I'm Kevin Will, Mayor of the City of Walnut Creek, and welcome to the regular meeting
of the Walnut Creek City Council.
The City Council was conducting this meeting from the City Council Chamber.
This meeting is being video streamed and can be viewed live or later on the City's website.
As some attendees may be participating in their first Walnut Creek City Council meeting,
I wanted to welcome everyone and talk briefly about the public comment process.
each agenda item there will be an opportunity for public comment on the
item. Thus if you desire to speak to an item on the agenda this evening please
hold your comments until the City Council considers that item. Additionally
we have a section on the agenda titled public communications which is for
public comments for items not on the agenda. Any comments during public
communication should not relate to an item that is on the agenda this evening.
Consistent with Section 9.5 of the City Council Handbook, 30 minutes will be
initially allocated for public communications for items not on the
agenda. Additional time for public communications for items not on the
agenda will be provided at the end of the open session portion of the meeting
if necessary. If you desire to provide a public comment, please complete a
speaker identification card and line up behind the lectern at the appropriate
time. Wait your turn and then when you approach the lectern please state your
name and city of residence for the record. You will have two minutes to
address the city council. Pursuant to California Government Code section
54953.4 SB 707, members of the public may also participate remotely via
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please use the raise hand feature or press star 9 if we'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. Please do
not use threatening, profane, or abusive language which disrupts, disturbs, or
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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
will not be separately read into the record.
All right, good evening, everyone.
My name is Matt Francois.
I'm the Mayor Pro Tem of the city of Walnut Creek.
Welcome to the Tuesday, October 6th regular meeting
of the Walnut Creek City Council.
Would you please all rise if you're able
and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Pledge of Allegiance.
Excellent, City Clerk, Susie Martinez,
would you please call the roll?
Council Member Davenny.
Here.
Mayor Pro Tem Francois? Here. Mayor Wilk? Here. And councilmember Darling is absent
due to a planned vacation. Excellent so next on our agenda we have a few
proclamations and the first is for pedestrian safety awareness month if we
have a representative from walk bike Walnut Creek I'd invite them to the
lectern and I'll just give a little remarks of a preview of what's in the
proclamation essentially we recognize October as pedestrian awareness month
and have made efforts at the city to adopt a vision zero plan which means
we're trying to avoid any fatalities that involve pedestrians encourage that
behavior by building out more sidewalks and areas for people to walk safely and
safe crosswalks, but also recognizing that the health benefits and the
social benefits from getting out and walking and talking to your neighbors
and getting out of your car and seeing a different perspective of the city. So I
have a proclamation here, I'll come up and present it to you and then we'll get
a photo after and love to hear from you and more about your organization.
Do I get to talk now or later?
Hi everyone, my name is Leora Tonwokko Ross.
You said to talk about my group, but like we're not really a group, we're just a bunch
of people who live in Walnut Creek and a lot of us have kids and we want them to have active
lifestyles and we want them to be able to ride their bikes to go see their friends and
walk around the neighborhood without worrying, you know, about them getting hit by cars.
morning actually my sons they could both go to Murwood one's five and one seven
we we went to school together but they wanted to race me running and them on
the bike so that's what we did they won spoiler alert but but you know I want to
add to you said about the like social benefits of walking and biking and since
my sons have been able to bike themselves to school not just on the back
of my bike but on their own bikes. I will tell you they are in my driveway
every morning saying like mom we have to go to school what are you doing get
ready you know and I I don't think that happens as frequently if you're driving
them so I just want us to have a good experience I want other families if they
want to bike I know it's not for everybody but if they want to bike and
walk around the mall in the creek I want it to be safe and that's what our group
is all about. So thank you so much for this and yeah thanks for having us. All
right would you indulge us for a photo? Sure. Okay. We're coming we'll meet right up here. Okay.
Can I give you my phone? I think I know where I'd sit by this point but we're doing music a little
bit of musical chairs tonight. Next on the agenda is a proclamation uh acknowledging October as
Domestic Violence Awareness Month. October has been recognized nationally as
Domestic Violence Awareness Month since 1989. Combating domestic violence
depends on all of us being willing to take action to recognize indicators of
domestic violence, respond with compassion to those experiencing
domestic violence and provide referrals for safe and confidential services.
The city recognizes the advocates, victim service providers and organizations who work
tirelessly to prevent domestic violence and extend hope and healing to survivors and victims
of domestic violence.
And so with that, I would welcome the representative to receive the proclamation.
And mayor if I could mayor pretend if I could have a minute. Yes
Is that Family Justice Center that's there? I
Believe that yes, they are
Okay. I just wanted to introduce visa French as the executive director
And as some people may know that I am the liaison from the mayor's conference in Contra Costa to the Family Justice Center
I'm so proud of the work that they're doing and truly it's helping domestic violence
survivors to get through some of the bureaucracy that can happen within the system itself.
And so with that, I'm so glad that Executive Director Bisa French is on hand to be able
to accept the proclamation.
Thank you, Mayor Wilk, and thank you for being on our board.
So good evening, Mayor and Council.
Thank you for recognizing the significance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
As you heard, my name is Bisa French and I am the Executive Director of the Family Justice
Center.
I'm new to the Family Justice Center, but I'm not new to the work.
I spent 28 years as a law enforcement officer, the last six as a chief of police, and I'm
happy and honored to be able to continue working in an area that I'm very passionate about.
Domestic violence is a public health and public safety issue that requires a collective community
response. It calls on all of us across systems, organizations, and communities
to move beyond individual efforts and to work together to create pathways to
safety, healing, and lasting change. That's what the Family Justice Center model is.
We bring resources together to make the community safer and stronger. We all know
that someone that has been affected by domestic violence, and I just urge all of
you that move beyond just knowing and make a connection. We have four different
family justice centers here in Contra Costa County. The two most close to
Walnut Creek is one in Concord and one in Danville and if you know someone
refer them. Thank you. Thank you very much Miss French if we can get a photo
with you please. Okay next on the agenda we have a presentation from two of our
great transit providers Bart and County Connection and I invite Bart board
director Matt Rinn and County Connection CFO Amber Johnson to wrestle over who
gets to speak first and to present to the council thank you both for being
here. What a photo too I'm just kidding I'm just kidding I'm good at selfies if
you don't know me anyways it's great to be here Matt Rinn board directors
representing district one. I just wanted to do a brief announcement actually. We
wanted to do an update on the Walnut Creek Station for a construction project
that's gonna be starting on October 19th. These flyers were distributed to the
neighborhood surrounding the station today and electronic copies are coming
out to staff. But we'll be working on the power substation equipment to provide
stable consistent power to our track system. Construction will take place
immediately cross the Weimar Apartments along Station Way. There should be no
disruptions to BART operations, street traffic, or pedestrian access. But if you
see movement going on over there, that's what's happening. So I just wanted to do
that and get you guys those copies. All right. 2026. Oh man, BART. We're doing good
things. Contrary to what you hear sometimes on the media, on the slow
Newsday. But uh we'll go through this big circle. See I knew it. This is not
indicative of a fart. We're actually doing really good. I can do finger puppets.
On the left there is the trains. Did it go? Something happened? Oh there it goes.
okay me all right see you scared it hey all right we're rolling reset the
clock no I'm just kidding all right we're gonna get up so I hear just with
Matt Marin Bart board of directors I know my poor in my life I was mayor Pleasant
Hill for two times eight-year council member there so I'm familiar with most of
you in this room and now my new capacity as a bartender to directors is district
One runs from Caldecott Tunnel down through San Ramon out through Clayton
about half of contour and then up through Pleasant Hill so about 500,000
residents Central Contra Costa County is the district. We've had some new
improvements in the last year is the new Fairgate systems. How many of my show of
hands have ridden Bart recently and seen the new Fairgates out there? They have
been great. It's an amazing improvement to the system. I'm not an athletic person
but the old Fairgates, I could have jumped over them
to the other side without paying.
So these are great, they go floor to ceiling in most cases.
And really, we've seen a great,
not only improvement in our Fairgate collection,
but also the reduction in crime, about 41%.
And then crimes against riders overall has fallen 67.
So the differential between those two
is between the 41 and the 67 is it encapsulates
our parking lots and things like that
in some of the areas where we have parking.
but we do see auto theft coming down as well.
And customer satisfaction is what it's all about
because we are in the service industry at 91.4%.
So that's great to hear.
We also just had a report come out for our last quarter
where we had 95% on-time performance.
So that's a fantastic metric,
and it's the first time we've ever gotten that high
of a score for on-time performance.
So looking forward to it.
The important stuff to most of the people in the room
is tell us about Walnut Creek and how awesome we are.
So Walnut Creek is our largest station
in Contra Costa County,
and we average about 3,542 riders on a weekday,
and that's our August numbers,
and our September numbers are a little bit higher than that,
and they just came out.
Transit oriented development,
the Waymark completed in 2023,
added about 358 housing units,
and phase two is currently in the planning process
to add additional housing
around our transit oriented development.
We have great partnerships.
Walnut Creek Art and Wine Festival,
Walnut Creek Downtown, the Lesher Center for Arts,
and our East Bay Leadership Council,
a great way to bring people to Walnut Creek Downtown
who may not be familiar with it.
And I know you'll have your parking meters too,
but it also helps make parking easier
for those who need to want to use the meters
for those restaurants as well downtown.
And we're happy to run shuttles from our parking garages
and partner up on using the parking garages
for volunteers and things like that.
So those who attend a lot of these events
can park rail near the event if they do decide to drive.
And then the volunteers can park offside of their garages
and use the shuttles to and from those events.
All right.
BART, and when you run a rail system,
it's pretty expensive to run, actually.
The cost of run trains is not as cheap as you would think,
but this is a chart showing how we rank nationally.
Obviously, the top way most expensive one
is the Honolulu Skyline one, which just came out.
BART actually does pretty well.
We're about $1.15 per mile there.
The only ones doing better are New York City,
Chicago, Miami, but you can see a few others.
LA Metro's about $2.13 if you wanna do an East Coast thing.
Accountability and oversight.
This is kinda my love language here,
and what I really kinda came on the BART board to do
is really continue to drive the accountability
and oversight of BART.
We have an Office of Inspector General
who conducts performance audits, investigates,
allegations of fraud and waste,
and is doing a great job with that.
I currently serve as the chair of the audit committee
on the Bart Board of Directors
and work closely with our office of inspector general
to implement efficiencies and also operations and reporting,
and then following up on complaints like whistle blowers
or anything else like that.
We did 2026, an independent financial efficiency review
was conducted by Mart, Bart, Mart, Bart,
You need Caltrain and AC Transit.
The findings show that BART saved almost $516 million
in operating costs through service reductions
in the workforce controls and efficiencies
between 2019 and 2025.
And then BART also did an additional capital cost by $549,
which increased our revenue by $99 million.
All right, a lot of you have heard the financial deficit
or the finance of the fiscal cliff that we're coming up.
So the current budget cycle we're in,
there is a $700 million structural deficit
in our operating budget.
A lot of this stems from the ridership
not returning post COVID.
Pre-COVID, we were running a good 300,000 riders a day,
and we've come back to about averaging over 200,000.
So that differential, that Delta,
close to about 100,000 riders a day,
we used to get a lot of our operating revenues
from the fare box recovery through that,
which was pretty unique for ridership.
If you look at a lot of other transit agencies,
a lot of those other agencies are highly subsidized
and don't recoup as much through the fares
that they collect for their riders.
Got all that covered, good.
There is some talk of alternative service plans.
So this year we had the unique challenge
of running two-digit scenarios.
One if additional, I can't really go into detail
of certain things, but if there's additional funding
that becomes available after November,
we ran through a scenario of that
and what that would look like.
And then we also had to kind of run it through a scenario
if we don't get additional revenues through this year,
what would that some of that look like?
And some of you may have heard,
it's called the alternative service plan,
which would cut some services by up to 70%.
We could possibly close the system at 9 o'clock at night.
We could increase fares by 50%.
Some of the scenarios were closing stations,
which some of you may have heard about those.
Longer differential between trains.
So rather than running seven, eight minute trains,
you could do half hour, 45 minute trains.
So all those doom scenarios are something
that hopefully would not come to fruition
and are tough choices to make.
All right, recent ridership growth.
We've had back-to-back years of double-digit ridership growth.
In July, BART began running longer trains
because we started to fill them up,
which is a good problem to have.
So we have the capacity to do that.
We have all new trains in our fleet.
Ridership ended in August of 14.2% higher.
And then September just ended
with another double-digit increase as well.
We broke an all-time ridership record post-COVID.
September 15th was transit day,
I know it's our single highest rider since 2020,
I have 242,000 trips in one day, so we're pretty excited.
And Salesforce was also going on that day in San Francisco.
All right, hey, it's not even here.
I threw a picture up on there for her and she's not even here.
Hopefully she's out on safari watching this or something
if it'll be able to get it.
I wanted to give, I appreciate the BART receiving
our transit award, best of Walnut Creek,
so apologies to the county connection people here
in the room, but it's on again this year,
So we'll see you in the competition.
But here's my contact information.
Tonya Love, I wanted to recognize too,
is our principal government community relationships director.
So I wanted to give her a shout out here.
She was actually walking in the heat in the neighborhood,
giving all the notices for the construction there.
So I appreciate her before, she's multi.
So we're being efficient.
We're like, you're coming out this way.
We're gonna put you to work
before you come to the Walnut Creek meeting.
I'm always happy to answer any questions,
but I know we have a packed agenda today.
So I wanted to be respectful of the time.
And we're also available to do one-offs
if you want to meet with us individually.
This presentation is also public and on the site as well.
So if you want any of that information,
I'm happy to do that for you guys.
I'll give you back.
That's terrific.
Thanks very much.
Don't go far.
I imagine Miss Johnson has a presentation as well.
Oh yeah, I'm sorry.
Let me turn the questions in.
Let's do Miss Johnson first
and then we'll do all our questions afterwards.
Terrific.
Well, good evening.
and thank you for this opportunity
to present to the council.
My name is Amber Johnson.
I'm the chief financial officer for County Connection
and I didn't realize we were competing
for best transit agency awards.
So my presentation just got stepped up a notch, I will say.
Thank you for testing that.
Okay, so tonight I'm here to share
a little bit about our organization
and perhaps more importantly,
how County Connection impacts and partners
with the city of Walnut Creek.
Okay, just a brief history and context
about County Connection.
We are a joint powers authority that was formed in 1980.
It includes the 10 cities and towns
and unincorporated areas of Contra Costa County
that you see here on the slide.
We provide the bus transit service
across all of these jurisdictions.
And of course we rely on and work very closely
with all of the member cities to manage bus stops,
infrastructure and things such as signal prioritization.
We could not operate the transportation services
we provide your community without the strong partnerships
we have with our cities, including the city of Walnut Creek.
So looking at our system overall,
one of the metrics we are often asked about
is how is your ridership compared to pre-COVID?
Here on this slide, we see our service levels,
which is represented as revenue hours.
Those are hours that buses available for passengers.
Overlaid with ridership from pre-COVID years
to the most recent fiscal year just ended in June of 2026.
So specifically, we like to look at FY19,
that third bar as our most recent pre-pandemic
year of service.
So when we compare today's service picture
to that pre-pandemic picture,
we see that we are moving about 83% of the passengers
we moved pre-pandemic,
while running about 85% of the service.
So we consider that we've reached about 97% efficiency
as we were compared to COVID, pre-COVID.
But interestingly, that's the whole picture,
but when we dive in a little bit deeper,
we see that ridership patterns are not the same
as they were before the pandemic.
This slide is demonstrating how our weekday service,
we're running about 81% of passengers
as compared to prior pre-COVID.
But Saturday and Sunday,
weekend ridership has gone up considerably.
So also not pictured on the slide
as we're seeing a lot more youth in student ridership
and a lot less commute ridership.
So the travel patterns have changed
I think it's something that that BART is also experienced pre-covid post-covid how people
just change how they work and live and travel across their communities.
Okay so next I'm going to zoom in a little bit to look at the services we provide within the city
of Walnut Creek. This is a map of the fixed routes that county connection operates here.
What's notable here is that only the routes four and five operate entirely within the city. All of
the remaining routes that serve Walnut Creek also connect to other areas of the county.
So this speaks to the important role that Walnut Creek has in the regional connectivity
of the greater Bay Area. Our next slide shows the Walnut Creek BART station and how we serve
the BART station, the largest BART station in Contra Costa County as previously mentioned.
