>>>
of the martinez city council, wednesday, november
19
7:is 7 p.m.
city clerk please call the roll.
>>
[ roll call ]
>> wonderful, please join me
for the pledge of allegiance.
>> I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the united states of america and
to the republic for which
it stands, one nation
under god, indivisible with liberty
and justice
for all.
>>
all right, to start up the meeting we
have a couple
of presentations and so I'm going
to ask the council to come down and
we will present from down there.
>>
okay, thank you.
please, come on up.
all right, good evening everyone.
so I have the
honor and we will go ahead and invite
the whole community, those of you
here for the sikh awareness and appreciation
month
if I can invite you all to come up
and join
the council, thank you very much.
all right, so
sikh awareness and appreciation month
whereas
sikh is the 5th largest religion with
25 million
followers worldwide and more than
500,000 in the united states many
of whom have called california home
since the late 1800s whereas sikh
americans
have contributed significantly to
the
nations growth to their work
in agriculture, business, education, technology
and public service including
the city of martinez where
councilmember malhi became the city's
1st sikh
american council member whereas the
values of equality, service
and justice are reflected through
acts
of community service including providing
free meals,
aiding seniors
and supporting local relief efforts
whereas despite
facing discrimination and hate crimes
sikh americans continue to demonstrate
resilience,
compassion and eternal optimism
in opposing the dignity of
all people.
whereas the city of martinez honors
and celebrates the many ways sikh
americans
strengthen communities and enrich
the social and cultural
fabric of our city and our nation.
now therefore be it resolved that
mayor zorn and
city council on behalf of our entire
council I should
say do hereby proclaim november 2025 as
sikh awareness and appreciation month
in
the city of martinez.
and so, very quickly I
have up here many local residents
in martinez including business owners including
daisy and
, the owners of the subway and we
have the
owners of the marina minimart
and pacheco truck stop
and we have some other local residents
here as well and
I want to say thank you, we are so
proud you
have chosen to call martin is
your home . We have a representative
of the local
house of worship
where many of
our local sikh go to worship. Did
you
want to say anything?
okay. All right, very good. With that
thank you all very much and very quickly,
my mom is here in
the audience and she made some traditional
tea, so if you would
like to have some , there was
some in the corner along with some
sweets. And
a qr code where you can learn a little
bit more
about our faith, culture and history
so if that is of
interest I
encourage you to partake in that as
well, thank you very much. We will
go ahead and get a couple of photos.
>>
good evening mayor and members of
the council and members of the public
for those who don't know me
my name is andrew white chief of police
for
the city of martinez, tonight we are
swearing in our 3 newest sergeants
at
this time I would like to call forward
sgt. Mayberry,
[ applause ]
sgt.
carney, scott
carney.
sgt.
so, before we get started with
their portion I wanted to recognize
a few people 1st of all current serving
officers
that are here if you're not standing,
stand up so we can recognize your
service to our community.
thank you. Some are still shy.
secondly I want to recognize we have
numerous retirees
that have joined us, including 2 prior chiefs.
thank you for joining us.
I just want to point out in
law enforcement
particularly serving in
the city of martinez service extends beyond
any one of us
it is about the connection to the
community and connection to the profession
and I was incredibly
delighted to see all the retirees
that have shown up to support
this legacy. We have one individual
sgt. Mayberry
who essentially grew up through the
department and it is nice to see people
coming back and supporting, I
want to stand here to say how much we
appreciate all of your service
and we never forget what you have
done for the city
and we will do everything to continue
to take care of
you, we are delighted to have one
retired k-9 dog that's
hiding in the corner.
all right, without further ado if we can
call forward folks that are going to be
pinning the badge
so for sgt. Mayberry, his daughter charlotte
, come forward please.
1st sgt.
king , his
sister, marissa.
and I will be pinning sgt. Carney's
badge.
>> at this
time I would like to call forward
our city clerk who will administer
the oath of office and while
she is preparing
a want to recognize in the police department
obviously police
on the streets are delivering service
that the community needs
and keeps them safe
but next to that work being done some
of the most
important people in the department
in leadership
by the front-line supervisors 24 hours
a day
providing support , leadership and
guidance in the mentorship
for officers coming into the agency
.
it takes a lot to go through the testing process.
preparing yourselves to do it
and these 3 individuals have done
everything they need to do to earn
this position.
and the coming months the coming years
will demonstrate that through their
hard work. I
appreciate you stepping up to do this
and behind them we have
2 more sergeants promoted
so it is a big deal for martinez police
and maybe the most
sergeants promoted in a short period
of time.
without further ado I will turn it
over to the city
clerk to minister the oath of office.
>> thank
you chief, good evening everyone.
sergeants please raise
your right hand and repeat
after me. I, state your name
to solemnly affirm
that I will support and defend
the constitution of the
united states
and the constitution of the state
of california.
against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
that I will bear
true faith. And allegiance to the same.
that I
take this obligation freely .
without any mental reservation.
or
purpose of evasion. And I will
well and faithfully discharge
the duties
of the office I am about to enter.
that is it, congratulations.
[ applause ]
>>
at this time all
pd staff that have come you are free to
go next door, for the dinner and to
the rest of
the community, thank you for your
support we
could not do the job without your
support cheering these guys on that
was a
good cheering section, thank you.
>> next up is the chamber of commerce,
if you would like to
come up.
>>
thank you, all right.
hello everyone,
I am the president of the chamber
of
commerce and tonight we are celebrating
a special business of the month and
I am honored to do this one in
the business community we talk about,
1st of all sorry
let me back up I want to thank
the mayor and city council for having
us tonight, thank
you everyone and city staff and my
chamber
staff for being here. In the business community
we
talk about the successes
of businesses and a special success
is when a business is able to start and
and last for a really long time and
then move on without the business
closing, have the business change hands
and that is a
huge tremendous success story when
a small business can do that and the
california
magic club is a great example of that situation.
jerry griffin started the
magic theater many years ago.
has been a fixture of martinez 21
years and announced
his retirement last month. And
now taking the home he
has bought the business and is carrying
on the magic
and we could not be more thrilled
for knowing that jerry
is able to lead
, lead to the next phase of
his dream and that john is
going to be able to carry on his dream
as well within
the business. So I want to thank and
honor both
jerry and john as business
of the month for chamber of commerce and
to wish you both well, great success and
to
applaud you for what you are doing
in the community
right now. Before
I turn it over we have a presentation,
we will go with
angela from senator grayson's office
and then also making
a presentation .
>>
thank you hello again
my name is angela from the office
of senator tim grayson, honored
to be here to present certificate
of recognition
to the california magic club. I want
to join with others recognizing the
california magic club
as the martinez business of the month,
dedication to excellence and valued
contribution in which the quality
and strength of the community.
on behalf of the 9 senate district
congratulations.
>>
once again my name is ,
and representing the assemblywoman
district 15
and on behalf of the california state legislature
I would like to recognize california
magic club. Proud to recognize california
magic club
as business of the month november
2025,
this entertainment
and dining establishment has enriched
the community by blending exceptional
hospitality with
timeless artistry of live magic
for its welcoming atmosphere, support
for talent and dedication to offering memorable
experiences, this
reflect the dedicated service and
meaningful role that you play in enriching
the community. Congratulations
on this milestone.
>>
I would also like to recognize you,
mr. Jerry. Proud to celebrate the
milestone of
your retirement marking the culmination
of
more than 20 years of dedicated service
to the california
magic club
and martinez community. Throughout
your remarkable
tenure artistry and commitment has
made you a beloved figure
in the
martinez business district. I extend
my heartfelt appreciation for outstanding
contributions and wish
you great fulfillment and joy in the years ahead.
>> I will turn it over to say
a few words.
>> I will keep it short
I am a person of few words. Thank
you very very much for this. I am
very humbled and grateful
for this acknowledgment.
as I looked around the
room the 1st person I saw when I came
in was joe sitting
over there. That gentleman was here
in town 21
years ago when we 1st got started
he would come in
and have lunch when we were serving
lunch but for
anyone in business for themselves
they know it's a lot of hard
work, sweat and a few
tears when you get started. I am very grateful
we have been
here as long as we have and it
is a wonderful time and I want to
say thank you to the city
who welcomed me so well back in the day
when we opened on april
fools' day of 2004. I had been to
a number of cities,
the one I grew up in, antioch, pleasant
hill where I had my
magic store at the time and there
was a lot of hoops to jump through
and a young lady by the name of debbie
dodson who had a
business in town said you have to
come to martinez and see
what they are doing so when I came down
a lady
by the name of leanne I can't remember
her last name she was
the business development lady at the
time, she
took me around and showed me all of
this. Everyone, the gentleman in charge
of
the business building codes and everything
like that, he took
me in and made it very easy
to get started so I want to say how
grateful I am to the city
of martinez and all the help you have
given me over the years
now to my dear friend john
who I have known at least 30 years
and as the old song
goes. I do believe that truly so thank
you
very much everyone. Thank you.
>> I will keep it even shorter. I
want
to say thank you.
a great honor to be welcomed to the
community in this way.
truly appreciate everyone coming down
to recognize
what jerry has done over the course
of 21 years in business and I
hope to have 21 more. Thank
you very much.
>>
who has the microphone?
>> all right, next item
is a thrown labs update.
mike, will you be introducing them?
gotcha okay.
they will be promoted there in the
virtual audience.
>> while getting promoted for anyone
who is
not aware the thrown labs is
our free bathroom available to the public
that
is in the plaza downtown. And it has
been a wonderful at to our plaza area
and looking forward to hearing some
of
the statistics from thrown
labs themselves. Hi natasha.
>> hi how are you? >> great,
thank you for joining us. Okay
I will go ahead and jump in, thank
you for
introducing thrown labs as a new
free bathroom you all have downtown
I'm
trying to share my screen but it is
not allowing
me to is there another
, another thing I need to do
to be able to share the screen?
>>
you should
be able to share. Can you try again?
>> yes.
>> sorry
it's going to have me leave and come back.
I will be right back.
>> she actually had
to log out completely.
it will be 1 minute.
>> while she
is doing that should we jump ahead
to public , can I rearrange
the agenda and to the consent
calendar 1st then we go back to public comment?
>> that is within your proper.
>> let's do consent calendar
as we wait for her to reconnect in
case we get a bunch of public comments,
for
the consent calendar there are items
5
through 16. Does
anyone on council want to pull items off
the consent calendar this evening?
>>
I don't have my agenda up
but I think it is item 13.
>>
I was going to say 13.
>>
you want to pull that one okay. In
that case I
will open up
to public comment. If there are any
consent calendar items 5
through 12 and 14 through 16 for those
of you in council
chambers does anyone have comments
on
consent calendar items excluding item 13?
how about anyone
in the virtual audience?
>>
those attending virtually please use
the raise hand feature.
I have no hands.
>>
all right we will bring this back
to council for final
comments or emotion.
>>
make a motion to pass consent calendar
items 5 through 12 and 14
to 16 correct?
>> 2nd. >> all in favor?
excellent.
>> the motion
passes.
>> is she back online or can
we proceed?
>> she is back online. >>
pause on item 13 go back to
it and go back to natasha.
>>
all right
trying again thank you everyone sorry
about that.
>> there we go.
>> we were just admiring
your santa claus earrings.
>>
thank you, they are actually cows
dressed as santa.
>>
even more.
>> thank you,
they have been my mom's for 30 years
so I will let her know you
liked them. Thank you, as you heard
before I
am from thrown labs, the new free
bathroom in martinez. Here today to
give you a
quick overview of what the thrown
bathroom is. I want
to give anyone who has not heard about thrown
or is not familiar with the difference
of what
we have to offer versus a traditional
public
restroom we will give you a quick
overview and talk about how the throne
in martinez is going so far so one
of the benefits
is we are able to collect a lot
of awesome data , not on your specific
usage,
I swear but on usage trends in general
so
we will go over that and time at the
end if
anyone has specific questions.
jumping into how we
got here today. Martinez was the 1st
city to actually bring
smart restrooms to the bay
area and after you we had south
san francisco and berkeley follow suit.
one to highlight you as you are the
leaders of innovation of the bay area
when it comes to smart restrooms which
has been exciting to see this newer
innovative bathroom
really take hold into your town
and we have seen comments from
users letting us know it has made
it easier for residents to shop, dine
and stay around main street
known to have a public restroom option
available
to them. You might be
wondering what is different about
the thrown
advised this public restroom something
we're
talking about today? The throne is a innovative
new smart bathroom
so it is ada compliant making it easy
for folks to
use even in a wheelchair,
fast and flexible we can pick it up
it is prefabricated and
move it to the place we want to be
in with no hookups and for
that reason, no hassle, you don't
have to have a sewage system or plumbing
system underground and you don't have
to have electrical hookups if you're
able to access solar so that makes
it easy for
you to put it where you might need
a portable bathroom.
we also have smart systems
in place that promote user accountability
so while
in some traditional bathrooms you
may have issues
around users using it or misusing
the space we don't see that
as much in throne because we have
accountability
systems built in and we have smart
cleaning system we will talk more
about where we are able
to proactively and reactively clean
thrones based off of usage patterns
and we hold all the
cleaning and maintenance for you.
this slide
says the same thing. Wanting the highlights,
you don't have to do upfront capital cost
where traditionally you may have to
do a lot of planning to make a new
public
bathroom, this, you can deploy quickly
because you
don't have to spend the time planning
and digging
and doing the upfront capital that you would
do
in traditional bathrooms, able to
deploy thrones within hours of knowing
where
we will put it and then planning
in advance. Highlights include having
a baby changing
station in which we know parents comment
they appreciate
having a clean space to take their child
into the restroom. We are
launching this qr code
integration with our system
that makes it accessible for blind
and low
vision folks coming to all thrones
fleetwide
2026 so we are excited to make it
go beyond what is necessary
to be ada compliant, but even
become more accessible for a larger variety
of folks and we have the option to
add
menstrual product dispensers and sharps
containers and other things
that make ours really accessible
for a larger group of audience so this is
a photo
of what it might look like out in
the wild.
one of
the things I mentioned was smart cleaning and
the smart cleaning system is designed around
a couple of
different inputs. If we know the throne
has
been used a lot or folks are commenting
the throne was
really dirty, maybe somebody was washing
their hands and they splashed everywhere
where they had thrown the paper towels
to the side rather than putting
it in the bin users give us feedback,
they ask how is the experience with
throne today or can they rate cleanliness
so if we start to see that going down
that goes into the algorithm and how
many times has
the throne been used
since the last clean as well as additional
pieces
that go into this formula. That tells
us when do we need
to go out and service the throne proactively
so
we can maintain a really sparkling
service experience for any user who
will use one
so that's what the flow will look
like
a user uses the throne they are asked
how it is
that goes to the algorithm
and you can see the algorithm of the
cleaner who
goes into clean the throne and send
the update saying that it is good
to go. So far
while the throne has been in martinez
here are results to date.
from that cleanliness score that
users are putting in
after use we
have maintained 4.3 out of 5 average
cleanliness score for the duration
of the time
we had the throne which is pretty
good anything
over 4 is pretty remarkable. Seems
like folks in martinez have taken
good care of
the throne and see it
as part of their community. We can
tell from
pieces like
there been no instances of vandalism
to the bathroom and we have had
no users with access restricted
due to repeated misuse, to explain that
we
have this accountability mechanism built
into the
throne where if you're inside,
your use is tied to a user id attached
to your phone number
so it does not tell us natasha is using
the throne but user abc is using the throne
and if the person goes in and misuses
the throne which could mean they
stay past the allotted 10 minute time
period or
their smoking in the throne or doing
something else that can spark
a sensor to tell us somebody is misusing it
they will get a warning saying they
have missed used
the throne they are asked
to not do it again
and if they continue to misuse that
they will have access restricted so
that accountability is one of the
ways we make sure folks are
taking care of this shared resource.
in martinez we have had 0% of
total user base be restricted so it
is being well
taken care of it is not being vandalized
and people
having positive experience with how
clean it is.
we also see folks
are not staying past the allotted time
so, in 15 minutes 99.8% of people
are leaving
and most people take less than 2 minutes
so it's not a place
that's having any loitering or
any vandalism issues. It has become
a great shared resource and we see
that in the data.
one of the other positive things I
wanted
to highlight is 34% of users have
come
back more than once so this is a testament
to
how much this is a community resource,
folks are using it multiple times.
last year I want to share copy
and pasted comments directly from users
that they have shared with
us. 1
user uses the throne and asked how
the
expense was if they let us know on
a
scale of 1 to 5 over text they are
asked if
they would like to leave additional
comments about their use.
these are some comments that folks
have shared
and one of
the best ones was amazing expense,
I was panicking for any place for
relief,
this experience blew my mind,
10 out of 10 will be back again probably.
great that folks are going out of
their way to
leave these positive comments and share
their experience back with us
and we want to make sure to share
back with
you all.
