3, 2, 1. Good
evening and happy new year to everyone. Today is tuesday,
january 13th, 2026, and we
just came out of the close the session. There's no reportable
action and we'll start our regular meeting
at 7 0 9 and we'll cause a meeting to order
and have a pledge of allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america
to be the republic, which it stands, one nation under god,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
agenda. Item two, report on close the session. We already
reported no, um, action items. So
mayors, uh, let me see. Council member morada is
participating remotely via china conference
pursuant to government code 5 4 9 5 3
b. His meeting location was posted on the agenda
and the agenda was posted as a attend conference location 72
hours before the meeting. All votes during the
attending conference session will be conducted by roll call
vote. So agenda item three presentations, and the
proclamations 3.1, recognition of the
altamont cruisers car club for their donation to
doubling police service services.
thank you. Good evening, madam mayor council. Um, vic fox, chief of police. It's
my honor to introduce, uh, once again from last year ken reichman and retired dublin police
services sergeant steve iasis of the altamont cruisers car club.
the altamont cruisers have been long dedicated supporters of youth programs throughout the tri-valley
and through their generous fundraising efforts, they've contributed more than $1 million
to local charities and youth focused initiatives. This year, the altamont cruisers
have once again demonstrated their commitment to our community by donating $3,500
to the crime prevention unit. This contribution will help fund essential operating
supplies for the many community events that we support throughout the year. So please join
me in welcoming ken, steve, and the altamont cruisers car club for their generosity, commitment
to service and ongoing support of the delwood community. Yeah, thank you very
much.
the front, yes, please share a few words front and center. Uh, I'm
ken. Uh, thank you for inviting us. I look forward to this every year
as I know steve does also. Um, it's just our,
uh, gratitude to be able to help the community and
all the work and efforts that you guys do. So thank you very, very much. And I hope you
come out and see our car show at the end of september. It's
the last sunday in september, and we have over 800 cars, classic
cars, so very cool. Wow. Thank you. You have to invite us,
. Yes, we will. We will make a reminder on it for sure.
you so much for your contribution, and I would like to present this recognition
to both of you. Do you want to come over and we'll take photo with you? Thank
you. Thank you very, very much. We give to
yeah. Thank you. Thank, thank you. Thank you. Very, very
once again. Thank you. Does that have to be classics? No.
no. Okay.
thank. Let's take the church.
should we invite the, um, chief come over too. Chief, you want
to come over .
there you go. Let me, let me
thank you. Oh, this unique.
thank you. Thank you.
agenda item 3.2 2025 sponsor
recognition.
good evening, honorable mayor dis uh, distinguished council members and members
of our community. Um, first off, happy new year. Uh, thank you for the opportunity
to present the city of dublin's 2025 sponsor recognition. My
name is ivan san pedro, recreation supervisor for the city of dublin's parks and community services department.
and tonight we are proud to recognize the businesses and organizations whose
generous support helped make our programs, events, and services possible throughout
2025.
all right, in 2025, the city of dublin
received $100,980 in cash sponsorships and
18,700 and in in-kind sponsorships. These
contributions play a vital role in offsetting the costs of producing community events and
supporting city programs, facilities and services. On the following
slides, we will highlight several key events and programs from 2025
and showcase the meaningful impact of our sponsors.
first up, uh, st. Patrick's day, um, celebration,
our annual st. Patrick's day celebration, once again, brought the community together
for a lively and festive event with the support of our sponsors. Attendees
enjoyed family friendly activities, entertainment and community engagement throughout
the day, making this one of, uh, dublin's signature celebrations of the year,
uh, the spring extravaganza welcomed families to a fun-filled day featuring
egg hunts, crafts, inflatables, and photo opportunities. Sponsors
help create a safe and joyful environment where children and families could celebrate
this. Uh, the season together,
uh, the farmer's market and summer concert series continue to thrive in
2025 local vendors live music and sponsor activations
created vibrant weekly gatherings that supported small businesses
while offering residents a place to connect and enjoy dublin's park, especially
in emerald glen park. Picnic flick
sponsored played a key role in enhancing picnic licks, our outdoor movie series.
families enjoyed premo activities, games, and giveaways, hosted by sponsors
helping to create a memorable summer evening in our community.
splatter once again, capped off the summer with a high energy festival featuring live
music, interactive activities, food vendors and creative experiences
for all ages. Sponsor supported help elevate this
event into a true community celebration.
at har, uh, uh, sorry. At harvest fair and ghost of dublin,
families enjoyed fall themed activities, historical elements, and seasonal fun.
sponsor participation helped bring these traditional events to life. While celebrating
dublin's heritage.
just last month, the holiday tree lighting and breakfast with santa, we rang in the holiday season
with the annual tree lighting and breakfast with santa. These beloved events
were made even more special through sponsor involvement, creating warm and memorable
experiences for families during the holidays.
and lastly, the senior center. Throughout this, uh, 2025, sponsors
also supported senior center events including resource fairs, specialty
programs that promote wellness, connection, and enrichment for dublin's
older adult community. So with that said,
on behalf of the city of dublin, we extend our sincere gratitude to all of the
businesses and organizations that supported our community throughout 2025.
your partnership plays a critical role in helping us deliver high quality programs
and events that enhance quality of life for our residents.
um, thank you again for your continued support and partnership, and we look forward to working with you
all in 2026. Now, at this time, we would like to invite
all the sponsors in attendance today, uh, to join the mayor and the city council members
for a group photo. Yeah, please come over if
you are the sponsors in the list, and we
would like to thank you and also have a photo with you. We already
present your certificates before the meeting.
everyone together? Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
oh, we'll arrange behind me. So for,
again, following, being here, supporting the city
agenda item 3.3, recognition of the 2025
tax, the home holiday, home decorating contest
winners.
good evening, mayor and council. I'm jennifer lamarey, recreation technician with the parks
and community services department. Tonight we are pleased to recognize the residents who helped spread
holiday cheer throughout our community through the 2025 deck. The homes holiday
home decorating contest
deck. The homes is an annual holiday home decorating contest that encourages creativity, neighborhood
pride, and community connection. This year's contest will once again showcase
the enthusiasm and talents of dublin residents, commissioners from the parks and community
services commission and the public served as judges. Winners were selected at the
december 15th, 2025. Parks and community services meeting and award winners
received a yard sign. They'll receive a certificate of recognition tonight and a gift card
from local businesses. This
year in 2025, we had 15 homes participating from neighborhoods across the city.
homes were evaluated across multiple categories, recognized for creativity,
presentation, and overall holiday spirit.
this map highlights the location of participating homes. Residents
were able to explore decorated neighborhoods throughout dublin, helping foster a shared community
experience during this holiday season.
at this time, we would like to recognize the award recipients. As each winner is announced,
we invite them to come forward to receive their certificate and be recognized by the city council.
first, we have the glimcher family at 7 9 5 1 peppertree road.
the people's choice award is selected by community votes and reflects display that rest
that resonates most with residents.
next, we have the gron pre family at 8 6 4 5
ardmore place. This award recognized the best use of music, movement and technology.
there's a few that are not here this evening that for sure I know are not here, so, so do
we. Do we want to bring them on? Just the one by one, the two that I just called are not
here this evening. Um, so I'll move forward. Next one. The ones that I know that are
thank you. Sorry about that. Um, next we have
winter wonderland award with the harris, I'm sorry, spotlight award with
the harris family at 7 9 6 4 gunshot court. The spotlight award
is our judge's choice award, and at this time, I'd like to invite the harris family up.
so, congratulations. You can bring your whole family here.
oh, good job.
okay. You kind of like that new style.
congratulations.
thank you. Next we have the overinflated
award with the mccormick family at 6 8 1 5 ion way. This award celebrates
the best use of inflatables. I don't believe they're here this evening. Uh, we
have the deck, the halls award with, which is the ross family at
1 0 8 6 8. Glen glen, gary link, excuse me, the
deck. The halls award recognizes the best condo apartment display. I
don't believe they're here as well. Right here. Oh, oh, they're welcome
for next year. Sorry about that. Teams.
very fun. Very cool. It'll be bigger next year.
yeah, we got this new thing going.
thank you.
next we have the dashing debut award, which is the eat family at 7 9 8 4
cranford lane. This award highlights a first year contest entry is the
eat family here.
and last we have the goat award. This goat award was the greatest of, of
all time recognized as outstanding display and excellence in cre, creativity
scale and holiday spirit. And we have the beto family, and they are here this evening.
you got two. So how long did it take you to take all that down?
three .
yes.
thank you. On behalf of the city, thank you to all of
our participants for helping make dublin brighter during this holiday season. We appreciate your creativity,
community spirit, and willingness to share your homes with residents throughout the city.
this concludes my deck, the homes presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much.
now we are, we are on agenda item four, public comment. At
this time, the public is permitted to address the city
council on non genderized items. Please
step to the podium and clearly state your name for the record.
have any? Yes, mayor. I have two speakers here in the chamber, and the first speaker
is mike grant.
good evening, mike grant, longtime resident dublin,
owner of guns unlimited. December 16th.
I came here. You guys did a, uh, resolution
condemning or basically not opening up the prison.
and, uh, this did nothing but stir up and cause violence.
as we've seen this in la, portland and minneapolis, the city council in
minneapolis. And the mayor, mayor stirred the pot. And this caused
a lady to get shot for doing something stupid, trying
to run over an ice officer. Then shortly after that, two illegals,
I said, illegals rammed into an ice vehicle in portland. Both
of them were also shot. This council has put
this same signal out to the protestors, said it's okay to disrupt police
and operations, and that's ice operations. And we even
had a speaker calling for blocking ice at the last meeting.
my suggestion for each of you is to immediately put out a statement
to the protestors in dublin who come and stand on our streets to avoid interfering
with ice operations if they come to town.
also told you that the ice doesn't need that federal prison
at all. They have, they have a military base called camp parks right over
there. The n-c-n-c-o academy will, will, will be closing in april.
and this frees up lots of space for law enforcement. Nice
to live on the base and base out of that place. Now
why would I bring this up? Well, with the haters following federal
agency officers around from motels, they will be looking
at this very soon. That was told to me last night by a few guys that
I know in the agency. So you should probably think about
the words that you will need to say, telling people to stand down
and not interfere with ice operations. I'm sure you would agree
that we don't need another ice agent attack
attacked, or he needs to defend himself and shoot somebody in dublin.
last, the illegals that was in bloomington, minnesota
for 25 years was just picked up the other day, january the
sixth, they finally told his family where he went to texas,
and that's what they're gonna do to anybody they find around here. They're not keeping 'em around here,
they're gonna send 'em down south someplace so they can be closer to the border and they can run 'em
across and get rid of 'em. So I come back to you again and I tell you, stay outta
national politics gene and follow what we said. Seven
people spoke or sent you guys information on this stuff. Seven people from
double and outta 72,000, and you reacted with
the emails. I know you run your eyebrows. The emails that came
out, I seen them. There was no reason for you guys to get involved in
this, but you guys are on the spotlight now. Second letter went to president trump and
christie, so hopefully they'll be out here. Have fun
mayor. The next speaker is angela tucker.
uh, good evening and happy nun year, uh, honorable mayor and, uh,
city council. I wanted to offer just some very, very brief
comments on, uh, the traffic safety issue relating to,
uh, not dissimilar topic to the indivisible protests in front
of the safe, uh, safeway one, I, uh, uh,
I drive by there regularly and, uh, just last saturday, I drove
by there again and it is getting a little bit more chaotic.
and I personally, of course, uh, do not take any issue with people
protesting. And while I do not follow the rationale
of pres, uh, uh, protesting president trump in our
city in california, that is beside the point. I take no issue with
that, but I am concerned about, uh, the traffic safety.
a lot of people are crossing, uh, all the time and they're very
close, uh, to the roadway in particular. I drive,
uh, may surprise you, but I drive a very large truck. And literally
people with the placards, they're like inches away from, uh, from the truck when
you are in the right hand lane. And I'm worried that if
somebody slips, uh, goes, uh, under the wheels,
what happens then? Right? What, what happens to liability?
what happens? Uh, um, you know, they are in a lively way waving
around the placards. Again, that's their right. I take no issue with that.
uh, but what happens if they hit my truck? What, what happens
if, uh, if they, um, wave the placards and
get injured when they accidentally hit the truck and, uh,
uh, and, and they injure their wrist? Right? Uh, the scenarios, um,
don't really bear thinking about, and I would just ask that
you consider the traffic safety again, in that particular corner.
perhaps you can take some measures such, uh, such, such
as barriers and, uh, just sort of attempt to
get a little bit more, uh, uh, order into that whole
situation and not quite so much traffic. Uh, not quite so much chaos. Thank
you very much. Thank you. I,
I have no more speakers slips, mayor. Okay. Thank you. Um, so moving on. We
are on agenda item five, consent calendar. So consent,
uh, calendar items are typically non-controversial in nature
and are considered for approval by the city council with one single
vote. Uh, we want to ask council members
if you have a comments or questions on any con consent
calendar items. Uh, mayor, I'd like to, um, pull
item, I think it's five point, um, four just
for, um, a couple of, uh, uh, comments. Okay.
uh, mayor, I'd like 5.7, please pull for comments as well.
5.7 for comments.
will you and oh, and mayor, I have public comment
on 5.2 and 5.7. 5.2
and 5.7. 5.7. Okay. So
we have to, um, like, uh, do raw cost
anyway. Um, so make a motion and we'll do roll cost. Have to
make a motion for motion the consent calendar outside of items 5.2,
5.4, and 5.7.
so let's do a roll call. Was there? Yeah. Oh,
I'll do a second. Okay. Sorry, we got a second by jean. Right
by by michael. Second by michael. And then let's do a roll call.
council member marada aye. Council member cadry
aye. Council member corsten. Aye. Vice mayor.
josie mayor who? Yes. National motion
passes unanimously. Yeah. Thank you. So let's go to 5.2 for
public comment.
oh, public comment for 5.2 is angela tucker.
hello again. Um, I did not expect to be here quite so soon.
again. So, angela, angela tucker again. Uh, I am a
resident of dublin. I am actually requesting that two items
be removed from the january consent proclamations,
specifically the proclamations on ramadan in february and diwali in
november. Failing that I would request that future proclamations
on significant question and jewish holidays be approved once submitted.
ramadan and diwali are both religious observances. Please
be reminded that there are currently no proclamation for other
religions observances included in the list of proclamations.
for whatever reason, a city council should refrain
from promoting only particular religions I
bear, no ill will to, uh, towards anyone per
the first amendment. I support every american's right to practice
whatever religion they choose or none. Not only do we
have freedom of religion, we also have freedom from religion.
