated or not operated correctly,
we have taken enforcement action against that owner.
We absolutely do.
And then there's a comment made about public health
safety not being a defined term but maybe just for the benefit of the code
and the record kind of that that is a standard code it's it's written in a
very broad discretionary fashion so that a decision-making body like the
Planning Commission or the City Council can construe what public health safety
and welfare is or is not and that it includes things like nuisances like noise
loitering, excess vehicles, operating against city laws. That's all kind of
under that umbrella of public health and safety. That is correct. Okay and then in
terms of and maybe it goes back to the first question about the complaints but
on due process does the city attorney or staff have obviously we've gone through
a full process here there was a several notices that were sent from the city to
There was an application process and a hearing process before the Planning Commission that
took place and now the appeal rights.
It seems to me that the Appellant has been provided with full due process here, but is
there any concerns from the City's standpoint that we've taken some shortcut or not provided
full due process to the Appellant?
No, no, not at all.
The City has provided all of the due process required.
There's been a hearing at the Planning Commission.
There's now been a hearing at the city council.
There was clear notices sent to the applicant
during the process, so we have no concerns
that there's inadequate due process here.
I think that's it for my questions.
Any further questions here?
I don't see any.
All right, I will make the motion.
One more comment, I'm just like playing this logic argument
And we have someone who's clearly been flouting the law,
and it's not acceptable, not coming at that premise at all.
But we held off on fines and other activities
so that we could allow him to go through the process
to get to the planning commission
to attempt to have the conditional use permit allowed.
But it was basically it was rejected because he was flaunting the law, the system.
That was sort of the argument that was made.
And is that a grounds for denying if he's in compliance with these other things or comes
in compliance with these other checklists, like the checklist was all green, the first
round through, the staff is recommending approval, but because of the behavior, the pattern of
behavior, not of public nuisance, but of not complying with our ordinance, it was felt
to be a moral objection, like how can we reward you with a CUP when you've been flaunting
laws. The way I look at it it's like we issue conditional use permits downtown
for alcohol and without it you have to stop serving at a certain point. If we
see somebody downtown serving past what they can serve without a permit, we tell
them you have to stop. You can come in and ask for a permit to do it later but
you need to stop doing that. And this is the same thing. And if somebody then
says well, if somebody comes in and asks for it and stops serving at the
time or stops doing what is illegal, then they could come in and apply and they
could comply with the process. If they are doing something that is illegal, they
continue to do it. If we told somebody you can't serve past 10 o'clock at
night and they say well I want to serve till one o'clock. And they continue to
serve till one o'clock. They come in and they ask for a permit to serve till one
o'clock. I would deny them because they were only allowed to go till ten. And
they're they're flouting the law by saying while I was applying for a permit
till go to one, I just kept doing it because I wanted to do it. And I see them
as almost slightly distinct issues that one is enforcement for bad behavior and
not complying with our laws like you did not you were out of compliance with our
laws we sent you notices and I feel like there was an opportunity or there still
is to enforce that but then there's like a separate process which is applying for
a CUP and it seems to but while you're applying for the CUP you have to comply
with whatever your existing ability to operate is if that means you have to
stop serving at 10 o'clock you stop serving at 10 o'clock other short-term
rentals have ceased operation while they're applying for their CUP. It
doesn't just because you're applying to correct the problem doesn't mean you
could keep causing the problem. And in addition I think it would set a terrible
precedent to approve something that has been flouting the law every step of the
way and now all it does is tell anybody else out there oh I can get away with it
to. So I think that it's really important that which is which is why I was more than
prepared had there not been violations to now to at least review the CUP on its own.
But I can't in good faith and in good conscience to all the places that the many places that
request CUPs all of these short term rentals out there that are abiding by proper procedure
And the ones that will come forward at some point as well
that aren't there yet, I can't in good faith deny the appeal
and then basically say, well, actually, the rules
don't matter, I just can't.
I have a question for the applicant.
You talked about transient occupancy tax,
and you talked about getting a request to pay for 24, 25.
Were you prepared to pay that?
The backlog of your anti-nog bounty talks?
No, I was asked to provide the revenue.
I have not received any request for it.
But if you, yeah, okay.
I mean, I'm just trying to give you potentially a path forward
because I watched the Planning Commission meeting,
the same thing here tonight.
You've been denied twice, well,
you're potentially being denied twice for the same reason,
which is you just won't comply with the process.
So just take that for what it's worth.
I mean, there may be an opportunity for you,
I don't know, to try to get yourself in compliance
with the existing law, which is you have to have a CUP
to operate a short term rental.
See that, so I think you have all these other ideas
and arguments about what the problem is,
that's the problem, is you're not following that.
So I don't know, I mean, if you might be able
to make some arrangement with the city,
or you can talk about like if you wanna pay the TOT
that you haven't been paying and try to get back
into compliance to come back and ask again.
But you do understand that's the process
that took place here.
The process of all requests for me to apply for a PUC
was followed to the T.
And everything was green.
No, except if you continue to operate without a license.
Okay, we're gonna wrap this up right now.
My recommendation to you is continue to work
with the Planning Department and Community Development.
Eric Avanibran right here is a Community Development Director.
If you want to be able to at some point look at this again and come forward and get a CUP,
I recommend you go through Community Development.
I also recommend very strongly you stop right now advertising because we are now watching
that.
Now the focus is there and there will be enforcement and there will be serious consequences.
I recommend you stop right now I will make the motion to deny the appeal and
upholding the planning Commission's decision to deny the conditional use
permit second Susie could have a role please I respect the council decision I
asked that there for the record all right thank you I want something on the
record I was you don't have the floor right you know at this point we've we've
closed the hearing but thank you mayor well I can't slumber Silva I slumber
Darling. Aye. Councilmember Davenne. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. Commissioner Carey. Okay we're
during the meeting of the City Council tonight in memoriam of Ed Skoog. Ed was a
longtime civic leader in Walnut Creek serving as mayor in 1987 to 88 and
helping shape the community's growth and development. Following a period of rapid
growth in Walnut Creek, Ed played a key role through the Measure A initiative in
1985 which limited building heights in downtown Walnut Creek and the commercial
areas. Tonight we honor the memory of Ed Scugge and the years spent in service
to the community of Walnut Creek and with that we're adjourned.