I believe this slide up in case anyone
is
reading them but just wanted to pause.
I know that was quick. Does anyone
have
questions or any high-level thoughts
or reactions?
>> all the council microphones are
off, but they are
giggling about it being a magical
place.
>> only disneyland is magical.
>> I would like to state for the
record when I have had friends, when
we have
been out and about and they have commented looking
for a restroom or something
and I remind them the throne is there
and they come back and report
that it
was a magical place so that's real
and it's possible that was my
comment. Anyway,
thank you very much for the report
out, that is super
helpful. Really nice to hear that
there have been no
recorded vandalism's because I know
you know this, but we had put a party
or 2 immediately adjacent
to where the throne is located.
it was a burned down,
we constantly had to pay more because
things like
debris and needles and things you
cannot clean were
getting thrown in it. So it was becoming
quite the headache. These
great stats are perfect.
it's exactly what we were going for and
I want to congratulate you and thank
you
and the engineering team. I'm not sure
if it was you or someone else who
found this and brought
it to us, someone researched it.
so our chief of police
brought it to us and we were in agreement
that this would be worth the money
because we could get
it out rolling quickly and
we did from the day we improved it
it was up and running in 3 months
or less.
less than 90 days which was amazing.
so it was proof
of concept
that has proven itself and turned
out to be a really good
solution. Those are my very positive comments
so thank you, appreciate
it.
>> thank you so much for sharing
that. More than happy to
do additional readouts later if you
want more data
with updates. Thank you all for having
me today
and it was great to get a chance to
join you.
>> before
you go, thank you so much for
the presentation. I appreciate it,
I loved
what you said at the outset which
is we were
the 1st in the bay
so I'm happy to hear that martinez
has won the proverbial
game of thrones
, thank you for that sorry I could
not resist.
>> years that if you would like.
>> one quick question for you
which was that
, you know when this concept came
before us
initially we were looking at a couple
of different
models if I am not mistaken. Looking
at the portable
versus one that was permanent
and was the permanent theirs or not?
>> it was a actual build. >>
okay, so that answers that so
thank you. My question was
, do you have like
I don't think there's a way to capture
this
unless people volunteer, but
curious to know the demographics of
the people using it because I
would still venture particularly for
senior citizen
population it might be
a little intimidating because they
are not really familiar with
the scanning and all
that involved so just wondering how
have
you worked to address that? Do you
will
send out ambassadors to help?
like for instance we have a big holiday
parade coming up in a couple
weeks and I would imagine it's going
to get used a lot hopefully. In
fact we might need more. I
was wondering do you have thoughts
on that in terms of
you get maybe
the elder population to be comfortable with
the technology?
>> I heard
2 questions and I will answer the
1st, question about
if we know anything about demographics
we don't
and one of the
rules is don't be creepy so we don't have
a way we don't want to
create a way of knowing anything much about
our users.
we want them to have that privacy
so it's in the
privacy policy where not collecting
that demographic data
so not be able to insert that part.
the question
of making it accessible for the elderly
we have a few ways of entering, so
on the front live a qr code that says
scan to enter that gives you a shortcut
to a text message
when you scan a text message pre-populated
will come up on the phone and you
click send,
we know scanning is the barrier
you're mentioning. Some folks
are little bit less familiar with
how to use the phone
to scan so there is another option
underneath that says
or text this word to this
phone number and the throne
will open. Instead of doing shortcut
through
the scan they can text directly and
we find
that makes it a little more accessible
where
some folks may want to scan because
it's faster,
they cannot figure that out
or if the phone is unable to get the
qr
code to work, some people struggle
with that and they
are able to use the text message option.
>>
thank you so much
really helpful to know.
>> question
for the
city manager for a short time we were
talking about a 3rd option
of having physical cards
you could use, did we ever roll it out?
>> we did get
some cards. Interesting because this
conversation
about demographic and such that
training either already has occurred
will be scheduled at the senior
center. We are going to do that for
that reason
in case people still see the barrier.
but again , trying
to encourage them through education
to use the options available on the throne
with the hopefully distant 3rd the
cards themselves and there's a limited
quantity anyway
it is a finite number. How those will
be distributed is up for discussion
obviously the senior center
is a logical place to host that so
that is in the works.
>> I have only ever received one complaint
because they
were struggling trying to get in. Otherwise
I have received nothing
but positive responses and I
was surprised oftentimes with qr codes there
is some thinking that
the phone does but because this will
prompt
a pre-populated text message
it is way simpler and sort of happens
and you send it and the
door opens so it becomes more intuitive
than people might be concerned
that it would be.
I have only received
one has anyone in council received complaints
or compliments or concerns from the
public?
>> complements more than anything.
were appreciative of the fact we responded
to the need , the prior set
up was placing
undue burden on some downtown businesses
so they
very much appreciated. If anything
I'm glad based on tonight's presentation
I would love to find ways to see how
we could bring an additional
1 at some point down the road
but given where we are with financial.
thank
you.
>> thank you
, did you have a question?
>> I wanted to commend you because
this
is amazing. I never thought we would
get this far
in and have 0 vandalism so whatever
you're doing holding people accountable
seems
to work well I wish you
would come down take over all parks because
0 vandalism is amazing
and I get rave reviews,
I walked downtown all the time and
I get
rave reviews from people down there
quite often.
I saw one person struggling to
get in. And then one of the
business owners took his time, came
over and showed
him the process
and it worked out wonderful. So yes.
I am a big fan and thank you.
>> of
course, one follow-up comment we
can see the breakdown of how many
people are entering via
the text and how many are entering
via
the app and martinez overtime has
moved more toward the app so
they are 20% of total
users individual users getting into
the app so they are starting to
see this as this is something that
will
be here forever and we want to go
ahead and download
the app because it's going to make
it faster for them
to open. In the app they can click
one button that says
begin use and they can walk in and
we have seen
that number the percentage
took up overtime.
>> that's great.
>> I did not know there was
an app and I have been paying attention
. Thank you so much for joining us
tonight. Really
appreciate it. Say hello to
the gang for us. We saw some of the
throne
folks at the conference in long beach
and they give us the spectacular pins
in
the shape of thrones and we were wearing
them and everyone
was jealous and I'm really sad I forgot
mine at home.
>> really cool they create a conversation.
people ask why do
you have a throne ?
>> thank you, have a great evening.
>> have
a great one everyone.
>> all right,
let's proceed through the agenda,
I skipped
public comment so I will
go back to public comment then back
to the consent calendar item.
we
don't normally take comments on the presentation
but you are welcome to talk during
public comment because we're going
into
it now so I can call on your 1st.
okay so I have one
speaker card and you can step up
after that. 1st
up.
>> hard to follow that last presentation
but I will
try. Hello I live in
pleasant hill I am here to as
for the councils help with preventable
public health crisis directly impacting
the city's district 3
and a lot more. We need
help getting unleaded aviation fuel
into the
county buchanan field, years after
other airports offer the widely available
unleaded fuel, buchanan continues
to
only offer
toxic leaded fuel, each propeller
plane flying out of concord
releases an estimated 2.3 teaspoons
of
toxic lead dust per hour.
in 2016 there were over 122,000
takeoffs and landings , that's a lot
of lead. Flight schools based at
buchanan burn leaded fuel
as they do loops around the airfield
all
day long every day, our concern needs
to focus on the counties
lack of concern.
please read the airport director's
county
website update regarding the transition
to
unleaded fuel it states that an
unleaded option has been on the market
for the last 6 years and
he added only 68%
of the
piston powered planes can use it. He is
pointing out the failure of the county
to provide 60% of all propeller planes with an
unleaded option for the last
6 years. Shame on them, lead is a
well-known health risk delaying
6 years seems criminal what
can we do? 1st, read about
san jose's read
hillview airport horrible results
from a study in 2020
on the lead levels
in children's blood, they absorb easily
and is only causes permanent
cognitive damage. Next contact supervisor
preston scales she is aware of the
health crisis,
urge her to use community benefit
award funds to offer incentives to
pilots so
they will use unleaded fuel. Next,
contact supervisor
john , one of the
reps on the board of the bay area
air district and
ask him to get
blood testing done within a mile and
a half of the end of the
runway's of buchanan. In 2021 john
and the board petitioned
the state health department to do more
blood testing at other airports,
the air board told us it has a lot
of money from fines. Our
families need a study
so they can know the danger and how
to deal with it.
I believe there are 7000 kids attending
school within
1 1/2
miles of buchanan, please work to
protect kids from these lead spewing
flying recreational vehicles.
thank you.
>>
thank you all right. Would you like
to comment? Come up
to the microphone, otherwise people
online cannot
hear your.
>> I was going to ask about this throne
was
going to keep people from sleeping
in it? You know at nighttime the homeless
people or whatever ?
>> I think
has natasha hung up
the phone ? I
will answer the question and we can
get more information. Because of the
way
that the throne
the way it works the doors automatically
open
after a set amount of time so they
inherently cannot sleep in it because
I have regular monitoring with
access, via the phones so
they are able to know someone is in
there exceeding the 15 minute limit.
that was the data she presented.
>>
thank you.
some easier than having her.
is anyone else in the
council chambers with public comment
this evening?
would you like to?
are you good? Okay
all right how about in the virtual audience?
>> for those attending virtually
please use the raise hand feature now.
I have no hands.
>> all right will come back to
council, sorry for rearranging the
agenda as a reminder
consent calendar we did approve items
5 through 12 and 14 through 16
and we pulled item 13 which
is adopt a resolution approving public
art application. So I think you pulled
1st would
you like to ask your questions?
>>
sure, thank you. I don't
believe I am the only one that wanted
to pull for
additional questions.
I have a couple of questions, the
1st one has to do with
staff report there was a mention
because I know we asked for neighbors
to be notified and it did indicate
november 7 there were notices
distributed to the neighbors
, that is all that it
said in the staff report. There was
not any follow-up
if anyone had concerns or comments or
anything like that
so I was curious if we had
information along those lines that
we wanted to hear
about tonight.
>> so, in the notices
we directed people to use the public comment
when the agenda is posted so we
did provide information about when
that would
be posted and also
provided my direct contact information
and I received
one inquiry on how to submit
public comment and provided the agenda information
for
that person.
>> okay, thank you. My other questions
have to
do with some of the feedback that
we provided
in altering
, somewhat the mural.
I'm not sure
what we asked for or what we
had wanted the artist to consider was
reflected
in the new potential
drawing.
so I want to point out a couple of
things. So the
1st drawing, the original has some beautiful
little fish along the central
and that actually
kind of blends talking about stylistic
and having everything planned
the 2nd, the newest one to me
not really
conformed to our request to
have it more stylistic
content consistent
that is one of my comments
and we talked about the silhouette
figures and we
were not really
we wanted something different from
the silhouettes
which is the black silhouettes in the
upper
right side so those are now , there
is additional silhouette figures
and I thought we talked about alternates
to that.
and I think there was another comment
in the staff
report about the boy on the skateboard
and that seemed
to be looking identical. So I'm not
really sure that this
rendering reflected what we had asked.
so I just wanted to kind of put those
comments out. On the original, the
girl and all the greenery
and the water because the water reflects
the
straits and the fish I did like that
I think that is beautiful I don't
know that I like
the random flowers and things in the
2nd rendering
it takes away from the waterfront and
we wanted to have that reflected.
those are some
of my comments. I will let my colleagues
express their comments.
>> to piggyback
on your comment regarding the ,
the figure , the children figures,
I thought we had said
to decide if they were going
to be silhouettes or if they were
going to
be lifelike. So, it
appears from the
update, that there was no changes
to the children
imagery
there is still the, they are the same
and
I thought that was one of the key pieces
to establish some consistency on the
visual look of the
young people. And then,
I also had the
question that
that you brought up in terms of what
was feedback from
the surveys so that was addressed
>> so just want to share we do have
mce and the artist
are present at tonight's meeting virtually
so they can add to the information
staff is going to share we
did include in the written staff report
a table
which summarize the comments expressed
by
the council with a response, in terms
of how the artist revised
the mural design.
the intent of doing that
was because, there is a couple locations
where
the changes are ever so subtle. But
when you have the ability of
blowing it up and having it more in
scale with what we will ultimately
see, those changes are more apparent.
a good example of that is with the
boy figure so the
boy figure how
the boy is slightly different
in particular the outline and it is
being revised
so the outline style
is more consistent with the outline
style of the primary
woman figure in the foreground.
>> I get that and I look at
the comments in terms of what we propose
and what the outcome was but
I very specifically remember
us making note
determining which style we're
going to use
if we're going to make them all looked childlike
and then the silhouettes should have been
childlike or if the decision was to
make them silhouettes and
make everybody. So
to the point, it seems like that was
not addressed
>>
I think it may be helpful if we can check
with the artist.
timothy hahn.
>>
tim has been promoted it will take
a 2nd.
>>
hi can you hear me?
to address that,
a lot of this has to do with not overwhelming
the viewer so there is a
visual hierarchy. We want a focal
point and we
want it to read we can
definitely add details, but
they are intentionally left simple
so that it does not take
away from the focal point, the main
character and the 2nd read
might be the kid where the flowers
and the
3rd or 4th or 5th
might be the children playing. So
when it comes down to it I know they
look like
silhouettes and we will add detail
as we do
that, but a little bit of detail,
just enough to make it fit but not enough
to compete with the other things that
is
kind of my take.
>> I appreciate that.
looking at the children behind the
young
man on the skateboard, they look more lifelike.
have a little more color than
the silhouette so for me I
don't think that's going to significantly
disrupt the imagery
, but again that was a
specific ask out of this
body, in particular if
you look at , with the
proposed design , the sunflowers have
been removed so I do
not think that making those
silhouette children consistent with
the ones behind the skateboarder is
going
to materially disturb this
, this mural.
>> I understand. Apologize for
that. I thought you are mainly talking
about
the kid on the
skateboard side and I missed that
part.
>> no problem.
>> can I jump in? Hi
thank you for clarifying. Is
it possible to have those
the black
silhouettes kind of resemble more
of the children
on the bottom left? Is that something you
could incorporate as a 2nd revision?
is that something that
you can do?
>> yes we can definitely do
that. Yes. I would love
to do that on the fly with you guys
if we get the
approval and if we could not miss
another month
for approvals but yes my answer is
yes we can definitely
make that little more detailed
than it is.
>> okay thank you.
before you got promoted onto
the meeting I had made a comment about
the fish that
were in the original drawing and I
feel like to me
that is very beautiful
and elegant and reflects the waterfront
and the replacement with the flowers
and other things
I feel that,
that actually takes away from the
center image. It
is distracting from the center
image.