And so this station is of course a critical element of the overall regional network. It
connects county connection with wheels and connects us to the Altamont corridor express
or the ACE train. County connection alone operates 256 bus trips through this station
in addition to five trips from wheels so that's 263 bus trips that provide a nice complement to
the 206 train departures from BART through the station. Moving on to a unique partnership that
that we have within the City of Walnut Creek and that is our partnership with
the Shadelands Business Park property owners for free fares on the Route 7.
This partnership has been in place since 2015 and it provides a highly valuable
service to transit riders who are accessing the Shadelands Business Park
for medical appointments, shopping, classes, or any number of the wide
variety of services offered there. Last year alone we carried 56,000 free
passengers on the Route 7 thanks to the Shadelands Business Park contribution.
All right, another important part of the bus transit network in all cities, but especially
Walnut Creek are the school routes.
We also provide a significant volume of service to schools across three separate routes, two
of which also connect to the Walnut Creek BART station.
These among our whole suite of routes are our most dynamic routes.
We often add capacity to overcrowding or create new alignments in response to unique needs
of school riders.
For example, we recently modified routes 602 and 605 to address overcrowding and alignments.
We currently move about 70,000 students each year on these routes.
Okay, so taking a step up to look at the high-level summary of bus service provided to riders
who pass through Walnut Creek, over one million annual trips are made on routes serving the
city and that represents about 39% of the riders across the total county connection
system.
Quite a few people.
Okay so in public transit we often just focus on ridership numbers but transit
also makes a big impact on the quality of life for all residents and visitors
even if they don't choose to take transit. Based on the transit service and
ridership on the routes that serve Walnut Creek, County Connection removes
about 1,400 cars from the road every day and avoids ten and a half million pounds
of carbon dioxide emissions each year. With a notable exception the bulk of our
bus fleet runs on renewable diesel, which is made from natural renewable resources.
And renewable diesel generates about 65 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than regular
diesel and about 40 percent fewer particulate emissions from regular diesel.
County Connection is also the paratransit service provider in Walnut Creek, I mean,
yeah, in Walnut Creek in Contra Costa County.
This service is for transit users that cannot use the fixed route system due to a disability,
and of course represents our most vulnerable population.
And we also have a partnership with BART
to provide their paratransit trips
at meeting their ADA requirement
within three quarters of a mile of their stations.
We've provided over 21,000 paratransit trips
that either began or ended in Walnut Creek last year.
This includes our one-seat ride program.
About 2,500 of those paratransit trips took place
on our one-seat ride program.
This is a unique paratransit program
connects the service areas of County Connection, Wheels in the Livermore Valley, Tri-Delta in East
County, and Westcat in West County into one. So this allows a passenger who travels from one service
area to another to stay in the same vehicle, the same one seat for their entire ride, which is
very different from how it used to work. We used to have to transport people into different vehicles
and it was very challenging. So this is an exciting program that we're really proud of.
All right, so we really see Walnut Creek as a valuable partner in providing transit services
to your community. We have appreciated a decades-long relationship with Walnut Creek, of course,
starting in 1980 when we formed the JPA, but going back to the mid-1990s when Walnut Creek
first began subsidizing fares for the Route 4 to provide a free ride trolley in downtown.
Eventually, this was expanded to include Route 5, and we were able to deploy the trolley buses on
these routes. We are also very proud to have partnered with Walnut Creek and
deploying the first inductively charged battery electric buses in the nation
which did garner national attention at that time. Beyond that, Walnut Creek has
also been proactive in applying for funds and working with County
Connection to develop transit signal priority projects in the city, improve
bus stops, and even add frequency and span of service on the popular routes 4
and five in connection with the housing development on Ignacio Valley Road. The
investments in Walnut Creek, the investments that Walnut Creek has made
in transit over the years really underscore the importance that the city
has placed on providing accessible, reliable transit options to the community
and we're very excited to continue to work together to see what solutions we
can partner on in the future. So lastly, in many ways, most importantly, I wanted
talk about the regional transit measure which is the ballot measure that will be voted on this
coming November. As Bart highlighted and as other large transit operators would also share,
the large transit operators are facing a profound fiscal cliff primarily due to the large loss of
fair revenues during the pandemic. It's important to understand that county connection and the other
local east bay transit operators are facing similar fiscal issues in the coming years
if additional revenues are not identified. The measure, if passed, would represent the
largest new funding source for County Connection in the last 30 years, giving us the ability to
preserve all the great transit services I just shared with you. If the measure does not pass,
County Connection specifically faces a six and a half million dollar annual deficit.
To mitigate this deficit, in April of this year, the County Connection Board of Directors adopted
alternative service plan which will reduce service across the county
connection system by 22 percent. This plan will be implemented by the end of
fiscal year 2028 if no new revenues are identified. Specifically for the city of
Walnut Creek this plan does eliminate express routes so those routes are 92x
93x and 95x. All of these routes provide express service connecting Walnut Creek
to regional transit hubs and route 301 which is a weekend service connecting
Walnut Creek Bart to Shadelands. Additionally there's a couple of routes
that would experience longer service delays or say it again service
frequencies would be reduced on routes 5, 7, and 21. We're certainly not picking on
Walnut Creek we had to spread this out across the entire system and so all of
our member jurisdictions will see service reductions under this plan should
it have to come to pass and I do hate to end on a negative note but I think
that was an important message to share as we work to serve your city to the
best of our ability and I'm happy to answer any questions okay I think we
have some for one or both of you great councilmember Silva I'll start with
County connection a couple of quick clarification questions and thank you
for the presentation and all of the work that County connection does for us I
live in South Walnut Creek. My daughter went to Walnut Creek Intermediate
School and that bus was a godsend because otherwise hauling yourself across
downtown Walnut Creek to WCI was a lot of traffic. Yeah, yeah. A long time. So even
carpooling helped. It helped much more to have the bus availability in both
directions. Terrific. So you mentioned that one million plus travelers, is that
the phrase you used? Writers. Writers can you describe is that if I wrote County
Connection three times this month, am I three writers or am I one writer? Yes.
Okay. And you also mentioned that you've had a
change in travel pattern and that's all attributable to the way we're
working during the work week versus we believe in the weekend. And maybe harder
financial times on people using the bus more on the weekends to get to jobs and
healthcare jobs. Thank you. Any other questions? County Connection? So Matt?
She was doing great. We can stay with County Connection. I'm just kidding. You
mentioned there's a hundred thousand rider-writer gap. Approximately. Between
200,000 per month. Per day. Per day, thank you, and 300,000 per day. Is that the
change in the work pattern particularly to and from across the Bay to San
Francisco. Yeah that's a contributing factor. The hybrid either work from home
or people that were riding to the cities five days a week. Some of the
occupancies in the San Francisco or Oakland whether some businesses have
moved out of state so there's some occupancy in those cities but yeah
definitely the work pattern the workforce has changed. So I mentioned to
you that I rode, I needed to go to two doctor's appointments in two different
medical facilities in San Francisco, one each day, Tuesday and Wednesday. And it
was a godsend, as I mentioned to you, to have BART because not only was it clean
and safe and easy to get in and out, but it was easy to get where I needed to go
with one transit stop change. And I was counting the cars, just kidding, on 24
going west. How many cars per day do they estimate it that takes off the roads
It's because of BART and the other county.
That's a good one.
Tony, do you have that figure?
Well, if we're running 200,000 riders a day,
I mean, you assume, I mean, there
could be some carpools or variations.
But you're in the hundreds of thousands of cars each day
you're saving by having a functioning BART system.
And then if we didn't have a BART system,
we'd turn to our partners like County Connection.
And they'd have to go out and have to buy a fleet of buses
and put all those buses on the road instead.
So it's not a very good scenario to play out.
And then there's all kinds of positive environmental impacts
by running BART trains.
All-electric fleet, we do try to purchase as high a percentage
of green energy as we can for that.
And so just trying to be a community partner there.
And I can get you the CO2 emissions saved as well.
I just don't know it off the top of my head.
And I also noticed that the trains are cleaner.
They're quieter.
And they're fuller.
We're getting there.
And so I think the ridership's coming back.
The customer surveys are coming back, our crime's dropping.
And that's why we just need a little bit more time
to figure out what's going on with the work,
have the continuing conversations about transportation.
I know you've always been very active with CCTA
and other transit agencies in the area.
And just to kind of see what that looks like
and continue that conversation
of what does public transportation look like
in the Bay Area going forward, so.
And to see that we actually cost,
the only ones that cost less
are really long-standing transit systems in New York City
and Chicago.
And with higher densities.
When you're throwing 40, 50-story buildings
on top of a station, you're going
to have a lot more riders per mile.
Yes, that's true.
Yeah, so thank you.
OK, thank you both.
I think we have questions from Councilmember Davini
and then Mayor Wilk, Councilmember Davini.
I have a BART question.
OK, I'm already here.
So you said it was about a $700 million deficit heading into next year without the $370 million?
$370 million. Yeah.
Okay, okay. And so if the regional transportation measure passes, does that cover that gap for you?
It gets us a lot closer, and I'll just define it as an additional revenue source,
so I don't get myself in trouble talking about transit measure. But it does get us close,
but we're continuing to work on internal efficiencies about controlling our expenditures. Things like
that. It's no secret there's challenges between California and federally, so federal funds to
support that is kind of falling on deaf ears at the moment, but we keep to try to do that to support
public transportation. But yeah, it's a two-prong approach, so we're looking for new revenues to
supplement the ridership, but there's still work we can continue to do internally where we're trying
to to meet that mark as well. And that was sort of where I was going with the
questioning was that you you said that was sort of your reason for joining and
your passion was to try to bring that that efficiency to the system and so if
this passes while it does a great job of covering some of the deficit the hard
work will continue on efficiency and auditing the system and making sure that
that it's functioning as fiscally as. Yeah we face like a lot of public agencies
you have pension liabilities, unfunded things like that, our continuing medical
costs that continue to rise, I think it was 14 million dollars, just an increased
medical cost without changing any of the coverages or any of the other variables
this year from one year to another. So we're facing a lot of those external
pressures, electrical prices, all the things that go into the system. But we
are being diligent when we're working with our labor partners, all the
contracts are coming up the first part of this year. So we're having those
conversations as well to see what that all looks like going forward. Yeah it's
great to hear that two-pronged approach. Thank you. Okay Mayor Wilk. Oh thank you.
Well first of all I want to say thank you to Matt Rinn. As our district
director it's terrific that we have you. You are so responsive whenever there's
questions or issues or issues of residents that are asking things you are
are often responding within an hour or two,
and I really appreciate that,
and thank you on behalf of all of our constituents.
Thank you.
I also want to thank Amber,
who was put into duty here,
because I am currently in Chicago
for the tri-annual conference
for American Public Transit Authority,
where I'm with our General Manager
and Assistant General Manager for County Connections,
so Amber was able to step up for this presentation,
so thank you for that.
You're welcome.
There's a lot of good information
come out of this conference. But one of the things that I want to talk about, and I've
talked in the past about some of the challenges that we have with our inductive charging system
for electric vehicles. So we came across a manufacturer that we are hoping to be able
to figure out a way, this is multi-year approach, but I want to put this up here right now.
This is a micro mini bus. I don't know if this will work. There we go, there we go.
and it holds up to 18 seats and we're looking at possibly for our Route 4 which is the free
shuttle that goes downtown.
Now again, this is going to be several years or several different issues that we have to
work out on this, but we are very impressed with what we saw and hopefully within the
next few years we can look at this kind of a mini bus going around downtown Walnut Creek
writers can go between BART and Broadway Plaza and all throughout with truly an
innovative and technologically sophisticated experience. So that's what
I'm doing here. I'll be back tomorrow and look forward to seeing everybody then.
Okay I think that round is rounded us out. I did get a question at the farmers
market on Sunday about the status of phase two of the residential project at
BART. Do you have any more details on when we might see something happening
happening there? Yeah that's something we're continuing to work on, not to call
out your city manager, but I'm looking at Dan too. We're working with the city
closely on that. We would like to see it to come to fruition and completed. I know
you guys would like it for your housing numbers and your housing helmet and just
have it completed. You know we'd like to have the site fully finished over there
as well to get that as possible. There are conversations with basically with
the developer and the situation in the market where it is and some things that
have transpired without giving away any other stuff that happened there but we
would definitely like to get that completed and hopefully soon so I guess
more to come check with your city manager that's good and that's fair yeah
we'll check with community development as well yeah we'd also like to see that
happen and I want to echo the mayor's comments about how responsive you are
while we have the green construction fence up now.
You know, often it can be a target for graffiti.
And when I point that out to you,
you always have the staff out there really quickly
to clean that up, we really appreciate that.
And I would echo Councilmember Silva's comments
about that bus that goes to WCI.
I think it is a godsend,
and especially for people living on the other side of town.
So thank you both for being here.
here I think you both know we have our consent calendar and then a legislative
update but then we'll be taking action on endorsements of various different
measures including RTM. So if you wanted to stick around for that, no obligation
there may be some questions related to that but just wanted to make sure that
that you knew that that was on the agenda. Do we get a photo? I'm just kidding.
I prefer that we do a self- So I'm just kidding.
We'll come back for a proclamation.
And I'll do your respect.
I would have to excuse myself from the room
when you guys get to those conversations.
Okay.
RTM, but happy to do something like that for you.
Great. Thank you.
All right, thank you.
So let's see, we're moving on to our consent calendar
and checking in with my colleagues
to see if anyone would like to pull an item for discussion.
I would like to pull an item, item two, I.
Council Member Silva.
And I'd like to pull item two, F.
So, at this point I would ask if there's any member
of the public that would like to make a comment
on the consent calendar.
We'll take people in the room first.
We have, how many items do we have here?
We have nine items on the consent calendar, agenda 10.
the agenda's in the back of the room
in case you're not reading from the same script I am,
but we'll take public comments on the consent calendar.
If you're joining us by Zoom
and would like to make a remote comment,
you please use the raise hand feature or press star nine
if you'd like to make a remote comment.
Not seeing anyone in the room,
Madam Clerk, any comments online?
No comments online.
Okay.
So I take a motion on items except for F and I.
Move to adopt the consent calendar items
to A through E, G, H, and J.
Second.
Roll call, please.
Council Member Silva.
I.
Council Member Davini.
I.
Mayor Pro Tem Francois.
I.
Mayor Wilk.
I.
Okay, I'll start with two F is the,
And this is a major milestone.
We're accepting the completion of the turf fields
that were installed at Heather Farm Park.
And it's one of the things that I can say
that I'm most proud of joining my colleagues
and seeing come to fruition on my eight years on the council
and wanna recognize the hard work of our staff.
Rich Payne certainly was front and center on a lot of that.
Heather Ballinger was also fielding a lot of questions
and certainly want to recognize our city manager who
was quite a great advocate for the project,
and it wouldn't have happened without his support
and leadership on that and want to thank also
the residents of Walnut Creek for supporting Measure O, which
is how we got a good chunk of funds
to be able to install those fields.
and the Walnut Creek Soccer Club,
who stepped up with a big fundraising campaign.
So unless there are any other comments,
I'll go ahead and make a motion.
Go ahead, Matt.
May I have a comment?
Mayor Portam?
Yes.
So we have heard from residents,
whether it's on social media or emails as well,
some concern about the fact that it's difficult
to get general public use on the fields.
I've had conversations with the Director of Arts
and Rec about this,
and I'd like to see if it's possible
for the city that during times that it is not being privately used, that maybe there's
a way that we can have somebody on staff at least be able to monitor to allow for some
additional general use, because I think there's been some frustration that they voted, people
have voted for Measure O and then are not able to use these fields. And this is something
that we're going to have to be thinking about over the next couple of years if we want to
look at Measure O in the future. So I just wanted to put that out there as something
that I've heard a lot of feedback on.
That's a good comment.
I appreciate you raising that.
And do you have any specific questions of staff on that,
or just wanted to make that comment?
I guess what I'd like to ask, if we could ask Director Farrow
to come up and just answer, how are we currently
handling general public usage?
And what is any plan that we may have
for allowing additional public usage
under some kind of supervision?
because we do know these are expensive fields and we want to make sure that they're not vandalized anyway.
Yeah, and if I could, for our Arts and Recreation Director speaks for just a moment.