I expect that the intention behind the proclamations for ramadan and diwali
is diversity and inclusion related be be that as
it may, please consider that promoting only one or limited
religious, uh, uh, groups does not make for conclusion it could be
considered somewhat divisive and exclusionary.
additionally, proclaiming islamic and hindu holidays exclusively
does not reflect the religious diversity of our city.
dublin has a vibrant catholic and non non-denominational
christian community, and we have jewish residents too
that is not at all reflected in the current proclamations. Again,
for whatever reasons. In summary, I primarily
request that you remove from madan and diwali from the city proclamations
at this time and propose that you generally refrain
from selective religious promotion. However, should you decide
after deliberations that you want to keep the proclamations on
ramadan and diwali, I simply ask that you are even handed
and agree in future to adding proclamations on significant christian
and jewish holidays such as land easter,
christmas, yom kippur, and hanukkah. Anything less
could probably be construed as discriminatory against christians
and jewish people. I trust that the mayor and this
city council would not intentionally ever be discriminating
against significant portions of this community. Thank
you very much for your attention and consideration.
thank you. So 5.2 and then move to
5.4. City council participation in the 2026
st. Patrick day. You have a comment to make, right? Um, yeah, I I just wanted to add, um,
uh, one comment that, um, this year, st. Patrick's day,
um, falls, the st's day parade and festiv fall in conjunction with
national league of cities, um, congressional city conference. And there, um, several
of us that may end up going to that. I know several of us are on policy committees for
that. Um, and so yes, fully supportive of the, um,
staff's recommendation, but also wondering if, um, in conjunction with that
there is an appetite to move. Um, the, uh, council meeting
that is on the 17th to the following week. There are five tuesdays
in the months of march. And so I'm wondering if I get head nods that, um, so that
we don't have council members that are immediately flying out, um, as part
of the celebration. You know, some of us wouldn't
be reading packets and all of that at the same time. John is looking at me funny. Am I outta line?
no. Good. Okay. Um, would there be, uh, head nods to move
our, um, march 17th meeting to the following tuesday?
um, anybody have a problem with that? I'd be supportive of that. Supportive of that?
yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's plan commission meeting that night. Is that
a problem? Well, yeah, the diocese is a problem for sure.
uh, how about their regular meeting night? But often they get canceled so we, we
we, they can probably plan around it, right? John? I, yeah. Or they
could move. Okay. You guys take priority . Um,
I'm seeing, I'm appreciate that, john. Yeah. Um, so I guess my ask
is to have staff look into it and see if that's doable for us. Be fantastic.
okay. Yeah. Thank you. Um, so moving on to 5.7.
sorry, uh, just quick comment. Uh, I, for 5.4, I, I
appreciate the opportunity to walk in the parade. I was hoping we could just, uh,
I'm assuming walking as a group, just the five of us as a council,
we do have a, um, there is a big winner
who has to work with, with the mayor.
there's what there, there we had the nonprofit organization
had a event. So they bid out walking with
the mayor in st. Patrick day as one of the award.
so there's a, there's a, a winner . When
did we agree on that? It's, uh, it happened just
a long time ago. Uh, yeah. I, I, you know, that mayor and council members, we can,
uh, so primarily it is the city council. There should be no other groups,
um, mayor, um, we can, we can talk about that individual offline.
okay. Yeah. It's primarily the city council primarily,
or exclusively, sorry. It's never been exclusively the
city council, uh, because we've had groups sort of tag along. Um,
it was our plan, our staff plan to control that this year. Anyway, um,
I I'm, I'm opening that up to you to decide whether it's going to be exclusive,
uh, here and now. And then the mayor and I can discuss so other ways for that individual to
participate. Yeah. This is a, a nonprofit organization. They were
fundraising and then they bid out and they, they
actually, it it's, it's a ceo of stanford who won that bid.
that that is the thing we kind of already promised. We who, who,
how did this all remind yeah. And the city, I also say this way. How did, how
did this come about? So this just the nonprofit
ask about this specifically and I grade
and I say I grade. Oh,
sounds like that's an offline conversation. But yeah, it could be limited to the five
council members. And, and then you can discuss that particular account. Thank you.
okay. So, so, but I am not sure.
so she, is that a, are
you making a motion or amendment? Are we trying to do something
here? 5.4. I think the, uh,
staff was seeking direction on, uh, your method of participation, which is walking,
uh, and now we've been asked to make it exclusively, uh,
the city council. That's what I hear. Okay.
and look into moving the council meeting directly following st. Patrick's day. Why,
why is council meetings related to this, uh, patrick day? Because
the, um, activities of st. Patrick's day sort of stomp on agenda review
and all of that and traveling to nlc. It's a week
before. No, it's, it's in conjunction. The, um, parade is on the 14th, the
count, the packet, all of that is in the, the lead up to that meeting.
and some of us will be flying out maybe directly from the parade to go to
nlc. I see. Okay. Alright. Where, where do agree on that one, right? Yeah.
okay. 5.7 doubling
fanon. Five 80 statement of overriding
considerations. Yes. And thank you mayor,
uh, council member john radha attending remotely. Uh, I have some questions
for staff if, uh, they'd be available to answer those for
me. Yes, sir.
okay. Uh, I by the way, I'm sorry, who am I speaking with?
you have, uh, amy million community development director stepping up to the
lectern. Great, thank you. Good evening, amy.
evening. Uh, I would like to ask, uh,
uh, about the or running statement, um, as it is
at the moment, uh, what happens with it once we're done with
it this evening? Where does it go? Uh,
from a planning perspective? It goes into the, to the project file. John, is there
a legal place it needs to go? Uh,
no. It doesn't get filed anywhere o other than the planning files. It's
a decision, it's a statement that's made when a decision is made and, um,
they, you know, just part of the city's records at that point. Thank you. I wasn't sure if it
needed to go back to the court or anything. I appreciate it. Well, technically
we will be reporting back to the court on our compliance with the writ. So there we
will be, if, if, if the council does adopt the statement of overriding considerations tonight,
we will indicate to the court that we have adopt that the council did readopt the
statement of overriding considerations. Okay.
uh, thank you, john, for that, for the affirmation. Uh,
therefore, I, I'm gonna take this, these, these
questions quite seriously since they are in compliance to an action requested
by the court. Uh, so amy, I'm going to step into
one procedural question and, and actually, I'm sorry, maybe this will go to john.
uh, so, uh, hold, hold, hold, hold tight. Amy , if you don't mind. So, uh, um,
city attorney, uh, barker the statement,
um, as it stands, uh, or, or the process around, around
the statement, we don't have the litigant appealing
anything at this point. Correct. And, and I'm, I, I understand this might be a, a point
of, uh, confidentiality, so please tell me if, if I'm overstepping.
no, uh, I, I don't have any awareness of whether the applicant or I'm
sorry, the, the, the, the a the litig against plan to appeal
or not. Um, the, um,
what we have is a court decision and, uh, what's in
front of you is, uh, staff's proposal to comply with the court decision
and report back to the court. Um, I, I don't, I don't have any information
about the other side, the other, the litigant's perspective on this.
I'm assuming that, that they would, uh, agree with us complying
with the court order. Okay, very good. Then, um,
as a matter of course, and just because I'm asking this question in public, it's, it's a
procedural point that we are operating in compliance to the court
order. Uh, very good. Thank you. Um, then thank you, uh,
john. I appreciate it. I'll, I'll jump over back to, to amy. Uh,
so amy, I'm gonna go over some of the benefits that were noted, which
I think, by the way, very well written, very well articulated.
I I really like how we, we've pinpointed, um, some
key wins for the city. Um, so let me, let me
ask the, for the first benefit that we have, which is the build of 238
units, um, really quickly, uh, these 238
units, they're single family homes or they, they town homes. What's the,
like, potential average, um, uh, uh,
habitability or, or how many, how many family members would live in this, in these 230
units? Uh, well, I think the
mul technically the multiplier in the general plan, which is we average, I think it's 2.7
people per unit. Uh, so
I would like to pretend I'm on math whiz, but I'm not. So 2.7 times 238 would
be tech, the technical number out of the general plan. Um, you know, we anticipate
them to be, whether you call them attached single family or town
homes, it's that, uh, typical multi-family sort of row town
product that you see in, in eastern dublin. Thank you, amy.
I did the math really quick. Um, great. So I guess the benefit of being remote is I could have a calculator
mm-hmm . Uh, 642.6, um,
possible extra lives we could be helping with 230 units. So,
uh, good benefit there. Uh, the next benefit I'd like to
ask about, uh, because we are in fact gonna be presenting this to the
court, which is on our rena goal. So could
you tell me, um, of our total rena
target or the number that we were given by the state of california,
what percentage does 238 equate to,
or what does it fulfill in terms of our arena achievement?
I, I'm gonna be honest, I don't remember the number off the top of my head. I think it was,
yeah, I mean, it was, I wanna say it was somewhere between three and four,
I believe. So it's, uh, less, it's somewhere between five and
10% would be my guess. Uh, that, yeah, that would
be my guess, based on my memory of what the actual numbers were. Okay.
so material, it sounds to me. Okay.
all right. Um, and,
uh, let, let me be the opposing
opinion at the moment, which is for five to 10%
potential achievement against arena target. If this
did not get passed tonight, what is the implication of that towards
our future achievement of arena target?
so, not passing this tonight, in my opinion, doesn't have any,
uh, substantial change to that rena contribution. John, can you speak to the
legal ramifications of not passing this tonight?
uh, well, um, there's a court order that's instructed us
to adopt this statement of overriding considerations. If we don't do it, it
could potentially invalidate the project we've already adopt. You know, the council already approved
the project and subsequently, of course, ordered us to
adopt a statement of overriding considerations. So if we elected not to proceed
with adopting a statement of overriding considerations, we'd have probably a
dispute with the applicant. Okay. Uh,
thank you, john, for the procedure. Just again, trying to make sure we have the,
the clarification around process. Um, uh,
amy, uh, I'm going to rattle off some of the other benefits, which again, were awesome.
so, 3.2 million, um, potential, uh, square
footage for office space, 7.2 acres for parks and community,
um, uh, projects. We have a wetlands mitigation,
uh, there's more to it. Um, these are, again, without sounding like a
broken record, really amazing. Uh, but I did notice that, you know, again, this
is a statement that we will be providing and affirming to the court. So,
um, was there any consideration for a benefit to public
safety? Yeah, so
I think the key part about just take, just taking a step back before
we answer that question. I think the key piece of cqa, which, um,
might, might be missing here, is that the purpose of ceq is
to disclose impacts, right? So you're disclosing all of your environmental impacts,
you go through the checklist and you look at what environmental impacts are associated with
this project. When you find that there is a significant unavoidable impact,
then before you approve a project, you have to approve
a statement of overriding consideration. Because the purpose of cqa
is not necessarily to be able to mitigate every single impact down
to less significant, significant, right? Some projects just have impacts.
and so the purpose of the statement of overriding consideration is to acknowledge
that some projects have impacts, but the project has a benefit, right?
so we are taking this very thoughtful
consideration and saying, okay, there is a, we are making a statement
to override those impacts because we acknowledge, uh, the
benefits of the project. So that's sort of the foundation in which all of this is
even happening, right? So procedurally, the court said you
needed to do this again at the time that we approved the project.
so from a public safety perspective, all of
that is analyzed in the environmental document. We have to do consistency with the general
plan. And then outside of that, there's also the
coordination with the public safety, the fire public works, right? Everyone takes
their review of a project. So, you know, depending on
specifically what you're thinking of, there's many, many aspects to public safety
and many areas of the project review process
of the sqa process in which public safety is looked at, considered
addressed through the process. Does that make sense?
that's great. Uh, can you gimme an example of where public safety would be
addressed in a sqa review? Uh, sure. So,
um, transportation is one of them, right? Do you have
appropriate access and circulation? Um, fire impacts,
for example, uh, you have to look at, um,
uh, impacts to water resources. You have to,
um, seismic, uh, is one of them,
uh, geological, uh, noise, right? All of
these really fundamentally come back to, uh, public
safety and welfare, right? All, you know, you can kind of draw a line to almost everything that
we do on a regular basis. And every portion of a project
review or a sql review all comes back to, uh, sort
of, you know, the purpose of why we are here, right? Which is public
safety, healthy, and well, health and welfare. Okay. Um,
very good. Thank you. Uh, again, I'm, I'm simply asking, because if you're
asking me to put my name on this, I wanna make sure I have, I get it right. Um,
the next benefit I want to ask about is the dublin boulevard extension.
so with this, um,
statement, um, what benefit does it give to
the extension and does it add any funding to the extension?
uh, so one of the things that the project does is part of the
entitlement is that it dedicates the entirety of the double boulevard extension through the project.
so without a project, uh, you have to get the rights
to that property in a different way, right? Whether it be imminent domain or
some other process. So when you have a developer who's willing to come to the table
with a map, also requesting a development agreement, then you can show
that dedication on the map and the development agreement, which is included in this project.
oh, okay. That's great. Uh, uh, when you say the entirety of
the dublin boulevard extension, am I
mistaken then to assume that the developer would go all
the way to the livermore city line? I'm sorry.
I thought that I had said the entirety through the project site. Uh, maybe I
mentally said that, but didn't actually say that, but that's what I'm, that's what I meant to say, just
through their project site is what they would be limited to. Got it. Thank
you very much. Um, and then, uh, because
the, one of the benefits sort of extended into the, into the school thing,
um, , just entertain me for a second. Uh,
and tell me if, if, uh, you don't have the answer, but that's okay, the,
going over to the school side of this conversation, um,
is there a percentage of the tax revenue that
would be going to a new school? Uh, am I, I mean, considering that there
are potentially 642.6
new lives coming online here, um, that's a kind
of a material number for potentially children too.
yeah. So it seems like there might be somebody who wants to respond. The only thing that I will
say, uh, commissioner mar or councilman marada, is that there are school impact
fees associated when you pull building permits for residential units. They're actually impact fees
when you pull them for commercial as well. They're just substantially less. So, uh,
as they pull the building permits, they will pay the school impact fees. Is there something else you
wanted to add? The school district gets about the same amount
of property tax that, uh, the city does council member. So
any development that pays property tax is gonna contribute, uh, to school
revenue. Okay. Very nice. Again, I'm, I'm
elated with the, the benefits to the city. Um, and then just in, in
closing, amy, if I may, just because I'm, I'm very conservative in, in
my assessment or, or let's, let's say me putting my name on something that
goes to a court. Um, what are the potential risks associated to
these overriding considerations as a statement that will go to the alameda
superior court?
I, uh, council member marda, I don't, I don't believe there are any risks associated with
adopting the statement of overriding considerations. This is just, uh, a procedural process
that the court asked us to proceed with. Um, I think the risk would occur
if we chose not to proceed with adopting the statement of overriding considerations,
and then we might face a dispute with the, with the applicant. Um,
I, I, I just wanna make one thing clear to you that the court asked us to adopt the statement
of overriding considerations. The court's not gonna review the statement of overriding
considerations. The court's just gonna confirm that we, that
you made the policy decision to adopt the statement of overriding considerations. That's all
the court's seeking from us. Okay. Uh, good distinction.
thank you, john. Uh, amy, no further questions. I appreciate
your time. Uh, mayor, I hand it back to you. Thank you. Um,
quick question. You have one more question? Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Just one very quick question.
um, you mentioned, uh, sharing, you know, the, our compliance
with, with the court. How is this communicated with either, uh, you know, the
readopting and, and reaffirming this, um, statement of overriding considerations? Is that given back
to the community, future residents, current residents? How, how is that communicated
out? Uh, well, this council meeting is, is really the only communication we're
gonna have with the public about, about the statement of overriding considerations, that that's, that's how
the process works. And then there's a return to the writ where we, uh, just
file a pleading in court and say, your honor, we comply with the writ by doing
x, y, and z. Uh, we file that. And, um, if the other side
wants to say, oh, you didn't do that, or challenge it in some way, they can do that. But it,
I think that'll be the end of it. We file it and, and the ca case will be resolved.
perfect. Thank you. Go ahead. Just ask a quick follow up question. Um, we
are not adopting new statements of overriding consideration tonight. Correct. We are
reaffirming statements of overriding consideration that were already
approved in subsequent or in pri prior sqa reviews.
that is correct. Through eastern, eastern double specific plan, uh, et cetera, et cetera. Correct? Yeah. We kind
of lost that point in the course of all the, all the questions that came up. But basically what
happened is tradition. So, so in 1995 or
1994, when the, when the city council adopted the eastern dublin specific plan,
um, there were a number of impacts, uh, that that couldn't be mitigated.
and so the council at that time was required to adopt a statement of overriding
considerations, and did, and we've relied on that statement of overriding considerations
ever since. And, uh, the, the petitioners in this particular
case challenged that, and asserted that we're required to
reconsider and readopt those, uh, statements of overriding considerations every
time we approve a project, when we're relying on the old, or the,
I, sorry, I should never say old eir, the, the 1995
eir. Um, uh, and it is,
uh, a procedural matter that we have to do that. But what we were really doing is
sort of ratifying what the council's done in the past. And
in, in this particular case, we, we, the, the statement of overrun
considerations is basically what we did before, but we tailored it ever so slightly to focus
on, on what's involved in this particular project. Okay. And, um, we've looked at it
more than just 1995, correct those statements. We've looked at 'em
since 1995. Right. We reconsider them every time and make sure there's
no additional impacts and everything's within the scope of the original
im, uh, the impacts that were considered previously. So that's something we
evaluate. Every project we consider, we review the checklist and make
sure that, uh, there isn't any impacts that haven't previously been considered. Perfect.
thank you more. No, that's it. Happy to make any more
comments. So we have two, um, public comments, um, speaker slips on this item. So
the first one here is here in the chamber, and that's tom evans.
good evening mayor council and the staff. I'm tom evans, longtime
resident. Um, I don't have a problem with a statement
of considerations, but the way it's
written, I'm not particularly comfortable with it, starts out saying the city
council has prepared the following statement. And I'm curious if that's
true. Did the five of you get together and hammer the statement
out? Or was it prepared by staff and you're approving it? And if you were just
approving it, it might be nice to change that word. Um,
there's a few benefits, and of course, it's up to the council to decide whether the
benefits outweigh the, uh, impacts. Well, actually, that was already
done as council member josie pointed out. Um, but
some of these that, that have been brought up just far, not benefits, I mean, a
benefit would be okay, might provide more jobs. That's a good thing, provides
revenue for the city, those, that's a benefit. Uh, parks and such
benefits, I could see all those. But stuff like, um, development
of 126 acres of commercial and,
uh, well complete development on the last remaining undeveloped portions
in eastern dublin. I don't see
how that's a benefit. If you're saying we had vacant
land and now we've filled it up, isn't that great? It's,
I don't see the benefit. In fact, if anything, it's probably not nice,
uh, to look at as, as the rolling hills are. But again, it's just not a benefit. So
it shouldn't be in there. Uh, roadway improvements, dublin
boulevard, you know, if, uh, if dublin still has to pay for dublin
boulevard, I don't see how this project is providing a benefit.
um, streetscape, this one, I, I just can't get over.
they're gonna provide curbs, gutters, sidewalks, and landscaping.