>> can
I jump in for a 2nd? I did reach out
to a couple
members of the public and they were very
excited and supportive so
I want to make sure we are not over
projecting our personal artistic opinions
on this particular design because
I think there's a lot of ways
murals like this can go so just so
you know your comment now sort of
negates your comment
so we're back to neutral because she
was super stoked
on that.
>> I would like to say I
am super
not stoked and I like the original
rendering because I think
it more reflects the waterfront
and the picture, the blue around the
center image
really makes the image stand out
a little bit
more from the background and if you
like the flowers are competing and
that is I
guess my personal opinion but I think
others may share that.
>> can I ask a clarifying question?
in regards to
the flowers ,
if you could please
transition to the other image. Okay so
, if you are facing
the mural , directly down and
to the right of the primary
female figure there is the flowers
there were previously
so I understand the comment
in regards to that.
do you share that same comment
in regards to how the flowers have
been added
underneath text in the lower right-hand
corner of the image? Or is it
just the one portion immediately adjacent
to
the female figure that you are
having problems with?
>> for me is
the flowers to the
right of the child.
and where the 2
leaves and the fish were.
>>
thank you for clarifying.
>> does anyone have
any other comments about this, just
those few?
>>
I really appreciate how we brought
the
boys and girls club logo forward.
I think that is wonderful to call out.
and I really appreciate all the hard work.
>> if it is
okay I will open up to public comment
if we have any
then we will bring it back anyone
in
council chambers wants to comment
on the art? Yes,
go ahead.
>>
why she the main focal part she's
not a child? The other thing I think
it
should be more based on the kids that
actually used to go to the boys and
girls club that
went to go play basketball
and have a good time and get together
as children. That is what
should be, the unity of children
getting together as a focal point
on the building rather
than flowers and whatever.
you have that in the background maybe,
but the main
part is the children.
thank you.
>> thank you.
any other comments?
how about in the
virtual audience anyone with comments on
this item?
>>
please use the raise hand feature.
I have no
hands.
>> I will bring this back
to council. I appreciate the comments that
debbie made. I think what I heard
was that there is a couple of comments
we would like to
see incorporated, my preference would
be to prove this evening so they can
move forward. Does anyone
on council have concerns with approving
while making note
of the comments?
>>
if we approve it, how do we
have any kind of visual rendering
of what's going up onto
the wall of the boys and
girls club?
>> well michael did you
want to respond?
>> can I recommend
if there is support from the council
you could designate one member on
the council that staff
will share the revised proposal
in response to
your specific direction to ensure
that it is in
adherence with that direction.
>>
this is the most
comments our council has ever provided
on any art that has gone up on the
walls and I think we are overthinking this
and I don't think we should be providing
input like that so that is
my opinion.
if I am outvoted that's fine if the
rest of my
counselor like to have somebody who
follows us to otherwise every other
art piece
we have approved at 75% conceptual level
and we have entrusted the artist to
paint it and
I would like to point out tim has
been the artist for all the other
murals and everyone has been okay
up
to this point so I'm not super excited
about
holding go ahead.
>> to
me this is a little different because
I think there is
an understanding I had it changed
last time
there was a understanding or misunderstanding that
this had to do with the boys and girls club
we
had a speaker talk about that and
in actuality
this does not have to do necessarily with
the boys and girls club this is about
an energy company talking about the future.
so it is confusing because when I
was here I thought it had to do
with the boys and girls club and had
the same questions where
they're not children why does it not
reflect the boys and girls club so
I was mistaken
so this is more about the energy company
and
and the mce and their vision and
their future and the vibrancy of
the company.
>> I'm sorry.
mce is the utility company that provides
energy not
an arbitrary company
that has come in.
>> correct they
provide energy. It
is different from a merrill that depicts
you know the animals on the
floor and that's not
very controversial or has any issues
or
whatever. To me it is different I
feel this is different where it is placed
and
what they are depicting it
is a little bit different from the
other murals that we have had I want
to make sure that we are all in agreement
and what
it is reflecting in the consistency
in the image across the entirety?
>>
thank you does anyone have any other comments?
>> with a lack of comments would
anyone be interested in making
a motion?
I will make a motion that we approve
this
art proposed proposed to
us sorry. Which
is item 13
item 13 on the consent
calendar.
>>
>> does that include the suggestions
around the children?
>> I will restate.
I'm a we adopt
resolution approving the public art
application and proposed mural to
include the recommendation provided
by council but not requiring it and
allowing the artist to have
artistic license with the final design.
>> 2nd.
>> all in favor please say aye.
any opposed any abstaining?
>> the motion passes.
>> to put it on the record
if there is as staff
determines a more significant departure
from the direction where the
recommendations that were provided
this evening,
similar to what happened with another mural
we would bring it back to the
entire council for consideration.
>>
thank
you. Moving on public hearing items
number 18 I know this is why the rest
of
you are here this evening conduct
public hearing and adopt resolution
adopting the
marina fee schedule.
>> we have a
general business item
number 17.
>> sorry I skipped it receive
update whole discussion provide input
to staff on the 2526 general fund budget
and
cip project list. Thank you, I am
so sorry.
>> so tonight
we will give you a brief
check in on where we are with the
budget and where we are with
capital improvements.
to lead us in the presentation I will
turn it over to assistant city manager.
>> great, thank you. I will try to
keep
this brief and we have folks for the
next item so bear with me if I
talk a little fast. As mike mentioned
when we adopted
the annual budget for this fiscal
year we made
a commitment to come back to you before
regularly scheduled midyear review
in the fall
to say checking on how we are doing
for the economic uncertainty that
we had.
the information that
fit into this report is from july
1 to october 31.
a little over 1/4.
junior sitting here next to me,
in case there is detailed questions,
we will do our
best to pull up details on the fly
, but
I will give a pretty good check in
on various
department budgets that I think
were of higher interest during the
budget adoption back
in june. And as a reminder we
do have our midyear review which is
more comprehensive, more detail
, that's coming up in february.
so a quick agenda I will provide a
budget overview sort of where we were
when we adopted the budget,
what were the conditions, I will be
focusing tonight
progress on the general fund, expenditures
and revenues. I will give a brief
marina fund update although I know
that
will be the focus of one of the upcoming
items and then our public works
director will provide a cip
update, everything fairly high-level.
a quick strategic plan alignment, this
item tonight aligns with goal
a fiscal around
financial sustainability. A quick
budget overview.
going into this fiscal year
we had various cost drivers and revenue drivers
that went into the formation of the
budget ultimately resulting in a starting
deficit of $1.5 million
so I will not go through each
of these individually, but you may
recall cost drivers include continued
increases to
insurance, continued labor increases
due
to cola and step and
merit increases, unfunded liabilities
which are said to continue ramping
up
starting this fiscal year over the
next 5 years as well as retiree health
and
of course one of our biggest cost
drivers which is the general
fund support to the marina
which has continued to be a subsidy, year-over-year.
on the revenue side
as we have reported over a handful
of years now
expenses are just rising
at a pace faster than revenue is increasing.
so, there has been
slowing revenue over the last couple
of years, of
course we know there's a lot of economic
uncertainty now we are keeping track
of so we have budgeted
underperforming sales tax
with reduced permit, we budgeted
for reduced permit and inspection
revenues although
I think I have good news tonight about
that, lower
interest income
and lower-than-expected franchise
fees. So how did we deal with that
when we were here in june trying to
figure out how to close the $1.5 million gap?
all of the departments came together and
every single department submitted
budget cuts, I want to remind you
that there is
no potential to restore the budget cuts,
these are ongoing budget cuts that have
to remain until we figure out more revenue.
until we find more revenue so budget
cuts what
we did was we looked at
3 year trends across all city departments
and
we focused on making sure we could
maintain baseline services or core services
and anything that was nice to have
that could
be deferred is what we focused
on reducing. So, in administration
a lot of this was looking holistically
at all departments were clean above supplies,
meeting costs, training, we centralize costs
to make it more efficient. We took
a good look at part-time staff, even
full-time staff when
we were feeling the vacancies.
we could achieve budget savings by
filling a position later in the fiscal year,
we opted to do that.
as always we looked at consultants
and really considered the minimum need
for the city. So we
did give up our emergency services contract
that was under the police department.
we
gave up a planning consultant to defer
short term housing
and we reduced , for the reduced
planning on call consultant
within the planning department.
we also eliminated private security
at
the homeless and this was a priority
robust conversation
we were dust maintenance
but it was based on 3 year trends
we felt good about. In
light of these budget reductions we
made if you recall
we also increased we chose
to increase city manager contingency budget
up to 130,000 so the thought was if
something came up, we
have some wiggle room we can go to
the city manager and request it for
. So,
a very quick progress report on current
general fund, this always looks
pretty stunning after the 1st quarter because
we always have a lot more expenses
than we do revenue
so I want to caution how
we look at the information. Early
expenses come in right in july
which is the
up from pension and insurance payments,
large lump-sum payments
along with all the typical labor costs
that happen in the 1st several months
of the fiscal year. And
then on the revenue side while we
are collecting
sales tax and franchise fees and
cannabis fees
are not collecting property tax. So
we don't get property
tax until later so that is why there
is a significant
imbalance. On the expenditure side
I
will give a quick highlight on some
of the, how the
department's are doing, but
if you look at this slide here we are
doing fine. We are 41% a budget, we
don't see any
red flags, as I mentioned up from
we spent $7.6
million toward insurance and pensions in
july. Our
operating expenses are tracking with
budget. There has
been no impact to core services
and I was
telling this to somebody earlier.
since I have been
here this is the 1st quarter where
we have
not had an emergency. So in the past
we had
a mercury spill or the incident
that occurred where we needed to run high
on police overtime or
help with certain department expenses
and we are tracking just well for once
, so we're
happy to hear that. Let me explain
briefly because
these items came up in
the budget process, repair and maintenance,
we have 52%
that has been spent
overall, so far. About $3.2 million
repair maintenance budget across the city.
namely what we
are tracking if there's anything high
it is
utilities across the city that
we have seen that might come in a
little over budget.'s we will track
for the midyear and if we have to
make changes
down the road we will. I did talk
to our superintendent and I asked
his subjective opinion on how
things are going and again with
no unforeseen issues that have popped up
but we know it is early and inclement
weather
is coming and that is usually where
his crew starts to
see the
unbudgeted and unplanned expenses
pop up due to
rain or any other sort of inclement
weather. Also,
the pool is something most expenses
occurred or significant
portion occurred over the summer.
that is tracking the budget.
we expect to be on target and then
lastly I will mention the city manager
contingency
which I said we bolstered we have
only spent 2500 of that contingency fund
so everything is looking very good.
on the
revenue side, we are 10% of budget
at
this point. We
are sales tax and measure x
is tracking on target we budgeted
$9.8 million for the
whole fiscal year. So far we
have received $2.1 million.
mentioned earlier property tax will
come later. One of the
, one of the benefits
that I have seen digging into the
data as our permit
and fees which we thought would
be slowing or low is actually doing
pretty well so we are ahead of the budget
on
permit fees
and one of the things that jill told
me could be the reason
was we have had several significant
tenant improvement
projects come through, increased activity
at
the refineries with recent submission
of the river house
of the housing application which again
is a pretty significant
permit fee to be processed
with 94 additional building permits
received for the same timeframe than
last year
compared to last year.
>> can I interrupt?
you said activities at the
refineries are we talking about because
the refinery is not in
the city so we don't get any permit
fees or
anything.
>> a small portion
of the refinery that does come to
us with permits.
>>
is that what happened last year? We're
talking
about the other ones?
>> this year.
it would be.
>> okay I know we will dig
into the marina a
little more robustly next. I want
to note
we had budgeted $560,000
to be on loan from the general fund
to the
marina fund.
so far we are at $126,000 or just
over. That is lower than what
we budgeted and the reason for that
is because
early on in the fiscal year
f3 was fully staffed so they were
not operating with
the budget provided with the number
of staff. I think it is 3 or 4 people
in total
so we do expect
those expenses to go up. Revenue collected
over there
is $90,000,
expenditures have been $117,000.
total expenditures at 57% of
the budget and it is primarily
due to the labor cost savings as I
mentioned.
the net loss is 27,000 now so we
will continue to track.
it is early but if we can come in
under budget on 560,000 we
will be happy with that.
and before turnover to joe
a quick reminder we adopted the 5 year
cip at the same time as
the budget.
one small amendment made to the cip
when we adopted it where we
shifted $50,000 from the downtown plaza
to the centennial project.
and then one item I want to mention
coming up midyear we don't have to
flush it out tonight, but since
we do have a waterfront revitalization
project
underway which is exploring the amphitheater
and obviously adding robust activity in
the area including
entertainment and retail we are recommending
an amendment midyear regarding the
waterfront stage so
this is the
budget we have been partnering with
kiwanis on.
and a to have a personal conversation
about this
it is not make logical sense to build
a waterfront stage
when we have a whole project being built
so what we have
committed to in the spirit of them
wanting to partner with us on a project
will go back
to the drawing board with them
in a future discussion to see what
we can collaborate
on so I will turn it over
to joe.
>> yes. Good evening.
a quick update
on some of these completed projects.
when we started listing them it
became quite a list and covered all phases
, some highlights were definitely
the fishing pier long
awaited with the ribbon-cutting a
few
weeks ago. It had been packed almost
every day from what I have heard.
the other one I wanted to highlight
was
the hydrant maintenance, we serviced
nearly 1000 fire hydrants
to confirm that they were
flowing and functional.
we did find I believe 3
that were out of service
for a couple of reasons typically
they had been repaired and the valve
had been reopened.
if you have been anywhere
downtown we have completed a huge
amount of paving,
alhambra avenue paging.
we are wrapping up the
zone 3, the downtown paving
with a lot of downtown the final
pieces remaining is striping
probably about 4 days left
of striping.
the zone 3 is
, or zone 4
is in design and zone 2
was completed last summer.
sidewalk projects , you know we did
the accessibility curb ramps,
updated the reimbursement program.
shaving program which we completed
last year over 900 locations shaped
and we are about to go out with another project
and there will be more significant
this spring.
sidewalks with
the gap closure.
we touched on facilities
city hall improvements, the roof is completed.
parks , last year both
sports courts and the
grand opening of pine meadows park
with water, water projects had
extensive water main replacement administered
to the
fire hydrants. We
are about to start construction on
the next water main project and we
are wrapping
up a pump station project
and then if you have been in
the downtown the last couple days
we have finally started
the long awaited infill
on parking lot 4. Started
on monday, depending on the
weather, they might possibly be completed
before thanksgiving.
we
are close to wrapping up the design phase
on the parking meter and destination
sign program
and we are ready to place the order
for the downtown bike racks as
well. So it is moving forward
I think those were the
some of the main highlights.
one of the ones
we wanted to point out was phase 1
street trees
the 150 trees. Unless
we get weeks of weather
our contractor
assures us he can have those completed
by the end of
the year.
>> great.
>> I know
we have bounced back and forth but
I believe it
was 30 ,
32, yes.
>>
I did not hear you say amtrak elevator,
but I can see it.
>>
I was about to say that is under design
right
now and so we have
a contractor, he has looked at it.
he has a plan for that
and we are coordinating security improvements.
with
the capital corridor amtrak improvements.
they have completed
their bid package and their scheduled
to go to coverage by next spring.
>> so, the construction
to clarify , so the
amtrak elevator is on us, security
is on
them and when
security improvements are made we
can move forward.