You hit the key issue as a mayor in terms of balancing access with protecting the assets, as you're aware.
In the past, we have had considerable vandalism, unfortunately, to the fields that required considerable repair when they were grass fields.
And after making a $7 million investment in these fields,
We want to make sure that we avoid a more challenging
and permanent damage as we've seen in other communities
that have gone to turf fields.
So that's the balance that's being struck
and I'd defer to our director here to provide more detail.
Good evening, Chris Farrow, Arts and Recreation Director,
and to, I guess, coincide with our city manager messaging
currently how the fields are allocated
is through a rental process.
So that means if the fields are not being rented,
they are locked.
However, we do during school periods
where there is vacation time,
so that would be spring break, winter break,
and then limited in the summer,
we do staff those fields to have them open
on a limited basis.
This is a pilot program that we're trying
to see how it works,
which days are getting more use over others.
We figured we'd start with the vacation days
as that's when the highest need would be.
And I do want to report that during the first week
that we offered this, which was spring break
of this last school year,
that we saw people with dogs off leash.
We had electric scooters, electric bikes,
and even while staff was out there,
people were participating in these undesirable behaviors.
So it did confirm our initial thought
that we need to keep a close eye on the usage out there.
So this pilot will continue through this year,
and then going into budget cycle for the next two years
would be the appropriate time to look at
If we want to have more staffing hours,
the vacation allotment or scheduling
worked with our current budget for part-time staff.
However, if we wanted to extend that and offer more hours,
it would come with a budget ask, obviously, as well.
So that's something that can be looked at
during this next two-year budget cycle.
I guess there's not much you can do
to keep the dogs off the fields,
I mean, other than close it or supervise it.
but if we had a type of gate, you know,
those like rotating gates that wouldn't allow maybe a bike
or some sort of larger equipment onto the field,
is that also an option to?
Perhaps we might want to also look
at some other kind of gate options
because we wouldn't want to limit like maintenance
and other things that need to get on the field.
So we can look at options for sure.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking of as the only gate,
like maybe the gate that's left open if there's a time period when it's
unsupervised. But stuff can look at that for sure. Thank you for looking into this
and all the work having basically been on the Walnut Creek soccer club board of
directors for six years and worked with the city on the rental of fields. I can
tell you that those grass fields were significantly damaged numerous times
every season and took them out of play. So it's really important that we
continue to maintain what we've built. Are we confident, sometimes people think
they only have one park in Walnut Creek, there are 22 parks, many of which have
open grass areas. Are we confident that we are communicating the availability
of other grass option area, grass area options, area options that are across the
city. Diablo Shadows, Del Devisiterio, San Miguel Park, because maybe people just
don't know that there are other places that they can use the park grass.
You bring up a valid point and it's almost like you were recently sitting in a
meeting that I had with staff in our upcoming activity guide. We're actually
gonna highlight not all of the not necessarily all of the parks but actually
the fact that there are additional fields right there at Heather farm. So
Although the artificial turf fields are closed the fields adjacent to it are
still open and so we do want to highlight that information as well so
highlighting additional parks is not a bad idea we can do that as well. So maybe
putting a sign up on the field these are not open but these other ones are
never never know that might encourage people to walk a few more steps. Sure.
And Chris could you just recap the the hours the pilot program the fields are
available to the public? Sure. So what month are we in? So the next time that we
would see them would be winter break and I don't know those dates off the top of
my head but we can certainly get them posted on the website and on socials and
then we generally do it from 9 to 4, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.
Any other questions? No I think we're good. I will move to approve consent calendar
item any public comment I think we already did that on everything okay I'm
getting head nods move to approve item 2f second roll call please mayor pro tem
Francois aye councilmember Silva aye councilmember Davini aye mayor Wilk
motion carries okay then on 2i which is the approval of the calendar year 2027
City Council meeting schedule Mayor Wilk. Yeah, so this is just something that, I think I
gave some wrong information, we had had the April 20th meeting that was rescheduled to
April 13th due to Passover when actually Passover is on the 21st and it begins that night. So
if the council so approves, I would suggest that we keep the normal scheduled calendar
where uh april 20th would be the normally scheduled meeting
and so not have to reschedule who to pass over
and i would make a motion on that roll call please
mayor welk aye council member silva aye council member diviny aye mayor pro time
Francois aye motion carries okay we're moving
right along if you believe it we're on to public communications
this is the portion of the meeting reserved for comment on items that are
not on our agenda.
And all remarks should please be addressed
to the city council.
Just a reminder to, this is a business meeting,
so we would ask that you use professional tone
and language in your comments.
And under the Brown Act, the state law, open meetings law,
we can't act on any items that were raised
during public communications
because they're not on our printed agenda.
Everyone needs to know what we're talking about
at a public meeting, and the items we're talking about now
were not on the agenda.
So we can't take any action on those items,
but we're glad that you're here and happy to hear from you.
And at this time, we'll take public comment on items
that are not on the agenda for 30 minutes.
So roughly until 728.
And if you're joining us by Zoom
or some other remote online feature,
please raise your hand or press star nine to indicate
that you'd like to make a comment
public communications. First up, welcome. Thank you. Hello. My name is Denise
Burian. I am a 30 year Walnut Creek resident and I am using public comment
periods so I'm going to cover a couple of topics. First of all I thought it was
interesting I did check I did check that 22,000 cars go through the Bay Bridge
between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. so I don't know where those how those
hundred thousand people are going to get to work but that could be a lot more
cars on the Bay Bridge. The other thing that I wanted to say that I do represent
A.U.W. which is American Association of University Women. We have a school board
project in the state of California and I've been attending school board
meetings in actually, Akalani's for about three years, and we just started City Council.
So I am the designated City Council rep to come to Walnut Creek.
So we promote the work, we promote the advancement of women, equity for women and for groups
who are underrepresented in equity and in having a voice.
So to that end, I want to thank you for declaring the Domestic Violence Awareness Month and
also the Indigenous Peoples Day in the city of Walnut Creek and recognizing that diversity
in our community.
And I also want to state that we support Measure W.
So that's actually on a separate agenda item.
Oh, so I can't talk about that?
You're welcome to, but when we get to that agenda item.
Okay.
Well, I just wanted to encourage you to support all of these measures.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming.
I wanted to clarify, too, in case it wasn't clear.
You don't get, Jan, you know, because you're a veteran.
But we have 30 minutes for public communications total.
Each speaker is allotted two minutes.
Thank you, Jan Warren from the Woodlands, and I appreciate this not being at the end
of the agenda. I just want to rattle through a few things. I want to thank the mayor for
participating in the No Hate discussion at Rossmore. I want to thank you for putting
item, where is it here? J, adoption of a proclamation declaring October the 12th, Indigenous People's
Day in the city of Walnut Creek. And I wanted to talk just a minute about, let's see, bike
writers on Mitchell and Wiggott and the Shadelands and those wonderful new green paths maybe two or
three years old and a bunch of those pylons or I don't know what they're called to separate
have been run over, knocked down. I don't know. I mentioned it to someone about a month ago
but I thought I'd tried the City Council this time and I don't know what the long-term plan
is, how much it takes to put them in, put something else in, consider putting something
else up or I assume that's a transportation department thing for me to talk to and I don't
think I see him tonight, but at any rate by the care facility on Mitchell, they tried
to shorten the width of the street and they put this little bulge out and then they put
crosswalk and then they put one of those things that is now knocked over but it's
still attached at the bottom and if you come through there at night and you're
not familiar with that area you could go wham over over it and I don't know how
if it do any damage to your tires or not but I'd appreciate if somebody could
look at all of that thanks. Thank you Jan. Good evening my name is Annie Harlan
and I'm a new field representative for Assemblymember Avila Ferrias and I'm
here tonight on behalf of the assembly members to give you guys a few updates
from our district office. This year the assembly woman introduced 11 new bills
with strong priorities focused on Contra Costa, housing, childcare, affordability
and safeguarding our communities from ICE. Six bills AB 1307, AB 1627, AB 2278, AB
2312, AB 2480, and AB 2689 have been signed by the governor and will become law next year.
If you would like more information about each bill, please visit our website.
We also wanted to invite members of our community to join us for upcoming district events.
On October 23rd, our office is hosting our second annual Fall Harvest Festival.
The event will be in Pacheco Square from 4 to 7 p.m.
Come join us for a fun afternoon filled with free arts and crafts, food, and pumpkins to
take home.
And don't forget to bring your furry friend.
It's a family and pub friendly event.
We are also co-hosting our Dia de Muertos event on November 1st from 1230 to 3.30pm
in Pacheco Square.
Join us for an afternoon honoring our loved ones and celebrating the rich culture, community,
and traditions that bring us together.
As always, our door is always open.
please don't hesitate to connect with me after the meeting if you have any questions or would
like more information about any of the bills or events I have covered. Thank you.
Thank you so much for coming tonight. If you have a business card or could email us after
and thank the assembly member for remembering us. I think she has maybe 400 or so constituents
in Walnut Creek, but we appreciate that you take the time.
Yeah, of course.
Come give the updates.
Hi, my name is Pamela West, and I am running for the County Board of Education.
And I'm running because it's time for some changes.
And I have been on a board before, I was on the Arinda Union School District Board for
eight years, and honestly, it was one of the best experiences of my life.
I enjoy helping to educate kids, helping to care for kids, and I hope that I'll be elected
this time. I have been attending lots of board meetings all over the county and I
wanted to say that all of the board meetings have been very enlightening and
members of the board have come to me with suggestions. They really need some
things done as far as the interaction between the school boards and the county.
So some of those things are they need more help with cyber security, they need
help with AI, they need help with professional development, they need help
with special education, they need help with the collaboration that takes place
between the county and the districts. They need help with new programs, they're
not getting enough resources and guidance when they're given a
new program to instill in their districts.
They also would like, of course, more funding advocacy.
So and I just want to highlight the fact that attending board
meetings has been one of my favorite experiences.
And Walnut Creek School District was one of those board meetings
where they had a budget presentation.
and the superintendent, the members of the board,
and the staff members really care about educating the kids
and taking care of the budget being physically responsible.
Thank you so much.
All right, thank you, Ms. West.
Good luck in your race.
Thank you.
Any other speakers for public communications
in the room or online?
Okay.
So we'll close that item and move on
to council member and staff announcements,
reports on activities or requests,
closed session announcements.
I'll ask assistant city attorney, Claire Lai,
if we had any items to report out of closed session tonight.
No reports out of closed session made for tonight.
Thank you.
And city manager, Dan Buckshi.
Yeah, good evening.
I do have one announcement that I'm pleased to make,
an award that the city received.
And while the plaque itself looks rather humble,
it is a very notable achievement that we received in Walnut Creek.
It's from the Institute for Local Government.
It's the Beacon Spotlight Award.
And it is the highest level, the platinum level.
There is silver, gold, and platinum levels.
And this is related to greenhouse gas reductions
and our sustainability efforts that
have been going on for decades now.
We received a 32% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
as compared to the baseline back in 2005, which, again,
is the highest level in the state.
There were about eight or nine other cities out of 483
that received this award this past year
at the annual League of Cities conference two weeks ago.
So thank you to everybody who has been involved, not only
in the city, but in the community,
because these are greenhouse gas emissions that
are measured community-wide.
So it's a collective effort of everybody in Walnut Creek.
So congratulations, and thank you.
Thank you nice to receive that award a lot of hard work and effort that's gone
on in our community development department staff and it's nice to see
the recognition and that we're having a positive impact. Okay we'll move on to
council member reports what any of my colleagues like to start off tonight.
All right thank you council member Davini. Good evening. Busy past couple
weeks we a number of the of us here on the council went down to Anaheim for a
city conference that the city manager just referred to we spent that time
three days learning about issues important to our city and one of the
highlights was definitely accepting that award and that was well stated so
yeah thank you to everyone in the in the community and all the city staff that
went worked so hard to make that happen on that note sustainability we had the
sustainable gala for Contra Costa just a couple weeks ago and that's really
turned into an amazing event year over year so anyone in the sustainable
community I hope that you're able to attend going forward it's inspiring to
see so many outstanding organizations within our community recognized making
our community healthier and making our community more sustainable. I want to
give a special thank you to sustainable Contra Costa's founder Tina Newhouse
for her continued leadership and promoting sustainability throughout
Contra Costa. I am our city representative to the transit authority
and we had a meeting to discuss the upcoming renewal of Measure J which
makes the allows the transit authority to exist and and creates so many
opportunities for transit improvement in our region. We are at the stage of
of having completed some of the listening to the community and transportation leaders,
and we've identified six guiding pillars through which proposed projects and programs will
be measured.
And those are congestion, how to reduce travel times and delays, safety, reducing fatal and
serious injury crashes, access for seniors, students, people with disabilities, and low-income
residents, connectivity, thriving communities, which is really a name for building transportation
systems that support a strong economy, and also the environmental, again, reduction of
transportation-related pollution and greenhouse gases.
So we'll be meeting again, but that's how that measure is taking shape.
I had the pleasure of attending our farmer's market a couple weeks ago, which is always
nice to hear from the community.
I had the pleasure, my wife and I, of hosting a Measure W campaign fundraiser and organizing
event at our home, and so I was really excited to be part of that, and I see a lot of Yes
on W folks here tonight so can't wait to get to that part of the presentation or that part
of the meeting tonight. Mayor Pro Tem Francois and I had a finance meeting. It was a it was
a good meeting. We had some nice discussion. I think we'll be bringing those topics to
the council for discussion during our next City Council meeting. We also had the mayor's
conference this past Thursday evening and important city business was
discussed there as well and finally and I'll let our liaison to the Diablo
Regional Arts Association spend more time speaking about this tonight but we
had on Broadway gala a fundraiser for the DRAA and that's always a special
event and I enjoyed attending that and I'm sure you'll hear more about that
shortly.
Excellent.
I think that was a good segue to Councilmember Silva.
Thank you very much.
I will mention that last Saturday evening,
the Diablo Regional Arts Association
held their annual fundraising event.
It was attended by 350 plus people,
and it helps to raise funds for the programs
that the DRAA supports, bringing arts and making
arts more accessible to underserved youth across Contra Costa.
And it's very exciting as the months go on when busloads of children from Title I schools
and other schools like that come into Walnut Creek to attend a show.
Christmas Carol in the winter is very popular and other shows.
So they do that with the funds that they raise at that event.
So last week, two weekends ago, was opening of the latest show at the Bedford Gallery.
It's called, I've got to get the words right, High Pile, Concepts and Tufting.
So it basically looks like, I mean there are faces made of all sorts of colors out of carpet.
It's very tactile, you just desperately want to touch it all.
And it's really wonderful and it is open through December 13th at the Bedford Gallery.
And if you visit bedfordgallery.org, you can find out the hours and when you can pay what
you want to attend.
The Central Costa Solid Waste Authority, also called Recycle Smart, is currently discussing
our rates for the coming year, which will start March 2027.
Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem Francois and I represent Walnut Creek on that board.
And so those conversations will start this month and we will be keeping you apprised.
It's the beginning of the new franchise period and so there were more services and therefore
there will also be additional costs, plus there are more regulatory requirements from
the state as to what we need to do to be diverting as much as possible from the landfill.
The Youth Ambassador Exchange Program from Walnut Creek Sister Cities is currently underway
last week the students from our students who were visiting
Nachato, Italy were in Italy. They're now home and our students that are in Sheaf Oak hungry are currently in
Hungary and we think they will visit the council at the next meeting, which is the 22nd of
October to be able to talk about their experiences and what they've been doing and
Finally, I'll circle back to the Cal City's annual conference. It's my 20th
I've been every year since I've been on the City Council and it is my last as a City Council member
Not my last but my last as a City Council member
One of the presentations that I thought was very interesting was they're talking about e-bike issues across the state a couple of
Representatives from Southern California areas. We're talking about how they're working with the local schools
I think some of these cities have one school district as opposed to multiple which makes it more challenging here
But really working on the middle school and younger ages to try to really keep them from riding
not legal by e-bikes to school and
the new board of directors for
Cal cities was sworn in there are 57 members of that board and they had some
25 or 30 new members that board changes hands a lot every year
I was honored to be able to swear in the new board because this is my last
Year on the board. I've spent 11 years on that board and it was a great honor
local mayor else of El Cerrito gave Quinto finished his year as president of Cal cities and
He has been followed by Teresa Costa who is a council member from Carlsbad
Which you had a meeting in Carlsbad today on zoom
Is now the new president and also our mayor Kevin Wilk has was sworn in at our East Bay division meeting as second vice president
of the division so congratulations and
I think I will leave it there
Okay, mayor if it's okay. I'll go next and then we'll round out with your update I
Want to recognize your service to the league not only the 11 years that you were on the board
But you were president of the league as well and kind of have been on several committees
And we're all better in our community for your having served there. So thank you
Let's see I did not attend the league conference because they my colleagues left me a number of other committee meetings to attend
And which I was happy to do
Including one that is as a land use attorney near and dear to my heart, which was the
General plan update we had our first community workshop on September 23rd right across the street in civic park at the assembly hall
We had a really great turnout, you know 40 or 50 community members came great staff
Crystal de Castro is the lead staff member for that
Huge undertaking and I'm just launching right in like you all know what a general plan is
but essentially it's a large planning document for the city that addresses everything that
basically touches your life and quality of life from parks and recreation to streets and mobility
to land use to things like economic development. All of that is covered by the general plan.