I mean, I, I, I think I have to dig pretty deep to pull that into
a benefit. Um, marina, uh,
this says it helps with reina. I disagree. Uh, uh,
we don't have any trouble filling the market rate
requirements for reina. That's easy. It's the, you know, if
this was providing significant low cost housing, then
yeah, then, then you're helping out with rena. But I don't think this project
is, I haven't heard any, seen any, uh, low cost housing,
um, further urbanization
of eastern dublin as planned by the city. Um,
I don't know. Why is that a benefit? You know, just, just the fact that you're
doing it, that's, it's not a benefit, uh, contribute
funds to construct schools, parks, and other community facilities.
well, how much are they contributing? Uh,
historically, the school districts come up short. You know, you, you get
so much per student, but they have to build, uh, buildings to accommodate them
to me. Tom is, you are over time. I'm out of time. Yeah, you are over.
yeah. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much. And
mayor, the next speaker is on zoom, and it's shirley lewandowski.
good. Thank you, marsha. This is shirley. Loki.
good evening. I'm a longtime dublin resident. Good evening mayor. Council members
and staff, you are being asked to adopt the six page writeup
by staff on the dublin fallon gh bpa five 80 project
regarding statements of overrun in considerations in order to comply
with the alameda county superior court's writ from november 19th, 2025,
to provide a new and more clarifying statement of overriding
consideration. This writeup doesn't clearly
state the reasons for overriding the environmental impacts. It refers to a lot of
generalities, repetitive rhetoric and references, the older
document. So my questions are, if a public is just reading the
six page document, do they even know what the benefits are to override
the negative impacts? I don't see it from this writeup. As
the alameda county superior court reviewed and approved it, apparently a writ has
to go back to the court. And I can't believe the court will not review it,
and may probably have other comments. Has the company who filed
a lawsuit, king kingswood owners association, reviewed and approved it?
they as a filing, uh, applicant for this lawsuit. They
have a right to review it, and I'm sure they would wanna make a comment whether or not
they agreed that the city has fulfilled what the court had asked. Has
this project received all the appropriate agency permits to move it forward,
such as the us army corps of engineers, fish and wildlife, et cetera?
where can I find data, real data information where the city has monitored
and prove statements of overriding considerations from past projects,
past development projects that have proven the benefits they claim then
have outweighed the negative impacts? Is that information available?
I would appreciate responses to my questions as you further deliberate. Thank
you. Thank you.
I have no more speaker slips on the side. Thank you. So, um, let's come back to,
to this 5.7. Any more comments about 5.7?
no. Okay. So, uh, we, we have, this is a
constant canada, so we have a 5.2, 5.4, and the 5.7
we need to, um, vote on. So,
uh, I want to say, do we want to vote each of them separately?
actually, something just, I thought, what, 5.7? Yeah, five seven. Okay. Just to sort come back
5.7 for john, um, there seems to be
this document, uh, is there a,
uh, consideration or could there be a consideration for reviewing the, the, the,
the wording and assessing what those benefits are? And
to clarify? Well, yeah, I mean, the, the council could certainly
alter the statement of overriding considerations if it
chose to. I mean, these are, these are, these are your statements of overriding
considerations. The thing I would, I would remind the council about is this
document is based on the original statement of overriding
considerations from 19 95, 19 94, actually. And so
it's just been tailored to focus on the project. Um,
it, this is, is a procedural matter, but if the council
has concerns about the statement, it they could cer it could certainly be altered.
the, at the end of the day, the question is whether or not
the council believes that the project, uh, the
benefits of the project outweigh the environmental impacts that, uh, can't
be mitigated.
I mean, there are a number of benefits articulated in the statement of overriding
considerations. I heard, I heard some, um, members of the public,
um, indicating that, that they found some of the, some of
the statements that are listed, uh, not to be benefits or not to
be that significant, but I didn't hear anyone say that, that
all of the benefits together didn't, didn't override the, the environmental impact.
so I, I don't know. I think that's a judgment for the council. Ultimately it,
okay. Uh, I just wanna make sure that it's
not, and, and this is my, my wording, that we're not just taking a document
and repeating it, and that we are, um, for procedural
matter, and that we are actually looking at how we're saying and how
we're phrasing, and to be clear with what, um, what those
benefits are. And that's the only reason I'm bringing this up, is if there is
not clarity, um, then is there
any harm in tweaking it or is there some kind of a, uh, issue with doing that?
I'm not gonna get, you know, pull up, go down a hole
here. I just want to see if there's a way to look at this document and say, hey, you
know, okay, maybe we weren't so clear on this.
uh, maybe we could elaborate on this. Uh, that's my only question, just
to be clear and trans a little more transparent. If, if that is the will,
uh, or, or there, is there any issue with, with doing that
there's no legal issue with, with, um, making some changes
or clarification to the, to the statement? If that's the counsel's desire?
um, I would, I would like, uh,
another re uh, another look at that. Um, if it
doesn't need to be done tonight, um, I, I'm not, you know, I'm just throwing this
out here for, for thoughts here. Uh, and if you have, I'd like to
hear the rest of you. What are you thinking? What, what are the consequences of not doing this tonight?
what, what did the court ask us to do? Uh,
well, we have to return to the court. Um, but we, we do have time. We could, we could bring it
back at the next meeting. Um, you know, it, it, so,
so we do have time to revise it. And how much staff work is that
to revise it based on direction that you haven't yet gotten? I understand you
may get direction of specific changes you want, but
for us to say, we're not gonna do this tonight, please take another
swing at this and bring it back to us without specific direction. Well, we
did hear some comments from the public tonight, so we'd evaluate, uh, the,
the statement in light of those comments and any other direction you gave us.
I don't know. It's, it's a, a little, it's, it's some work. I think the applicant's
gonna end up paying for it. So it's not gonna, it's not gonna cost the city
a lot of money, but it would be, it would be some staff effort required to get it back on an agenda
at some point. So we've heard, and, and not to minimize
public comment, which I very much appreciate the people that come all the time, but that would've been
taking direction from the public in writing a statement of overriding considerations,
which I don't think is probably the will of the council. I think we would, we would want to
decide which of those comments we agreed upon and which ones we don't.
um, and we've already discussed this project at some length
when we approved it. Discuss the eir, uh, uh,
the planning commission has discussed. The eir, the, um, council discussed it at
least twice. And I, my recollection, recollection is more than twice.
um, uh, so I, I'm not really sure what
your purpose in rewriting them is when it's not going to
material in, I mean, I'm not, I don't if necessarily disagree with it's material or not. I don't necessarily disagree
with you. I'm just not really sure what the purpose would be at this point. 'cause it's not gonna change
the project. It's not gonna change whether the project goes forward.
um, and to, uh, council member mcc, I'm sorry, council member, uh,
cadre's point these two meetings. If, if in
fact it becomes two meetings are the points at which we are going to communicate this
out to the public. So it's not gonna go, it's not like we're gonna then publish them
other than in the project file and then mail them out to the
residents mm-hmm . Um, for, you know, new statements. So personally, I don't
really see the point of going down that road when we've already sort of made
the statements of over in consideration. And so I, I'm not really sure why we, we need to have
a van coming back. I guess my point is, um, are we just,
uh, through routine just cutting and pasting something and not paying attention to
how we're saying it? So it's more of how we're saying it than, uh,
the fact that, hey, it all says the same thing. It really doesn't matter. So I, I, I think
all I'm saying is if we wanna be clear in our documents,
uh, and uh, then, uh, maybe we should take another look at this. That's
all. And I don't think it's a, a big deal. It's a big ask. That's all. That's
all it is. Yeah. I don't, I don't think it's a t terribly huge ask either. Yeah. But I don't think wordsmithing
is gonna change much, and I'm comfortable with, with it the way it is.
you're fine. Okay. I'll see. So I'm sure it could
be wordsmithed and improved. Uh, perhaps we give direction to
staff to, you know, anytime this comes back in, in the future, they take a closer look
at it. But I'm, I'm not sure if it has any material impact or, uh, if it, if
it really changes anything and, and it, and
next time we approve a project and we rely on the eastern dublin specific plan, um,
it's likely we will be, uh, bringing back a statement of overriding considerations
in compliance with the, the, you know, the court order doesn't apply to future projects, but,
um, I think we've followed the direction the court gave us. So, so we will have
an opportunity to do that, that wordsmithing you're talking about on future projects.
so, um, so we're done discussion on this item. I agree
with all of you. Like, uh, we can improve, but maybe
we don't have to, um, for this scenario, because we all make a material change.
I, I totally agree with this. So let's just, uh, make a roll call for
each of those 5.2. Maybe we can combine 5.2
and 5.4, um, and then 5.7 separately.
sure. Happy to make a motion for items 5.2 and 5.4 on the consent
calendar. Yeah. So let's, uh, vote on this. Uh, um, 5.2.
you need a second? Yeah, I know. 5.2 and 5.4. And
then we have a, a motion you to go second. Yeah, I second on those. We have
a michael at second. Let's do the roll call. Council member
marada. Aye. Council member cadre. Aye.
council member mccarsten. Aye. Vice mayor josie. Aye. Mayor
who, aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. I make
a second motion for item 5.7. I'll second. So we have
a motion. I second for 5.7. Let's do the roll call
council. Miranda abstain.
council member cadre. Aye. Council member corsten. Yeah.
yes. Vice mayor josie? Yes. Mayor who? Yes.
motion passes. Board zero. Great, thank you.
so moving on to agenda item six. Um,
I'm sorry, mayor, did I just hear city clerk say motion passed at four to zero
or four to one? Four to one? It's four to four to zero to one.
what? Zero. Oh, got it. Thank you. Sorry, the abstain. Yeah, the council
member abstain. So he didn't vote. No, he,
he abstain. So we would, we were gonna list it accordingly in the minutes.
okay. Yep. Sorry, my mic went out for a second. Thank you for clarification.
okay. Thank you. So agenda item six, public
hearing. Nine, seven. I'm finished the business nine,
agenda eight, new business 8.1.
good evening, honorable mayor and city council members. Jordan fos, senior management analyst. And this evening
I'll be providing an informational report on dublin's safe and sane fireworks program.
uh, this report is in response to a june 17th, 2025 request
from the city council to receive an informational report on the city's program.
so to start with some historical context. Uh, since dublin's incorporation in 1982,
the city has been regulating fireworks over the years. The sale of safe and sane
fireworks has been addressed through ordinance amendments by the city council, as well
as operational policies, uh, that balance community benefit and safety compliance.
furthermore, the sale of safe and sane fireworks has been voted on through two advisory ballot
measures. The first in 1982 and the second in 1988,
both ballot measures were to ban the sale of safe and sane fireworks, and both were
defeated by the voters. In 1987, the dublin municipal code chapter
5.24 was published, uh, incorporating various ordinances and amendments
on the sale of safe and insane fireworks into one chapter. Uh, in
2002, the city council at the recommendation of the city's then assigned fireworks committee
approved the designation of four city parks for safe and sane fireworks use
on july 4th only. I do want to note that these actions address
safe and sane fireworks, um, and a illegal fireworks are banned by state law.
so illegal fireworks are considered explosive and or aerial in nature, and
it is a misdemeanor or felony to possess or discharge those anywhere unless permitted
by a state licensed power technician, pyro technician.
the sale of safe and same fireworks is allowed with a permit in commercial areas of the city
based on the city's current population and regulations listed in the municipal code,
which allow for one booth per 3000 residents, not including group quarters
populations. Uh, it allows for up to 23 booths to be permitted.
uh, the city does operate a lottery system when the number of applications exceed. What we allow
for booths and for organizations that would like to apply for a sales permit,
they must be a nonprofit with 5 0 1 c3 status. They must be based
in dublin for at least one year, uh, and have 20 resident members. They
must serve the dublin community, and they must have an active business license with the city.
lastly, the sales period for safe and san fireworks, uh, runs
from noon on june 28th to, uh, noon on june on july 5th.
struggled to get that out. Uh, and sales take place daily during this period between
8:00 am and 10:00 pm
so the use of safe insane fireworks are permitted at four designated parks, which I mentioned
on july 4th, only from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm those parks are alamo
creek park, dublin sports grounds, emerald glen park and shannon park. Furthermore,
the city's practice allows for the use of safe and sane fireworks in residential neighborhoods
with single family homes, as well as commercial areas with the consent of the property owner.
safe and sane fireworks are only allowed to be used during the designated sales period.
again, illegal fireworks is defined by state law, are strictly prohibited at
all times in the city.
so dublin police services is responsible for fireworks response as well as suppression,
uh, police activities. So annually, dps utilizes a suppression
detail to respond to fireworks complaints, provides security at our designated parks, and
then proactively seek illegal fireworks use. The detail is staffed
on overtime and is supported by alameda county sheriff's office. Um,
in 2025. The suppression detail consisted of 21 personnel in addition to the
standard patrol. And on average, dps receives approximately 55 calls
for service each year related to either illegal fireworks noise issues,
uh, potentially the improper use of safe and sane fireworks, as well as public safety
concerns. Additionally, suppression details have confiscated more
than 1600 pounds of illegal fireworks since 2020. And in 2025,
the suppression team confiscated 100 pounds of illegal
fireworks. Alameda county fire department also plays an important
role in both the sale of safe and sane fireworks, as well as emergency response related to
fireworks. A cfd is responsible for the booth application process inspection,
and regulation of fireworks booths and overall code enforcement for the operation of these booths.
a cfd is also responsible for emergency response, which,
uh, which does strain resources in the event of any, you know, active large mutual
aid fires that are, um, occurring in the state at the time.
since 2020, there have been four documented fire incidents in non-designated park
areas. There have been two vegetation fires, one caused by illegal
or improper use and or disposal of the safe, insane fireworks. And then
one tree fire that was the result of illegal fireworks. No injuries or
structural damage was reported from these fires. In addition to these incidents,
a cfd also extinguish extinguishes fireworks firework related
dumpster fires at our designated parks, um, each year during the
july 4th period. So
there is a financial impact to the sale of safe and insane fireworks in the city as well. Uh, the
table on the screen illustrates the 2025 city expenditures as well as revenues.
so total expenditures include direct personnel expenses and operational support across
departments that provide public safety, maintenance, permitting, and inspection
services, as well as general administration. Overall, the city's total expenditures
were $79,707. Uh, police made up approximately
51% of those expenditures. Fire makes up approximately 22%.
uh, maintenance makes up approximately 17%, and the remainder falls within
street sweeping, um, a vi for the trash bins or garbage
bins, um, staff time. And then, um, as well lost revenue
due to facility closure. Specifically at the shannon community center.
the city does bring in revenue as well from booth application fees and deposits.
and so this year in 2025, the city brought in $5,535 in
revenue. So it leads to a net city cost of 74,172 for
the 2025 period. Okay,
so that was a summary of the city's current programs, but I do want to also highlight the nonprofits
that apply to operate boosts in the city. So each year, the city approves approximately
15 boosts for the sale of safe, insane fireworks. And while the city does not
collect information on the sales from nonprofits over recent years, some
organizations have shared this with staff that they are facing challenges. So
these challenges can include declining net revenues due to the high operating cost,
uh, which include rental space, generators, equipment, et cetera.
firework products, uh, revenue generated also appears to vary by booth
location, where it's been reported to staff that obviously in higher traffic areas you're gonna have higher revenues,
lower traffic areas, you'll have lower revenues. Some organizations have also
reported difficulty in finding enough volunteers to run the booth, leading to organizations
partnering to ensure adequate volunteer support. Um, and that has basically
kept the number of booth applications fairly stagnant over the years.
lastly, some organizations are finding it more difficult to find locations for firework booths.
this is likely due to the development of previously vacant commercial sites, as well as increased
rent prices. Furthermore, some property owners currently allow, uh, allowing boost
have shared with staff that they're considering removing rental access in future years, which
would have an impact on the amount of sites available.