>> correct. We are going to do
some additional security and hardening improvements
that would be on the city
to secure some of the , the
heating and
ventilation equipment on the platform
and then some
of the ,
securing those so they are not hiding
in
hiding spots and then
lastly one
of our strategic projects and
for the 150th our park master plan
not necessarily cip per se
but it is one of the key projects and
you know we are probably one month
into that . I
think we had our 4th project team
meeting
last week , lauren gave a
pretty complete update on that last week
but we will be kicking off a robust
public
engagement process right after the
1st of the year.
>> so just to conclude, next steps 2026
back to
budget season for us. January,
we will be scheduling a budget and
finance subcommittee meeting. We will
be
bringing the
midyear budget to the finance subcommittee
before going to city council.
we will be kicking off fiscal year
26-27 budget
development process that
happens largely at the staff level
initially before
we bring conversations to the council.
in february we will
bring midyear budget
and then we will bring the cip amendment
we spoke about.
in march we will be a little earlier
but at least by march bringing the
recreation fee update, so
debbie hernandez is working now on
that
and they are studying all of the various
user fees
so they will bring
recommendation to you on that. April is
when we typically
bring the broad city administrative fees
that we bring annually.
in april we will have
a study session, we will update the
long-range forecast
and we will want to talk with council
on fiscal sustainability measures.
we
have spoke , we focus a lot on expenditures
over the last few years pretty much
we
have been taking a chopping block
to a lot of city services and we have
cut millions out of the budget, but
we still have no revenue coming in
so we
really have to sit down and figure
that problem out. So june and I were
talking
about this today putting a study session together
to look at all the options on the
table and get a
sense from the council where you want
us to further pursue.
look forward to that, in may we will
have the fiscal
year 26-27 budget workshop and june
is the adoption. That
concludes our presentation.
>>
thank you so much for the presentation.
the action tonight was to provide
input and hold
discussion. Any specific item that
you would like guidance on or any
feedback on a
particular portion?
>>
so, I think this is more
of a informational update,
if you have questions we are happy to
take them but there is no specific
area. We are tracking well
to budget now with no concerns.
>>
the only question I have was in
the staff report talking about park
maintenance because
I remember the discussion we have lumped
the park maintenance budget reduction
under the city
manager contingency fund. It read
in
the staff report we have reduced park
maintenance
so can you clarify if that
reduction is people related
and action related or
things?
>> things,
we assumed this
budget assumes all positions filled
whether it is
in any department. So it is more
you know equipment or
a fence falls over and we need to
rebuild the fence things
like that, arborists, tree related things
and we are pretty, we feel pretty
good right now that we
have enough budget to deal with those issues.
>> great, thank you. >>
yeah, just
more of a comment, I really appreciate staff's
fiscal responsibility.
you all are doing everything that
you
can, given our
tight budget. This is just more
of a comment.
we need to continue to be mindful
of impacts
that can trickle down
, the federal level .
I know today it
was just announced and california
is
forecasting instead of a $13 billion
budget deficit
for next fiscal year, an
$18 billion budget
deficit and we know when there is a
deficit,
that means more cuts. On
state programs so we just need to
be
mindful because it always has a
trickle-down approach. So, there are
a lot of moving parts that are somewhat
out of our control
at the state and federal level so
we need to
be vigilant and stay close
to see how some of these things happening
above our
head are going to impact us locally.
great job
.
>> I have a question for joe.
you mentioned
the hydrant project we have.
so come early on I think people talked
about
the hydrant project
checking the hydrants could cause
pressure changes and water leaks.
have we experienced anything like
that with
hydrant checks we have been doing
as part of the project?
>> I think
there is
a couple complaints of discolored water
, but it was pretty limited. Actually
it went pretty smoothly.
all the way around.
>>
okay great to hear. 1
other question. This is not
necessarily related, it is related
to paving. I've got comments about paving
I don't think it was paving on ramps
to
highway 4 with that be caltrans?
>> that is a caltrans project. Long
and ongoing. Disruptive.
>> okay I did not
think it was us, but
the striping delay has caused people
a lot of confusion on and off the
highway. The ramps are not striped
and it is difficult to know how to
navigate that
especially at night and it is dangerous
and
I have had some residents talk
about that thinking the city is responsible.
I don't know
if the ramps have been striped already.
I did experience it too
so if there is any
way to speak with them about maybe
more timely
striping because it
is a danger to the residence driving
in the evening.
>> we
can relay those concerns.
some of the off ramp lower portions
have the final
paving have not been striped
, but as of last week they were put
in the final layer
of asphalt on the outside
lanes and striping would be subsequent
to that
in the clear weather.
>> thank you, if you can relay
comments to them to try to do this
more quickly it could cause accidents.
it may have already caused
an accident I'm not sure but people
have been frightened to drive
on and off the highway in the evening
>>
speaking of striping there is a handful
of downtown paving areas not striped
and I reached out to you and you
said in the next couple of weeks
pending the rain?
>> we think there is
3 or 4 days left of striping.
in the clear weather.
>> great, better than I
was thinking.
>> yeah,
I echo
those comments and
I will speak a little bit more about
that at the end of
tonight's meeting. To piggyback
off of what greg said, thank you
this is very helpful. I think
it underscores the work that is
already been undertaken with work
that is before us.
appreciate the opportunity to
provide additional input at the
appropriate time but everything
greg says , spot on.
certain things are within our purview, but
there's a lot of things not within
our purview,
independent factors. Just
like everybody has household budgets
there are things you
can manage and some things you are
not able to manage and the city is
no different. So we have got to focus
on what we can manage. Also
be able to prepare for some of the
things that
might be on the horizon.
federal economic indicators give
me a lot of pause and
then to
greg's point in terms of the headwinds
that the
state is continuing to face as well that
is all going to have
impacts on municipalities such as ours
. To bring it more local
it really underscores the pressing
need for us to be able to identify
the revenue.
so from my standpoint
I think oftentimes we
have seen other jurisdictions there
has been a
quick pivot to let's just ask residents
to pony up more. They go through it
2 years later and
say pony up some more and it is a
never ending cycle and am
grateful that has not been a practice
of this city at
least historically and of the recent council
and debbie is the
veteran here. And I really appreciate
the
fact that you know we have had a
fiscally conservative approach
and are trying to continue to do that,
but I think it really underscores
the importance of the discussion
we are having and we will continue
to have certainly
with the community in terms of where
opportunities
are to help bring us that revenue.
so, those are just my thoughts.
thank you very much.
>>
thank you for the update I think
it is wonderful we have not had
any big things happen to us. So far.
winter is coming, so
I appreciate your hard work.
>>
all right I'm going to open up to
public
comment. Anyone in the council chambers
want to provide?
go ahead, kevin.
>> kevin, you know we are on the cip
budget not the marine item, you know
we
are on cip not the marina?
I will call on you when we get to
the item.
so sorry. Anyone else on
the cip and the
budget update item? He has got flyers.
this is important. Anyone
in the virtual audience want to provide
comment on the cip project list?
>> please use the race
hand feature.
>> I have no
hands.
>> thank you for the update,
since
there is nothing to vote on
it was a good conversation thank you.
moving
on public hearing item 18. Conduct
public hearing
and adopt resolution amending the
marina fee schedule
related to mooring utility and
fees. Who will be presenting tonight?
jill? Go ahead.
>>
put the presentation on.
great.
are you walking out?
okay.
thank you mayor and council members.
tonight we are here
to discuss the
marina fee schedule and recommendation
to adopt resolution amending
the marina fee schedule related to
mooring
utilities and liver board fees.
a brief update how this
particular item aligns with strategic plan
and
that is under the goal of fiscal sustainability
promoting financial health
through long-term planning responsible
budgeting,
cost recovery which is what we are
here tonight
and increased
awareness. To provide a little background,
in october awareness. To provide a
little background, in
october 2024, the staff brought forward
the similar item to have a discussion
about increasing the fees
after our marina operator had left
and we were in the process of taking over
the
marina. It was identified the fees
were not
demonstrated full cost recovery
or getting close to cost recovery
at the time council
provided direction so after hearing
from the community
they wanted to wait
until improvements had been made to
the marina as well as
having staff research a little bit
further about a
water leak as to why we're using so
much water at the time.
since then the water leak has been
resolved, this was
a main underneath the ramp
that has been corrected and fixed.
as
well as the city, in january the city,
in january
2025 brought on f3, to manage
the marina. Since they have arrived
they
have done incredible amount of improvements
and enhancements.
everything related to safety lighting
security, painting, they
have done a lot of repairs to docs,
building ramps
to get infrastructure out of the water
so boaters
can get to the vessels during the
day
related to the tides moving up and
down as well
as overall operational managements
and maintenance and so forth.
october of this year
we brought this item to the marina
and waterfront
subcommittee and had a hearty discussion
which we will talk about. Additionally
following off the previous presentation
, the marina has long-standing
deficits because we talked about the
$560,000 loan that was made and
it is projected we may
be around 650
in loans moving forward creating a compromise
on the city's future reserves.
at this time I will turn
it over to talk a little bit more
about the
financial aspect.
>> sure,
so what is
up on the screen is the long-range
forecast done
in may or june of the last year and
this
scenario assumes an ongoing
subsidy from the general fund, to
the marina.
on an ongoing basis, something
we have decided to do
as a council and city organization
is start planning for the next 5 to
10 years making sure
we are being responsible today and understanding
what the long-term liabilities are
on the city's general funds
so this is what the picture depicts
for your. As mentioned, the
marina enterprise fund has had a long-standing
structural deficit. We brought on
f3, they have done a fabulous job
from everything we have heard
and seen, but now we
are paying for that, things are getting
fixed. We have more employees at
the marina. Like
I said earlier we are coming under
budget right now
but it is something we assume is going
to continue
to be of high cost on the city. Since
fiscal
year 21 -22 the general fund
, there has been $2 million general
fund
reserves spent toward the marina 's
we
are trying to be careful. We want
to meet
the reserve target, we are nervous
about the next
few years so in order to sort of maintain
status quo with the subsidy to the marina,
which includes the
loan to the state, the utility cost and
f3 operation costs we are looking at
needing $1.2 million
in a new ongoing budget with budget cuts
over the next few years
phased in over the next few years.
always
trying to keep your eyes on that and
again it
comes down to it is cutting into our
core services as a city
and that is why it is critical,
jill is bringing forward a proposal
tonight to modestly
fill the gap a little bit.
>>
all right, again with the fee schedule
the goal is to reduce dependency on
the general fund, in research we have discovered
the last
fee increase was in 2014
and as you know the cost of operations
have dramatically increased since
that time. As well as with
f3 coming on and
permits being made everything from
lumber and labor has all increased.
when looking at the methodology
of what's the best way of doing this
we looked to
our partners in some of the other
regional markets with
comparisons and
a lot of the increases are based on
consumer price
index and when we are talking about tonight
is the consumer price index for inflation
for the bay area region
as well
as we received information
from the bureau of labor statistics
and pg&e data with
utility rates and we did a market
analysis
with some of the similar
marinas
in the area comparable to us and that
would be monisha, vallejo, pittsburgh
and
antioch. That also to touch upon it
, several of those also have
wooden docs similar to ours so we
were only pulling those forward
not necessarily the nice concrete or
covered structures. Some of the marinas
have expensive rates
as well. Even with the comparison
you
will see in the attachment
martinez has the lowest rates and
one of the things
of the follow-up the subcommittee
wanted to do was to
find out when jurisdictions had their
last increases so
we went back and they did increase
in 2025,
vallejo 2023, pittsburgh 2025 and antioch
in 2023. To give you an idea
where they are with the rates that are
relatively recent
. So, tonight
as part of the fee schedule in
exhibit a there's
a lot of fees associated with the
marina, tonight we
are asking for increases for the 3 fees
the
morning fee, the vessel and the monthly rate
the utility fee which is electricity
and gas provided by the marina
it does not include water because
we never had a water rate listed and
then the
fee which is the surcharge for the boaters
permitted to remain on their vessels
longer than
72 hours with 72 hour restriction.
we will start
with the mooring fees again proposed
based on cpi index. Local
marina market and best practice of
what other
marinas are doing and
our recommendation is to align the
fee with cumulative
cpi from 2014 to 2025
which is 40.69%.
very straightforward methodology and improves
the
overall enterprise ,
the marina enterprise financial position.
competitive with other marinas
but far below the average and we're still
getting toward the lower end.
implementation for the fee the
recommendation that was to the subcommittee
and I will go back when I
get to the end I will tell you what
the recommendation was. We provided
2 options do
we implement all at once or look at
the phase in model over 2 years which
is what we do with some of the other
fees especially administrative
fees restart was 75%
1st year and then 25% in the 2nd
year on them.
so, this particular attachment is
a little different from the one in
the staff report
this is what we presented showing
you an idea of what it would look like if
we did 75/25.
one of the things I
want to point out is the ones that
are color-coded, those
are actually the vessels at the
marina currently. While we have rates
going from 20 foot
all the way to 70
foot slips, because of the
marina being downsized, losing docs
and so forth
the primary vessel slips are 30, 35 and
45 with just one , 60 being
occupied. That gives you an idea
of where the main increase will affect those
that
have boats at the marina. If you look
or actually the other thing I want
to point out
is the dry storage comparison. A lot
of times
it is more of a luxury to have your
boat in the marina
to get on and go so
if you look at the dry storage comparison
which is more
of a process to get your boat to the
water that is averaging
from 200 to 300 for the uncovered storage.
and
then again as I mentioned, the antioch,
pittsburgh and
vallejo rates are covered
because they do include , you know
--
the increase for the
utility fee they felt made
sense, understanding the need for
the increase.
I mean they understood there was a
need
and why. They did acknowledge the
acknowledgment of
improvements under
f3 leadership and it was nice to hear the
praise given to them
by the voters that were out there.
I did forget to
mention jamie is on the line, he is sick
he is here but with us online should
we have questions that
are asked.
and then some of the comments were
about some additional improvements
they would like to see, comments about the
pump out being
replaced, the bathrooms, isolated
incident at the bathrooms having issues
with that corrected
and locks have been updated as
well as the water and
electricity upgrades like there are
things they will
upgrade their. The pump out had a recent
inspection of compliance and I
don't recall the agency that is required
it might be the health
department and it did pass just fine.
but we are looking at options that
if we have the
ability to improve that we
will look at that as well in the future.
again, complements
about f3 and then you know there was understanding
of additional funding to help close
the gap a little bit.
so, we went
through forward subcommittee.
the recommendation that they came
back with
--they felt like 40% was a big bite
right off the bat and wanted to pass
on this cost with the understanding
of
knowing that we had to look towards
cost recovery and having to close
the
gap anyway we can. So they estimate
--the recommendation that was passed
forward to
the council, they created option three,
which is to look at
2026 of
rolling in half of that increase
in 2026 and half of that increase
in 2027. For the utility fees, they
agreed that doubling
the cost made sense and adding the
five dollars a month and
they asked for the five dollars a
month to be rolled into the fee
itself. [ inaudible ] which is the
standard practice that are some of
the
other marinas are also doing. As
for the liveaboard fee, increasing
that fee
by $75 to 275. The implementation
for the utility fee and liveaboard
fee
was recommended january 1st and then
just the facts he would have a
timeframe over two years. If you look
at number one, it
gives you an
idea that by 2027, we should see an
increase
of 129,000.
while that is a great increase
based on what we talked about it doesn't necessarily
get closer to that larger
gap so we'll have to look at other
things which we can do to either
increase revenue or look at how our
services are being offered. On that.
so,
with that, staff is available for
any questions. And
the council.
>> thank you very much.
does
anyone want to start us off, and if
not, can I have the folks that
are in the marina subcommittee maybe
just provide their
input on the conversation I
was had?
>> yeah.