Generally they're updated once every 20 years. The city last updated its general plan in 2006.
So our staff was there, our consultant was there, our great community development director,
Erika Vandenbrand was there, we had a robust discussion with several different workshops set
up around the room where people were able to engage with one another and with staff and provide
feedback as we just launch on this three-year, four-year effort to update the general plan.
There will be certainly other opportunities to come in person and provide input. There's at least
three other community workshops planned and if you weren't able to attend the
workshop on September 23rd, staff and the consultant have organized a virtual
workshop online go to the city website and it'll be just like you were there
and you can provide your input through that through that means and would
welcome you doing so. As the liaison to Ross Moore I attended that board meeting
and provided them an update on all of our activities
from September, what's happening at the Lesher Center,
the Oktoberfest hosted by Walnut Creek downtown,
and also concepts in tufting,
I had to look up what tufting was,
but then I realized I think I had some of those on my wall
when I was in seventh grade, my mom was a crafter.
So I think it was the first time
I've stumped the Rossmore board,
I didn't have any questions for them,
but it's always great to see them,
and I enjoy going there in person
and talking to folks there.
On October 1st, I was invited by what will be one
of our new council members, Brendan Moran,
to participate in a panel for leadership Contra Costa,
and it was a panel on leadership in Contra Costa
with perspectives from different elected members.
So we had our assembly member, Rebecca Bauer-Cahan,
county supervisor Ken Carlson and myself.
And it was a good, robust discussion,
a lot of questions from the leadership Contra Costa group.
And I thought what was one of the most fulfilling aspects
was when we could talk about a project
that all three of us had to work in a partnership with
to make happen, and that was the Miles Hall
Community Crisis Hub, which required both Assemblymember
Bauer-Cahan's office dedicating funds
and establishing the AB988 program,
the supervisor in the county coming up
with Measure X funding to really get the program off the ground,
and then our city manager and staff and former Mayor Luella
Haski, who kind of led the charge
and got this really positive change
happen in our community, whereas now Supervisor Carlson mentioned that last
month I believe there were 30,000 calls that were handled by the 988 system.
Instead of calls going to 911 when someone's in a mental health crisis, this
is a really viable alternative that's being used to great success. Council
Member Davini mentioned our finance committee
and essentially it was making recommendations
on fiscal year 26, accepting the fiscal year 26
final numbers and then making recommended changes
to the fiscal year 27 budget.
We're only making recommendations
because we're just a committee
and the whole item will come before the council
on October 20th.
very nice to attend on Broadway on Saturday evening.
It was a little warm, but it was a good time.
And I hope they raised a lot of money
for our great regional arts center.
And then the next morning I was right back at it
at the farmer's market and always good to engage
and see people there and get good feedback.
That's my update on to the mayor.
All right, well thank you Mayor Pro Tem.
So I had the opportunity to be able to kick off
the Habitat for Humanity 40th anniversary build-a-thon
at Esperanza Place a couple of weeks ago.
There were hundreds of volunteers,
great to see the next phase of Esperanza Place
now being built.
And just really wonderful to see the outpouring
of the community to be involved with that.
I also came to Kensington at Walnut Creek,
which is a senior assisted living facility.
As we know, there is an aging population.
It's actually the fastest growing segment of society right now
and more and more people that are seniors,
including probably many of our parents
or for those younger ones, our grandparents
that are needing extra assistance.
Well, so we presented certificates
to 13 long time employees.
The longest of there has been there 29 years.
And so really it was great to be able to celebrate
these long time employees that truly are cherished
in being caregivers for our family that is there.
I was also along with that, with assisted living,
I spoke at the Heritage Downtown a couple of weeks ago.
I speak there every year and they're really involved.
A lot of people are there.
In fact, the former president of the Ross Moore Foundation
was now living at the Heritage Downtown.
So it's just something that,
when we had that opportunity, any of us,
everybody loves to hear what's happening in Walnut Creek.
I was also at the Cal City's annual conference,
as you heard from Council Member Silva,
I was named East Bay Division Second Vice President.
So happy to be part of the leadership of that.
And it's always great to hear from our fellow cities
that are dealing with a lot of the same issues that we are
and how they're handling it
and really being able to collaborate over best practices.
So that's something that really comes out of that conference.
There was also the first tea celebration,
and that started at Boundary Oak over 20 years ago,
but it was their anniversary of really getting children,
well, I guess you don't just have to be a children,
but it's your first opportunity to be able to golf.
And so there's a great board there
that really gets kids off of their screens
and off of their video games
and being able to take up golf.
You heard from one of our public regarding
the LGBTQ plus symposium against hate.
That was a wonderful turnout.
Hundreds of people came to Rossmer for that.
Congressman Mark Dusolny, Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Cahan
and myself spoke out against some of our experiences
and what we all need to do to stand up against hate
across the spectrum.
Many of you know that that's something
that I've taken a special interest in
and I'm always happy to stand up
against hate wherever it exists,
and I encourage elected officials everywhere
to be able to make sure they're standing up
for their own community.
This last weekend, I spoke at the American Cancer Society
Rally for Life, which is something
that the American Cancer Society has been doing
across the country for many, many years now,
and it really is a tribute to the survivors
as well as people that are caregivers in the cancer society.
On Broadway, as you heard, was terrific. I actually, I think I beat you there Mayor Pro Tem.
I had to wake up at 3am the next morning and get on the flight to Chicago where I was able to attend
the APTA Expo for County Connection. I did want to mention that as liaison for County Connection,
a couple of points that weren't brought up earlier is that part of the reason that there is
flat growth is due to the monument corridor being down 5% year over year. That's a route that has
always grown and the negative growth is being attributed to concerns about ice.
So it's something that we're paying attention to and how we can continue
to be able to support the community that are riding the bus.
There will also be a lot of more discussions about free passes for use
in the coming months and I'll be reporting on that as well.
We still firmly believe that today's youth riders become tomorrow's adult bus
riders and again getting cars off the road.
And lastly, I wanted to mention that today, October 6th, is also the National Mental Health
Day of Prayer. This morning at the County Board of Supervisors, Police Chief Ryan Hibbs attended
on behalf of the City of Walnut Creek their board meeting at the County Board of Supervisors,
which honored the memory among others of Tony Pereira, who was tragically killed this year.
Our hout goes out to the family of Tony Pereira, including his mother, Annie, who was spotted
for health and awareness for mental health, and I think we all know
somebody in our own family that has been impacted by mental health.
So I did want to mention that, and again, thank you Chief Hibbs for attending on
behalf of the City of Walnut Creek, and that's my update.
Thank you, Mayor. How are we doing? Yeah, we're going to take a quick five
minute break. Don't adjust your cameras, we'll be right
back. Okay, welcome back everyone. Next on the
agenda is a consideration item and it's a presentation of the 2026 state
legislative session and I would invite assistant to the city manager Joe
Caroza for to provide the presentation. And staff Joe Caroza assistant to the
city manager tonight I'm joined by Casey Casey Elliott vice president of Townsend
public affairs to to do today's presentation. Townsend is the firm we
work with to develop the legislative agenda, Townshend conducts bill tracking and monitoring
for us, delivers bill support and opposition letters, as well as builds relationships between
the city and our state representatives. And Casey will be supporting us in the coming
months as well to develop the 2027 legislative agenda, which the legislative committee will
will consider and forward to council
in early 2027 for adoption.
Tonight, Casey will be providing us with a summary
of significant legislative and initiatives
from the 2026 legislative cycle,
which is the second year of the legislative cycle.
And that just came to a close.
So Casey will share the initiatives
most significant to cities that are like ours
and close with his presentation with a perspective
on what might be coming next down the pipeline in 2027.
So with that, I'm gonna go ahead and hand off to Casey.
Thank you, Joe.
Casey Elliott, Towns and Public Affairs.
Thank you for having me tonight.
I will try to be relatively brief
in my summary of the session,
though the legislature sometimes makes that
a little bit difficult.
This year, looking back at the year in totality,
the legislature introduced just over 1,800 bills.
I would consider this to be a,
honestly a relatively light legislative session.
The legislature at the beginning of the two year session
had imposed a new bill cap.
So this year is where we saw fewer bills introduced
relative to prior years.
That did not stop the legislature from passing 1,160 bills.
Many of those were introduced in 2005,
the first year of the legislative session.
So there were about a little over 1,100 bills
that were still up to the governor's consideration,
largely during the month of September.
Ultimately, he signed 1,040 of those,
vetoed 120 for veto rate just above 10%.
For comparison, that's a little bit lower
of a rate than Governor Newsom has averaged over his term.
He's typically in the 13 to 14% veto range.
So just a little bit fewer vetoes this year
than we have seen in years past.
Just briefly, while it feels a while ago,
the state legislature approved a budget at the end of June.
They did some budget trailer bills in August
to modify that based on some current conditions.
Overall, the state budget for 26, 27,
total spending just over $350 billion,
that does reflect higher revenue
than was originally anticipated in November of 2025
in November of last year by the Legislative Analyst's Office by about $40 billion.
So these early revenue projections, which I'll talk about later when we talk about next
year's budget, can sometimes need to be taken with a little bit of a grain of salt.
The budget did maintain the $35 billion budget reserve between the major state's rainy day
fund, the Prop 98 rainy day fund, and some other reserves.
Ultimately there were any number of programs included within the budget.
Notably there was funding for homelessness through HEAP, the main state program for funding,
about $700 million which is more than was programmed in the budget last year, but less
than a typical year.
Also there was some additional funding put towards the implementation of Proposition
36 related to public safety, $50 million compared to $25 million in past years, though I would
note that $50 million is still not enough for full implementation of Prop 36.
The budget will continue.
We've pretty much gone into an annual budget cycle, so while the legislature will not be
acting on anything during interim, likely when they return in January and February,
we're probably looking at additional modifications of the current budget year.
In addition to the state budget, numerous areas that impacted local governments were
up for consideration this year, and these are some of the issues that I'll be touching
on here briefly.
Wanted to start with wildfire and wildfire insurance.
This slide in particular, SB 492, wildfire liability, this really kind of dominated the
end of session, the last three, four weeks of session.
Local governments were originally considered as part of this negotiation.
Effectively, the issue that the state was trying to grapple with is the cost pressures
that are being put on the utility companies, insurance companies, affected property owners
and others through all of these catastrophic wildfire events that we continue to have,
how to move people away from the fare plan onto private insurance while trying to minimize
the liabilities that all any number of entities have through these processes.
Originally when the bills were proposals were floated by the governor's office, local governments
would have been limited in the in their ability to recoup losses associated with wildfires,
events whether those were hard caps appreciation of replacement value of
infrastructure that would be impacted so the initial proposal from the
governor's office had the potential to significantly negatively impact local
local agencies through a lot of work through any number of advocates through
Cal City's CSAC any number of state organizations really kind of put the
word out for our elected officials as to the, you know, detriment that the
governor's proposal could have mid month. The legislature came up with their
alternative proposals, which thankfully removed some of those onerous
provisions that would have limited local government's abilities. Ultimately, the
very end of session, it was like 7 a.m. on Saturday morning, the 27th SP 492 was
amended into print, that bill ultimately could not reach a full agreement within the legislature
on literally the 36th hour of the final day of session, the Assembly opted not to consider
that measure.
So ultimately, nothing happened in the legislature on this particular topic.
It is likely to return again next year.
All options will be on the table again next year.
This is an issue that's unfortunately not going away given the number of these types
of incidents, the occurring frequency that we're seeing them, so more to come on that.
That said, there were a number of additional measures within the wildfire and insurance
space that did ultimately move through.
These are three examples of bills that were ultimately approved by the legislature and
signed into law by the governor, including AB 1934 that creates that
requires the state to put forth a program for a certification program for
for those that are conducting home hardening work as the state's advancing
their zone zero regulations and we're going to be looking for homeowners and
property owners to do work hopefully with the idea of you know in making their
homes more safe increasing their ability to obtain private insurance.
We want to make sure that that works being done to a standard that both the state expects
and that the property owner can anticipate is being done to a quality level.
So that measure was signed into law.
Also we had bills like SB 876 which make modifications to insurance claim processes which expand
the living expenses and replacement costs.
So for those who are impacted by these events that do have insurance, we'll be able to recover
the value of their property as part of their underlying insurance policy.
So again, working on some of the legislation related to the actual insurance policies themselves.
And then also I just wanted to briefly highlight 973, which has the state codify a program
which had been enacted through executive order, really coordinating wildfire response at a
county level and to make sure that regionally we're looking at things like mitigation prevention,
preparedness, and recovery activities. So this was that measure codified those activities.
I'm happy to know that I'm not the first one that's going to talk about e-bikes tonight,
but we had a lot of focus on e-bikes this year. These are three measures that were
ultimately approved by the legislature, signed into law by the governor. I would
start by noting that there were probably eight bills related to e-bikes that were
introduced this year. These were the three that moved through. 2346 by
Assemblymember Lori Wilson, who's the chair of the Assembly Transportation
Committee, was probably the largest of the three. It makes some update
requirements related to some disclosures, but importantly it also provides local
agencies with control over establishing speed limits on local paths, local roads
for through the various classifications of e-bikes. So again providing all
municipalities, all local organizations with a little bit more control, maybe
not the elements that we would like, but starting to kind of move down that
move down that lane. I can say as a side note I was with Miss Wilson over the
weekend and I told her there would be more e-bike bills coming next year so
so not to think that this conversation is over.
Also Senate Bill 1176, this makes modifications
to some of the definitions within state law,
trying to clarify e-bikes versus mopeds versus e-moto's
and make that distinction a little bit more clear
within the law, as well as what folks are able
to market as e-bikes.
So we aren't seeing these e-moto's
and other things advertised as e-bikes,
and so that when, whether it's individuals, parents,
when they're seeing something marketed as an e-bike,
they can be assured that it's compliant with state law
that applies to e-bikes.
And then lastly, we saw bills such as 1614,
getting towards some of the activities
that we see some engaging in on these vehicles,
this one requiring seats.
We saw other things related to wheelies.
Also, so again, providing local agencies,
law enforcement with some additional tools to enforce some of the
reckless behavior that we're seeing associated with some of these. There were
several bills related to labor and public employment that I just wanted to
highlight briefly. I would note as compared to all of the other slides
that you'll hear from me, all three of these measures were ultimately vetoed
by the governor. So none of these measures became law. Though I have a
sneaking suspicion we'll see some version of all of them reintroduced next year.
Probably the most notable of the three, Assembly Bill 1383, was something that we saw introduced
and moved very quickly at the beginning of January when the legislature returned and
then sat for a number of months.
This bill would have made changes to the retirement age and some of the formulas that could be
negotiated for local law enforcement.
This starts to, many of you will remember the legislation under Jerry Brown, PEPRA,
the modifications that were done at the state level locally to kind of rein in some of the
increasing costs that we were seeing associated with public retirement costs.
This would have started to reverse some of those changes.
The measure moved through the legislature with pretty strong bipartisan support.
Ultimately, it was vetoed by the governor.
Cost considerations being a primary element, just on the state side of this, I think the
price tag was estimated to be around four and a half, five billion dollars to implement
this measure.
So, significant fiscal impacts to the state and local agencies had this been put into
place.