I had also like to share some identified environmental and community impacts from the use of fireworks.
so fire risk remains the city's most significant concern during summer months, primarily
due to our proximity to wildland, um, areas as well as significant summer
weather conditions, extreme heat, low relative humidity, as well as strong winds.
all of these conditions increase the risk of fast moving vegetation or structure fires in the area
during this period. Fireworks also can create secondary
impacts to the community, such as noise related disruptions for veterans and other sensitive
populations, stress and harm to pets and wildlife and light pollution.
uh, and also then to get a better picture of how dublin's program operates in the bay area, staff
also researched surrounding cities. So overall, there are 10 cities in the bay area
that allow the sale of safe and insane fireworks, and they're listed in the chart on the screen.
newark and union city are the only two jurisdictions in alameda county that allow safe
and sane fireworks, uh, and they are very comparable to dublin. So that's really where staff
focused. Both newark and union city allow the sale of safe and sane fireworks
at boost throughout their community. Similar to dublin, they both have firework suppression details
with similar responsibilities to dublin, and then they both contract fire suppression
services through a cfd as well. Uh, I
do wanna highlight just a couple of notable differences, um, between these communities in dublin.
so newark city council established a process where fireworks boosts were capped and then they
decrease through attrition when an organization chooses not to renew their permit or,
uh, they no longer meet the city's requirements. Dublin's cap is based, as I
mentioned earlier on the population, so it increases and decreases based on the population of
the city. Newark also includes, uh, illegal fireworks
and their social host ordinance, allowing police to cite the property owner where illegal fireworks
are seen to be used to compare double dublin's. Uh, social host
ordinance only covers underage drinking and does not include fireworks.
union city differs from dublin with their fee structure as they charge permit fees based
on a percentage of gross revenue, uh, from the sales of fireworks. Dublin
has a set inspection and application fee, and then union
city calculates this to an estimation of reasonable city costs to administer permits
and to then operate the program. And then they divide that by the gross revenues derived from the
sales of fireworks in the city of the previ for the previous year.
so while this report is informational only, it does raise potential areas the city may consider in
the future to enhance safety and help recover the city's expenses related to fireworks
management. So these include implementing a new fee structure for permit fees that
could be structured to align with the city's costs, which is similar to what union city has done.
it could include expanding the current social host ordinance to assign responsibility to
property owners and assess fines accordingly. And also capping the number
of boosts to allow for current nonprofits to maintain their sales booth, while also
controlling the expansion of fireworks in the community.
so that concludes, uh, the informational presentation and staff's recommendation is
to receive the port and we receive the report, excuse me, and we're happy to take any questions you have.
thank you. Thank you, jordan. That's a very comprehensive study.
um, start with the questions.
the button wasn't working there for a second. Um, thank you for the
comprehensive report. Um, a few questions. Um,
the financial analysis that was up there are all of those costs,
most particularly fire and police strictly due to
safe and sane fireworks? Not strictly. So fire will
be, the majority of it will be because it's really gonna be your inspection services, code enforcement,
um, services. The police number though, like, especially if you're looking at suppression
details mm-hmm . Those totals will be impacted by looking for illegal fireworks
as well. Okay. And the, the suppression number, the police number included
that suppression detail? Correct. Okay. Um, alright, that's good to know.
um, the, I know we've asked this in
the past, and this is I think the third time we've talked about fireworks since I've been on the dais.
um, we have not seen an
increase in illegal fireworks in
the city of dublin, um, compared to our surrounding
cities. Is that correct? I couldn't speak directly to our surrounding cities.
I can say, uh, in 2020 we did confiscate, I believe a thousand pounds
worth of illegal fireworks. Since then, it's been fairly consistent year over
year. Um, so it's not like we're seeing a, a increase year over year in dublin necessarily.
um, I don't know if the chief wants to speak to other communities. Um, yeah, I I
I we've had that, I know you probably don't have that reward in front of you. We've had that question
asked in the past, and the, the answer we got was that, um, our,
uh, the, the calls for service based on illegal fireworks and what we're seeing
is comparable to surrounding cities is and, and maybe sometimes even lower. Is that,
is that a, do I have that right? Do I remember that correctly? Uh, vice mayor, I
don't have the, the info this for the surrounding cities. I can tell you from working these details previously when
I was assigned here, um, our arrest numbers are about the same. They're
very low. Um, the amount of fireworks that we seize every year is pretty consistent,
and a lot of the fireworks that we do seize come from undercover operations with our detectives.
it's not necessarily always picking up the fireworks off the street, but, um, I, I don't
know what the surrounding agencies are picking up okay. Or what their numbers are.
all right. Um, do you have any recollection of those reports that we've had
in the past? Okay, thank you. Um, I, the 2020 year
we talked about it then, um, because everybody in california
was appalled by the illegal fireworks, and it was because of all the professional shows being canceled and the
black market being flooded with, um, the illegal fireworks. And
so that, I'm, I'm, that was an anomaly mm-hmm . Um, so
I'm, I'm not, that's not the number that I want us to all be thinking
about so much. Correct. It's more the current years mm-hmm . Um, okay. Thank
you. The, um, you said that the cap is based,
the, the, the number of boosts goes up and down, but I think what you meant was the cap goes up and down
based on the population, correct? Correct. The cap. The cap, the allowable number of boosts,
our cap, uhhuh is based on the, is based on the population. It's one per every 3000,
uh, minus anybody in group quarters. And the, the last few years
have we had enough booths that we were bumping up against that cap so that we had to do the lottery
draw? We have not, no. Do you remember when the last year we had to do the lottery draw? Was, I believe it was in
2015, was the last time we did the lottery draw. Okay. And last
year we had 15 booths, is that right? 15 selected, 16 applied. And there were,
how many could we have had? How many could we have had based on the cap?
uh, 23. 23. Okay. Thank you. Um, and then, uh, the,
the booth locations for each nonprofit, how were those booths selected?
the locations? You, you had a slide that talked about the locations. Yeah. And, um,
I'll let bonnie come up and answer that. Okay. Chief tara, she, I think will have more information
on that specifically. Okay.
good evening. Council division chief tara with the emily county fire department. Um,
the city does not, um, dictate booths. Those are established
between the fireworks provider and the organizations,
or the organizations themselves secure their booth locations.
what we do is when the booth locations are submitted, we ensure that the
location meets the regulation standards for distances from things
like gasoline pumps, buildings, um, lithium
ion, battery charging stations, those types of, um, things. But
we do not pick or determine where the booth locations are.
and obviously the property owners here within the community determine whether
they want a booth on their property or not. Okay. Um,
and, uh, when was the last time the ordinance itself was updated?
was that 82? Do I have that right?
uh, the ordinance, there were multiple amendments that had happened over
the years. Um, not specifically just in 1982. Okay.
um, I don't have that exact information in front of me right now, though. I apologize.
the last update I saw in writing on here was 82, but you think there was things that
were updated since then? There were multiple, or there were multiple amendments that occurred? Lemme
pull it up. My, my recollection
is that there have been a number of amendments, but they're mainly related to the, the way
the fireworks, uh, sales permits process works. You know, who's qualifying
and things like that. Um, there the fundamentals around, uh, safe and
sane fireworks haven't changed. That's 82. Does that sound right? Yeah, that sounds right.
okay. It appears that the most recent update was in 2012. Okay.
okay. That's it for my questions right now. Thank you. Thank you. Very good questions anymore?
good. Um, thank you for the presentation. Uh, just got one
question, uh, kind of dovetailing off of, uh, the vice mayor's questions. Is there, do
we have the capacity to, uh, break out the suppression detail on,
for police and fire between illegal and legal, uh,
activities or fireworks rather?
um, so council member cadre, so we already do that. So part of our suppression detail, uh,
goes to cover four parks or safe and sane fireworks are being, um,
used. So we typically, um, I think we put about two officers at each
park. So part of that suppression does cover the safe and sane.
got it. Okay. So two per four, so eight officers
during that 12 hour window? That's correct. Roughly. Okay. Uh,
can I piggyback? Sure. Question. Um, but the police costs
for safe, insane fireworks are more than just those officers at the park the night of
fireworks. Right. And so I think, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your question was,
um, really for the, the, uh, police cost
associated with fireworks mm-hmm . Um, can we
get a full breakdown of, you know, this is how much it costs for police
services to support safe and sane fireworks? Yeah. I think we, we put together,
I know captain campos put together a, uh, sheet detailing all the costs, including costs
for, uh, you know, inspections and stuff, or any, any types of response
to a fireworks booth. Mm-hmm . And also including, um, the staff that
was dedicated to suppression on the day of 4th of july. I see. Okay. So we may have just
misunderstood your answer, . Okay. Thank you. Thank you,
michael. Yeah, thank you, mayor. Um,
what, uh, what has prevented us, uh,
from, and you may have mentioned this, but I wasn't clear on this, uh,
requiring or, or enforcing a, a reporting mechanism
from the nonprofits. Why have we not been, let me rephrase it. That's
where I wanna go, but why have we not, uh, um,
received good information over the years? Because essentially, regardless of
whether, uh, you know, we have breakouts or not on the data,
uh, we are, uh, we are subsidizing
this process by $74,000 a year, which, which
is great. Um, but I would think that we'd want
to be able to pinpoint what those benefits are
to the community. And I know, um, the community for, obviously for many years,
this has been a, a very, very good revenue source, uh, to
support the schools. So what I'd like to see is, is
also, is to, uh, see how successful we can, uh,
be in requiring, uh, whether it's the, uh,
how, wherever that information's coming from, whether it's the, the, uh, fireworks
provider or the nonprofits. And, uh, I know that they
know how much they're making, uh, but we'd like, I'd like to see kind of a gross
revenue, uh, or, or something that says, hey, look, we're,
we're, uh, willing to provide this. This is, this is, you know, this is what we're putting
up as a city, and, uh, here's, here's how
it's benefiting our, our schools. And I think that would be, um,
a first start as far as I'm concerned. Um, the other
thing is, uh, and, and I'm, I'm going to digress and
say I thank you for the report. I, I often fail to thank you,
, and I wanna do that because you actually identified, um,
a couple of comparatives. And, um, what I'd like to understand
is what do you think, uh, their rationale or
how successful have both newark and
union city been over the year, and where do you think they're going, uh,
on that? I mean, I can say like with union city specifically, uh, or excuse me, newark
specifically with the cap, and, you know, obviously reducing the number of boosts to attrition mm-hmm
. I believe they've reduced by two or three boosts over the past,
gosh, how many years it's been, it's been five plus years.
so there has been a little bit of an attrition there. The cap was originally set at 14, I believe
they're down to 12 or 11 booths at this point. Mm-hmm . So that's been successful
for what I guess their council was going for. Um,
I, I couldn't really speak to how successful union city's been with, with
their specific, uh, fee structure. Yeah.
um, I, you know, we'd have to reach out to them and, and really sit down, what, what are, yeah.
or how much are they subsidizing or, you know, yeah. We would've, we'd
have to reach out to them directly to get that, that detailed information, which we're happy to do
if, um, I, I would appreciate that.
um, and then, um, I think that's,
those are the, the basic questions for now that I'll, I might have a couple more later,
but thank you. Yeah. So, john, council member marada, do you have
any questions? Um, yes. I, if I may, just two
very quick questions for jordan. Um, uh, jordan. Great.
great. Uh, research and, and in depth, uh, the first
question is, um, as a city, uh, fundamentally
we provide this as a service correct. To,
to our residents, both the fireworks permitting process as
well as the, uh, coordinate off area for where fireworks can be
lit off in the parks, correct? That is correct. Okay. Thank
you. Uh, just a point of clarification. And then, uh, second question
is, uh, during the
evaluation, and, and, uh, actually, let me take a step back. I, I actually agree with,
uh, councilman horten because he and I come from a very similar business background.
so we're always about kpis and metrics. Um, but to that
point, which I'm leading into jordan, uh, we as a city
do not engage with the applicants on
either commercial discussion around foot traffic,
sales volume, or anything of that sort. Correct. We, we simply accept
the permit process, term permit and provide a service.
correct. They're not required to report anything back to the city, um, specifically
surrounding their sales. Okay.
okay. Um, thank you. Therefore, I, um, I, I, I think it's,
it's important to note that, you know, as a city, uh, again, we provide a service,
um, the data around, uh, the commercial
aspects of running a booth and the number of booths, those are all
extra data points. Um, but maybe at, at some point it becomes
a deliberation as to do those become points
of discussion and adjudication as we, you know, look further
about the support of this service. Uh, but as of now, I, I'm going to
just say that this, provide this, continue to provide the service. It, it was a great report.
um, but we don't necessarily need to look at, uh, volume of,
of sales as a determining factor for the number of booths we have in the
future. So, thank you, jordan. Your report is accepted and I appreciate it,
council member. So thank you. Good work. So, I, I,
I actually know some data points, I'll say. So I think a, some
number of non-profit organizations, they made a significant,
uh, revenue from these sales, um, because they, they, sometimes they
reach out to me, and actually I was a volunteer selling,
uh, fireworks in the past years. So I, I kinda have that information.
so it's a significant for non-profit for many of them. And
also, um, also depends because it's not easy to
sell as well. So that's why the numbers of nonprofit
apply for these permits, like reduced over years, because
it's not easy. But for some pfcs for those, you know, they have a lot
of, um, associated, uh, supporting groups,
they do rely on this. Um, so I, I do have a
question. And the question is, uh, so
I say like a, it has been on ballot in the past
a few times, so I'm just, uh, curious.
so if we want to change anything, we also need to go to the ballot,
is that right? I'm gonna let john answer that
question. You don't have to place it on the ballot, but, uh, it's
been done in the past to inform the city council's decision about it.
go ahead. Yeah. Uh, that's, that's absolutely correct. I'm just gonna
unpack it slightly. It was originally, the policy was originally adopted by the
city council. Um, so it can be changed by the city council. I think it's been controversial
in the past. Um, and so the council had put it on
the ballot as an advisory measure to just ask the public, hey,
do you wanna keep it or do you want to, do you wanna get rid of safe and sane
fireworks? Uh, so that's why it was on the ballot. It wasn't actually an initiative measure, it was just a,
a question, do you, do you want to retain safe and sane fireworks in dublin? Okay.
cool. Thank you. So that's all the questions. And do we have
a public comments? Uh, yes, mayor, I have,
um, it looks like six speakers on this, um, topic, some here in
the chamber, and one on zoom. So the first speaker is james bowling.
hi, um, I'm james bowling, and, uh, I represent, uh, dublin
high school music boosters. Um, so I'm just gonna go ahead and speak
really quickly about revenue. It is a major revenue source for us, um,
for us. I'll give you some specifics since you were kind of asking.
um, net revenue for us is
about $25,000 a year. What does that do? That allows
our band to go down to fresno for a two day competition, uh, to compete
with all bands from across california and nevada and oregon.
it's a huge competition that they do. Without that revenue, we're not going.
um, and it also makes up 25% of all fundraising
that we do. So it would be a significant cut within
our program. The other issue would also be, and I would
like to kind of put some things into perspective. That's our perspective and
what it would do to our organization. Um, your guys'
budget is $171 million. From what I read up on your website, that's
75,000 is four tenths, I'm sorry, four, one hundreds of a
percent of your overall budget. That to me, is not a very significant
savings for the city. I do appreciate that you guys being fiscally
responsible as I am as well. Um, however, I would implore
you to not look at this as an expense, but to look at this as an
investment on the children and the organizations that serve your community.
that's the perspective I would like for you guys to think about before you make any type of
decisions. Um, to add a fee,
you guys were talking about adding it to the gross, if there was a fee to
cover up that cost, I'm just telling you that that would probably
cut us, that would cut our revenue made from the, by the boost
by about 10%. From what I saw in the report, I saw
a possible fee being charged. And so that I just kind of did a quick thing on
how much that would actually cost us. Um,
and also to kind of go to the safety,
if in the past two years you've had two responses, and one of them
was improper use or disposal of safe, some safe and same fireworks,
and one was for illegal, I don't see a necessary
measure to ban them as, I don't think that that would actually reduce
safety concerns that the city has. I understand
the concerns that the city may have, but I don't think that would be a
significant safety improvement for the city. 'cause people are still going to bring
in illegal fireworks. I come from modesto where they
let off safe, insane fireworks, but those are way outnumbered by the
illegal ones, . So I can tell you that it's not gonna change
a thing whether you get rid of it or you don't. Thank you.
thank you, mayor. The next speaker is mike grant.
good evening again, mike grant, longtime resident.