I really appreciate your report
and all the hard work and I appreciate
all the stakeholders that came down
to the
subcommittee meeting and had their
input. I think --can you tell me a
little
bit more about the bathrooms in
the keys. [ inaudible -low volume
]
>>
there was an incident in which there
was a key being used by
a prior tenant, and they were not
happy with the marina, so there was
some damage that was done internally
to the bathrooms and so it we ended
up
doing is f3 changed all the locks
to have box as an
interim solution until we do
more research on whether it makes
sense to re-key
everything.
>> [ inaudible ]
>> it was about 6000 just to do regular
heart keys and
it was somewhere in the 20+ range
if we were going to do key fobs. And
given our track of moving
forward with
reyna revitalization discussions,
we wanted to be mindful not to spend
that kind of funding.
>> and I really
appreciate you putting up option three.
in
our conversation.
>> given the situation with the bathrooms,
has there been any additional
incidents or are the keys working
well? Do the residents feel
like they
have privacy
--I'm just curious.
>> it is a keypad box so it's not keys. They
have a code that only
the residents have. I've not heard
of any incidents since that time.
>> okay. That
was my concern was, you know, we have
a solution but has it actually solved
the problem and made people feel safer
when using the bathroom, especially
after hours, and
again, thank you for presenting the
50-50 rollout, as opposed to the 7525
because
jay and I both felt that was a little
bit easier to transition these increases
more gradually over the next two years.
so.
>> I think you spelled out
all of
the changes. That one slide
--I think one or two back --if you
want to push
that back. Just one more
forward. Yes. So
I think that
side represents some of
the comments that we had, jay, and
I think that kind of sums up
our recommendations. So, that's all we
have
this year.
>> and I stepped out at the very beginning.
when I came in, I
heard you were reporting out on the
water fix, so thank you very much
for that information. That was something
and it was important for all of us.
I
think we were all here when this conversation
happened last time. There was concern
about passing on utility costs for
water. When we had not yet resolved
the
water main
leakage, so
thank you for reporting out on that.
I did ask earlier today about the
cost difference,
which was sort of the trigger for
us realizing there was a leak. Did
you have a chance to report out on
that?
>> I did not have a
chance.
>> would you mind? >> previously,
we were paying a little over $16,000
per month. Every other month
now is down to about $850.
>> that's
great. That is --that is much
more realistic. Just to clarify, the
five dollars for
the water is based on $850 a month.
not the 16,000.
>> yeah.
and it still far below anything we
would recover.
>> I want to make
a correction. $850 just
for the
meter --the leak. There's other
meters out there.
>> thank you. >>
if you look
at the
--did we fix that in 2024? I think
we did that or talked about the water
at 82. We were over --we were
up in the 140,000 --116,000 --something
like that range. There's multiple
water meters.
great. Thank you. And just making
sure. Those were my two questions
then. Great.
thank you. Any other comments? I know
we have several folks hear from the
public, and kevin has flyers so how
about we start with kevin for public
comment and anyone else who
has comments can raise their
hand.
>> I just had a quick question
as a point of clarification. In the
staff report, it
plays out
--lays
out --there's two options and then
there was a third option so what
am I missing?
>> with the staff report,
we wanted to talk about what we submitted
to the subcommittee but our aggradation
is what came out of the subcommittee
which
is the 50%. When you look at the attachments,
attachment a shows the 50-50. The
model. It shows you how much money
will be collected and then we did
that
with the slide to show you what would
be collected based on the two
different areas. [ inaudible ]
>>
so option three that's listed on the
slideshow
came about after.
>> it is
a subcommittee that came up with option
three. We came forward with the recommendation
and they wanted to look at how we
--is the delivery of the rates
a little bit more? So that's where
they came up with the recommendation
for
the council tonight. To go with the
50% instead of
75 25 . Were full. And
this is the morning rate,
so, yeah. The other two rates, they
would like to be full
in effect january 1st.
>>
okay. Got
it. Okay. I'm going to reserve further
comment until
I've had an opportunity to hear from
some of the stakeholders
that have patiently waited to chime
in, so thank you.
>> okay. Now kevin
can hand out those fires.
I'm sorry.
>> hi. My name is
kevin bacon. I live on arlington street
just down the road from here and
also use the marina with
a boat [ inaudible ] I just wanted
to touch base
on the narrative
of the expense and the income generated
by the
marina by itself and so this is
handed to you the 20 year income
expense accounting produced by the
city
staff as pulled
off of your website. It's from 2006.
it ends
around 2023, '24. It's the budget
and it
is pretty detailed. And it condensed
down
to just an expense and income on that
first page. And this
is in an effort to address the
staff report goal b, strategy 2, engage
the community about
the marina's fiscal reality and
its future. And the reality is that
the budget shows near break
even income
to
operational expenses. It's got nothing
to do with the
capital expenditures. But
the marina operational expenses
are conflated with the outlays of
the
enterprise fund. Staff writes, the
city
has used $1.7 million to cover marina
needs.
the message we hear is that
the marina is costing us
$1.7 million and I think jay was outraged when
he heard that back
in july
and said we probably want to shut
down the marina because of that. But
that's not really the
case. When you look
at the --breaking down the
$1.7 million, dredging project,
$750,000. That's
in the 1.7. That is a capital expenditure.
that's not an operational expense.
the water
front
trust --half $1 million. That is not
an operational expense. That is a
capital expenditure.
design fees for the eastern wall,
we don't know if that's been spent
but that's $250,000. I don't think
we
spent that. Temporary repairs --the
fishing pier --the fishing pier is
not a marina. It's part of
the enterprise fund, but that
is not
an operational expenditure. The funds set aside for
entrance doc d,
$60,000, that probably wasn't even
spent. I don't think so. That was
the gangway. So,
in supplemental
funding for the bates shore, $50,000.
>>
your time is up.
>> so anyhow, that
bait shop
operation fund is --shouldn't be part
of the marina as well. That's been
closed down.
>> thank you. >> I
just want you to address the narrative,
please.
>> thanks, kevin. >>
go ahead.
>> my
name is bob emanuel. I live in pacific
grove but I do have a boat
here. As a longtime resident, as a
kid, in fact, my father was a city
manager here back in the 60s and this
place has really shrunk. He used
to be much bigger when I was a kid
in my mind. Anyway, I was
out on the ferry --the marine --the
ferry dock today and I
was really glad that you left the
old fairy. When I was a kid,
there was no bridge. You have to take
the ferry across
and it is nice to see people live
with that. [ inaudible ] but
I would like to say before I get to
my main point is
you compared a lot of marinas. Those
are
very nice. I'm familiar with a lot
of them. The difference is my
boat is here in the mud twice a day
and in those other marinas, they are
not. That said, I don't have any issue
with
the 40% increase. I would
just say almost 40 years I was a civil
servant for
the department
of defense.
I ran municipal and county services on
army and navy bases.
the went through a similar situation
where we did not want to raise rates.
we
kept them low, kept them low, kept
them low and then all of a
sudden, we are in a situation where
we have to jack them up pretty high.
there are a lot of wonderful people
living at the marina. For me, no big
deal. It's a good I come here once
a week to reacquaint myself with
my high school friends but for the
people who live there, I think that
could be quite expensive. My advice
per the lesson I learned myself, two,
three, four,
5% per year, rather than 40% every
--you guys get the point.
anyways, thank you.
>> thank you.
>> who else has
comments? Jonas pique.
>> any of
you own a boat down
at the -- marina? You live on one.
so you are familiar
with
our docks. I'm on a dock. I can't
even get my boat out of
the slip because I'm sitting in the
mud. Not only is it
--I can't get out, but
it is wearing my bottom
paying off the boat. [ inaudible ]
I'm sucking up
mud into mansion so it's causing
engine problems. B, the
docks, you can't even walk on them,
basically and if you do, you have
to
watch where you are walking because
you are going to put your foot through
the wood. Or
you stub your toe and you trip. I
mean, I think all of us
should go on a field trip and walk
the docks. You go to the niche, you
go to
any other
marina,
they are nice concrete docks. They have so
much more to offer. Yes, you are
the cheapest here, but you have nothing to
offer us. There's no fuel. We can't
get in and out. I don't know how you
are going to do your light
parade because everyone is going to
get stuck at the mouth at the marina.
and definitely if you are a sailboat.
you know. I mean, literally, the money
should
be going to the marina because that's
what brought everybody here in the
first place.
you got the symbol of a sailboat.
nobody can come in here with a
sailboat. The yacht
club has
a problem with people coming in on
cruises. I mean, it's time to work
on that. That is your moneymaker that
we are paying for so help us
out as boat owners. Thank you very
much.
>>
thank you.
>> any other
comments tonight?
all right. How about in the
virtual audience?
>> please use the
raise
hand
feature.
>> I have
no hands.
>> all right, so, I'm going to bring
this back. Sandra,
you indicated you had some other comments.
would you like to provide your
comments now?
[ inaudible ]
>> you know, reading
this staff
report, it took me back to the recent
discussion we had on our
garbage rates. And, you know, how
he had to do, I think it was a
double-digit increase on our
garbage rates and similarly, we
had prior administrations hadn't done the
consistent sort of, you know, increases
that
certainly I a
very much
--I think is very much prudent,
and I know that our current executive
team in council all feel that way.
and
I am
very, very -- I share the frustration
that was expressed here tonight, and
to the point of,
you know, what we are doing about
it, I think staff had laid out
thank you for that. Some of the improvements
and it sounds like those improvements
were
acknowledged. That f3 has done an
admirable job in the short amount
of time
that we had them. But we have a lot
more work
to do, and there is what is doable
in the short term and then
it's more of the long term, as well,
and that we are working to
address both. So, I wanted to clarify
that from
staff because the options before us
here tonight. The
third option is in
the slideshow to go back to the earlier option.
that is specific to the morning.
is that --is that correct?
>> no.
the third -- yes. The third option
we presented under the
mooring fees is a third option recommended
by the subcommittee. The utilities
and the
liveaboard fee, the subcommittee
accepted as presented.
>> then my
question was --in other user fees,
like
for parks
and rec, I believe we have a system
in place where if somebody demonstrates
financial
hardship, that we have some options
available
for them. Is there a similar --is
there some recourse here that
if somebody does come forward to
show some
financial hardship, do we have a way
to work with them
or offer any type of relief?
>> no.
that is not
being presented.
>> so we don't have that. That would've been
something that I would have liked
to have
seen. You are talking 40%.
you know.
that is a pretty steep increase. I
understand why we have to do it. I
do. I'm not questioning that, but
I'm also --and I appreciate the subcommittee's
recommendation, as well, with respect
to phasing it in. That
is helpful. But, you know, I personally
would
have liked to have seen some type
of
financial hardship
waiver or something there to
help, but that's just me. But I think
sort of moving forward, it is
really incumbent upon
us to manage these much more closely
than
we have, to the commentators earlier
point,
you know, the annual two, three, 5%
we need to
do --it needs to keep up. Because
this is a lot to hit
them with.
I
get it. And I share that frustration.
I'm just trying to figure out how
we manage it and I think the subcommittee
has come forward with as
good as a recommendation as there's
going to be at this point. But,
yeah. Those are just some of my thoughts
that I have, so,
thank you.
>> yeah. I
just had a question
for staff.
based on the information that was
submitted here to council, can you
all kind of speak to the expenditures
and
operational versus capital, just so we
have clarity?
>> yes.
q
for that. I was just going to ask
if I could make some clarifications
on
that. So, one of the things to understand
about the marina enterprise fund is
it
has five funds and those five funds
are divided up into different things.
you
have capital. You have the marina
itself. The waterfront area. There's
one for --what
is it? Railroad. And what was the
last one? And debt service for
debt service. The amounts that we
put into this presentation were focused on the
marina and that is fund 78. What kevin presented
here was how mars
budget from what their revenue might've
been from the 10
year projection. But it is important
to note on this back in
2025 and a lot of this year, we
had more slips. We had a lot more
slips. We had the bait shop which
was
bringing in revenue. All of
that revenue went back to the operations
of the marina. Over time, as we have
gone through the plaintiff the deficit
and having to close
down docs,
losing boaters and so forth, that
is what has changed and shifted it
to what
we are getting out to the point of
the discussion we are having tonight
with the amount. So this is just almar's
part. It doesn't include --because
one
of the things that the city took on
was a lot of the
utility cost. There was a
set utility that they had
almar
that they were paying and the rest
that the city covered in a different fund.
this is not accurate when you're talking
about the bigger picture of the entire
arena. --marina. It
is only telling part of
the story.
expenditures --none of
them made it was collected in fund 78
goes to any of these types of
items so those all come out of fund
74,
which is our capital fund. So the
marina --the boaters of the
marina
do not pay for these
items. That something that's important
to clarify. I just wanted to make sure
--and that's
--all the --the peer --the work at
--doing the capital project
--the land
use plan
which is a requirement by the state
of california. That was not paid for
by the boaters. Just wanted to verify
that on those two points.
>> sorry,
joe. Just to clarify, then, where
do those funds
come from?
>> a little bit of everything.
from the general fund, krantz.
>>
for the marina operations, since almar's
budget is not paying especially the
water
bill and insurance and a lot of the
other,
costs --doing maintenance on
the marina itself. Those funds before
I come up to the 2023 fiscal year,
the
funds itself [
inaudible ] in particular for 78 we
talk
about, --$97 in deficits in the balance
--and that's on top of the
$109,000 loan we already loaned
them at that point in time. The total
deficit before fiscal year 2024 is
$506,000 for marina operations.
so almar's budget in here is just
a
part of it. Only. There's
a more
portion and then the portion the city
handles the
operation as well. [ inaudible ]
>>
can I add the thing I feel like
neither of you mentioned? I requested
a copy of the fund 78 so I
could see the individual line items,
and the largest line item is salary
and benefits
for the employees that work at the
marina. Right? And that's a 300,000
--so all of the repairs that are being
made using this budget, but we
are paying them, and so I think this
conversation feels not quite --
we are not comparing the same buckets
of monies. We are talking about one
thing over here and
then they are talking about something
completely different, so I don't know
if it is worth
providing the council
the full
fund
78 to talk to if we have additional
questions about this because that
has been
--has always felt a little awkward,
and I think that the deficit that
you
are talking about, and it does not
--you said
390,000
deficit but that does not include
the debt service to write to the state,
so
it's in addition to that and that's
how we are coming up with
this 500 some odd
thousand year rite, of the loans we
are giving to the fund and those numbers
are never really presented at the
same time so I think from our perspective
it
gets confusing why we are saying how
we are spending the
money.
>> I can help because I know I
brought this up in my
last presentation, so there are
two things.
there is operational, right? And there's
a loan, as well. In the
mix of the $560,000, so what we started putting
into our budget and also the
forecast, and I'm sorry, june, if
I'm off on the number but I recall
it is
$375,000 for f3
operations. Then I get that correct?
>> yes. >> there is the loan
payment and then the utility payment
that makes up the 516,000 print in
ongoing years it
is 650,000, right, in total. There
was capital projects mentioned earlier.
that's a whole
different bucket, but what I have
to reinforcement
--reinforce with the council --this
council in prior councils, by the
way, I have taken money out of the
reserves
to pay for those capital improvements,
so, either, whether it's operations
or whether it
is capital, we have been taking money
out of reserves for
the marina, and it's unsustainable.
one point I do want to
make, too, and this is where it is
unfortunate because there is an impact,
right?
two people,
and I have set up here for the last three
years having to take similar
conversations on our city administration
fees, that were significantly behind
--you remember a few
years ago, mike chandler had to bring,
you know, we hadn't touched those
in
10 years and we had to just rip the
band-aid off. And in same with
our recreation fees. Just two years
ago, had to bring fee increases of
50,
60% because we hadn't touched the
fees, and
--in 10, 15, 20 years, but at the
same time, we are sitting here,
cutting every department down to its
core. We almost had to freeze positions
this past
fiscal year. Right, so it's very difficult.
it's not that we
don't empathize with that user groups
who are
affected by
this, but,
everyone in the community --tonight,
it's obviously the boaters. Right?
and
the live aboards, but in the past,
we've had to deal with other user
groups
within the committee, so it's never
easy, and I just want to recognize
that, but at the same time, there's
really not
much --we are operating at a skeleton
at this point in the city. It's
a give-and-take and I recognize a
difficult decision in front
of you.