I think the governor's veto message does leave the door open for conversations within the
the state budget context, but again I would anticipate that we will see bills
like this come back again next year. Also within the the the late Republican
employment space we did see conversations related to state telework
policies as well as advanced notification to bargaining units should
the state use AI based platforms for work that can otherwise be done by
bargaining units. Again both of those measures were were vetoed by the
governor, both of those the governor cited potential state budget
implications for the implementation of those measures. Really quick, we did see
several follow-up measures to SB 707 this year related to Brown Act, Public
Records Act. These measures, the AB 1187 was probably the most meaningful. That
bill move through was signed into law as an urgency measure. It rolled back some
of the language translation requirements
that were originally included in SB 707.
As we started seeing the implementation of SB 707 this year,
as was somewhat anticipated, some of those language
and translations requirements became very difficult
to comply with, just a number of folks that were needed in order
to make that happen, usage of AI and whatnot was maybe not
to the level that was anticipated
707 was was going through so 1187 was approved signed into law and that that
makes them those changes should note though should public agencies want to
continue to do translation or intemporative services as part of their
agendas they're welcome to do so this bill does not prohibit anyone doing it
it just does not require it AB 1821 and 1159 move into Public Records Act
Act issues, AB 1821 provides a little bit more time to respond to public records act
requests, just moving it from a calendar day to a business day, reflecting that people
take time off on the weekends and that that should not necessarily be counted against
us when complying with a public records act request.
And then 1159 tries to get at issues related to the use of bots, AI and other artificial
means of requesting public records act, Brown act public comments and limiting some of those
abilities. It would not be an annual update if I did not provide an update on
housing. There were a number of housing bills introduced and considered in
Sacramento this year, though I would say maybe not to the magnitude of we've seen
in previous years, but again these measures, all four of them were
signed into law. They will all be going into effect. They will impact agencies.
These bills generally, as we've kind of seen the first two, are moving or in
similar veins as we've seen moving up timelines for local agencies to respond.
AB 1621 deals with post entitlement plan checks, just kind of moving that through, streamlining
that process, limiting to two plan checks that can be required of a project, putting
in some timelines on responding to appeals and those things.
So again, the idea behind that bill is just to lower the amount of time that projects
are in that post-entitlement phase before they can go to construction.
1751 by Ms. Quirk Silva, this bill applies some of the bills that we've seen on ministerial
streamlining of approval processes to townhome projects, again, consistent with legislation
that we've seen previously.
It was just kind of a gap of types of projects that weren't previously covered under additional
or under previous legislation.
So this will apply many of the streamlining, the labor requirements to projects that choose
to use that legislation.
On an issue that was coming up and general plan was mentioned earlier, 2296 by Ms. Pappin,
this bill comes out of recommendations from Cal Cities and some other state audits related
to the RINA process.
provide some additional timelines, additional time for cities to have data, have their arena
allocations provided to them, some additional technical assistance requirements from HCDs.
So really trying to aim at assisting localities in providing up-to-date housing elements,
making sure that local agencies have the information that they need in a timely manner to make
the decisions that that you have to as part of the housing element process so
that bill was signed into law. And then the last bill 1117 by Mr. Vontes makes
some modifications to the ability to charge impact fees for ADUs and JADUs.
Currently ADUs and JADUs 750 square feet and less are exempt from impact fees.
this would change the law so for those that are above 750 square feet
it would effectively give you that first 750 square feet for free as opposed to
making it proportional on your full size. So right now if you have a thousand
square foot ADU this would basically you'd be able to charge 250 square feet
impact fees as though it was 250 square feet under 1117. Previously you
would have done it on a proportional basis.
So if the original, the main structure was 2,000 square feet, for example, when you were
adding 1,000 square foot ADU, you would be able to charge half, so 1,000 square feet.
So makes modifications, so it will impact the level of fees that are associated with
those ADUs that are larger than 750 square feet.
With the legislature now concluded, Sacramento is focused on the November election.
I just wanted to briefly touch on a couple of statewide ballot initiatives that will
have impacts within Sacramento and also by extension through local agencies.
The first Proposition 1, which I know Joe's going to mention here shortly, so I won't
spend too much time on it, this is the housing bond.
Legislature has seemingly been trying to place the housing bond on the ballot for the last
four years.
this is the version that ended up on the ballot.
So, 11 and a quarter billion.
One and a quarter billion of that
goes to the CalVet Home Loan Program.
The other 10 billion is for what we would consider
probably more of a traditional state housing bond.
About half of that goes to the multifamily housing program.
Other portions of it go to farm worker housing,
supportive housing.
There are also about $1 billion for home ownership programs, lending programs, first-time home
buyer programs.
And then also there is a new pot of funding, $200 million in there available to local housing
trust funds, which is the primary pot of funding within the housing bond that is available
to local public agencies as opposed to just project developers.
In 40, obviously the one time wealth tax,
note this given the potential impact
that it could have on the state budget situation
moving forward, the state relies heavily on high earners.
There's a measure, Prop 40 on the ballot,
that would provide a one time tax of up to 5%
on taxpayers and trusts with assets over a billion dollars,
so the billionaire tax.
this measure would have the proceeds of that,
90% of that would go to health care,
state level health care programs
to help offset some of the cuts
that we've seen coming out of Washington, D.C.
The other 10% would be assigned for food assistance,
education, some other programs.
Based on the LAO's estimates,
they would anticipate that if approved,
this would, the state would see a jump in revenues
in the short term as that funding is being collected,
but then likely seeing an ongoing decrease in revenue,
potential concerns being that folks may leave the state,
other things like that.
Given that the state is so dependent
on our high income earners and capital gains tax,
that's where the long-term decrease of revenue
is potentially concerning to the state.
There are also two competing ballot measures,
Proposition 41 and 42.
The opponents of Proposition 40 qualified those measures
through initiative, I should note all three
of these measures were qualified by a citizen's initiative.
Those measures each take would negate elements
of Prop 40 retroactive taxes, the ability to tax assets,
things along those lines.
Worth noting that both Prop 41 and Prop 42 contain language
that say if all three measures should pass,
the one that receives the highest number of votes
would be the one that would go into effect.
So we may, depending upon the outcome in November,
we may have some untangling to figure out
how those three measures are gonna work together
depending upon how voters act on those.
Proposition 43.
This is the measure that was placed on the ballot
as an alternative to the Taxpayer Protection Act.
This measure, as it is placed before voters,
would require any special tax put on a local ballot
regardless of how it got there to require a two-thirds majority for passage.
Currently under the upland, under the upland decision, if citizens place a special tax
on the ballot, then that can be approved with a 50 percent, which is simple majority vote.
For example, if the council put that exact same special tax on the ballot, it would require
a two-thirds vote.
Should Proposition 43 pass, regardless of how it ends up on the ballot, a special tax
would require a two-thirds vote.
does not apply to general taxes, it is not retrospective, it is prospective, and it does
not apply to anything that appears on the same ballot in November.
And then the last measure I did want to note was Proposition 45, which would make modifications
to CEQA to help expedite environmental review of certain types of projects.
This would apply to a number of housing transportation, water, hospital, and clean energy projects.
This bill is not a CEQA exemption.
It is streamlining.
So it would still require agencies to complete environmental review for these types of projects.
But it does allow for expedited review and consideration as well as expedited judicial
proceedings for any challenges that may occur to projects of these.
to have that we see the states proved any number of bills previously for sports stadiums,
large complexes, this would take many of those provisions and apply them to a broader element
of projects. This would apply to projects that require both local CEQA review as well
as the state acting as the reviewing agent. So depending upon the specific project, if
it's a something on the state highway system, this would require the state to act quicker
If it was something on a local roads or a local housing development, it may require,
in certain instances, the local agency to move through CEQA in a more expedited fashion.
And then lastly, just wanted to do a really brief look ahead.
Obviously next year we'll have a new governor, a new administration that will likely take
a couple of months at the beginning of the year to sort through anticipated, regardless
of which candidate becomes the governor,
we'll see some significant turnover
within the governor's office themselves.
And then that individual will have the opportunity
to make any replacements that they didn't fit
at state agencies.
So typically, it'll take anywhere from three to six months
to really get agencies kind of up and running,
particularly if there's significant change
at an agency secretary level or department head level.
So we will see that.
New administration will come in,
obviously have their various policy priorities.
So they will be working with the legislature
to move those from campaign slogans into legislation
to move through the process.
Neither Mr. Becerra nor Mr. Hilton
have recent experience in working directly
with the legislature.
So there'll be a feeling-out process there.
Mr. Becerra obviously has worked with the legislature
through his time at Congress as AG dating back into the 90s.
But more recently, neither of them
have a state legislative background.
So they'll just be having to work with the legislature
on that element, which, again, can just
lead to a little bit slower start
of the legislative session.
While policy may take a little while to develop next year,
the January budget is still due the first week of January.
May revise will still happen in May.
So the new governor, potentially a new Department of Finance, will need to be dealing with
the state budget very quickly.
As I noted earlier, we've kind of entered this era where we're really doing year-round
budget trailer bills.
So I would anticipate there would be budget activity early next year, potentially Q1,
in advance of June, depending upon the exact budget conditions.
I would note, as of this morning, the Department of Finance indicated that year-to-date revenue
was running about $4.2 billion above projection, above what was anticipated when the budget
was approved at the end of June. So, that trends well, but obviously we're heading
into the big revenue collecting months at the end of the year and then as we get closer
to tax filing season. Depending upon how that goes, the new administration will be dealing
with continued implementation of HR1 at the federal level, which is continuing to put
pressure on costs on the state related to health and human services as well as
any number of funding priorities that they may have on other portions of the
budget. I spoke about wildfire liability so I don't think I'll spend too much
time on that other than to say we would anticipate additional bills beyond just
the wildfire liability proposal but continued within this area. Also tort
reform there was some increased conversation related to tort reform and
the impact that it's having that recently approved legislations having
on local agencies, their costs for insurance,
other costs that are going up.
There was an attempt to do something this year.
Legislation was approved this year, just not as broad
as we would have originally liked.
So there was some legislation that went through this year
impactful more on the school district side
of public agencies do anticipate
that we'll see some broader efforts again next year
to lower the overall costs related to some of these claims
against agencies next year.
And then I'll lastly just note AI data centers,
AI and data centers.
There's just a lot of conversation right now.
Hard to tell what that legislation will look like
at the beginning of next year.
It feels like this is a policy area
that's moving very quickly
or not at the state and federal level.
A lot of conversations occurring.
Obviously, a lot of conversations locally about data centers, the impacts.
We did see legislation that was approved this year for reporting on energy, water usage
of proposed facilities.
I do think we'll see more legislation next year, whether it's kill switches, whether
it's impacts on labor and workforce, on education.
centers locally the use of resources citing so I anticipate we'll see in
dozens and dozens of bills in this area next year with that thank you for the
time I'm happy to answer questions on on any of these measures or or anything
else that was considered by the legislature this year thank you thanks
very much Casey any questions for Casey councilmember Silva thank you very much
for your work on our behalf and with so many of our neighboring cities and
other cities across the state. The governor in one of his departing shots
basically reorganized the housing department and I guess it's no longer
housing business and finance or wasn't financed but consumer something or
rather it's had a lot of name changes but this looks a little more significant
what are your thoughts? Yeah the gubernatorial re-organizations are
always interesting this one as you noted before HCD where we tend to think of
most of the housing stuff takes place was within the business consumer services
and housing agency which has now been broken into the housing agency and then
the business consumer services agency business consumer services if anyone
deals with the state on any number of licensing issues our ring in cosmetology
any number of that's where that goes so that's over there and so they've broken
out housing separately from that to focus on housing and homelessness. Honestly, that was
probably a change that probably needed to happen a while ago because those that that agency really
operated as very separate departments because they were their their missions were not necessarily
overlapping. That said, that did bring in a new agency secretary, new department heads. I do think
that that's going to likely be more permanent, putting more of a focus on
on housing within that agency and not kind of getting it muddled with
everything else. As we move into a new administration, I think that'll be one
of the big questions is does a new governor replace the head of the housing
agency? I think one of them would, I think the other one might, but really as
as we go into our new arena cycles,
those positions are gonna be key depending upon
what changes may happen at the executive level
within that agency would then kind of filter down
through some of the policy making folks,
the legislative teams.
So really we'd be kind of looking for the new governor
to what kind of tone they're gonna set.
While I think both candidates are very focused
on delivering housing and increasing affordability,
what that means from a policy perspective
obviously can vary greatly.
Newsom we saw come in with immediately,
I'm gonna make three million new units,
which was very aspirational and the state didn't meet.
I haven't heard anything that aggressive
from the candidates.
I know that our team had a chance to participate
in a meeting with Mr. Becerra and he indicated
that he was gonna be deferential to local agencies
and what works and really kind of using best practices.
That sounds great as a candidate talking to a group
of local public officials,
but I think once we see who comes in
and how they staff that agency,
we'll really tell where things are gonna go in the future.
And one question about the PAPN Bill
and the RINA process, and it's just more of a heads up.
I think this bill was in large part sponsored by CalCities.
And I think, and I've spoken with CalCities about this,
I think the councils of government around the state
are viewing it as their opportunity to have more time,
not giving more time to cities.
So beware.
And keep, you know, we should keep an eye out on that
because I don't think that's what it was intended.
It wasn't intended to make ABAG and SCAG and all that
have more time to play with the allocation
of the renin numbers.
It was really about having more time
to basically figure out how to comply.
Yes.
Thank you.
Good answer.
Council Member Davini, any questions
on the legislative update?
Okay.
Mayor, I just had a quick one about
the wildfire prevention.
You know, as a liaison to Ross Market,
questions about home hardening
and we've got seniors on fixed incomes
and there are many mutuals up there,
but they're obligated to kind of undertake
somewhat expensive improvements in and around their property.
Are you aware of any state grant funding
available for that activity?
That is, that's a great question.
With some of the home hardening zone zero regulations
that are gonna be finalized shortly,
and then there's gonna be a phase in period,
right now, actually, at CalCities,
there was a session on wildfire
that the city manager and I were at.
And that exact question was asked.
I think the short answer is
there's not enough resources being made available
by the state right now.
I think once those, excuse me,
once those regulations go into effect,
I think there's gonna be a multi-year push on education,
on letting homeowners know what they,
what should be doing, what best practices are.
Hopefully we'll be working with the state,
whether it's through the budget,
through other regional organizations
to try to make funding available.
because as you noted, I mean, on a case by case basis,
there's gonna be not insignificant costs
associated with compliance.
I think every property owner is gonna be
in a little bit different circumstances,
but if you're trying to make modifications
to landscaping, siting windows, eaves,
kind of all of these things,
that the potential for costs is gonna be significant.
I know there's been some conversations
about regionalizing funding opportunities,
making them available to, whether it be a county
or some more of the firewise communities,
other types of things like that,
where we can kind of regionalize the home hardening efforts.
So I think that's a conversation that will continue today
though I can't tell you that there's a ton of resources
available that homeowners can go to,
but hopefully in the coming years
we'll see that come online.
Excellent, thank you.
So now we're gonna open up this item
which is the 2026 state legislative session
for public comment.
Any member of the public wishing to address us
would have two minutes and just a friendly reminder
to our folks on Zoom.
If you would like to speak to this item,
please raise your hand virtually, of course,
or press star nine.
Welcome.
Good evening.
Mark Jaffee, Downtown Walnut Creek resident,
president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association.
I thought it was a very informative briefing.
I would just like to push back on one item, AB 1821,
which extends the time for responding
to public record requests.
As a government watchdog, my bread and butter
is sending public records act requests.
And under the new legislation, a government
can use an extension and have a full calendar month
just to advise the requester whether the document exists.
So I don't think it's a great piece of legislation.
It's passed.
All I can do is ask that you and other governments
that you might influence try to abide by the previous
standard of 10 calendar days and not use the extensions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other comments on the legislative agenda?
Not seeing any in the room.
How about online, Madam Clerk?
No public comments on Zoom.
Okay, so no action item required on this,
but if any of my colleagues had comments to raise,
now would be the appropriate time.
I think council member Davini may have some comments.
Yeah, it wasn't really a question,
so I didn't bring it up earlier, more of a comment.
I know that some of the e-bic legislation
that was out did not pass.
But one that did, that I guess applied
just to the San Mateo County, was a PAPN 2595 assembly bill.