I'm concerned you get a hundred pounds of illegal fireworks that you compensate.
and I, I'm more concerned about, uh, why don't you guys
start finding these people $200 a pound for every pound of
fireworks you find on 'em, and give 'em a little deterrent. They won't do that anymore
and stick it to 'em in the pocketbook. That's what you're trying to do most of the time to us.
so let's go ahead and do it to them. Maybe they won't bring the fireworks in town anymore,
not a big deal. Chief would go ahead and write the ticket to 'em, and we will
haul 'em away to santa rita motel, and we'll collect the cash
from 'em. That's how we'll stop that. So as far as
the city, the $74,000 to this city's chump change,
we see it all the time. We spend more money. I see people driving around with, uh,
cars going to lunch, and these little cars hiding out and stuff in the street.
it's not a big deal, the city cars. So if we can afford to do that,
we can afford to let these people make a profit,
just like the gentleman just said here for the school. Just leave it alone,
move on. Look for something else to save money on, like go after
maybe these protestors and raise their permit fees. Thank you,
mayor. The next speaker is inga houston.
good evening mayor and city council and staff. Um, before I start,
I'm gonna, uh, talk from a business point of view, but I, I would like to point out
that, um, in the revenue funding, um, did you take
into consideration the potential sales tax income that comes in on the
sales tax that is charged on the, um,
fireworks. So if the fireworks go away, that sales tax will go down? So that's something
to consider. Uh, the thing is, is, uh, my name is inga houston.
I'm president, ceo of the dublin chamber of commerce. Um, I'm
speaking tonight on the behalf of the business, um, community,
uh, local businesses that invest in this community, employer, residents,
um, and partner closer with both the city and the nonprofit organizations.
from a business perspective, with a lawful nonprofit
fundraising mechanism, if it's eliminated, the financial
need does not disappear. It shifts and the
shift lands directly on local businesses. If nonprofits lose
a significant source of revenue, businesses will face increased donation
requests, sponsorship asks, and emergency appeals
to fill that gap for small and mid-sized businesses already
managing rising costs and labor insurance, rent and compliance.
this creates a financial strain. This is not
theoretical, it is how funding gaps are filled.
if the average firework booth nets $30,000 times 15
booths, that's $450,000 that our nonprofits here in
dublin are going to be seeking from our community. The city's
support of firework sales over the years has created awesome fundraising opportunities,
and I applaud the city for, for this, uh, program.
and also it's a multi-generational fundraiser.
I also wanna emphasize the role nonprofits play in our, in the overall
business climate nonprofit, um, nonprofits provide
youth programs, safety education, school support, family
support services, and community engagement that helps make dublin
a place where businesses wanna, where businesses can attract employees,
customers, and investment. When nonprofit funding is reduced,
pressure shifts back to the city and the private sector. The business community
support strong enforcement against illegal activities,
but we do not support the elimination of a regulator program that is
working and shifting unintended costs onto the business and public
safety resources. Respectfully, the chamber believes the
most effective path forward is to preserve this nonprofit
fundraising activity. This approach protects
community services and avoids placing additional financial strain on dublin
businesses. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you, mayor.
the next speaker is gary leach.
hi, ms. Mayor, city council. Thanks for having me. I'm gary leach. I'm the
executive director of doublet partners in education. Many of you
know that d pi has been around for about 30 years. We support schools
with afterschool programs and nonprofit, or excuse me, uh, summer programs.
but what a lot of people don't realize is the amount of money that we give back to
the community, directly to the students for student programs,
to the schools and the school district. This year, this current fiscal
year, we'll be giving $280,000 back to the schools
school community, and for school programs for fireworks
specifically, we gave $19,000 to middle
school and high school music programs. We love music. We love
music programs. We know what it does for children. We know
not only is it like learning a whole foreign language, and so it requires
a lot of thinking and self-confidence to be able to play music
in front of hundreds of parents, but it also helps
with anxiety. So if you think about the stress that
is both because of academic stress and peer pressure
that our middle school students and high school students experience music is
a fantastic outlet for that. That's really why deep, I
really strongly supports music programs. So that night, where did that
$19,000 go that we gave to the middle schools and the
high school emerald high school this year? I'll tell you where it went. So,
wells middle school, uh, mr. B, as they call him the fantastic music
teacher, he said by us giving him money, it allowed
a cost to help their trip to disneyland. So
let's put it this way. Middle school kids play in a marching band,
get the dream of marching down main street in disneyland and playing at
disneyland. That's fantastic. We don't want that to go away.
um, what does it also do? It allowed us to give
a electric guitar and an amp to a student who was learning music and
learning how to play guitar, and she really wanted to learn electric guitar. So that allowed
her to do that. Um, what is it doing to emerald highs music
program? It's allowing that brand new high school to be able
to buy instruments and musical equipment to support schools.
so what happens if fireworks goes away? Um, that $19,000
that we gave to those middle school and high school programs goes away. It
goes away. And we will try to find other ways to make up that money.
but we want and deep, I wants to continue to support music
programs because the benefit to the dublin students, the
children of dublin, and particularly to help the anxiety
and, you know, the stress that kids are under, music is a fantastic outlet.
thank you very much. Thank you, mayor. The
next speaker is dennis rel.
good evening mayor, members of the council. My name is dennis val, I'm president of without
communications. And for the more than three decades I've
worked with california cities, counties, fire
agencies, law enforcement, the office of the state fire marshal, uh,
on fireworks, safety enforcement, and public education.
I submitted a detailed letter to you regarding tonight's staff report, and
I appreciate the opportunity to briefly summarize its key points.
let me start with what I believe is the most important issue, and I want to compliment
jordan for the addition in the powerpoint because initially the staff
report did not clearly distinguish between the impacts caused
by illegal fireworks versus those associated with state fire marshal
approved, safe and sane. The distinction matters because it
drives policy, it drives enforcement, it drives the strategy,
and it drives the cost allocation. The overwhelming majority of police
and fire deployment costs described in the report are driven by illegal
aerial fireworks, not the ground-based, safe and sane products sold
by dublin's nonprofits. Those enforcement costs would largely
remain, even if dublin banned safe and same fireworks altogether.
cities that have done so can attest to that. Which brings me
to cost of recovery. The staff report points to union cities a potential
model. I wanna make very clear about the example. Union
city had previously attempted to recover its full 4th of july, police
and fire deployment costs through public records requests and legal
analysis under proposition 26 and the sinclair paint case,
the decis, the decision, uh, was to change the
approach because the previous, uh, approach had
improperly shifted. Costs driven by illegal activity onto the
backs of the nonprofits. Union city ultimately refunded
approximately $45,000 to its community nonprofits.
and the nonprofits through the ab 1403
paid approximately $38,000 the last three years each year,
uh, to cover, uh, to help supplement and cover city costs. Union
city now relies on ab 14, uh oh three, which
authorizes up to 7% surcharge on gross sales to
fund enforcement without reducing nonprofit proceeds. Equally
important, dublin currently lacks one of the most effective local enforcement
tools throughout california, and that's a fireworks social host ordinance
with a stacking provision in it. I would respectfully suggest the
city council direct staff to focus on a fireworks social host ordinance,
an administrative sign, excuse me, citation with stacking
at a a thousand dollars per violation per device
cost recovery from the violators, and a lawful use
of ab 1403 revenues, which could result in as much as $71,000
annually for the city, with no impact on the revenue generated
for the non-pro profits, plus another $10,000 in
sales tax. I'm happy to respond to any. Thank
you, mayor. I
have one speaker on zoom and that is sumit agrawal.
thanks for having me. Um, can you guys hear me?
please? Go ahead. Okay. Um,
my name is samita gral. I'm a dublin resident for over
13 years, and I'm here representing the tri-valley minor hockey association,
which is a nonprofit that has served this community for over
20 years. We serve youth hockey kids aged
six through 18 and help kids build a love for hockey, teamwork
and discipline. I, myself, am an immigrant at the united states
and never seen ice hockey before I came here. And through this club,
both my children have learned to play ice hockey. I have a 10-year-old daughter and
a 15-year-old son, and both are proud hockey players. Today,
the funds we raise, support, travel, hockey equipment, and access for many
families who otherwise could not have afforded it. There is no replacement funding
sources for this work. And fireworks is by far our largest
single fundraiser. Every dollar goes back to the program.
I've participated in this fundraising for the past two years, um, and
I have celebrated it myself at emerald park. One thing I can say for
sure, it truly brings our community together.
so my call to action is simple on the morning of 4th of july.
please stop by the fireworks booth. It is easy to forget the
positive vibe and the connection that it creates in our communities,
and that in the parking lot with the buddhist set up, I fully support the
strong enforcement against illegal fireworks. Illegal fires
are a real problem, but I hope that the council does not
punish community nonprofits here for something they did not create. Please
help us keep safe and sane fireworks and focus the enforcement where it belongs,
which is an illegal fireworks. Thanks for your time. I'm happy
to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.
I have no more speakers slips, mayor. Yeah, thank you. We'll bring back to our council
for further, um, discussion on this item.
you want to go ahead? Sure. Um, happy to go first. So thank you for the, uh,
to the six speakers, um, for, for sharing their thoughts. Um,
uh, yeah, so I, I see, excuse
me, I see fireworks, um, as like, as a, as a very american
thing. Uh, you know, apple pie baseball hotdog, in my case,
veggie hotdog. But, um, uh, I, I don't, I don't see,
I don't really see the need to, um, change what we have going.
I think the social host ordinance piece of it is something
that we should look at in specifically around the illegal fireworks
and, and try to curtail that. I, um, I actually think
getting rid of safe and sane is gonna increase illegal fireworks 'cause people still
wanna celebrate and, and it's gonna create more, more of a fire risk. Um,
uh, second point is just around, uh, kind of digging
into the numbers of illegal fireworks and some of the surrounding areas and, and kind of tracking that.
I, I don't think dublin is immune to that, uh, or it clearly is not.
um, but I'd, I'd be concerned just, or I, I would, uh, I
would recommend just sort of tracking those numbers and, and making sure that those aren't going up within
dublin and, and in surrounding areas. Uh, I think the fee
structure is worth exploring at some point. Um,
I think we should get a handle on, even if it's in ballpark numbers, what type
of community benefit we're providing through this. Um,
you know, if it's in the range of 30 k times
15, right? Uh, $450,000, that's great. Um,
you know, they're doing the hard work. They're, they're, they're out there. It's long grueling, sometimes
hot days , um, and, and, uh, and it's a great way
to support it. But if it's, you know, single digit thousands times 15 is like,
we're, we're wasting money, right? Like, we're, we're, we're wasting 75 and
not capture, or the nonprofits aren't being able to, um, to capture the, capture
the benefit. So I, I would, I would be supportive of looking at the free fee
structure, at least capturing ballpark figures in terms of what their revenues
are, um, where the net is, uh, and
looking into the social host ordinances and looking at surrounding areas
and what we might be able to do to curtail, uh, some of the illegal fireworks.
yeah, go ahead. Thank you. Um, I agree with an awful
lot of what you said. Um, you can't live in dublin for very
long and not have worked a fireworks booth. I don't think there's been a year since at least
2007 that I haven't spent multiple shifts in fireworks
booths for multiple nonprofits. I mean, it is as much a part of dublin
as anything else at this point. Um,
but that doesn't mean we don't look at doing things a little bit differently. I wanna be very clear before
anybody loses their minds. I'm not in favor of banning safe and st. Fireworks . Um, but I think that
we, we do want to, um, make sure that we are
doing it in a way that reflects the, um, current reality
as opposed to the way we started selling safe and insane fireworks in the, um,
the, uh, 1980s, which, uh, clearly was not uncontroversial
since they put two, um, advisory measures on the ballot at that
time. Um, I do think we need to look at, um, uh,
potentially a different fee structure. Um,
I wanna make sure that we are truly capturing the city's
actual costs for truly administering
safe and sane fireworks. Um, I think we've heard a couple of things tonight to make
me say, was 74,000 really the right number? One is, um,
the public safety piece is, are those the
right numbers? Um, two, uh, have we accounted for sales tax
revenue because it, you know, let's make sure that we're really capturing
the whole thing. But having said that, once we do have a number, um, I, I think that it is,
um, it's worth exploring. What,
what are we, what are the people who are not part of those 15 nonprofits?
um, what are we asking those residents to pay, particularly in light
of the projected deficit down the road. Um, so I think
it's worth exploring that. Um, I do think it's worth looking at the social host
ordinance, um, for multiple, multiple reasons, not just for
fireworks. I think that, um, what I would love to see is to have the social host ordinance
come back to us as a separate item so that we can update it. Because I know, um,
right now it's only about underage drinking. We would like to look at it, um, as it pertains to
fireworks. I think we would like to look at it as it pertains to, um, potentially
e-bikes and things of that nature. And, and there may be other things that we wanna, um, make
sure that it's, um, truly, uh, working for the city of dublin. So I'd love to see
that come back to us. Um, uh, one of the bulleted
items in the staff report talks about, um, capping the number of booths available. I think the cap that we
have currently is fine. We're not bumping up against it now. Keeping it,
um, tied to the population I think is, is fine. Um,
the, I can't read my own handwriting here. Oh, that says
locations. Um, we've heard a bunch of numbers thrown out about
the amount of money that each nonprofit is making. Um, I
heard somebody say 19,000. I heard a number, say another, say 25,000. Somebody
said an average of 30, which I don't think data we have supports, but we don't really know.
I'm part of a nonprofit who would love to see those numbers. Um, and hasn't, hasn't
been anywhere near that. And I believe some of that might be tied to location. So I'd love to see,
um, more information about, um,
an equitable assignment of booth locations across nonprofits so that
everybody has an opportunity to be hitting those kind of big numbers. Um,
you know, if we're doing a lottery for booths, there may be some way to, um, leave
it less up to chance about which locations. Um, so if the, the staff has any
ideas around that, um, I'm intrigued with the administrative citation.
um, I'd love to see, uh, police services come back with, um,
information about, uh, putting more teeth into, um, the
illegal fireworks, not just the social host ordinance, but, um, being able to have increasing
administrative citations on other state law restrictions on how much you can find through
an administrative citation, but, um, doing as much as we possibly can about that.
um, and then finally, and, um, I, I do think that it's time that we,
uh, put an advisory ballot measure out about, um, and
I'd like to to word it in the affirmative. Do we want to continue the
sale of safe and sane fireworks in the city of dublin? I think if it hasn't been since the
eighties, we get multiple emails every year, um,
to counsel around the 4th of july. Why on earth are we still allowing this? A
lot of those emails really do tend to be about the illegal ones. And so I'd wanna make sure that
the ballot language was clear that we were ta that we have no, that it is already
illegal to, um, shoot off safe and sane, but, um, weigh in
from the members of the public. Um, and we can talk about if there's
support for that, whether we want that to be truly advisory or whether we want that to be. I think we would rather have
an advisory personally, um, whether the public is interested in continuing safe and
sane. 'cause I do agree that, you know, it's a big part of what makes dub and 4th of july
double and 4th of july. You know, we, um, and then my last point
is that, um, with fire and the dumpster fires, I hope that there's a way that
we can, um, perhaps have park staff, um,
pour water in those dumpsters every 10 minutes or 15 minutes so that they don't catch on fire in the first place.
um, and then we don't have to have a firetruck come out. Um, we still are gonna monitor it, but
hopefully there's a way that we can, um, prevent those fires, um, from catching in the
dumpsters in the first place. So I think that's, those would be my, that's what I'd like
to see us do. Thank you. Yeah. You want to make some comments? Yeah. Yeah, sure.
um, thank you both for those comments. Uh, I agree with a
lot of them. Um, and I'm just gonna get right down
into what I think is where we should be focusing. Um,
and one is focusing on illegal fireworks. Okay.
um, I was reading the ordinance right now put, and you said it, I was gonna say
it too. You put more teeth in it. Let's really go after this. That
is probably the major concern. Uh,
and, uh, we should put our resources in in, um,
building that out. Okay. The other thing that, uh, I don't have
a problem with, and I brought this up, uh, we have a reporting gap. Uh,
and I, that's the way I'm phrasing it, is that it would be really,
really good to understand how beneficial, um,
these services are to the nonprofits. And I would bet that
these nonprofits would be more than willing to
provide, uh, information, uh, on, uh,
how successful they've been. Uh, it's, it's not about the 75
grand, and it's not about the 0.005, whatever percent. It's
about incrementally looking at what we're providing
regardless of what that cost is. And I think this is great.