>> okay, so, lauren, thank you for
that context. Very helpful. So
I guess sort of --assuming --okay
--so we are
going to act on
this tonight. What is the next step?
how do we ensure there's
regular reviews --that we are bird
dogging this
and doing actual work necessary to
make sure
that our
dose that we are keeping up with
the actual expenses, if that makes
sense. What reassurance can we provide
to the stakeholders
moving forward that we are not going to
find ourselves in a situation like
this. What are the sort of --what
have we learned? What sort of
policy changes will we be making to
ensure that a future council
doesn't find themselves in a situation
like this.
>> it's already done. You adopted
a
strategic plan.
it spells out loud and clear that
this council is committed to reducing
subsidies that are straining the general
funds. So we have it very clearly
spelled
out.
in prior fee increases that
we've taken in other areas, though,
you have consistently said to us,
yeah, let's put
this on a more routine schedule, so,
for example, as you know, our administrative
fees
come every year. Our rec fees come
every --years, so things don't fall
behind. Same --same potential here.
once very challenging here is we have
a project
coming up, so it's hard
to know when we would actually come with
another fee
increase in
the future, because, we don't --we
don't really understand the timeline
with
the project, and the other piece of
this
is when we come in
the spring
and jim and I
bring, you know, a discussion about
long-term fiscal sustainability, I
think we will have a
better sense there about what our
options are on how to close the gap
at
the marina, so it's hard to answer
now, whether in another two years
we
are going to be coming back --because
the project might be moving in
a direction at that point, where,
yeah. Exactly. It's hard to know
today.
>> no. I --I --
I recognize
the discomfort. I'm sitting here,
having
flashbacks because my day job, I
work for the state, and we went through
this same
exercise, where,
fees for the work we do had
not been adjusted for 20, 30 years,
and for some of our licensees, it
was
sticker shock, and we can get into
why previous administrations weren't
raising fees every two or
3% per year, but we had to make
the adjustment
because if we didn't, we were moving
towards the brink of insolvency, but
in some
cases, we did do a step approach so
over
two years, in some cases
we would say, hey, we would work with
licensees to provide some
type of payment
plan if there was --was --was hardship,
but it's about writing
the ship and very similar to what
we are
experiences tonight,
even with the increases, it's still
not covering all of the cost. But
we have to
try to
do something to try
to prevent the bleeding. Now, if we
were down
the path with
some other projects on the horizon,
we probably wouldn't be sitting here
having
this conversation, but unfortunately,
we
aren't there yet.
but we have to try to do something
because, again, this is taking
away from our
general fund and if
our reserves
go below a certain threshold with
our general fund, then this is
a very different conversation here.
that we are having as a council and
having to talk of
--
to
our residents about it. I know having
gone through it, it is an uncomfortable
situation. You're talking about increases
and my boat is stuck
in mud. I --I --I hear
it. So, we are just trying to --given
the hand that we have
to play, to just tried to do something
to mitigate what we are having to
fund to keep
the marina operational at this
time, so.
>>
I just want to
remind everyone that we are in a very
different place than we were just
a couple of
years ago.
there's been posts on rants and raves
where people say,
have they even dredged up marine in
the last few decades
and someone that jackson says, yes,
we dredged in 2020 22
-- 2022 --and the seawalls --
we just finished the repairs of the
fishing pier which blocked an
entire hole that had been set a minting
in that whole side of the marina and
one of the things that has been
brought up over the last couple of
years is
talking about public-private partnership.
that's the direction we need to go
and anyone who
has been here knows that is what our council
had to present to
us in july and we are in the process
of talking through some of
that, so we are not raising rates
and
doing nothing.
we are raising rates while we are
doing a bunch of other stuff and
I do want to thank you
for including all of the work that
f3 has done that again, a couple of
years ago --last december
--f3
has only been around since last january.
at this time last year, we couldn't
you
all in the face and say that things
were happening because
a lot of that repair was not
getting done, and in this calendar
year, I've seen so
many improvements. I acknowledge they're
not perfect but we've all been
down there. We've all taken --
we either have friends with bullets
or we've done field trips. We know
what it looks like
and it has improved significantly,
so I recognize that --what you
said --
we are always the ones stuck approving
rate increases which is super frustrating,
but
we know that it's not just the rate
increases. This
is a much bigger project and a much
bigger problem and we are here
for it,
and we are playing the wrong game
for the
marina and so I appreciate, lauren,
your comment about, we don't know
where we
are going to be because potentially,
you know, this time next year, we
are
going
to be
talking about
steps 4 for that partnership. We are
going to be in a different place
in a couple of months if everything
goes the way that it was propose to
us over the summer, so, yeah. That
was my comment because I know we have
received lots of --some frustration
from the public and from people here
tonight.
I'm sorry. We already close to the
public comment process but I'd
be happy to talk to you after the
meeting. Yeah. Thanks. So, let's see.
tonight, it's
the public hearing. We are supposed
to adopt a resolution. Was there any
concern --any changes we wanted to
make? I
believe option three was on the table
tonight. It was
to reduce
from the 75, 25 to the 50, 50 split.
were
there any other changes that people
wanted to make or based on
comments received. I think kevin
for his
comments about changing the narrative.
I think that is absolutely a fair
comment. Just understanding that the
folks that are
renting slips,
they are --
they are not spending $500,000 a year.
so that's why I think that's the narrative
he wanted to make so I just wanted
to acknowledge that. Thank you for
pointing
that out. So what handed us was the
expenses associated with renting slips,
but
then we did have a follow-up conversation
about the other expenses that the
city has
to deal with. So. So, anyway, yeah.
was there anything anyone wanted to
add
before we --anyone would like to make
a motion then, as written?
>>
I make a motion that we adopt a resolution
amending the marina fee schedule related
to mooring, utility, and liveaboard
fees
>> second. >> all in favor,
please say
aye .
>> aye. >> motion passes. >> all
right. Our next
item is
conduct a public hearing, waive
the reading, and introduce an ordinance
in approving zoning text amendment
to the mmc.
thanks.
>>
thank you, mayor zorn. I
am here to discuss several
text amendments.
[ inaudible - low volume ]
okay. So before
we get too far into things, I
would like to discuss why we are here
and some other
important context.
so there's a couple of things
in the ordinance. I'll get into the
specifics shortly, but here's a high-level
summary. The vast
majority of the ordinance and what
we'll be discussing tonight is the
establishment of
an inclusionary housing program. We
are also providing some additional
modifications to our offstreet
parking standards, permitting unbundled
parking, establishing ground mounted
mechanical equipment, clarifying some
adu regulations --
state exemption adus, throughout
the ordinance.
now we know what's in the ordinance.
here's some important policy context
that the streets why we are here.
for scott housing
element provides direction for the
city to consider adopting
an inclusionary housing ordinance.
second is consistency with the metropolitan
transportation
commission's transit oriented communities,
also known as the toc policy. The
toc policy is a voluntary program
that rewards the
sword significant
funding including inclusionary housing
requirements and some of
the parking management strategies
that we are discussing today.
>>
I'm sorry. In the
back --
I'm sorry, sir.
>>
gentlemen.
>>
it's
difficult to hear the presentation.
thank you.
>> and just as her mother, city council
has
previously directed staff to update our policies
and regulations to be consistent with
the toc
policy. Ab 1505 has
requirements . This is
consistent with goal c, economic development
and housing from strategic
policies.
so we are going to be talking about
a
lot of technicalities around affordable
housing. Before we dive too deep,
it is impertinent
to take a moment and talk about what
affordable housing actually means.
there are a
lot of
concerns. I want to make sure we are
all on the same page. Affordable housing
is just a blanket term that is also
sometimes called lower income housing
or below market rate housing. What
it boils down
to is
affordable housing is a requirement
that homes
to be printed or so the film is based
on one, their household income and
two, their household size. Not all
affordable housing is the same. Based
on
these two variables of income and
size, there are different tiers of
affordable housing
but it is based on ami, which
is the median income level for house
hold levels based
on the county so half of the households
in
the county earn more. Half earned
less. For
example in contra costa county, the
jiggling for a family of
four was
$155,700. Now that we know
what the
ami is, we can do calculations to
figure out what the various income
and
affordable --affordability
levels are for different
budgets. They generally fall into the categories
you see in the columns. Acutely low
is
17%
aye --ami very low is up to 50. Close
up to
80.
water it is up to 120. When
summons is affordable housing, I can
mean a lot of different things depending
on
who it is intended to serve. Now,
one of the biggest
misconceptions about affordable housing
is that it is for only the lowest
wage
earners. While that can be true for
some projects --15, 30% ami,
it's not actually usually the case.
for instance, nausea contra
costa
county --
hundred $86,000 is
considered moderate income. Both of
these families could qualify for affordable
housing. And
that really surprises people because
they don't realize that affordable
housing
--they're not thinking families that
make six figures.
so, with that out of the way, let's
get into what the actual inclusionary housing
program that
we are proposing is. So,
starting off what is inclusionary
housing? Sometimes it is referred
to as
inclusionary zoning but it refers
to requirements imposed on developers
of residential projects to set
aside a
shared --a share of their proposed
units as affordable housing. Inclusionary
housing can be
limited to
address segregation by ensuring housing
is available for lower
wage workers, guarding against concentrations
of poverty and events and making it
possible for lower
income households to live in higher
resourced neighborhoods. Okay, so
now that we have covered
our bases let's talk
about the program. So the next two
slides are the most important for
understanding. Projects which generally
have the creation
of 11
new dwelling units will be required
to comply. However, there are certain
types of exclusions.
that includes projects like reconstructions,
modifications to existing buildings
and other projects that you see
listed here. Now, these types of qualifying
projects would be
required to dedicate 15% of their
total units to affordable housing. Depending
on if they are rental or ownership,
the average ami
must meet 80 or 120% of
ami average. 120
for ownership.
to kind of put these regulations into
a little bit of
context, I provided two real-world
examples of recently approved projects.
the first is the
amare apartments project which
is
currently approved for 183 units.
hypothetically, if we were to apply
our program here,
15% of their units would need to be
affordable which would equate to
28 units being the restricted. Affordable.
from there, again, rental
would have to have an average of no
more
than 80% ami, so there's a different
way you
can break that down but here's just
an example of a
potential income unit mix there. And
then the
same thing for the wyoming heights
project which was just recently approved
and
is
the ownership project for 21 townhomes.
if we were to apply these standards,
seven
of the
units would
be required to be affordable
housing. And again, that one is 120% ami,
so the mix can be a little
bit different depending on the rental
or ownership components.
>> can I
interrupt really
quickly? This is not the actual breakdown
of
affordable units. These are hypothetical
numbers.
>> and just for context,
amare project
isn't entitled for nine affordable
units and the wyoming heights project
is
entitled
48. --
for 8. Leon two general requirements
of inclusionary units. Any units built on
site would need to be of a standard
comparable to the above
moderate units
or the market rate units. This includes
the design, the finishes, the access
to amenities. These units need to
be reasonably dispersed throughout
the project site kind
of how you would envision it in this
image that you see here. Really, the
goal is to make affordable units indistinguishable
from market rate units. You shouldn't
be able
to go to a project site and figure
out which ones are affordable and
which ones are market rate. So, to
assist in offsetting the cost of incorporating
affordable housing into these types
of projects,
we do make sure that these projects
are available for a couple
of different incentives. The first
is they would still be eligible for
california state density
bonus law which provides a pretty
significant density bonus to projects
already providing affordable housing.
it also allows them several concessions
and waivers to development standards.
things like heights,
setbacks, and light coverage, or projects
would be eligible for development
incentive and community benefits
program which was passed I believe
last year, which provides even greater
residential
density bonus then under state. The first
is we are proposing to explicitly
permit unbundled
it allows
them several
this would not be a
requirement of projects. It would
just
create the option. Another requirement
of the chick told us we
are providing
--administrative offices for any new
development. And while not
a requirement
of the
toc
policy we are proposing a couple of
additional cleanup to create some
parking standards and ratios
for retail complexes and shopping
centers. The code currently lacks
regulations relating to small ground
mounted income
such as
hvac and [ inaudible ] which
has been a gray area and as I could.
we are proposing to allow
them to project into the side yard
setbacks.
no closer than three pairs --
feet
--closer to the primary structure
as opposed to the
property line. So just add some clarification
to
the zoning.
we also have a couple of updates
to our adu code. The first one is related
to privacy standards. So the zoning
ordinance generally only permits adus
to
be two stories if they are additions
to existing structures or if there's
some
kind of approval
of an exception. So to alleviate the
potential privacy concerns of a two-story
adu we incorporated devisee standards
such as frosted
or opaque windows or windows having
to be
a certain height above the floor level. The
intent was always for these standards
to apply to windows only on second
stories, however, that's not unfortunately
the way it is
written in the codes of this is more
of a cleanup to make sure
that these privacy standards are enforced
on the second story
windows only. And second adu has to
do
--amendment has to do with the state
exemption adus. I'll kind of get into
what
those are in just a second but generally
we are just doing a little
bit of cleanup related to those. So
after publication of the
planning commission
ordinance we received one public comment from
the california housing defense --
I forget the acronym.
defense fund. Thank you. So calhdf.
they had
two comments. One is that we
are incorrectly referencing the state
good. We corrected
that any state ordinance. It just
hasn't been reflected in the online
code
yet. [ inaudible ] the second had
to do with how we
treat state exemption adus. The state
exemption adus are an envelope
for adus. High requirements, square-foot
requirements
pretty you meet those requirements,
the city basically has no
discretion and you're allowed to go
straight for building
permit. Calhdf had a common related
to how he described those in our
code. And we were applying some of
our discretionary standards to them that
for clarity we were never
doing that.
we already had some carveout at the
beginning but we went
ahead and made some additional clarifications
to ensure that that is extremely clear
in
our code.
and finally, we presented the
ordinance to the planning commission
on october 28th. There was a minority
concern about
the unbundled parking amendment in
the ordinance. There was a citation
of concerns that it
could potentially result in price
gouging separating the pricing --
leases
--and there was a motion to remove
it from the ordinance but the motion
failed and
--adopted --with some other
minor amendments.
okay. So with that, tonight's recommendation
is a little long so please bear
with me. Staff's recommendation is
to conduct a public hearing, waive
the reading, and introduce
an ordinance approving zoning text
mems to the martinez municipal code
by 1, adding chapter
22.82, inclusionary housing, 2, amending
chapters 22.04, definitions, and chapters
22.12, residential districts to
reference a new chapter 22.82, 3,
amending
chapter 22.3 for general requirements
and exceptions to add regulations
related to ground mounted mechanical
equipment, 4,
amending chapter 22.36, offstreet
parking and loading facilities to
update
automobile and bicycle parking ratios
for residential, commercial,
and office projects and permit unbundled
parking pursuant to the housing element
and ntc,
metropolitan transpiration commissions
parking
pursuant to the housing element and
metropolitan transportation commission's
transit oriented communities, policy,
4 amending chapter
22.43 accessory to units and junior
accessory dwelling in a stick or fight
privacy standards
for two-story and second-story detached
accessory
dwelling units.
with that, I
am happy to answer any questions from
the council.