And just so for the public,
that was introduced due to the tragic death
of a four-year-old involved in an e-bike accident
with another 10-year-old and 11-year-old and a car.
So what they did is they passed a local pilot project
in San Mateo County that limits children under the age of 12
from riding class one and class two e-bikes, right?
Okay, so one additional one,
and it's an example of how counties or localities
can working with their state representatives
empower themselves locally,
so I just wanted to bring that one up.
Thank you.
Any other comments on the legislation agenda?
Mayor?
I just wanna thank Casey for his update on that.
A lot of what went through, we were supportive of,
there were some things that either didn't go through
or did go through that we took different positions on.
But overall, I think this benefits Walnut Creek well
in many different facets.
And again, appreciate Casey for his due diligence
in updating us and the residents of Walnut Creek.
I concur and I also want to thank our assistant
to the city manager, Joe Caroza, who kind of in real time
is juggling a lot of legislative bills
and alerting members of the legislative committee
on the council to those, so I appreciate all the hard work
that he's done over the last year.
And with that, I think we're done with this item.
We'll move on to our next consideration item,
which is resolutions supporting and endorsing
consideration of resolution supporting and endorsing
measure W, measure T, measure RTM,
and Prop 1 on the November 3rd ballot.
And I would invite Joe back to the podium
to provide a presentation.
All right, thank you.
Okay, so I am before you this evening
to present for your consideration, again, these items.
So resolution supporting and endorsing measures W,
Measure T, Measure RTM, and Proposition 1,
which are on the November 3rd, 2026 ballot.
As a reminder, at the City Council meeting
in September, September 15th, 2026,
City Council did request that support for Measures W, T,
and RTM be agendized at tonight's meeting.
And additionally, the League of California Cities
did request consideration of support for Proposition 1,
which the Legislative Committee did review
and requests to be added to the agenda as well.
So that's why we're bringing forward these tonight.
And this evening, I will provide a very brief overview
of each of these measures before you for consideration.
All right, so we'll start with Measure W.
So Measure W was proposed
by Akalani's Union High School District,
which includes four high schools in the region,
four high-performing high schools,
plus the Akalani's Center for Independent Study.
One of those high schools, Los Lomas,
is within Walnut Creek.
And this measure will go before folks
who are registered voters in the Aquiline's Union High School
District service area.
So this measure would establish a $168 parcel tax for eight
years, and the district estimates
that that will generate roughly $6 million annually
in locally controlled funding.
The funds would support areas including attracting
and retaining teachers, advanced academic programs, including things like STEM and arts,
and maintaining manageable class sizes.
The measure does include accountability provisions, including independent audits and an oversight
committee.
The measure does include exemptions for eligible seniors and certain individuals receiving
disability benefits.
W does require a two-thirds vote of yes for approval. Moving on now to measure T. Measure
T is the city's measure concerning the position of City Treasurer. So measure T asks Walnut
Creek voters whether the City Treasurer should transition from its current elected position
to an appointed position. Council did unanimously vote in May to place this question before
voters in Walnut Creek and the treasurer position as it is now oversees more than a hundred
million dollars in municipal investments and the responsibilities of the position have
become increasingly complex including having expert knowledge in public finance, accounting
and government finance compliance laws.
Currently the position being elected only requires that they be a registered Walnut
Creek voter and be elected to the position. An appointed treasurer would also align with
more than 90% of cities statewide that utilize appointed rather than elected treasurers.
Measure T would require a simple majority of Walnut Creek voters to pass.
The third measure before you tonight is measure RTM, known as the regional transit measure,
known as the Connect Bay Area Transit Initiative. This is a five-county regional measure that
covers Contra Costa County, Alameda County, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties, as well
as San Francisco County. And its goal is to fund and avert major fiscal cliffs, service
cuts to transit operations. The measure would establish a half-cent sales tax in four of
of those five counties, so in Alameda, Contra Costa,
San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties,
and a 1% sales tax in San Francisco County
over the next 14 years.
This measure would estimate to bring in about $980 million
across the five counties, again,
primarily to maintain transit operations,
as well as to address fiscal challenges
facing regional transit agencies,
including those that we heard from tonight,
BART and County Connection.
Funding would support major operators like BART,
Muni, CalTRAN, AC Transit,
with also some additional revenue being provided
and distributed to county transportation agencies,
including Contra Costa County,
Contra Costa Transportation Authority.
This measure does include several financial oversight
and accountability requirements,
and will require also a simple majority to pass.
The final item tonight is Proposition 1.
Proposition 1 was placed on the ballot by the legislature
through the Veterans and Affordable Bond Act of 2026,
and is a statewide measure.
Proposition 1, as Casey mentioned already tonight,
would authorize $11.25 billion
in state general obligation bonds
for the development, preservation,
and rehabilitation of affordable housing,
including $1.25 billion devoted to veteran home loan
and housing programs.
The funding would replenish several existing state programs
supporting multifamily housing,
infill infrastructure, home ownership,
farm worker and tribal housing, student housing,
local pilot programs, and veterans housing.
As a statewide bond measure,
Proposition 1 will go before all California registered voters
and requires a majority vote for approval.
So this brings us to the action before the council
this evening and before you are for separate written
resolutions for you to consider supporting and endorsing
each measure individually.
Council may choose to adopt any or all of them,
decline to adopt any or all of them,
or amend the proposed language.
and that is the presentation tonight, any questions?
Okay, thanks Joe.
I had one about RTM, majority vote required,
is that across all four counties?
Is that how that's measured?
All five counties.
Five counties.
Yes.
So if it were not to pass in Contra Costa, for instance,
but have 50% vote among the five counties,
it would still pass and take effect in Contra Costa.
Actually, I believe that is true,
But I can't confirm.
It's humility.
That is true.
Yeah, cumulative.
Thank you.
Any other questions for Joe?
Quick clarification question on Measure G,
because a number of people have asked me questions about this.
When we mean an appointed treasurer,
we mean not appointed by the council,
not a political appointment.
We mean a hired professional financial person
who is appointed to the job, just the same way
the police chief is appointed to his job.
Correct, and the city manager would be, uh, delegate the authority, uh, to, to, to, to
hire that individual.
The other question, if you don't mind, uh, numerous people have been surprised when I've
said that we do not have the authority to change the qualifications for the, an elected
position that is, sits in the state and the state general laws, is that correct?
Yes, that is correct.
So when I've said just a registered voter, it could be an 18 year old senior at Las Lomas
High School who is eligible to vote, who's failing math. Somebody in the
audience here tonight. Yes. You too could become a professional, a non-professional
treasurer. That's correct. Thank you. I have a question of clarification.
Mayor Portem? Yep. Go for it, Mayor. What is the expected cost to the city and
taxpayers by having it appointed treasurer? It's considered, it will be
negligible. There will be some cost savings when it comes to not having
elections, but there should be no significant cost to the city or to
taxpayers. So we would not be hiring a separate staff member to be treasurer,
is that correct? No, we can absorb that within our own staffing now. Alright,
thanks for that clarifying question. Now I'm going to open it up for public
comment and please keep in mind that we've got four items so public comment
will receive public comment at this time you'll have two minutes each to provide
us comments on W T RTM and prop one public comment two minutes all the same
time and if you're joining us by zoom now please raise your hand or press star
nine and we'll get to you right after we get to the people in the room go ahead
Yes, thanks again Mark Joffee Walnut Creek resident president of Cocoa Tax.
I respectfully ask you not to weigh in on the three measures that do not specifically pertain to the city.
Walnut Creek has a lot of issues that you could be tackling rather than addressing state
multi-county and multi-community ballot measures.
Senator Steve Glaser was the lead signer of our argument against measure RTM in your voter guide.
It will raise sales taxes in Walnut Creek to 9.75 percent.
Had Measure B passed in June, we'd be well over 10 percent.
Fortunately, Cocoa Tax led the successful opposition to Measure B, and I thank you for
not taking a position on it.
BART and other transit agencies need to look at excessive executive compensation, lavish
benefits such as free BART fares for relatives and retiree health care before
hitting up taxpayers for even more money. As you know, the city of Walnut Creek
somehow gets by without providing a defined retiree health care benefit.
There is a simple way for Bay Area transit to get new revenue without
imposing regressive taxes. The state legislature can divert cap and invest
funds from the failing high-speed rail project to BART, county connection and
other agencies. With respect to education funding I want to remind you
that WCSD measure J and last year's Aquilanus Union measure T parcel taxes
both failed to reach the required two-thirds support in Walnut Creek. This
suggests that by endorsing measure W you are going to be out of touch with many
of your constituents. Our group was open to not opposing Measure W but unfortunately the board
did not respond to our suggestion that they pursue a lower parcel tax than the one that
had been rejected last year. Thank you for your time. Thank you Mr. Joffe. Any other public comments
on TWRTM or One. Hi, my name is Ingrid Yat and I live in
Walnut Creek, California. Good evening, my name is Ingrid Yat
and I am a sophomore at Los Lomas. I believe that Los Lomas and all the
other schools in the Occulanias Union High School District
are some of the best schools in the nation. We rank in the top 5% of high
schools nationwide, which I think we can all agree is
something that we should be proud of. But our schools are in a funding crisis.
In the last two years AUHSD has had to make 4.2 million dollars in cuts.
If Measure W does not pass, more cuts will be needed.
These cuts will include loss of electives, AP classes,
technology, counseling, and only six periods instead of seven.
That is not what our community wants to see. 93% of voters ranked quality of
public schools as a top issue, more important than streets and public
safety. We know that good public schools are the
driving force of maintaining property values in Laffia, Aranda, and Aranda City Councils
and Moraga Town Council have all already endorsed Measure W. It is important that Wanna Creek
City Council endorses as well to show our community's unified commitment to excellent
public schools. I have been working with students at Akulani's Campo in Ramani on Measure W,
and on behalf of all the students at AUHSD, we will be honored to have the Council's endorsement.
you. Nicely done. Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Henry Pickett. I am a
Walling Creek resident and a junior attending Los Alamos High School. Many of
you have heard about the recent budget cuts in the Occulani Unified High School
District as Ingrid just mentioned, four million over the last two years. I've
noticed a lot of effects on our school regarding these budget cuts. The most
notable effect that I have seen is the impact on class sizes at the high
schools. With the budget cuts, many teachers have had to been laid off and
the lack of teachers to teach enough classes has increased the class sizes.
This increase in class size has put a lot of stress on students who are
overwhelmed with the already copious amount of work in the schools. The
students have a harder time finding time to talk to their teachers who are busy
with the large amount of students who are also already in that class. Students
have to wait behind a long line of their peers every day to talk to teachers
about support with or problems with homework assignments, questions about
tests, or anything else regarding their classes. Teachers are overwhelmed with
the amount of students who need help with all the homework assignments that they are
assigned.
I've also noticed and heard that in some classes there aren't enough tables and chairs for
all of the students to sit at a desk.
This forces some of the students to share a desk with a classmate or some of the students
have to stand in the back.
Our schools are among the top 5% in the nation.
However, our per-student funding is some of the lowest.
We haven't had any new local funding in 16 years.
Just one line to wrap it up, Mr. Pickett.
On behalf of all the students
of the Oclani's Unified High School District,
we would be honored to have the council's endorsement
on Measure W.
Thank you. Thank you.
Good evening, my name is Ember Ocker
and I'm a junior at Los Alamos High School.
To add on to what my peers have said,
Measure W, not passing will also lead to cuts of counselors
and at Los Lomas we have counselors to help with education,
college and career, and for mental health and wellness.
Our counselors for education have already undergone cuts
in the district leading to each counselor
having to take on more students,
giving them less time for individual attention
for each student.
Without a college and career counselor,
students will be less prepared, not only for college,
life after high school. And lastly, our Wellness Counselor is very important for our schools and
cuts in the Wellness Center will lead to less attention for each student. Before the Wellness
Center was improved in the AUHSD district, there was a suicide rate of twice the state average.
Now, with improvements, we are well below the average but decreasing the funds threatens to
to bring up this average again.
This is why is it crucial for Measure W to pass
to protect students' access to counts.
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is Lorelei Fairclough,
and I am a junior at Los Lomas.
One librarian for four high schools is insufficient.
One librarian for approximately 5,400 students
is unsustainable, yet cuts like the loss of a librarian
will continue to affect the district
if Measure W does not pass.
Having access to a full-time librarian
is an essential part of a student's education.
Before the cuts, students at Los Lomas
often went to the library to check out books, print,
and study.
They can still do these things, but the hours
are cut and the atmosphere is not the same.
Having a single librarian spread across the district
means students lose out on the personal connections
that they were able to have with our old librarian.
Without the personal connection between the librarian
students new books are hard to purchase. A designated on-site librarian allows for
targeted book purchasing without a full-time librarian it is limited.
Additionally, now students don't have access to a credentialed professional
who can give them extra support on research and other class projects. The
library acted as a classroom. Classes like English, science, and social studies
would go in and get lessons from my librarian several times a year. A
librarian is an expert in research citations and other interdisciplinary
lessons like AI use all necessary for college and careers but don't fall under
one certain course. Librarians also know how to access and use all the
databases we have for without we must use for all of our other classes.
Therefore having Measure W pass is crucial to protecting the high quality
education that the Alkalani's Union High School District offers and saves it
from similar cuts in the future. We would be honored for your endorsement of
Measure W. Thank you. Hello, my name is Shahin Mohabadi and I'm a seventh grader
at WCI and I'm here to ask you for the endorsement of Measure W because if
Measure W passes it'll be at least two years in before I go to high school and
by then I can expect a higher quality education so I can be prepared for
college and then later in life a job. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other
public comments on TW RTM or one not in the I'm in the chamber here anybody
online madam clerk we have no one online okay so we'll close the public comment
and I think we have four different resolutions here and so probably it makes
sense for us to take them up one at a time and the first one in the queue is
They're not in alphabetical order, surprisingly.
The first one is measure W, which we've just heard some really good public comment on.
So I would, well, before I go into there, any other further clarifying questions on
any of these measures?
Okay.
Well, the first public comment indicated that he felt we shouldn't take up RTM, W, and one
because that's not a city issue.
Find out a little hard to fathom given that transportation affects us at the city schools affect our city housing affects our city
So why wouldn't we and I'll just make that come in
It was it was a question sort of at the end but kind of a rhetorical question. Okay, so
No other clarifying questions. So we're going to discuss measure W first, which is the Akalani's Union High School District
parcel tax measure
and who would like to lead us off?
You know, I will, because I was really
moved by the public comment that we heard tonight
from the students.
I think, you know, you are the future,
but you also took the time and the energy
to give a lot of thought to your comments
before you came down here.
And I thought raised some really compelling points
about the cost-cutting measures the district has undertaken
already, and the need for additional funding to keep the high school district at the top
where it is now and where we all want it to remain.
The quality of our public schools, both in Mount Diablo and Akalani's, they're the best,
some of the best in the state, and I'm told they're some of the best in the nation, and
And I think we need to, I personally feel we need to reinvest in our schools for all
the reasons the students talked about, which were class sizes, the wellness counselors,
the college counselors, the librarians.
And these all come with some expenses, and I think it's a wise investment that we vote
to endorse Measure W.
I agree Mayor Pro Tem. I think there is nothing more economically important to
a community than supporting its schools. Without good schools the economy declines.
Without good schools your quality of life declines and the premise that you
can go without a raise and deliver the same quality outcome is basically
nonsensical. This is important. It's important to take care of our youth
whether we have children in our household or not and I'm proud to
support this. Councilmember Davini. Yeah, I enthusiastically support endorsing
Measure W and thank you to the students that came out tonight and sat through
the first two hours of the meeting that really shows your dedication to speaking
and appreciate your advocacy and you were all very well spoken so thank you for being
here tonight.
I mean to me this is a no brainer for the community.
This is money going back to our students, to our children.
It's very cliche that they're our future but I mean really like they really are and
so hearing that we're one of the lowest funded school districts in the state you know it's
necessary for the community to step up and support.
I agree with Council Member Silva's comments
that it's hugely important to our economy.
If all you care about is your taxes and your finances,
I'd say it's hugely important to your property values, too.
So you could vote for it for that reason.
We should continue to support the STEM arts.
And I think there's a narrative, a little bit of a perhaps dig,
on supporting the wellness centers
that I've heard from opposition.
And I don't know if everyone heard that correctly tonight.