I think the multiplier, what I'm, if we're figuring that out, that's a fantastic
multiplier, but I think it's more about, um, building
up a little more reporting, uh, with, with the
nonprofits. And, uh, that's what I would like to see on
the other side of the coin. So, um, yeah. Very good. Yeah. Thank
you. Um, council member, marada, do you want to make some comments?
no additional comments, mayor. Mayor, I wholeheartedly agree with many of the comments made
by vice mayor josie and council member co, uh, cadre and council
member mccarsten. Um, I love the deliberation, the focus on what we need to
do next. So, um, I have no further comments. Thank you. So
I'll make sta for my comments here. So I heard a lot of good comments
here, and I do feel we need to focus on the illegal
fireworks and make sure safety, um,
fire. We, we want to make sure that's not the issue for us.
and I do want to say there are a lot of benefits, community
benefits, as we heard from, um, our, um, public
speakers today. And I love to hear this. Um, that's a part
of the things we talk about. We want to find out more now the, now the owning
about how much you have made from these cells. Also, the stories
you told us about where you use the money, how that change
our kids life, how we make our community a better place.
so we love to hear that in the future. And, um,
and I, I do want to say beyond what we just talk about, I do feel it's like
a community spirit. It's like, uh, we celebrate independence
day, we celebrate the holiday, and we are together because
I went to parks during that night, and I do see a lot of
crowd. We get together. We even, we don't have to buy the,
the save anything fireworks, but we can always watch. So
I, I feel that's very important to our city, um,
as a community getting together and celebrate independent
day together proudly. So that's beyond, um, just a raising
funds for the non-profit. And so just a, just
come back to this, um, a few items we want
to talk about here. So, so I don't, I don't feel we need
to recover our fees from, from this, um,
fee structure. The reason is, you know, we celebrate
st. Patrick day. We celebrate sp splitter. These are cost,
and this, this, uh, these are the cost for the community. These are
the cost, um, from the number we put here,
70,000. I think it's comparable or it's reasonable compared
to other events, other community events. We, we provide, um,
the, the finance support. And, but I do care
about, um, this second item here, the city's social host
ordinance. I think it will be, be a good idea to look into
this. Uh, we want to help people, um, responsible especially,
um, we want to be cautious about this
illegal, um, fireworks. We want to do educational programs
as well. So those are the things we think, uh, we, we can look
into. And for the numbers of both, um,
I think the number is, is, is already kind of, uh, worked out
on its own right now. It's not growing up.
uh, and it's not easy actually. It's not very, very hard, hard work,
um, and a good network in order to make the nonprofit fundraising
to work. So I don't think we, we need to do anything there. Um,
but for the better measure, I don't, I don't feel right now we need a better measure
to look at this. Again, I don't feel we need this.
that's how I, I, my comments is, so this is, uh,
um, just the receive the report, give comments, so we don't need a motion.
well, it sounds like I, um, there's some direction being provided. So if I could just go through
yes. Each one. Can I go ahead. Can I add, go ahead. Um, thank you. I forgot
to mention the fact that the ordinance itself, um, needs a little bit of cleanup.
it's from 82 ish. Um, and there are, there are
some things in it that are very outdated. Um, and there are at
least two practices that are in there that we don't follow, um,
regarding who can be in the booth, who can work the booth, and the profit sharing in the booth. So
I would also like to see that come back to us so that we, um, can
update it. Um, for example, the, um, the deposit,
put it, take that out, put it in the fee structure, um, so that it, it rises with inflation, if
that's appropriate. Um, who can work in the booth? Does it really have
to be only a parent or a spouse of a kid that's in that nonprofit? Um,
'cause that is not our current practice. Um, there's another piece in there that I brought up
to staff earlier that I really don't wanna daylight in public that I think is super problematic. So there, there's
some things about the ordinance that, um, should come back, um, to us, I think as
well if, if, um, folks are amenable to that as well. Okay. So mayor,
council members to, to recap and then I need direction on a couple things. Um, the
soc social host ordinance, uh, we'll look at expanding that. Okay.
and, uh, cleanup items only on the fireworks ordinance to make sure it's
current. That makes sense. Um, fee structure. Uh,
am I being directed to explore a new fee structure?
okay. For, for now,
I see two nos and one, yes,
I am. I, I'm indifferent to that. I think for me
it's more about understanding what the benefit is to the community.
and, and that's on my list as well. I mean, is that something you want me to
explore in conjunction with the benefit to the community? Look at the fee structure or no,
I have, I have no problem looking at the fee structure. One, two, and,
uh, council member marada, uh,
not this time. Okay. Uh, the next thing is,
uh, getting information on revenues. Uh, we can make
that part of the application process, but that's part of that
is understanding the benefit that's provided by the nonprofits. Right.
can I ask, um, actually the mayor brought up something that, um,
oftentimes when, um, and I've seen applications before for, for
other, you know, for healthcare services and the whole bit, and there was it,
there was the, the benefit, the analytics, and then there was also the stories
mm-hmm . Okay. Uh, how was, how do you perceive this to be benefiting?
so I, you know, I don't wanna get too much into the, you know, paperwork
of all this because, because it can be very toxic, but, um, I didn't have
a problem with that either to share with us some of the stories us share
this, like the ones they share we use for the student going to this
trip. Just, just generally. Yeah. Where, how this another thing,
I, I, I don't know all the nonprofits, so if they don't want to share,
it's okay to, you know, like we want to keep, if they want to keep the number
confidential, that there's sometimes people want to do that.
so we're not gonna make it part of the application process. Is it optional? Yeah, optional. Yeah.
it, it gives clarity. Some people don't want to share that number.
I'd, I'd prefer just having it as part of the application. Yeah. If we're
collecting data, we need to collect data or, or we, we keep it confidential because I,
I do see this can be some number financial numbers. People
may not want to share with the, everybody. Nonprofits have reporting
requirements on their, you think it's okay if, if they feel okay.
uh, okay. Next, um, explore
allocation of booth, um, assignments of locations.
I, how is it done right now? It's, it's,
it's . Well, we don't have anything to do with it right now, so we would just have to investigate.
would we have any control over? I think, I think part of it, uh, according
to the, to the staff report, part of it is, is the nonprofits working
it out with a property owner directly. Mm-hmm . So there, there wouldn't be
a a that can't be equitable. , a lot of it is not them working it out with the property owners. A
lot of them is working. My understanding of it, having been on that end of it is working it out with
the fireworks seller who often is the one that contracts with the
property owner. Oh.
I think that's investigated the issue of, if you want me to explore it, that's what I'm asking
for, is to explore the issue. Sure. Okay. Uh, more teeth
in the admin, uh, citation. Okay.
advisory ballot measure. I just wanna say a couple things on this. Um, it wouldn't cost us
anything to put a, a ballot measure on, except the translation
services, as I recall, are about $15,000 into several
languages. Uh, if we were to do any outreach to the community in
the form of postcards, um, off of one we have done in the past, there
are about, uh, $10,000 per issuance
of postcards. I'm not saying we would go that route. We obviously would use online methods
as well, but, uh, those would be the general costs. I wouldn't, we could put that input,
maybe we put it into like a community survey. Could do that. Yeah. My, my issue,
my only issue with the community survey is that it's, um, it's less scientific.
we get the people who are already engaged and not necessarily the people
who email us after the fact. And we get a lot of that, um, my
interest in putting it on the, um, the ballot, and, and to
be clear, I was interested in the general for 2026, because it lowers the cost and ups the
participation. I wouldn't want us doing any particular outreach around
it. Yeah. Just asking the question to minimize the cost as much as possible. Yes. There would be translation
costs. We would be translating ballot measures anyway.
this adds language that we'd have to translate. And obviously it adds a little bit of, um, john's
time, um, to make sure that we're wording things in a, in a legal way.
um, I think that's a fairly small amount
to make sure that we're reaching all of the community that doesn't come to the meetings, but,
you know, has weighed in. Um,
I, that's all I'll say about it. I'm not, I, I think we've asked, we've
asked advisory in the past, we have a very different community than we had before. I have a feeling I know how
it's gonna come out, and that's why I'm so interested in, in making sure that we're doing this right, going forward.
but I don't know for sure. So, um, that's why I think it's worth asking the question on
this one. Go ahead. Sorry. Um, I'm a little
slow on this. You wanna, you wanna put something on the ballot? Is that what I'm saying?
and, and I'm, I'm still seeing that it very difficult to understand
what it is that you're trying to get at and how that would be phrased. Because when
you put something on the ballot, you're saying either yes or no. Right? How would, how
I'm missing something? Um, but you can put a measure on the ballot, and john, if I explain
this incorrectly, please obviously jump in. You can put a ballot on the measure
on the, you can put a measure on the ballot, which is binding, and then if
councils ever wanted to change that in the future, it would take another act of voters.
um, or you can put an advisory question on a ballot where you're
getting the input from everybody who votes on that ballot. And so
my, my ask is that we put an advisory
question on the general 2026 ballot where we know there's gonna be high participation
saying, do you support, as an advisory question, do you support
the city's continued sale of safe, insane fireworks? Because that puts the measure
that puts this to rest for, you know, quite a while, once we've
got that answer. Um, that yes, the community is, you know, but it's not something
that I want the city advocating for one side or the other. It's not something like
when we've put measures on the ballot where we're saying, this is, this is the city's
position that we think this is a good idea, and we're going out and, and, you know, we can't
advocate for once it's on there, but we, we spend a lot of time putting out informational
postcards and me mess messaging and that kind of thing. I'm simply saying,
I think we should be asking the question. We do that
information. Well, then we would have the, we would have
the opinions of, you know, more than 15
nonprofits on what they think we should be doing. Because we've heard quite
a lot that the environment is just different than it was in 88, 82 when the last time they
asked this question. Um, you know, climate change is different. Wildfire risk is different.
the, the demographics of dublin or significantly different. Um, and
we get this question every year. We get emails from people, you read them asking us
to ban fireworks. So I, I think it's worth asking the question, and I don't
think it's a very big cost to ask an advisory question. It is still in the hands of council whether
we take that advice or not. I ask question. Yeah, go ahead.
if I may comment, john. Oh, I, hang on one sec. John,
you wanna go for it? Go ahead. I'll let you go and then I'll, I'll follow you.
okay. Um, I, so I, I don't disagree with, uh,
uh, vice mayor's request to, to collect the data and, and, and survey. Uh,
I do think there are multiple avenues in which we can collect the data, because if
we just put it on the ballot, it is a segment of the population who are
registered voters. Not everybody is a registered voter in, in, uh, in, in, in
our city. So we need to also be accounting for their opinion as well, because
although they may not be registered voters, they have money in their pocket to go buy fireworks.
so we have to extend and expand the survey to, to get
the true number and opinion of what we think our residents are feeling.
so, uh, that's, that's simply my comment. Um, I think there are multiple avenues.
so we should pursue and have a dialogue about what those avenues
could be and have staff research them and get back to us on multiple approaches
to get above the statistical curve of a, of, um, of
a confidence level of what we think the citizen opinion truly is.
um, to thank you. Thank you. Um, council member marada, go ahead. Uh,
so this question is for, for, for john. Um,
have we done, uh, anything in the nature of an advisory,
uh, question on the ballot in recent memory?
not in recent memory, but there have been at least I think, two fireworks, uh,
advisory measures. And there may have been other in the history of dublin, other advisory measures.
I'm looking at, marsha, those are the only two we're aware of as
three of us here, I would advocate for looking
for outreach methods. And it, it's pretty much what john just said. Uh, at least what I picked
up from that was that we don't know what the right approach is,
you know, whether we're hitting the right people, uh, through various
methods. I'm not sure that, uh,
a ballot, uh, advisory is the sole
for best reason. And I think if, if we can just maybe spend
a little bit of time on, on discussing that, um, a little bit,
uh, more to flush out what that best method is, because I, I, I agree with
you. I think the question should be asked, but, uh, I mean, we,
we can't go about our business and not ask that question. As you pointed out very clearly,
uh, things have changed since 1982. Um, and, and
in all fairness, uh, we would be, uh, uh, deficient
in our ways if we didn't ask these questions. This is what
we, this is what we're pay the big bucks for, right? So, um, I would
advocate for, um, talking a little bit more about
what that method might be. Yeah, I'm fine with that. I, I just wanna make
sure that we, we come back with a method that is, um, statistically significant
as opposed to simply, um, an opt-in survey on a website or something
like that. I think the beauty of capitalism is that the dollars speak,
right? If if people are buying, then they're supportive of it. So,
and, and also about the questions we have to, um, consider,
because I heard you just mention question is, should we sell
the safe thing? And for
me, it's not about we sell or we don't sell it. For me, it's a,
like, do we allow the fireworks to, in
our city, in the city parks and the yeah, I meant, as opposed
to wording it, should the city ban ban? I meant to, to my
question. I wanted it to be on the I see. I see. Yeah. So, so another
information I want to bring to you, because I actually, I, I, I did a multi years
of volunteers on this thing. I, I know it's important for a lot of people,
and I know it's, uh, it's, it's, it's a spirit for a lot of
people. And I actually don't say, what are the additional information
we, we were trying to get out of this. We already heard speakers today, and we say
emails, we talk to people, and we can always go
on analyst, you know, put a lot of effort, a lot of, for, that's additional
stuff, time and additional cost as well to, we can, we can
go down the rabbit hole to dig into data, get more.
but I don't say like how effective we use our time, just trying
to get more data, get everything from what I heard, discussion of
the consult today. From what I heard from the public speaking today,
I think we, we like to keep, that's what I heard too. We like to continue
the, the fire, the safe financing, fireworks. We want to
focus on illegal, like managing the illegal ones. I, I don't
see how does that information, like, because
if information is always comes with a cost,
I don't say why. That's a focus of what we, we trying to do. Put our
money and effort on that. So that's my, my
argument of putting a ballot there. Um, if we put in
a survey questions, I don't say why not? Because we do surveys every year. We
do this anyway. And I think that's easy way and not disturbing
way, um, to get the information. That's how I
feel. I just want to, want to add advocate for that. If
we do need that information for me. I don't feel we need that information.
I'm good with direction. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
we're good. Okay. Uh, should we take a, because
we do have another item about the safety thing.
should we take like three minutes break?