>> thank you very much
for
all of that. Everyone, please make
a note that he read the whole thing
so
we need to make a motion, we are good.
>> well, just one, the numbering
seems like it was off. It was 1234,
and then five. Shouldn't it be
six?
>> yes. It should be. >> yeah.
so.
>> thank you for catching that.
>> my only comment was I really appreciate
so
many of the clarifications you made
and some of
the graphics. Oftentimes, people who
aren't in
planning have a hard time understanding
some of the words that are used so
I appreciate the
visual. Does have questions for
him about
any of the items presented tonight?
>> no. I appreciate the clarity. It
made a
lot of sense.
I too share concerns around just the
term affordable
housing because it just has a
different connotation
if you say workforce housing then
people perk up than affordable
housing so I appreciate you just laying
out the chart and really, we were
kind
of going back and forth. It is just
unfathomable that one
is considered low income off of $120,000
a year. That's a whole
other story but thank you for
your presentation.
>> welcome to the
bay
area.
>> thank you very much and for the
presentation.
appreciate it.
looking at the staff report, a couple
of questions that had come
to mind. The section on
page five, alternative means
of compliance. So you referenced ab
1505 . There are these alternatives
that are laid
out. So, this --if this is
adopted
tonight, and these are the options
that would be available to affordable housing
developers
to meet
their requirements. Correct? They
could take advantage of one of these,
all of
these? Is there a limit? How does
that work?
>>
for clarification, this would be for
any developer. Not just affordable
housing developers.
>>
thank you.
>> yeah. They would be
--the
language in the code is carved out
that they can take advantage of one,
multiple combination
of these options and alternatives.
>> okay. So, in the cities that have
moved and adopted inclusionary
housing policy,
what has been the general trend? Have they
actually seen -- have they
been able to move the needle on these
types of projects in their respective
communities?
>> yeah,
so, in my research, the turner center
out of uc berkeley, which is one of
the foremost leaders in housing policy
research, they did a pretty thorough
study
and analyzed the effects of inclusionary
housing ordinance and their general consensus
is that it tends to slightly reduce overall
housing production but increase overall
housing production.
>>
interesting. Okay.
>>
and then the last question I had was
with
respect to
the parking that you referenced as
part of
your presentation. I
could see unbundled parking making
sense,
particularly if you are within a certain
diameter
radius of [ inaudible ]
forgive me. I get
my terminology --
>> major transit stops. >> if you
say okay, we built
something not too
far from the amtrak station. Somebody says,
I don't need a car. I have
the train, or I can walk to
the bus. Fair. Right? We build something
closer to virginia hills, it becomes
--it
becomes a little bit of a different
ball
game. Right? But if I understand you
correctly, it's not a mandate. It's
an option. So, that would be
up to the developer
to say,
I think
I'm going to get more people here.
parking is going to have to
be a necessity based on the layout
of the proposal. Right? So, I just
wanted
to kind of feel that out and make
sure I was understanding that correct
because
from a developer standpoint, I could
see it being advantageous
on one hand but then on the other
hand, it may not
make sense,
but we are not, we are just
giving them the option to do that.
we are not requiring them to do that.
>> right. >> and I just want to clarify,
generally speaking, it's been seen
that
unbundling parking reduces the cost
of housing because if you are paying
for the price
of parking
but
you don't use it, you are basically
subsidizing all of your neighbors,
or they are
subsidizing you, and that's already
included in the cost of your housing
as opposed to
if you detach the two, you technically
could lower the cost of overall housing.
>>
okay. And the last question I had
here was --I appreciated the hypothetical
you put in
there with
respect to amare and wyoming heights. I
guess the question that came to
mind is if such a policy was in place
before the projects were
[ inaudible -low volume ] I don't
know what
the right
word is, permitted.
>> entitled. >>
entitled. Excuse me. Do you think
the developers
would've moved forward in the way
that they did?
>> you know, I'm not
really sure. But like I --that's why
I
kind of mentioned before, that generally
speaking,
cities with inclusionary
housing have seen slightly
decreased overall
housing production, but in turn, have
seen higher affordable so I
don't want to speak for any of those
other developers, but,
you know, affordable housing is
not cheap. It's very expensive, which
is why it's really important that
we included the certain incentives
like our community
benefits program, like allowing them
to utilize
state density bonus. Those things are
-- result in significant cost savings
and help offset the price of affordable housing.
>>
I appreciate you bringing that up
because sometimes, we
have to remind folks, we are not in
the business
of building housing. We don't build
houses, but we do help create the
conditions hopefully that
fosters housing, so I just want to
make sure as we are going through
this
policy and related items, that we
are hopefully making it easier and
more attractive
for folks to be able to help us
move this needle on bringing
more affordable workforce housing
to our community, which
it
sounds like based on what I'm hearing
tonight, it will.
>>
I'm going to give additional context
and additional
information with what brandon said.
as
he said earlier in his presentation
using wyoming heights as an example,
the affordability requirement
under the
inclusionary ordinance is 15%, but
with each
of the overlays, is adopted, it's
actually 20%, so this is not actually
impeding
them anymore than the incentives that
they actually
already have, so where we
had envisioned from her housing element
that we are going to see housing growth
-- these regulations won't
impact them. Amare is a
different
story. It's
an abnormality. It's not a typical
project we are going to have. I don't
foresee a
project like that in the foreseeable
future. Housing element does not envision
a project
of that skill for the
foreseeable future.
I wouldn't recommend making a decision
based on that and we
have included a carveouts of that because that
project is already entitled, these
regulations
won't impact that project.
>> I do
also want to add one more thing. [
inaudible ] I have an extra slide
for
it. In contra costa county, we are
only one
of four or five --I don't recall --
cities that do not have
an inclusionary housing ordinance
and of those four or five cities, only
two that
we are aware of are not actually planning
on doing one, so, almost every single
city in contra costa county will have
an inclusionary ordinance.
>> so,
in the text
of the staff report, it says it
is less
than 15%.
would be allowed but
it requires a feasibility study. Can
you just restate that or speak to
it one
more time?
>> yeah. So, one of the
caveats for adopting this is
that the toc policy has
a minimum requirement for affordability
which is
15%. They do allow
us to reduce it or developers to reduce
it if they can provide substantial
proof that that would result in infeasibility
of
their project. So.
>> all right. Then
the
other question --
>> from our perspective,
I was
going through, what our options were,
and this
happened a couple of times with some
of
the items
you brought to us where we start with 30%
but we end up
at 50 or whatever but in this particular
case, 15 is the lowest we
can go. We don't have any
flexibility there'd , tonight, at
least.
>> so we can
start at 15%, and if the city conducts
a feasibility study, we can potentially
lower it. That would have to be
reviewed by mtc following but in terms of
timelines
for getting the discretionary funding
ball rolling
from
mtc, it's important that we adopt
an ordinance today and then if
we need to amend it after we do a
study, we can do so.
>>
on the slide before we had all the
other cities, there were a couple
that
said 5% or something. They would've
done a feasibility study?
>> some
of them
may have. We weren't able to get into
that level of research but we are
also aware that a lot of the cities, knowing
that they are also going
to comply with toc policy are probably going
to have to update their percentages
as well.
>> okay. The other thing
that's in the staff report --
the weight it was worded in my notes
are bad but something like it needs
to average out to 80% ami for those
15%. Why did we write it
that way? Is there another state law
that requires it?
>> it is toc policy
requirement.
>> toc policy --because
from
my perspective,
I think that I would like to remove
the requirement for what percentage of
ami and I would love to
leave that up to the developer because
from --it was my understanding that there
is often
like grant funding. There's other funding
sources for low and very
low, but maybe not for the higher,
and so if you're a developer that
has access to that funding, you would want
to do possibly one way and
then other developers may want to
have all of their
units be moderate and I would rather
us not dictate that.
>> again,
it is a requirement
in the
toc policy, but in
a way, it does provide flexibility
kind of like in the example that I
pulled
up here. They are required to provide
28 units but the distribution can
be up
to them, so they could say, well,
we are going to do one acutely
low at 15% and then do the rest that
moderate.
>> so it averages out.
>> so it averages up. The example
I provided here is supposed to be
like an even balance mix.
>> that one
doesn't qualify theoretically the
way you did
it. Would that be approved?
>> well,
the average --it is supposed to be
less than 80%.
>> oh, I see. Sorry.
>> honestly, the way that
we are hearing from developers is
a lot of them don't even want to do
moderate because it is too hard to
find buyers and renters because the
people
in that income category, a lot of
them don't realize they are eligible
because
$180,000, you wouldn't think you would
be eligible for affordable housing
but to a lot
of people in that income category
have so much upward mobility that
they could see
themselves out of affordable housing,
so. They're not really trying to do
a lot of
moderate housing from what we've heard.
>> so for now, staff recommendation
is to
be consistent with the way the toc
policy is written
and if we find any acute problems,
we
can circle back with a feasibility
study or something.
>> yes.
>> okay.
>>
I was going to say very quickly, sorry,
that the framing that you did, brandon,
at the outset in
terms of affordable, that was spot
on.
I've had similar conversations with folks in the
community. They are shocked when I
tell
them that.
people have such a negative connotation
in terms of what
affordable is. They are thinking the
lowest of the low, and that is not
theirs
that is simply not true.
I mean, the statistics that you shared
bear that out and I think it's something
that we collectively need to be mindful
of as in our negations with
community members, as affordable is
not,
you know, what you think it is.
you know. And getting more and more
challenging if
anything. Even for folks, like you
said --
and other
parts of the country, sure. Six figures.
the six figures. He would be pretty comfortable.
that is not
the case here, and I think that's
really important for us, so what I
really
like about this, you know, and I appreciate
the earlier conversation, is providing
that
flexibility. Not making it so rigid
that it's going to
unnecessarily drive up the cost because
our goal --certainly michael --has
been,
had we make this a more attractive
place for developers to come and say,
hey,
we want to invest in your community.
we want to help those folks that
are, you know, that are
fit that affordable [ inaudible ]
the affordability
equation you laid out.
we need to create those options. Because
right now, we historically have not met
that challenge, so we have a
lot of work to do, but I appreciate
you bringing this forward to us
tonight, so, hopefully --I would love
to get a report out within a year
to see where we stand.
>> just to
opine on that, we do the
annual progress report every year
which is
required by hcd which
we update with unit counts including
any affordable units and we present
it to the
city council it's a year. That comes
around in april or march. Yeah.
>>
okay.
I'm going to open this
up to
public comment because we have not
done that yet. Tom, would you like
to make
any comments this evening? We got a
note thank you headshake. Anyone in
the
virtual audience like to provide comment
on this item?
>> please use the
virtual
hand feature. I have
no hands.
>> audit. With the council
like to make any final comments or
make
a motion?
>> so
how do we
freeze this
without reading all
of this?
>> you can say move the staff
recommendation.
>> yeah. >> I'd like
to
move the staff recommendation.
>>
second.
>> all in favor, please say
aye.
>> aye. >> wonderful. Thank you so
much.
>> normally
I would pause and say it is 10:20
and we want to continue but we
are at the end of the agenda and it's just going
to
be comments and things. I would like
to recommend that we keep going. Is
available with that?
all right. Chief of
police comments.
>> thank you, mayor. We did unfortunately
on tuesday evening had a
physical altercation which reported
--resulted in a death. That case is
being investigated as
a homicide and there was an arrest
made and we
send out a press release regarding
that and our hearts
go out to the folks invited by the
situation including the victim that
lost
her life. That
concludes my report.
>> thank you. Can I
ask a follow-up on
this? There were several comments
on rants and raves and
social media
about this with half information.
where does the police
department post their press releases so we
can just simply respond and direct
people
to that?
>> so we send them out to
the media
outlets, but I can look at putting
it somewhere so you
can respond
back with that.
>> said if someone is not already
on the police department's mailing
list, they wouldn't
necessarily get that press release.
>> correct but they also usually get
put out on
social but I don't know this one has
gone out in that direction. I
don't believe that it has.
>> okay.
I'll follow up with you and it may
--I think it may have gotten to the
news already.
>>
it did. We did it on camera while you
were in closed session.
>>
thank you.
>> all right. City manager
update.
>> all right. We are going
to start with an update from yves
on the 2025 holidays. Community events
and programs.
>> good evening, council. We
have a lot of holiday events coming
up.
I'll try to keep this quick and brief
but there is a lot of
exciting things to share, so starting
off actually this friday, and the
downtown from 5:00
to 9:00 p.m., we have pink friday,
and this event has a
lot going on. It has the other evening
holiday market, sip and shop candycane
lane, live
entertainment, toys for tots toy drive
and the christmas tree lighting also
and very excited to have the council
at the
christmas tree lighting. That will be
at 7:30 p.m. So looking forward
to celebrating the start of the festive
season downtown
on friday. Then on
saturday, november 22nd from 9:00
a.m. To 3:00 p.m., we have the harvest
craft fair at
the
senior center. And you get free
hot chocolate, and it's a free public
event where you get to get
the jump on your holiday shopping
from
local artisans. Great crafts, and
it really is a very big event for
the senior center so we hope to
see everyone there, also. Santa house
hours are going to start after thanksgiving,
november
29th. Downtown martinez will be posting
information on their website soon
for the
actual schedule of days and hours
were you can go visit santa downtown so
that's always an exciting part for
the community. Friday,
december 5th is the parade
of lights. The annual holiday parade downtown. That
will be at
7:00 p.m. We
do have a new parade route this year
that we are going to be trailing where
we start on ward and go
down towards
el hambra. This will be giving the
community a ton more room to
get that front seat spectator spot
to watch the parade
go by.
you don't have to tread a crane your
neck over a
bunch of people in front of you. You
can see it up close and
personal so we are looking forward
to having the community be able to
get that
front road --row and spread out a
little bit. Not for credit but still
be in the downtown area to enjoy it.
there's
also a I spy
a ranger team this year. We will show
that on social media all the different
ways to participate in that scavenger
hunt. And then, also,
let's see.
on december 12 at 6:00 p.m. There
is a committee organized event
for the martinez
lighted boat parade and this will
be the first year hopefully of this
new annual
tradition, and, we invite everyone
to go down to the martinez fishing
pier and watch the
parade of festively decorated boats
go by.
so, those were all of the main
holiday events that are currently
scheduled. There may be more to come,
and we look forward to sharing
this with you at
that time.
>> yves, can you repeat
the date
of the senior center craft fair?
>>
that is november 22nd. It is actually
this saturday.
>> and
are the council assumed to be in the
parade
of lights? Do we already have a spot?
>> yes. You have to have a spot with all
the bells and whistles.
>> perfect. >> I'll be calling all
of you
for that.
>> when is that? What's the date on
that?
>> december 5th on the first
friday
of december.
>> and to clarify, we are doing the
tree lighting this friday.
>>
yes. The tree lighting is this friday,
november 21st.
>> before thanksgiving.
>> before
thanksgiving because we really love
holidays and it will be at 7:30 p.m.
the
actual pink event friday is going
to be from 5:00 p.m. To 9:00 p.m.
>>
okay. All right.
say nothing. You should let folks
cut the turkey before you
light the tree but that's just me.
but hey, costco thought it was christmas
in august
so what do I know.
>> so, jay, since
you are the vice mayor and
I booked my flights for thanksgiving
before I knew the tree lighting was
on the
21st, you are officially in charge
on
friday. Great.
>> those are all the
holiday
events.
>>
excellent. Thank you so much.
>>
so, a couple more things. Jill has
an update on the holiday guide that
she
wants to share with everyone.