But we had twice the suicide rates in the Walnut Creek
and the high school district compared to the state.
Two times?
Go ahead.
Suicidal ideation.
Suicidal ideation.
OK.
All right.
Well, and we know what that leads to.
But twice the rate of suicidal ideation
compared to the state.
And that's now less than state average.
So I don't understand how anyone would think in today's age
of mental health issues, especially with students,
with online devices, social media,
that somehow not investing in our Wellness Center
would be desirable for anyone.
So I'm very enthusiastic in my endorsement of W
and thank you all for being here tonight.
Thank you, council member.
Good comments.
Mayor?
Yes, I want to, well, first of all,
thank all the people that came to smoke,
all the students who came out on a school night
to speak for Measure W. As Councilmember Silva said, it's so important to support our schools
and the different programs, the different services. And as goes the schools, so goes
the entire community. I have visited the Wellness Center actually with Mayor Pro Tem Francois
as well as another time too. We didn't have that when I was growing up and going to school.
so valuable. And of course, we know the value of libraries. So this is an important measure.
I think we should all take pride in the fact of being able to endorse this measure. And
I certainly hope that it succeeds.
I concur. And I like that we're joining our colleagues in Lafayette and Moraga and Arrinda
in enthusiastically supporting measure W. So with that, I would make the motion to endorse
that the city council endorse measure W.
Second.
Roll call, please. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. Council Member Davini. Aye. Council Member Silva. Aye. Mayor Wilk. Aye. Motion carries 4-0.
I'll add one more thing. My very first time speaking in front of the City Council was in 2001 when there were parcel taxes on the ballot for both the Akalani High School District and the Walnut Creek District and I was chairing that Walnut Creek parcel tax.
I was shaking in my boots, standing up to get five people to say yes.
And they graciously said yes and enthusiastically supported it and I'm glad we were able to
do the same thing tonight.
Good full circle moment.
We were, you're welcome to, well let's, let's, I think we'll get through these others relatively
quickly.
Measure T is next up in the queue.
I'll just point out that we all voted to put measure T on the ballot unanimously and see
the value in having financial professional at the helm of city finances given that that
person oversees close to $150 million in municipal investments.
So we want someone that, you know, ideally is a CPA, potentially has an MBA, but at least
has had demonstrated experience in the financial industry.
We've been fortunate to have a city treasurer for the last 30 years who's done an excellent
job.
I think at some point he may want to retire, and I think bringing that position in-house
and being appointed still, but by the city manager and absorbed through existing city
staff, not adding to the bottom line of the city, but absorbing that position within the
city.
The city government makes sense, and I also point out Council Member Davini and I serve
on the finance committee, and the treasurer is right next to us the entire time.
they're not making any unilateral decisions without council member or
staff input and then as I mentioned earlier in our update neither are we. We
make recommendations that come to the full City Council and that we have that
that's on a noticed agenda and we receive public comment on that that is
not nothing is being done and you know behind closed doors it's all being done
out front in the public as it should be and so I will I will be supporting
measure T and I'll turn to the mayor next. Yeah thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Of
course you and I co-authored the language for this ballot for this measure
and the the confusing thing to me is that the opposing side to this seems to
feel that there is less accountability. And actually, it couldn't be further from the
truth. The accountability goes from the appointed treasurer reporting to the finance director,
reporting to the finance committee, reporting to the city manager, and ultimately reporting
to the entire city council. There's actually several layers of accountability of which,
in fact, that's about four times more than what there currently is. In addition, the
is responsible for investing the funds of the city. It is not for making decisions on
financial considerations of the city that we take. And so this makes perfect sense.
I hope that everybody understands how fortunate that we've been to have a treasure as capable
as we've had in Rangasana for the last 30 years. But I'm afraid he probably doesn't
have another 30 years in him. And so I will absolutely be supporting this measure that
we've all voted on and that we've written the ballot argument for. I will be
supporting this as well and in my travels around the state in the last
month and a half to two months I've mentioned repeatedly that we've put this
on the ballot and cities across the state look at me like I've got horns
growing out of my head. What do you mean you have an elected treasurer? They can't
understand it. They can't understand that we haven't made the transition long
before this so I'm happy to be able to support this. And for all the reasons
just mentioned I also will be supporting in favor of supporting this so I'll make
the motion I was gonna invite the mayor to that's okay that's fine okay I would
like to make the motion that we are supporting measure T second roll call
please mayor Wilk I councilmember Silva I councilmember Davini mayor pro tem
Francois I wish and carries four zero all right on to measure RTM the regional
transit funding measure anyone like to kick us off on that well I will say that
I was watching those cars that were sitting in the queue to go over the
bridge twice last week and if we if the transit agencies fail financially it
does not improve local transportation it degrades it and that degrades quality
of life it degrades the economy and it's very difficult to come back when he's
This basically puts things out of business.
This one – the RTM has had some interesting discussion around it, especially in the areas
of fiscal responsibility, and that's been the big opposition.
I don't see it that way, and I think when we looked at the last presentation when Matt
RIN showed us, our BART representative, the cost of per-mile traveled on BART. Would it
cost to run BART compared to so many other trains around the nation? It was quite low.
And also the model that the idea that the public transportation system would sustain
itself just through its own fees is I don't think really a viable model either.
I think many other agencies around the country are have more public funding
than what part has here. So I wanted you to just like sort of dispel that just a
bit and for that reason and for supporting our the transportation our
community I would be in support of this the RTM. Mayor. Yeah I've been the
transportation liaison for lack of a better word the county can action for
the last ten years and I've been close to the different funding on this. Being
at this American Public Transportation or I should say American Public Transit
Association conference this week. It's amazing how BART is one of the very
few public transit agencies that are supported wholly by local revenue or
local funding and fair revenue sources. Most other public transit agencies in
the country are supported by a broader revenue base including state taxes. I
I think that we need to hopefully get there,
but that's not what's in front of us.
I'd like to see the state being able to support BART
more than it has in its existence.
But that said, we are also the number one metro area
in the country that's slowest
in recovering from the pandemic.
We are now below 50% of revenue from fares
And so, as we heard from Matt Rinn, our BART Director, earlier, we are still trying to
recover from that.
It's slow, but it will happen.
But as I've been telling people, the real consequence here is everybody's commute and
travel times will double.
The estimations of being on the Bay Bridge would be an extra 30 to 40 minutes each way.
The estimation of going through the Caldecott Tunnel will be an extra 15 to 30 minutes each
way, whether or not people take BART or any public transit, fair drive times will be severely
impacted even on routes that they wouldn't take BART on. For example, Danville or Pleasanton
to Walnut Creek, normally anywhere from a 10 to a 20-minute drive could be a half an
hour to an hour drive. And so we're going to pay for this one way or another, whether
Whether it's more in greenhouse gas emissions, more in gas costs that we're spending now,
but we have to support our public transit systems.
That is the way that really things are going for the future, and if we take a step back
now with lead times of 30 to 45 minutes on BART or closing of stations, fewer and fewer
people will take public transit, and it will truly be a death spiral.
So nobody likes to pay more in taxes, nobody likes to pay more in sales taxes, but the
consequence is even greater than what it would mean out of our pocketbook and essentially
spending an additional $50 over the over a $10,000 purchases over a year.
So I will be supporting this endorsement for RTM.
I appreciate all those thoughtful comments.
And this one I had to think about a little, you know, I think Mayor said it well, no one
likes paying more in higher taxes, but the consequences of not doing so may be greater.
As someone who rides BART, you know, five days a week, sometimes more, into the city
for work, I, you know, there is the mentality, well, gee, I'm paying my fare.
I'm doing my part.
I haven't given up and working from home multiple days a week
and so there is that thought process.
But also if the hours were to be cut
or stations were to be closed, that
would impact how easy it is right now for me to take part.
And I've also had the experience of we are a large metro area
seeing how other large metro areas, maybe to the south of us,
are coming up now trying to get that infrastructure
in place that the Bay Area invested in wisely
in the 60s and 70s, and that were the beneficiaries of.
So I hear that, I understand some of the criticisms.
I think that they were addressed tonight earlier on
in the presentations in terms of some of the cost-cutting
measures that Bart has already implemented.
Council Member Davini raised a good point
about the cost per mile of BART
compared to other transit agencies.
I think it's somewhat simplistic
to say the state should fund it
when it funds part of it but has never funded really all of it
and I think that's a larger, bigger conversation
with 80 people and a governor
to really get that funding worked out.
I think that it sounds like a potentially good solution,
but I don't think it's an obvious or easy one,
especially when that money has already been allocated
in other different directions.
And I understand the comments about the cap and trade.
I think that that falls into the state funding category
that we don't necessarily, that Bard and County Connection
and other transit agencies can't immediately tap into
I'll just make maybe more of the philosophical it doesn't matter it's too late point that
you know maybe when we're when we're presented with a choice like a statewide measure like
high-speed rail compared to reinvesting in the regional transit systems that are really
the lifeblood that we rely on day to day.
I think we should think long and hard about that because I think the investment should
be made in the local, regional transit agencies that have the ability to move people and that
are more likely to be used on a regular basis than perhaps from, I won't say Bakersfield,
DeMerced, I'll say from LA to San Francisco, given that there are alternatives to get there
in a faster, potentially cheaper way.
We are where we are and that train has left the station, so to speak.
So I think it's too important for the lifeblood of our region to not make this investment
in our transit system and it is for a fixed period of time.
I'm hopeful that at the end of that period of time we'll see more people riding public
transit the that the the fares that people pay will obviate hopefully the
need for an extension of this but I too will be supporting it and I would
entertain a motion to endorse RTM councilmember Silva. I move to adopt a
resolution at the City Council of the City of Walnut Creek declaring support
for the measure RTM which is also the regional transit measure. Second. Roll
Call please. Councilmember Silva. Aye. Mayor Wilk. Aye. Councilmember Davini. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye.
Motion carries 4-0. All right now we're on to Prop 1 which is the state housing bond
measure. I think we're at the rounding the corner here. We're in a stout state
housing crisis. We heard from our consultant earlier today about the need
for about the additional legislation that's been passed at the state level
to support additional housing. I think the the one area and we've all
experienced this on a semi-regular basis the hardest housing to get funded and
built is affordable housing because of the fairly large subsidies it requires
from both a land and construction cost standpoint and so you know if we're you
you know, serious about being a California for all and not just a select few that we
need to do what we can to help bring down the housing cost, especially when it comes
to obviously our veterans.
So I will be supporting this measure and would welcome any other comments on that.
I will go back to my statement that if you don't fund housing and you don't have the
funds to build housing you basically are disabling your local your local and
statewide economies because people need places to live in order to be able to
have jobs and if we don't have enough housing housing prices rise it becomes
greater homeless greater under housed and fewer people here for the jobs that
we want to have so I'm strongly in support of of being able to fund housing
I don't think any of us are against housing would you like to make a motion
Council Member Silva. I move to adopt the resolution of the City Council of the
City of Walnut Creek declaring support for Proposition 1, the
Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026. Second. Roll call please.
Council Member Silva. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Francois. Aye. Council Member Davinee. Aye. Mayor Wilk. Aye. Motion carries
All right. Nicely done, all. How are we doing? Okay. I've got my marching orders and I know
Councilman, I know Mayor's not going to object. Next on the agenda is consideration item for
acceptance of the Shadelands property and business improvement district annual report
for fiscal year 2025 to 2026. I see we have Assistant City Manager Charles
Ching to provide the presentation. Welcome Charles. Thank you Mayor, Mayor
Pro Tem, Member City Council. Good evening, Charles Ching, the Assistant City Manager.
And the item, the item in front of Council tonight is the presentation and
potential acceptance of the shade lens property business improvement district
annual report for fiscal year 25-26. So as council is aware the city established
the Shadelands P-Bid back in 2014 with the support of property owners within
Shadelands and the intent of the P-Bid was to improve the Shadelands business
park essentially and a lot of the efforts around the P-Bid include
improvements in business retention, improvements in efforts on attracting
new business, preservation of infrastructure, wayfinding, signage, access
and including transportation to and from shade lands. And in accordance with the
PBID management plan, the PBID is required to present an annual report to
City Council every year and this report is supposed to include accomplishments
from the prior year, budget numbers from the prior year, and plans for the
PBID for the upcoming fiscal year. And this year, along with, you know, historic
reports that have been brought to City Council, the report was created by the
the Walnut Creek Chamber and the Shade Lens Steering Committee.
And so with that, I'd like to introduce Katie Burrows, the CEO and President of the Walnut
Creek Chamber, and Blair Stinchas, the Chair of the Steering Committee, to provide the
presentation.
Thank you, Charles, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council members.
Thank you so much for having us tonight.
My name is Katie Burrows.
I am the CEO and President of the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.
I'm here with Blair Stanches, who is a member of the board of the chamber, and the chair
of the steering committee for the Shadelands PBID.
We also have Anthony Thomas, who's here, Thompson, who's here.
He's also the treasurer of the board, an advisor to the PBID, and Jared Ash, who advises as
well and does a lot on the ground.
We are here tonight to share with you our 2025-26 annual report, and I'm going to get
us kicked off here, oop, other way, big button, okay.
What we're going to do tonight, as Charles mentioned, we're going to tell you a little
bit about what our goals were for the year, what our accomplishments were, how we invested
the property assessment funds.
What we want to make sure that you also see
are the financials, the budget for the next fiscal year.
We'll tell you a little bit about some upcoming events
and then we'll answer any questions if you have any.
So just to recap,
Shadelands mission is to promote the PBID,
to attract diverse and innovative businesses,
to enrich the quality of life
for the community and the region,
and to improve property values.
The vision is to advance as a dynamic business
and lifestyle destination.
You'll see on the right that we have various values
that the Steering Committee is governed by
and is guided by and tonight we're gonna focus on
transparency and fiscal responsibility
as we get into sharing a recap of the year.
In short, the year was about going from planning
to building and doing it without any assessment fee,
with keeping the assessment fees flat.
That's the short version.
I'm gonna let Blair tell you the detailed version.
As a long-term resident of the city of Walnut Creek
as a business owner here in Walnut Creek
the business that's located in the shade lens. I'm proud to be here today and to continue to
talk about the shade lens and the accomplishments thereof. Charles mentioned this but the PBID was
founded under the California state code. It runs from January of 2020 through the end of 2029. It
covers 114 assessed parcels. The county collects the assessments on the property tax bills and
passes them to the chamber. And then the chamber acts as the owner's association. Spinning
is directed by the steering committee, which is made up predominantly of the property owners.
And the plan has four categories for targets, transportation, wayfinding, advocacy and operations,
branding and marketing and amenities and asset protection. So on reserves, because of COVID,
We do have significant reserves.
The plan, under the plan, we do take the unspent assessments.
They roll forward.
So we ended the last fiscal year with approximately $870,000.
And our plan is to put those reserves into work on visible improvements, wayfinding,
signage first, before the term ends.
All right.
The strategic plan is really our roadmap.
These have remained constant throughout the decade, up until now.
And we have five goals.
Number one, to attract, support, and retain innovative growth companies.
Number two, to enhance wayfinding and signage.
Number three, improve mobility, infrastructure, safety, and services.
Of course, promote Shadelands as a destination.
You'll hear us do that tonight.
And encourage the development to enhance the Shadelands
as a premier place to live, learn, work, and play.
Now, this is a list of the people
that help make that happen.
This is the steering committee.
I do want to take a second to thank Angela De La Juse
Ashley, our past chair, and every other member
that's listed here.
At the top, you have the actual steering committee.
And then below, you have the staff
that continues to help us out.
And Katie's made some of those introductions already.
The property owners that are on here
are the stakeholders that we help manage.
And they give their time to direct
how the assessments are made and spent.
Sorry.
As far as our first goal to attract
and retain as many businesses as we can
and create this as a destination.
One of the things that we've been doing is,
as you might be familiar, the Funders and Founders event.
We held that in November of 2025,
but we're gonna continue to hold that
in the renamed Startup Walnut Creek version.
So we're very excited about that.
That's where we bring together business leaders.
In November, we actually had over 180 business leaders,
investors, entrepreneurs, and innovators
from across the Bay Area and from outside the state
come into our meeting.
We had panels, Q&As, and the startup pitch competition
that was very successful.
So we're going to be doing that again
in early 2027 in the Shadelands.
So that's a roomful of people who make location decisions
standing in the Shadelands.