I don't think we can run through very quickly. We have more questions. So we have
a very important agenda item. Let's take a three minutes break and come back.
thank you.
well, this is tv 30. I'm gonna count you in in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
I'll continue our, um, discussion on this new
agenda. Item 8.2 to
w library, civic center, public art mural project,
artwork, election. Uh, good evening. I'm
mayor I, members of the city council, sean kowski, parkland community services. Um,
I'm gonna do my best to power through this without coughing all over the microphone. Um, the item for
you tonight is the dublin library, uh, public art mural project. Um, I'm gonna,
it's kinda a two part presentation. I'm gonna run through some background, and then I'm actually gonna turn
over to the artist. Um, we'll let them run through, uh, their proposal.
uh, so this project kicked off with the adoption of the 24, uh, through 29,
uh, capital improvement program, uh, which included, uh, project pa 0 1 2 5,
which is outdoor murals. This project earmarked funding for,
uh, planned in future projects. We kind of, we had our eyes kind of on this, uh,
location on this mural opportunity. At the same time, you know, there potentially some
future mural opportunities. Um, so this kind of set aside funding resources,
um, for us to kinda hit the ground running, um, in early 25, uh,
staff, recent rfq, uh, we received 31 responses from muralist,
uh, that were interested in this project. And then potentially future projects,
um, in may of 25. And I, there's an asterisk here. This is, um, kind of a, something
new that we tried, uh, with this project. Um, we took an item to the heritage and
culture arts commission to, uh, present to this spec talk more
about specifics of this project. Um, so from that meeting, uh,
with input from staff, from the, uh, from the library, we developed
a project theme, uh, some, uh, specific project goals. Um,
those are included with your staff report. I'm gonna show 'em a little bit on the next slide as well. Um, but
really just trying to be specific and kind of hone in where we wanted to go with this project.
um, that brought us into the selection committee phase. Uh, first meeting,
uh, was in june. And at this meeting, the selection committee, which dan hoc
meeting, uh, um, made up of, uh, community members. They
reviewed the project goals that were developed and the 31 artists, uh,
portfolios. Uh, from there, they selected five finalists who were invited
to develop site specific proposals. At the second
selection committee meeting in august. Um, again, they reviewed project goals and
received presentations from the five finalists. Um, at that meeting, they
recommended three for consideration. Uh, that brought us to
september 25, which was the, um, some, again, with the matric
there. Something new that we tried was a public outreach kind of, uh, comment period.
um, so the goal of this was really just to, to bring awareness to the project.
um, try to, you know, drum up some engagement, you know, educate the
community on the city's public art program. Um, and an overwhelming response. Over 700
responses, um, were received. Um, I do wanna note that obviously, that the data
700 comments was a lot. You know, it's not statistically valid. Um,
we have no necessarily guarantee that these were dublin residents,
um, and they were really just looking at renderings.
they weren't really seeing the full artist proposal. Um, so like, I think
what you'll see tonight is you'll see the pictures, but you also hear kind of the narrative in this story behind it, which
I think kind of helps maybe frame, um, you know, where, where the vision is.
um, that brought us to, uh, the november 25 heritage and call
arts commission meeting. Again, we reviewed project goals and objectives. Uh, the heritage commission
reviewed the three finalists proposals that were recommended by the s committee,
and they ultimately selected the recommend or the selected the proposal
by rough edge collective, um, is the recommendation, um, tonight. So,
uh, brings us to the last bullet point, is tonight, uh, here for city council review
and, um, approval.
um, again, this is a, it's a lot of text up there. Uh, but the, the theme
for the project was, our story begins with imagination. And just kind of, kind of highlight
some of the, um, you know, some of the words here, writing the represent representation
of cultural diversity, generational change, you know, a mural that conveys,
you know, growth, imagination, collective journeys, um,
you know, controlled vibrancy. Um, one of the things that really stuck out
was, uh, the heritage commission was, please, please, please don't let this just
be a, you know, a painting of the inside of a library. You know, we don't want to just see, you know,
bookshelves full of books and, you know, computers, whatnot. Um, so
again, you know, a mural that conveys, you know, or inspires imagination, wisdom, knowledge,
um, you know, a mural that can be interpreted, you know, from different perspectives. So again,
this was, this was included of the staff report, and this was kind of the basis of all
the, um, you know, the, the selection process.
uh, just for a little bit of context, uh, about 25 foot long, uh,
12 by 14, uh, wide or tall and wide. It's about 950 square
feet, um, all around.
and again, I, I included this. This is from the city's public art master plan. Um, you know,
as we're looking at artists and, uh, artwork selection, you know, works that
obviously are qualified professional harvest, high quality, appropriate to site enhanced public spaces,
uh, permanence, um, that includes, you know, resistance to
vandalism, you know, it can be maintained. Um, work
is consistent with city and community values and city's mission vision. And then obviously,
work that's, you know, safe for public display.
um, that concludes, uh, my presentation. And I want to introduce, um,
mj and joshua from the rough edge collective, and they're gonna run through,
um, their slides.
hello. Um, okay. Thank you for having
us. Um, here's a little background on us.
my name is maria jose mj lindo lawyer, and I'm joshua lawyer.
and, uh, we're really excited to have the opportunity to come, uh,
talk about a proposal. Um, we're really, really,
um, excited about the work, and yeah, thank you.
and this is, um, kind of the long rendition of, of stories
told. Our story begins
with a child completely immersed in a book, transported beyond the page, into
new worlds, new ideas, and the lives of people from different cultures,
beliefs, and experiences. This design seeks to honor the
quiet, extraordinary power of stories, the way they reach across borders
and differences. To touch something deeply human in all of us, books become
more than pages that become portals weaving connection through curiosity,
empathy, and wonder. Here we celebrate not only what unites us,
but also the vibrant spectrum of what sets us apart. In our shared
stories and our singular voices. We find the true beauty of being human.
the second figure, the oracle is submitted for approval. This design has been
revised in response to feedback from the arts council to more accurately represent
the diversity of dublin's population and the cult. The city's cultural, and,
I'm sorry, the city's historical and cultural heritage. We anticipate potential
changing of some of the figures as well as further developing some visuals,
um, such as the birds.
the third figure become, uh, the third figure comes from a distant place wrapped
in the stories of her ancestors. Myths and legends passed down through generations,
blending memory with magic, history with imagination. Her stories
immortalized through poems, through, through traditions, through songs,
epic tales and short stories. She's the mystery that is honest
and true. The fourth figure
is a woman defined by strength and unwavering purpose. She moves through the world
like a force of nature, part superhero, part visionary,
unafraid to stand for what's right and shape what's possible. She's the one you root for in
every story, the kind of cool that doesn't chase attention, but commands it. Her confidence
lingers like a spark you might hope to catch, so you can, you too can
step forward with the strength you never was yours.
each of these figures lives in a different world. Yet through the timeless power of storytelling,
they are connected, finding common ground in the shared language of humanity.
our goal was to depict figures that felt historic and magical stories that
captured myths that feel, felt familiar as if someone we grew up with.
but more importantly, to highlight the importance of storytelling and how this human
trait allows us to truly find freedom, adventure, and understanding.
we introduced local birds to add a sense of movement throughout the piece, while a
red ribbon weaves through the narrative subtly and symbolic symbolically
connecting the figures across our story.
uh, the following sides are superimposed images, so you can see kind of how the,
the piece moves and the narrative. Um, so the narrative starts, and
you kind of are meant to follow the piece around.
we wanted, um, this side to feel organic and to transition from
a cool tone to a warm tone. We wanted the door to remain visible in order,
um, based on the chemical placard and the understanding that if any issues happen, the
fire department and any emergency agencies could have easily find the door.
and that's it. , I've been help. Sorry,
do we, they here for questions or
to do that much faster than that thought. Uh, . So happy to, uh, obviously
on staff and aren aren available for questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. You, congratulations
for, for being here. Thank you. Because I know it's a lot of process, a lot of sub
machines, and so great to see you in person because
I read about you. I was like, wow, you know, thank you for working on this project
for us. Thank you. So we'll start with the questions. Thank you
for the presentation. Um, sean, and, and to the two of you. And thank you for
staying so late. Uh, I just had one question. Um, you, you mentioned the
red ribbon. I, I didn't see that. I was hoping you could just explain that a little more.
uh, yeah. During, uh, our, our initial proposal, uh,
we kind of had potential concepts to pursue. And one of
the ideas was, uh, to introduce birds as a way of,
of creating movement through the piece. And kind of, uh, helping with, uh,
a viewer understand the direction of the narrative. Uh, and we had
a, a bird carrying a string in. One of our things we mentioned
was maybe we could have, um, this idea of how you could
thread each figure through, through this rope that, uh,
or through this, uh, red string that the bird was carrying. And,
uh, the arts council mentioned that that was a, a good idea. So we,
we took that and we kind of had little, little details of each figure
where they have, uh, a red kind of a string
in on the character. So each character that the, uh, child
is reading about and that kind of, um, uh, that color is matched on,
on the jacket. So this idea of like, they're all kind of,
there's a through line between them all. Got it. Okay. So more interpretive, less,
um, yeah. Yeah. Concrete . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. I
thought I was missing thing. That'll detail. There's, I appreciate that. And you
can see it on the last figure too, on the door there.
yeah. And we, we, we did a redundant bird here,
uh mm-hmm . But we are gonna replace that bird with another native bird.
that's the goal. Very nice. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you. Questions. I have several. Thank you.
um, first of all, I really like it. Um, my
questions are probably more for sean, um, a little bit procedural.
um, the, the selection committee is
made up of community members. Is anybody from heritage cultural arts on that selection committee?
yeah. So we're, we're trying to be intentional. Um, you know, when we put this selection committee together,
we had a representative from the heritage commission served on that mm-hmm . Um,
to kind of who would be a liaison mm-hmm . Uh, between, um,
but then it was, we had member of the del arts collective. It was local, you know, art school,
business owners. Um, so we're, we try to put together a diverse panel,
um, of community members. Okay. But only one from, uh, heritage and cultural
arts. It's not like a subcommittee of heritage and cultural arts that's on that committee in addition to the rest of the
selection committee. Okay. Um, just from a process standpoint.
um, and nothing about the art that was selected, just so don't be nervous, ,
just the, um, the, the process of the art
selection committee designing the criteria, but not being the decision makers based
on that criteria. There's something about that that, I mean, I know we continually refining the
process, um, but maybe having two from heritage and culture arts on
the selection committee when we are the next time we do this. 'cause I know we've
had emails, maybe not about, we've had emails about artists that were like,
we were given criteria. We, we designed to that criteria, and then the people making the choices
were making choices not based on that criteria. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well,
I think we tried to be strategic. That's what we went to the heritage commission first. Uhhuh developed
the criteria. Okay. That carried over. So the selection committee
saw that. Okay. So the selection committee didn't design the criteria so much, the heritage culture arts
did. They provided perfect. Okay. Uh, they had an opportunity at the first meeting
to look at it and weigh in, be as they were developing or looking at the first round mm-hmm
. But by that point, I mean, it was already there in the second meeting when they were actually making
a recommendation mm-hmm . That, that was already established. Okay. So they came back to the
heritage commission meeting or commission. It was all the same, the same criteria shown.
okay. Good. And then, um, as it, the,
the public comment process, um, you said it wasn't statistically
significant and it, um, maybe wasn't even double in residence. Can you talk just
a little bit more about how, how and where and through what methods we
collected that public comment feedback? Um, it's traditional. See, we put
out a news flash, you know, so it gets, it gets broadcasted out. Um, primarily
I think when a lot of feedback came from actually participants at the library. So we had it displayed as you
walked into the library. Okay. Um, and it was just, it was an easy qr code to scan, and
it was just a simple, you know, to be honest, it was a microsoft form. So it was, it was real simple,
real easy. You didn't need to log in and you mm-hmm . You know, and I don't
anticipate, you know, you can look at the entries and the data, you know, you can think somebody just stood there 30 times
over and, you know, put in the same comment. Um, but what we really did, we took
all that feedback, you know, the 700 plus comments staff, we really tried
to identify, you know, consistent themes and kind of narratives mm-hmm . And that was then
provided to the artist, um, ahead of the heritage commission meeting. So that's
where you saw, you know, the addition of the, the oracle figure. Mm-hmm . Um, you know,
there was some opportunity there to kind of solicit some of the feedback or take some of that
feedback into consideration. The heritage commission also saw that
feedback, and so as they were reviewing the proposals, we're able to, to
have that as for consideration as well, uhhuh. And what was, um, what was
at the library, you said it was more conceptual, so it wasn't as polished
as this, it, it kind of pictures of a printed, I
don't remember how big on like a display board in the display case, but pictures,
but similar to similar, yeah. Similar to this as, I mean, obviously not
these final ones, but this sort of, this, this amount of detail, this amount of
proposal. Correct. Okay. And then, um, you said the heritage cultural arts commissioner,
the selection commission saw, was it select committee or heritage and culture arts saw the
feedback, the heritage commission. 'cause the feedback came
after, after the select committee. Okay. Um, and you said they saw all the feedback? They saw all the feedback,
or they saw a summary of the feedback? Summary of the feedback. Okay. Um, so they
didn't actually get to see the actual comments that were made? No. They didn't see the, the 700
uhhuh raw comments? No. It was a and why, why not?
no, I just think it was, you know, staff was looking through the, you know, through
it and trying to, you know, just, I don't know, maybe consistency, trying to highlight just consistent
themes, you know, narratives that were there. Mm-hmm . Okay.
I think there's, I mean, looking at this, there's maybe opportunities. I mean, it's the first time we try something like this, I think. Right.
you know, thinking through it, you know, maybe there's opportunity like, hey, instead of just doing a survey, you
know, maybe it's a, you know, night on zoom, you know, with the artists present, you know, so it was, it
was really us trying to get this, you know, give the community another opportunity.
yeah. Yeah. We've done a lot of feedback. I mean, I appreciate the idea of going out for feedback, right.
we've done that in a lot of ways, whether we've done it at, um, uh, something like splatter where we have
dot boards for a new park, or, you know, lot, lots of different ways we can, um,
get feedback, which I applaud. I'm just wondering how we're then using that feedback, right. How are
we, um, giving it to the, you know, how are, how was the
committee that's recommending to us taking that feedback that we asked for? Right. Um,
I think that's the extent of my questions for right this minute.
thank you. Yeah. Thank you. So, questions,
comments to the lawyers? , I very much appreciated
your use of colors. I like them a lot. And I like the theme,
uh, sean question, , thank you. Get
you guys up. Um, so
getting back to process, you know, what, what these, these, uh,
the, the lawyers are very talented, and I think this is, this is
beautiful. Um, how much, uh,
I mean, it was a very methodical process, the rfq process, how much effort
was placed on, uh, seeking out local,
um, artists from around the tri-valley?
and, and I, I guess, I mean, you're gonna tell me, but I, I'd like to see,
I maybe, maybe I'm leading to you, is like, I'd like to see more effort
in doing that in the future. But how, what was the process? Was it just
very, very, hey, you got some very talented folks here and yeah. These guys are
good and let's go with it. Right. That that's part of it. Yeah. Um, I mean, we definitely,
we, we try to go as broad as possible. Um, you know, a lot of, you
know, project goals, budget kind of drives where some of the interest is coming from. You know, if we're
doing a, a $300,000, you know, sculpture project, you know, we're gonna start
getting international artists that are gonna mm-hmm . Maybe, you know, pique their interest.
um, I mean, that's something I, I think will kind of open to that.
we have, and I know some agencies will kind of, depending on, you know, the skies and
scale of a project, we'll limit it to the nine bay area counties, the state of california,
you know, western united states. I mean, so that is, that is something we could consider.
yeah. I'd like to encourage, um, folks, there's some talent in this
valley and it would be great, uh, where wherever that source is,
you know, it could be professional artists, it could be even, you know, some of the schools, whatever. Uh, just
throwing stuff out there. Yeah. Local arts organizations, you, you get some really talented people
and it would be great, uh, uh, to have folks like that involved in
other projects. And we do, right. We have 'em various other projects, but
because they're part of the, they're part of our broadened community.
right. And I'd like to see that. Yeah. Consideration in,
in the future is part of the process. That's all. Great job. Thank
you. . Yeah. So council member marada. Um,
hi. Thank you, mayor. Uh, sean, two questions for you. And then, uh, one question
for the artists. Uh, the, uh, first question is the
location of the, uh, the shed.
if that, if, for lack of a better term, um, I know where that is. Um,
uh, what's your consideration for lighting so that, uh, we can
continue to, to, to share the vibrancy of the colors of the, of
the artwork? Uh, no direct lighting is planned for this. It'll just
be, you know, pathway overhead lighting, um, you know, parking lot, safety
lighting at night that'll, you know, potentially on, on some been on the backside
pathway lighting, but no additional lighting is planned for this project.
okay. Is that, uh, just for budget reasons, or we just didn't think about
it yet? Um, it's, there's definitely a bud. I mean, we, if there, if
that's of interest, I mean, it's something we could definitely pursue. It's, I mean, obviously there's a budget impact there.