>> [
inaudible ] I wanted to add,
as well, that
the downtown
martinez in partnership with the city
is creating the first ever holiday
gift guide. 16 pages, and it will be
inserted
into your
town monthly, which they have presence
and a lot of our surrounding jurisdictions
but not in martinez so they are new to
the martinez for this. It will reach
over 10,000 households as well as
we will have
standalone guides that will be pulled
out
and shared at the tree lighting event,
as well as the participating businesses
will have
copies. We'll also have qr codes in
different posters around at the stores
that people can scan and then view
the guide with
all the [ inaudible ] layers --shop
local
--
's all with the intent
to get to the shop local this holiday season.
[ inaudible ]
>> great. Thank
you.
>> yes. The last thing I want
to mention is we did have
a fantastic ribbon-cutting reopening
of fishing pier back on november
8th. In the mist, in the
fog that was rolling in that morning
with 100+ of our closest friends.
it was
fantastic. One thing that wasn't ready for the
grand opening but is about
to be installed at
the peer
are the fishing pole holders. Joe
just got 12 of them
in. Public works is going to be installing
them. They might even be ready by
the weekend. That was one thing that
we hadn't quite gotten to.
>> and
they want to be pvc pipes screwed
into the
railing. Right?
great.
>> that's all I had. >>
okay. Next one is subcommittee and
outside agency reports. You are welcome
to keep
it brief. I think many of the things
that we've talked about tonight were
covered already. Is there anything
else
from subcommittee that you would like
to report out on? Economic developers
or budget
and finance?
>> yes, mayor. Just very
quickly, council member mckillop and
I sit on
the economic development
subcommittee. We had a robust discussion
with kaiser permanente and
the county
hospital who provided of reviews of their
operations here in martinez and a
discussion
about the impacts of some of the rim
healthcare cuts as a result
of recent federal actions that
were undertaken.
one thing which was news to me was
that in
spite of that, the county hospital
is actually looking at a very ambitious
expansion, so they are going to be
doing a lot of construction
it sounds like in the very
near future.
which will no doubt bring a lot of construction workers
into martinez, but also, there will
be some
associated headaches, perhaps with
that. We want to make sure we mitigate
that to
the extent possible, and so, I think
we got a commitment from them. They
have
a plan in place to do that. The v-8
was not able to participate because
of the federal government shutdown
which is still going on but we hope
to
bring them back, but would love to
be able to schedule tours of all
of those facilities at some point
next year, as well, so. But that was
it. Debbie, did I miss anything?
>>
I think you mentioned all the things
we discussed.
coincidentally, this morning, I got
to meet with david culberson, the
ceo of the
hospital, and we got to see where
the new building is going to be built
in the future. I was there on another
unrelated matter but got
to visit the hospital, and they will
be a lot of change and I'm looking
forward to that, as well.
>> the one
thing I think was really a
big take
away was, we
are a city of 36,000 but we have these
three medical centers and they
are a huge linchpin for our community. There's
a lot of martinez residence and played
at those centers but then when you
think about
the economic impact that these facilities
have, it was a
really good, it was one of the better
subcommittees I have to say that
--meetings that I've had the opportunity
to participate in. Anyway, that was
it.
>>
one of the
additional challenges they talked about
was parking and so hopefully we can find
ways in which
we can help support some of their
parking needs especially during construction
phases in
early next year or by 2026.
>> are
you about kaiser? Or the county?
>>
the county.
>> mike, would you like
to speak to the parking coronation
that
you are doing with the county?
>>
you
can.
>> the county has approached
the city asking to be able to use
part
of the marina temporarily for a few
years.
we also wanted to coordinator with
state
lands to see if that was acceptable
and they believe they can make an
exception
for that type of
use for a temporary basis. We've been
working with
the county
they
need to go forward to the board of supervisors
to get approval before we
were able to bring it back to the
council for discussion, and they did
that yesterday,
so they got approval yesterday so
the goal would be to try to bring
something
before the council before the end
of the year because they actually
need the
temporary parking as soon as possible.
and then we figured, the two years,
we would
have a discussion based on where we
are the conversation to see if we
get
accepted for another year.
>> with
that generate revenue?
>> it would
actually, yes.
he would generate revenue. Part of
the agreement would
be -- [ inaudible ] that went on out
there as well as some restriping that
will
happen. It's part of the agreement
that the county will be reimbursing
us
for that cost as well as doing $12,000 a
year for license agreement.
>> and this is coming back
to us at a future date, so you have to
go into
much detail.
>> thanks. >> the other subcommittee
report out
is for budget and finance subcommittee. You
guys
met two days ago. As testing boy scouts
--'s but you came
in and disrupted our meeting. I wanted
to note that
for our
. We were heavily in a
budget and finance subcommittee.
>>
and they were respectful. They were
quiet and
they made squeaky noises with their
shoes.
>> they did squeak. A lot of
squeaking. [
inaudible -overlapping speakers ] 's
but just the two items that we heard
in regards to the purchasing policy,
because we are working on a revised
purchasing
policy for the city, and the other
was reviewing the citywide payment
processing system.
there
are some vendors we need to select
from so we've narrowed down the field
and that
will come back to us, but it was awfully cute
to see all the boy
scouts come in. The council chambers
were empty. I don't think there was
like
one person there. And all of a sudden,
it was filled with all of these
children, and they sat quietly for,
you know, a good 10 minutes, taking
it
all in. And then they just left, and
went on their way, so it is
really nice to see them. It was kind
of cute.
>> we did debrief and
I asked them for any feedback of what they had heard
and learned.
>>
and what did they say?
>> I can't
even remember but they all earned
their
badges for community involvement that
night.
>> they were riveted. >> they
did report
words
I know
you had been saying so I knew they were
listening.
>> is
for us at that agency report outs,
I wanted to give a quick note that
we
had our quarterly meeting with the
county representatives. A report out on
this periodically.
we have a standing meeting with the
folks from the jail, from housing
and
homelessness services with
a 3 with the hospital and david culberson's
on that call because he represents
the hospital. The biggest concerns of course
are releasing people from the jail,
releasing people
from psychiatric emergency services
and everyone
kind of being
in martinez and not necessarily having
transportation or taking advantage
of transportation and leaving, so,
that was the driver for starting that meeting
this past meeting that we
had really was talking a lot about
mental health issues, and we were
able to
provide after that meeting some stats
for --from martinez on some of the
issues
that we have been
having with
mental health
calls and not getting the support
that we need from the county, so that
was that
meeting that we had. Any other outside
agency meetings that we attended?
>> yeah. Celeste
thursday, november 13th, attended
our trans pack
committee meeting. One of the big
items
is measured j21a
fund safe transportation for children
which includes funding
to improve
transportation access and safety for
students in our sub impact region.
so, we approved funds in
the amount
of 41,000 two
participate
in a two-month
summer program. It would be june and
july of 2026 for
youth ages
6 to 18 can ride buses free without
passes.
and then, on the heels of that will
be the existing past the class school
your program
which is august
to september next year, providing
free passes to enrolled students.
so we
will be contributing $41,000 so students can
ride free in june and july. We
also asked staff because it seems
a bit cumbersome, but we have asked
staff to
see about if we
could extend that free time
without enrollment
because with children being able to write
for free for june and july, they
just get on a bus. They
don't have to enroll. And some of
the information we got back is that
the
parents really appreciate it because
it kept them out
of cars. Kept gas bills down. So we
want to just
see about --because in
our measured j21a fund, we've got 4.2 million
available, so we can easily
for four months
have folks write for free, so that
came out of
our meeting.
>> anybody? >> just very quickly, I
did have
an opportunity to attend the unveiling
of the
latest fairy was introduced
by our ferry operator, so I would like
to think jim wonderment and the staff for
their hospitality.
they recognize the
city of martinez at the event so I
appreciated
that.
and, yeah. It was really nice to be able
to connect with other local
elected's and see and learn more about
the
upcoming technologies
they helped unveil, so that's it.
>>
right. The only thing that's left
is city council comments. Debbie,
do you want
to start?
>> I just wanted to call
out that tonight in
our
consent calendar, we approved the free
parking in the
downtown area. I don't think I was like
touched on. I don't
know if we actually said anything
about that, but that goes into effect
november 27th through january
5th, so,
unfortunately, it's just after the
21st, when we are going
to do the tree lighting, so the tree
lighting is before the free parking,
but,
I don't know. Maybe we should meet
at the november 21st.
anyway, so just want to let people
know they can go down there and
park for free and that could hopefully
encourage them
-- shopping
experiences down there. Looking forward to that.
I'll be at the tree lighting with
some of my colleagues and I know it's
a little bit earlier than normal,
but we are starting the holiday season
a little early this year. More time
for shopping. I don't have anything
else
to add.
>> you have anything? >> thank you.
thank you very much. I too look forward
to joining everyone at the upcoming
tree lighting and holiday frolic.
I want to just call
out that we have a couple of tree
plantings that are
coming up. This saturday at hidden
valley
park, november 22nd. 9:00 a.m. In
collaboration I
believe with the school. Is
that correct?
mpg and e. That will be
taking place and then we go over to
pine meadow park on
december 6th, so both
coincidentally in district 3,
so.
>>
you are always doing something
in district 3.
>> getting some trees
planted. So come one, come on. I'd
like
to thank staff for the excellent job
that was done with the fishing pier
which
was talked about earlier, but also
the veterans day events. It took a
lot
of coordination. It has really great
turnouts for both and I know there's
a
lot of work that goes in behind the
scenes. That doesn't happen by
accident, so my
hats off to
public works, parks and rec, and everyone.
it was a team effort. So job well
done,
team. Thank you very much. Appreciate
that. I did want to just very quickly
follow
up on the earlier item
regarding caltrans that came up. I
too have heard similar concerns and
you know
think it speaks to a broader issue
where it's
not just the lack of timely response
on the striping and what have you,
but, that stretch of highway
4,
folks, between hercules in martinez,
it's a dump, and it is
frustrating. Every
time I
am
driving by there, that's like the
gateway to our city. I'm like, why
aren't
they picking this up? How often are
they sending crews? Highway 24 don't
look like
that. It's like, can
we --
I
think there's an opportunity here
to really engage them and if we need
to engage our state representatives
in this conversation, but caltrans
really needs to step up their
game. I just feel that more could
be done. We have a real safety issue
quite frankly but it's
also we've spent a lot of time on
beautification of
our city. What about beautification
of the entryway into our city?
highway 4. So maybe this is something
we could work collaboratively with
our counterparts in hercules and see
if maybe we
can collectively lean on caltrans
to
step up.
the striping and -- that's
got to be a priority and the fact -- the
lack of lighting as well is a
contributing factor, as well, I have to
say. It's really dark on highway 4
at certain points, so you combine
that with the lack of striping and
it's a
real safety issue. So we need to get
that done. Happy to connect off-line
in
terms of how best we can advocate
on that. The last thing I wanted
to say --I just wanted to extend my
heartfelt condolences to the family
of gwen moore, a longtime munro --
pardon me. Excuse
me. Munro. A longtime downtown business
owner. So I
was just
very saddened, like many in our community,
to learn of her
passing but just wanted to offer my
heartfelt condolences to her
mother, donna, and to all who knew
and
loved her, so,
thank you.
>> so, for my update,
just so you know, after you made the
comment about the striping, I sent
an email to
caltrans to our contact and I've seen
a handful of staff, so
he is the person who would respond
to us and I think we can take advantage
of
that relationship, and request additional
things, so, that's that update. So,
for me, today, I
got a chance to go to --high school
to their leadership exchange. We
had kids in the leadership program
from seventh
--2nd to 5th grade. There was a lot of
local folks and
the kids got to ask us questions and
I really enjoyed it, so kudos to
luciana who is a freshman who coordinated
all of that. There were about 50 kids
there. We talked about the tree lighting that I'm able
to join --so I'm
glad that you all will be covering
it. A reminder that the downtown cleanup
is on saturday the 22nd, and that
is the last cleanup
of the year, and that is really to help
kick off the
holiday season, you know, spruce up
our
downtown for shopping. Happy thanks giving to everybody. I
will be out of town with extended family
for the thanksgiving week, so
thanks to everybody who is covering
all of the events that are happening.
the
hospice tree
fell a couple of weeks ago so I just wanted
to remind everybody that the ceremony
will not be held here in martinez
on
december 2nd. They are taking all
the pleasant hill people and all the
martinez people
and going to the concord hospice tree.
I did into the --with the
director of hospice
east bay
a
couple of days ago to talk about with
an entry might look like. Other cities
aren't finding new trees. They're
finding new trees to make the hospice
tree out of so
I wanted to pass that on to all of
you because she had even
acknowledged that our hospice treat
was in a really weird place. The fact
that it
was in the middle of the road someone
we had events, we had to
close the road down together. So if
we can find a beautiful old tree, that's
in a park or something, that would
be much more conducive to what they
are
looking for, and it would be consistent
with other cities so if anybody has
any ideas, I was thinking can part
might be an interesting location.
golden hills park
would be great. There are a lot of
old trees there, too. Let me know
if you have any ideas and I know that
mike had been in touch
with them, as well, but I don't think
we have made any decisions,
right? Okay.
>> the light of the boat
parade.
>> there are fires
around. And that would be --if anyone
would like
to participate,,
that and just enjoy the new fishing
pier at night. That is half the goal
and there will be music and refreshments
and a variety of things. It
should be a lot of fun. And then, are you
going to
bring up the -- I'll talk about it.
yeah. So last
week or the last time, remember, I
sat in on the board
of supervisors meeting about covering
snap benefits.
step benefits have theoretically been
funded,
but food insecurity
is really even more of an issue this
year than it
has been in years past. And so,
I've been speaking with loaves and
fishes and
with jay about the potential for city
council to
help contribute toward a protein fund
for
the holidays. Turkey,
chicken, ham, tofu, whatever you might want
to have for the
holidays. So
city council actually has a little
bit of money in our discretionary
fund that
has been unspent so I wanted to propose
this as an option to donate a
little extra to our contra costa food
bank on behalf
of the city.
>> yes. >> I second
that motion.
>> are you comfortable
with that,
as well?
>> is that --is that intended to
be direction to the
city --
>> yes. >> it's because you are directing
money to be spent --you can
direct him to bring it back
--
>>
exactly. I wanted to make
sure everyone was okay with it. I
would like to direct mike to bring
back
to us at a future --thank you for
clarifying. I was getting fair --
to come back to us. Ideally, it would
be 2000 that we can split
1002 each organization, so if you
can double check to make sure that
the numbers
are correct from what's left of the
budget and then if you can bring it
back at our next agenda, that would
be great. Thank you.
>>
we don't meet again until december
10th, so I
know that
probably --I'm sure there will still
be a need through the holiday but
it's a little ways out.
>> thank you
for the reminder on that. We can
coordinate.
>> and I intended to close
the meeting in honor of gwen
this evening.
thank you for bringing [ inaudible
]
>> just do something that's been on
my mind
--the day job --and
we are in the holiday season. Adjust
the number
of scams and a
deep fakes. There is so
much activity going on in this space
right now, so the message is, for
friends, for family, elderly, just
be careful
online shopping. Providing
any information,
because it is a
huge, huge issue, and on a daily basis,
we are getting information on folks
who have been scammed. Through
a.I. And social media, so
just those in this season just for
folks to just be careful. Just
be careful, and wishing everybody
a happy, restful,
prosperous thanksgiving.
>> the mayor
pretty
much covered all of my talking points,
which
is great.
and I can't
wait for the tree lighting and cleanup
and I want to wish everybody a happy
thanksgiving.
>> great. Excellent. Well, in that
case, I would like to adjourn this
meeting in
memory of glenn and all that she contributed
to the martinez community in the downtown
community and all the activities she
did at
first friday for children in transit.
this meeting is
now adjourned to our regular scheduled
meeting on december
10th.