And that's exactly what this goal is for.
So we're positioning the district as a hub for health care,
health tech, sports, professional services,
and you'll see that at startup on the creek in January.
We also are doing significant work
to increase the wayfinding and signage.
Wayfinding is the largest single investment
that the district will make in the current term.
We've completed the district-wide wayfinding
strategy, and we've moved into the implementation
new and replacement signage throughout the shade lens. Goal number three to
increase the mobility infrastructure safety and services. So we have seen, you
know, and we've tried to assist with creating more than 50 new EV charging
stations in the past year bringing the total up to beyond 70. For safety
concerns we work actively with our police and the property owners to build
the working relationship, and we're continually doing that.
Our biggest ongoing transportation commitment
is, as we've heard about tonight,
the Free Shade Lens bus that runs from,
I believe it's sometimes called Walnut Creek North Bart
Station, aka the Pleasant Hill Bart Station.
And you've seen photos of that bus within the evening.
We also continue to improve the district through other areas such as EV charging, bike storage,
roadway and crossing improvements, et cetera.
On safety, we're trying to create an emergency contact list for the business owners that
are part of the chaplains district.
And then as far as, excuse me, so as far as promoting the area, give me one second.
We actually so promoting the Shadelands as a destination when we started and this happened
over 13 years, close to 13 years ago, we didn't have a clue how many businesses were in the
Shadelands.
currently have a directory of over 300 businesses just within the Shadelands
alone. If you haven't had an opportunity the Shadelands scene newspaper has had
over 100 issues now we're up to we're going to be on number 107 and that's
been available since 2017. It's been over 950 stories about 150 businesses and
nonprofits. Our digital reach has increased significantly against all
social media, we actually have had 2.6 million views, which translates to about 6,000 clicks
through to the website to where the businesses are located.
Every business that's there does get the opportunity to potentially have a spotlight which actually
makes it even more valuable when you're leasing space as a property owner.
And then to encourage and develop in the Shadelands as a premier place to live, learn,
work and play.
As far as our stewardship, our costs did arrive, sorry, did rise across transportation, marketing
insurance and administration.
But the committee held the assessments flat as we, as Katie discussed.
We're funding new investments from the reserves, not from higher assessments.
And then with that I'm going to go ahead and hand it back to Katie so that we can start
to talk about the financials.
Thank you.
I hope you can see those numbers if you can use your screen and expand them a little bit.
There's a lot on this page.
What I'll just highlight is the first two columns of numbers are the 2025-26 budget
versus the actuals.
From an income perspective, every year Civitas does an annual report that helps us project
what the income is going to be from the assessments.
And as we've said, we've held the assessment rate flat.
As you go down to the expenses, you can see the four different categories that have been
discussed today, transportation and wayfinding, branding and marketing, amenities and asset
protection, advocacy and operations.
And we have to make sure that they meet the particular percentage targets on an annual
basis.
The big difference between budget versus actual, you'll see, is about a $240,000 lower amount
in spend.
That is a conservative, the spend was conservative last year, mostly in part to the large wayfinding
project of $300,000 that Blair was speaking about.
got underway in the 2025-26 fiscal year,
but the actual implementation will
start being paid in the next fiscal year.
So that's the primary difference there,
because that's a big project.
You can also see the fund balance at the very bottom
that Blair was speaking to, the 868.
We dipped into the reserve by about $120,000.
And as Blair said, that's something
that we're intending to do.
We built up reserves during COVID,
and by the end of the district plan in December, 2029,
our goal is to have spent that all down.
When you look at the budget for 26-27,
you'll see similar income levels,
but you'll see that the budget reflects more
of the budget from 25-26,
the same level of spending about at 730.
And again, that's primarily driven by the additional monies
from the Wayfinding Project, which will end this year.
So as we go forward, we'll be managing the deficit,
so to speak, as we're spending down the reserves.
All right, I'm gonna, you guys have,
you've heard me talk about this before,
but one of the great events that's happening
In Shadelands, upcoming is our 100-year anniversary
for the chamber.
This is a tribute to the community members
that have made this all possible.
It's going to be on October 29, 530 to 8.
We are having it at Cali Craft Shadelands.
There's going to be food.
There's going to be music.
Surprise and delights will reveal the best of for the chamber.
It's going to be a great evening.
and we're grateful to our sponsors,
Shade Lens, Kaiser Permanente, F&M Bank,
Visit Walnut Creek, Sutter Health, CSAA,
and the city of Walnut Creek.
Really appreciate the long standing partnership,
and Blair's gonna tell you about the other upcoming events.
And of course these are all Shade Lens based,
that's the tie in here.
So the next one's the Shade Lens Fall Fest,
that's happening on November 15th, feel free to stop by.
After that, I've referred to it already,
but start up on the creek,
we have particular excitement about and energy behind.
That's going to also be at the Shadeland Sports Mall.
Speaking of the Sports Mall, since we've mentioned it,
if you haven't had a tour of the Sports Mall,
please let us know.
We occasionally get groups together
to provide a Sports Mall tour
because it is so innovative and so interesting
for people, not just in the region,
but also I've actually talked to people
that have come internationally
to do things at the sports mall.
So that concludes our presentation.
So if you have any questions, please let us know.
Okay, thank you very much.
That was a great presentation
and a very colorful one that we got in our packet too.
Any questions for Katie or Blair?
I do.
Council member Davini.
If we could put the financial page back up.
So thank you both for the presentation.
Anyway, on the financial page, it
showed that the projections for 25, 26 as far as revenue,
and you may have mentioned it, and it was a lot of information.
I might have missed this.
But came in a little shy.
Was that, I think it was $20,000 under what was estimated.
What was that due to?
And then one of my questions will be in my address
at the same time is,
what will be the effect of the Del Monte Foods closing?
And how do you, will that impact things?
Great question.
One of the things we believe is that some of the,
there's a city fee of 1% that wasn't accounted for
in the original budget.
That still leaves a little bit of money left over
that either wasn't collected.
we were looking at that number actually just on Monday
and trying to understand that a little bit better.
And Charles, we may need to get with you.
We've heard that the collection rates are really high.
So that shortfall of the money comes into the county,
comes to the city and comes to us.
So we'll have to look into that a little bit more
and we can get back to you.
Sure.
And then I was looking at the budget
And I know the number one priority
is to attract and attain businesses, healthcare,
health tech, business services.
The wayfinding, I think you gave us a presentation on this.
It's been a little while,
but I saw this 46% of the expenditure.
And my thought is that area is a little hard
to sort of conceptualize when you drive into it, right?
Am I on this street or I'm on this street?
I should be on the next one over so I can see how perhaps businesses maybe lost a little
bit back there.
Was that the thrust of why that was the most important thing for you, if you could speak
to that?
When this was originally conceived, and I was not there for that, but from what I understand
is that Shaitans really needed to be put on the map quite literally.
There were, to give you an example, there were issues with the funders and founders
because we had individuals using Google Maps, and they were being led to the wrong place.
So the signage and the coordination between what technology we have, all of that needed
to happen.
And keep in mind also that it's such a significant, dense area of medical services now, not just
for the city but for the region, that people are making decisions as far as where they
live or if they're going to move based on all of their doctors that they're now seeing
in the shade lens or in the area.
So the making sure that people know where to go if they're going to one of our significant
partners in healthcare like Bass or Kaiser or John Muir, it does get confusing and that's
why it's a significant investment.
These numbers were provided as part of the overall plan maybe a decade ago and with that
we have certain parameters that we have to follow within the steering committee to adhere
to that.
in mind that we can sway that over a 10-year period we do have a plus or minus of about
15 percentage points. So prior to wayfinding, branding was really important. And we spent
a lot of money on marketing and branding and now we're moving on to wayfinding. So that
is a significant cost right now in the overall 10-year program.
And that's sort of like more of a one-time to create that infrastructure?
Yeah, these will be physical signs that you will see in different areas of the it'll be a one time
significant fee
There's also you know
There will be some maintenance charges and other fees associated with it
But this will be the most significant cost under the wayfinding that we're aware of and when is that?
Due to complete if it goes according to schedule it should well to be complete complete
It might take a few years but this signal the mass for that the majority of it should be completed in this nest next
fiscal year I'll be
Fascinated to watch it unfold say it again. I said, I'll be fascinated to watch it unfold. It sounds very yeah, please
And if you ever want to tour of the Shadelands
It's it's really changed over the past few years. Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely
Any other questions?
Council member Silva. Yeah, thank you any very much regarding the infrastructure of the wayfinding is this impacting our public
infrastructure at all such that for example
Are they lit and therefore there's electrical poles involved in any of these installations?
Is this just your costs or are there costs for the city or others as well?
this is
For the for them. Yeah, Jared. Why don't you come? So Jared actually has we're trying to get all of you up here
Yeah, and you may.
Yeah.
Hi, Jared Ash, consultant for the Shade Lens PBID.
No, the short answer to your question is no.
Only one sign, they all have reflective lettering.
They're either being placed under current street lights.
The only one sign that will have actual electric
will be funded by UCSF Children's Beddinghoff
Hospital on that corner, because there is power there.
So all of that was taken into account.
I do want to shout out to the public work staff who
have been on site with us multiple times,
mapping this out to possibly allow for the right of way,
making sure we do the site triangles right.
It's been a good effort.
And even last weekend, one of the 100 degree days,
we had two public work staffs, economic development,
community development, all were on the ground with me
going through to make sure we're placing everything correctly
in a great partnership.
Very important that you don't block visibility.
Yes.
Then we don't want people hitting those bollards.
Yes.
City staff has been really like it's
been a great partnership the whole way on this process
in a way I don't see in other cities.
So my other question for, OK, I've
been on this council for 20 years,
and it seems like every other year we're
talking about the vacancy levels at the Shadelands and what are we going to do
do you have can you give us an update on how they can see levels are at this
point in time I think I do not have that number offhand it is actually but I can
tell you confidently it is below the downtown office space vacancy and if you
account for a builder's remedy project that will in the near future makes the
denominator small, or?
Exactly makes the denominator smaller.
It will take up a lot of the vacancy.
Now, we do have vacancies.
Del Monte is officially out of that building.
It does not affect our numbers.
The joint genome lab has come down.
All of that is impacting what is the future of the shade lens and changing that number,
but it is not the widespread vacancy.
I mean you've seen Diablo Ballet move into a former ATF facility that was
stripped completely bare and you know they're they're really happy and being
very successful there in that facility. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, questions?
Yeah I do have a question. We've been talking a lot about transportation
tonight, everything from buses, and we have presentations on that, so I wanted to ask,
and thank you for the presentation, Katie and Blair and Jared, and answering questions
too, I'm hearing things about the Route 7 bus from Bart to Shadelands that is under
consideration for not being supported anymore, and it carries thousands and thousands of
riders every year. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Sure. That's currently in our fiscal budget for the next year. The property owners are
questioning the fiscal responsibility of their fund and their particular commitment to that
relationship. So that's what the discussion has been. We've actually invited in the transportation
association the county connection. I always mess up how many C's there's supposed to be.
We've invited them in to do a presentation.
We've been communicating with staff here in Walnut Creek
on a regular basis about this as well.
But it is currently in our budget
for the next fiscal year.
Okay, good to hear.
I would hope it has the support
because that's a big carrot for businesses
as well as development that's happening within Shadelands.
So I'm glad to hear it for the next year
and I hope it is for the foreseeable future.
Yeah, I do want to mention one other highlight.
You know, Jared mentioned Diablo Ballet, which
was a great success story.
We also have Suma Academy, who I don't know
if you're aware of them.
Mayor Welk, I know you are.
You were at the opening.
The ribbon cutting.
And the ribbon cutting.
So they're a wonderful facility.
They perform a service that really
is above and beyond, which is taking care of people who are not able to be taught in
our public classrooms because of disabilities that they have, and those individuals are
referred to Summa Academy.
This is their third campus, but this is absolutely their dream campus, and they took over where
Cocoa Spa was, and it has been a success story for the Shade Lens, and it's something
that we like to talk about whenever we have a chance as well. So when we talk
about live, work, learn, and play, we have a significant learning responsibility
here in the Shadelands as well with the many schools that are there. I just
wanted to follow up on one of the mayor's questions about the Route 7 bus
and if am I reading your budget correctly that that's 80,000 of 500 it's
It's about 10 percent, a little over 10 percent of the budget?
Correct.
Okay.
10 percent of the reserves, yes.
Okay.
So I actually wanted to continue on that.
You said it's included in the budget, but is it in the management plan?
Because that management plan extends for a decade and is subject to review and approval
by the body, correct?
Correct.
Okay, that's good.
in the management plan. Councilmember Davini. Yeah it was along the same subject. I think balancing
the budget and deciding where to allocate the money is always a you know difficult decision.
I know sometimes talking to people who live on that side of town around Shadelands, some of
their concerns about development in that area is traffic right that's sort of the one that it's
hard to hard to respond to like yep there's gonna be more traffic and it's
already pretty bad so maybe even from a PR standpoint like having the the bus
routes is this nice messaging from shade lens to the community like we're we're
trying to solve this problem but thank you food for thought good input just two
other quick ones what is the average assessment that a property owner pays to
the p-bid or is it on a square footage basis? It's based on both square footage
of buildings and linear frontage and nobody is exempt so nonprofits have to
pay the city has to pay for like the art center the public works yard everything
pays in based on those two elements. No one is exempt even the city all right
Um, and then in terms of the way finding program, I should know this, but where are you in kind of the city approval permitting process for that?
We after last week's meeting, we're going through with some updated drawings and
Again, staff has been great at working with us on those sight lines and other items
Um, and we should be filing the paperwork
in the next like hopefully two weeks to to get that done and to go to design review.
Is that the end of the line for you? You get design review approval and then you can
get your permits to install the signs? I'll let Mr. Ting.
So it really depends on where the sign is. So there's like two different tracks on this.
the signs that are on private property can go ahead and be constructed but there are signs that
are on public right-of-way which will need additional there's a mechanism that will need
to bring back to city council for maintenance responsibilities around maintaining who provides
power and whatnot in just giving giving the shade lens the ability to to erect a sign on right-of-way
Okay. Thank you all. Team effort, good job. Public comment. Anybody in the room like to provide
public comment on this item? The chief does and I can see him shaking his head. Anybody online?
If you're online and would like to provide public comment, please raise your virtual hand
or press star nine. Okay. City clerk is saying we have no one online. So we'll bring it back,
Bring it back to the council and let's see we're accepting this report, I believe, but first I would
Welcome any comments from my colleagues council members Silva. Do you want to lead us off?
Thank you very much for the work and
This has been a long 10 years
Through covet at the same time. So I know it's helped improve the
viability of the business park from many perspectives and I hope you've heard our concerns tonight about
the nuances of the wayfinding but also the transportation issues and the obligation
related to that. Thank you. Councilmember DeBea.
No, just appreciate the presentation and I think our questions made our comments known too.
Yeah, I would agree. I think that that Route 7 bus is a real important
amenity that's provided at the Shadelands. I know when we
talked about the Mitchell townhomes and some other changes that have happened
in Shadelands, we pointed to that as being an important
option and for people to be able to, alternative
for people to get to be able to get to the BART station without having to drive
down Treet or Ignacio. So I would strongly
like to see that continue. I see the value in it. It doesn't seem like it's
a huge part of the budget either so and I will concur with the yeah and I staffs already on it
it sounds like in terms of some of the line of sight issues with with some of the the branding
flags made it difficult to get out of some of the driveways around there but so I know that they'll
be taken care of through some of the more permanent wayfinding sending saying all the negative things
first. I want to say that I think that Shadelands has made a huge positive
turnaround and it's directly attributable to all your efforts over
the last ten years. It took time for those efforts to bear fruit but they
certainly are. I see it kind of when I'm out there during the week or when I'm
out there on a weekend, the level of activity out there is really remarkable
to see and I think it's only gonna get better from here so I applaud you on all
the efforts thank you for the report and with that I think do we need a motion on
this okay we'll accept the report and we're here to help in any way we can to
the continued success to see the continued success of the Shadelands
thank you thank you very much all right I think that does good night good night
Good night Katie, thank you for sticking in with us tonight. With that we're
gonna let the mayor go to sleep in Chicago and we are... I keep wondering if he's looking at a
baseball game because he's looking over here. It might be a Dodger game in the
background. We are adjourned.