um, probably significant, you know, in terms of the, of the overall scope
of this project. Uh, but it's something we could
okay. Um, that's fine, sean. I'm, you can make it the,
the, the lower end of things, uh, to consider. Um,
question number two for you, sean, is, uh, once again, the location of the, of
the shed. Uh, have you considered how this
would either be additive to or complementary to
the, the marketplace that we have during st. Pat's, as
well as, uh, other, uh, other events that we hold within the, the parking
lot? Yeah. I mean, it's ultimately when the, the enclosures
there. Now, it's built, I mean, we definitely lost a little bit of, you know, real estate for st. Patrick's
safe festival. Um, I mean, my hope is this would maybe enhance that
a little bit, you know, by bringing art, you know, as people are walking, you know, through the vendor rows
um hmm. Opposed to just a, a big
cmu wall. Uh, so maybe bring a little bit of art into st. Pat's
or it okay. Yeah. Um, you're, you're on the same page
as me. Um, I'd hate for the, the, the popup tents to, to cover
the art. That's all the, because of the location, just with circulation and
fire access. There's no, no tense vendors right in front of that, that
that stays open. Ah, fantastic. Very good. Thank you,
sean. Uh, and then, uh, if I may address the artist, if that's possible.
yes, yes, yes, I would. Please. Uh, good evening. Um,
I have, uh, just one quick question. Uh, did I hear correctly that
there are still some efforts and research to finalize on
the figures themselves? That is correct, yes. Uh,
I mean, we're gonna be working with the art council and kind of going through that process, which is pretty
standard usually, at least for us, when we're working on a project, just fine
tuning everything and being as thoughtful as we can be.
uh, fantastic. I love it. I just wanted to clarify that, uh, you'll perform
your own necessary due diligence to, to understand, learn, and to
observe the diversity of the people, the culture, the dress, uh, of our
people, of, of dublin. Okay. Uh, uh, that's it, mayor for
me. Um, I will save my closing comments after public comment.
okay. Thank you, council member. So thank you. Great work. Thank you. Thank you, jean.
so I do have a, a couple of questions to ask. So how long
this kind of, uh, like a artwork can, can stay
there? Like a, there's a rain, you know, there's a all kind of weather.
yeah. So, uh, whenever we are painting a mural, our goal is
to have it last as long as possible. Sun damage is always kind of the pri
uh, the main issue. And that's kind of the life of
the paint. And we, we prioritize high quality paint, uh,
that's meant to be, uh, have additional pigments
so it can last as long as possible. So, uh, we
always say like a safe estimate being like 20, 25,
maybe 30 years, depending on, uh, how much direct
sunlight it gets. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah. And, and the pigment we use
is approved by like, caltrans. We've done projects with them where it's like, it's approved,
it's an approved, um, used material. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you.
um, so it's just make a small suggestion. You
said that we are still looking at those, uh, like figures, right? Like the people
there, we can make some tricks. So I, I trying to balance that.
we see like three females, one male, you know, one little boy. Maybe
we can also balance female and a male somehow just for,
for, for something to consider. If we cannot, we cannot, it's okay.
okay. Go ahead. Like three minutes, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
okay. Yeah, that's just my quick comment, but love the artwork. Thank you. Thank
you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And do we, do we have public
comments? I have no speaker, so, okay. So we don't have a public comment that's come
back. Any more comments we want to make on this one? Yeah, please.
um, I really love the work. Um,
I love the colors, I love the theme. I love the idea of the kid reading,
and then sort of all of these things. Um, I like the explanation of,
um, what the characters represent. Um, I did ask for and got right
before the meeting, the, um, the feedback from the public. And,
um, I know you're still tweaking things. Um, I know you,
you've read the feedback mm-hmm . The public comment, which the heritage cultural arts kid, and
I, I hope that you can get that to everybody else on council. But the, um, the
comments sort of overwhelmingly, the, the theme through the comments, um,
were, everybody loves it. They love the vibrant colors, um, but the characters
themselves don't necessarily say dublin to them. Um,
and so I, I, I love the concept, and I'm hoping that when we get the design
back, that they will really be reflective of dublin.
um, because I think that that's the, the, the piece that
the 700 commenters were saying, this is great, but is it dublin?
um, and so the, the theme is fantastic. Um, the, the,
I love the bird. I love the, the thread. I love the fact that, you know, it's
very clear that his mind is being expanded to all of these
different things that are not necessarily him, um, through,
through the artwork. Um, I just, you know, that seemed to be
the overarching theme that we need these people to be dublin.
um, I'm not sure exactly what that means, but
I'm looking forward to that when it comes back to us. Thank you. That's good. Thank you.
yeah, thank you. Any more comments? More comments from you?
you sure? Yeah, yeah. Council member ri, so, eight, I appreciate,
uh, appreciate the artwork. Uh, I really appreciate the outreach and, and public engagement.
I think that that piece of it's really important. Um, I like the
playful movement, almost whimsical. Um, I,
I see the story, and, and it's something that you could, you know, it, it sort
of unfolds. And the fact that it's gonna be on, on, uh, on the multiple sides, it,
it's, it's intriguing. Um, yeah, if there's a way to
make it more dublin, great. Right? Um, I, I don't know. Like,
I don't want to, uh, sort of force my,
my thoughts, which, which are probably like a little more literal and less abstract,
but you're the artist and, and, and I love what you've done. So thank you.
um, council member morada, uh, thank you, mayor.
uh, yes. Uh, simply, uh, one comment for sean, and then one for the artist, uh,
sean, perfect timing, by the way, considering what monday is, uh,
as a national holiday. Um, great timing on bringing this up. So good work.
uh, and then comment for the artist. Um,
I really like how you're using the idea of, of a,
of a protagonist, uh, learning. And then also the other characters themselves
are protagonist in their own story. Um, keep it up. That is,
uh, that is, I think, a very assertive way. Not, not in a bad
meaning, assertive meaning. It's, it's a great way to show and inspire
our kids that they too can inspire to be the pro protagonist
of their own story and be the leaders that they aspire to be. So, thank you very much.
thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. But we
do need to make a motion. Do we, we need to make a motion. May
I approve? I, I move. We approve the conceptual design of the artwork proposed by rough edge collective for the outdoor
murals project. Thank you. Oh, second. We got the first and second. And
do the roll, roll call. Councilman marada.
aye. Council member cadry aye. Councilman horten.
aye. Vice mayor josie. Aye. Mayor who? Aye. Thank you. Thank
you so much. Thank you. Wow, that's a good work.
so, let's move on to agenda item 8.3,
taking on police activity and ongoing
public safety efforts.
well, good evening again, uh, counsel vic fox, uh, chief of police counsel.
this item is a, uh, an overview of police activity and ongoing public
safety efforts from dps to protect this community. Um, I have a lot of
information to go over. I'm gonna try to get through this as quickly as possible.
so, just for background, um, we track and analyze, uh,
our data all the time, uh, our operational data to evaluate our service demands,
allocate resources, and inform our strategic planning. Uh, this
information is shared with council, provide transparency, highlight trends, and demonstrate how
dps is responding to community safety needs.
so, we're gonna jump right in. Sorry about that. We're gonna jump right into police
activities, so police activities or any operation to
enforce laws to maintain order and protect the community. And those include our investigations,
our emergency responses, enforcement of laws, and community policing.
for this, cate, for this table just below, police activities are divided
into one of two categories. Community initiated and officer initiated
community initiated our calls for service that a cso dispatch receives
from individuals. Uh, reporting an incident within the city of dublin,
an officer initiated activities or activities that dps officer initiates on their
own. Now looking at the data from 23 to 24,
there was a slight increase in community initiated activity, and then it dropped
off, uh, a little over 6% in 2025.
officer initiated activity, uh, saw a sharp decrease from
23 to 24, um, just over 29%, and
then decreased again in 2025, uh, 12,766,
or 15.67%.
let's talk about, uh, call priority levels. So when a call comes in to emergency
services dispatch, or when an officer takes, uh, a self-initiated activity,
our, our dispatch program assigns it a priority level. Now,
the priority levels range from zero to nine. For the purpose of this
presentation, most of our crime data, the priorities run from one through
five. I'm gonna go over the other priorities really quick, just so you know what they are.
so, priority zero are unit emergencies, and these are self-reported
emergencies by an a cso or dublin police services staff member. Those do not
come from the community. Uh, for 2025,
uh, we had seven priority zero calls.
uh, most of the time, that is an inadvertent activation of the
emergency button on the officer's radio. So it's just, it's, it's an
accidental activation. So we have seven of those in 2025
priority ones. Those are our calls in
progress. Um, those will
require immediate response due to imminent public or officer safety issue,
and they involve injury. And those are gonna be our assault with the deadly weapons,
robberies, domestic violence, 9 1 1 calls, medical
emergencies, and even silent commercial alarms, such as those that come from a bank, a panic button.
moving on to priority two. Priority two are also, um, calls
that are in progress or just occur, but do not pose an imminent threat.
and examples of these calls include petty thefts, disturbances,
suspicious persons, or vehicles, uh, audible alarms,
traffic collisions with no reported injuries and traffic stops.
so, um, traffic stops by our officers. Those are priority two incidents.
so priority three through five. Those are used for, uh, reports,
uh, and other activities. And these are for incidents that have already occurred. There's
no threat to the public and no reported evidence of a suspect
being present. So most of the time it's for our, it's for our cold reports,
and those would include, uh, auto burglaries, vehicle thefts,
patrol checks, illegally parked vehicles. That's three through five
priority six through eight. Those are discretionary used when no other activity codes
exist. I can tell you for 2025, we had zero incidents of these priority levels.
and priority nine is used as a test code.
sorry, it's blocked by the, uh, council member. We're on a screen. Uh, but this table
right here breaks down, uh, all the calls for service based on
priority level and for simplicity purposes. Um, those calls
three through five, we're calling those three plus. So, priority one calls
from 23 to 24, declined, um, 10.61%,
and they declined, uh, just under a half percent last year.
priority two calls, um, also declined, uh, 2.91%
from 23 to 24, and then declined again. Uh, another
10.38% in 2025
priority three plus, again, most of those are reports. The reports
declined, uh, 28.29% from 23 to 24,
and declined again, another 12.93% in 2025.
so less paper, less reports are being taken.
so response times. So response times are defined as the time, uh, uh, the dispatcher
dispatches the call and the time the officer arrives at the location.
so, for the purpose of these stats, we did not include
officer initiated calls, because the time that the officer sees a
violation to the time that they are on the detail is almost zero. So that's
gonna include a business check, a patrol check of a street, or
a traffic stop. We do not include those in these stats for response
times. So for priority one calls, uh, as I just discussed,
uh, there was a slight decline in the response time from seven minutes and 20
seconds to six minutes and 42 seconds in 2024.
and that increased about 6% in 2025 to seven minutes and eight seconds.
priority two calls, uh, increased very slightly from 23 to
24. And then in 2025, they, uh, increased to, uh, seven minutes
and 54 seconds, 6.76% increase.
moving on to reports. So every month, uh, by the
10th of the month, I believe dps reports all of our data and all of our reports,
the california department of justice, their crime reporting system, it's called the california
incident based reporting system, or cybers. And it's aligned with the
fbi's equivalent, which is the national incident based reporting system, or nbrs.
nbrs captures a national, uh, snapshot of crime. Cybers captures
california crime. When the information goes into cybers, uh,
it is sorted out. And cybers classifies crimes into three
broad categories based on who or what is primarily harmed.
the first category is, uh, crimes against person. These are offenses where, uh, the
victim is an individual, and the crime involves, uh, threatened physical harm. So,
homicide, robbery, assaults, those are your, your violent, uh, felonies
for the most part.
number two is crimes against property. Uh, these offenses, offenses
involve taking of damage to, or destruction of property, rather than direct
physical harm to a person. So examples are burglary, theft,
vandalism, motor theft, fraud, embezzlement,
et cetera. Just for a few examples. The last is crimes against society.
and these are offenses that primarily affect public order and
community safety, rather than, uh, targeting a specific individual or property.
and these are gonna be drug related offenses, duis, prostitutions,
public drunkenness, weapons violations.
so here's our reports for by, by those cybers, uh, classifications,
those three categories, and again, and I think I may have mentioned
it, but the stats that we're giving you, uh, for this
presentation, or through the month of november, as I mentioned, those stats
are due to the state by the 10th of the month. So the 10th of january
would've been for december. It was too late for the staff report. So
crimes against persons declined 1.17% from 23 to 24,
another 3%, 3.5% for 2025
crimes against property, uh, increased slightly from 23
to 24, 7 0.36%, and then it declined, uh,
20.78% in 2025 crimes
against the society, uh, decreased from down
8.65% and then decreased substantially
in 2025, down 28.53%.
sorry about that.
okay, so these are reports taken by type. Uh, these are
specific categories. These are not all the reports that dublin police services took. These
are the categories of reports that the city publishes annually in the annual report.
uh, before I go over these numbers, I do wanna mention that
all the numbers that were given you are not always necessary
singular events. For example, aggravated assault for 2025,
it shows 70 incidents. Um,
so if, for an example, so if we go to a domestic violence call, we
had twenty, a hundred twenty nine of those, uh, and the victim is injured
and, and sustained an injury, that incident is gonna count as a domestic
violence and an aggravated assault, if that makes any sense.
so it may not just be 70 incidents of aggravated assault. Aggravated assault
also includes assaults on officers. Uh, if we arrest somebody for
ddui, and there's a child in the car that's aggravated assault, so
those numbers might be a little bit misleading, but just how the, the data is inputted and
reported. So, aggravated assaults, um,
decline slightly and then raised to 70 last year, 12%
increase. Arsons remain relatively the same, eight to six to seven,
going down to burglaries. Uh, the burglary line represents
all the burglaries that occurred in the city of dublin. Those are commercial burglaries. Those are residential
burglaries, burglaries from the school, you name it, it's all of them.
so those increase, uh, from 23 to 24, 18
0.18%, and then it declined to an overall number of 77
for 2025, or a 34.19% decrease in
total burglaries in, in the city of dublin.
now, we differentiated of those numbers, uh, residentials. So
residential, uh, increase by one from 23 to 24,
uh, 2.63%, and then increased to 43 for
2025, or a 10.26% increase.
moving on to domestic violence has stayed relatively the same. 1 22 to
1 21 and then increased to 1 29 in 2025,
6% increase. Uh, homicides
have stayed the same for the last, uh, three years. I do want to note that the 2025
homicide in delvin was a tragic case of a drug overdose by one of our, our
citizens. Um, and due to prop 36, uh, laws,
if an individual sells illegal drugs that result in death, they can be charged with
homicide. Uh, rapes have
gone from eight to nine and 2324, and then increased,
uh, to 12 in 2025. Moving
on to robberies, uh, robberies went from 43 to 41 in 2024,
and then went down to 40, uh, estimated in 2025.
what I do wanna note is the line below that says sds. Now, sds is a
type of robbery that's, that's recognized by california law.
and, uh, estess robberies generally originate from
a simple theft. So if a subject walks into a store and they steal
an item, it's a misdemeanor theft returns into a robbery is if a
store employee, or if a loss prevention agent confronts that person
and they're threatened or they're assaulted, that now becomes,
uh, a robbery. So if you take estess robberies
that occur from simple theft from our total robberies, 40 minus
21, that's down to 19 robberies.
sex offense is, uh, went from 21 to 20 and
2024, and then increased to 26, 30% increase in 2025.
shoplifting increased significantly from 23 to 24, and
then dropped significantly in 2025. It dropped 31% last
year. Stolen vehicles, uh, went from
1 37 to 1 59 and then had a good decline
in 2025, down 25.79%.
theft from a motor vehicle or auto burglaries, 1 79 down
to one 30, and then another decrease down to 1 28 in
2025.
'cause another, the council likes comparisons. Uh, this is how we measure up with our
neighbors. So, uh, green means improvement. Red means it got worse. Yellow means
it stayed the same. So looking at, uh, aggravated assault,
uh, we rose slowly, slowly, livermore improved. And then
pleasanton and san ramon, uh, did a little worse last year.
arsons, um, we went up by one. Livermore
improved. Pleasanton and san ramon did worse
burglaries, as I mentioned. We went from one 17 down to seven. Seven. We improved.
livermore improved significantly. Pleasanton improved. They went from
1 55 down to 1 42, a lot higher than us. And then san ramon,
uh, rose a. Little bit. Residential burglary,
we went from 39 to 43, didn't do better. Um,
livermore got worse. Pleasanton got worse, and so did san ramon.
uh, homicide, uh, we stayed the same. Livermore
reported zero homicides through november, but they did have a one in december. So they finished the
year with one. Uh, pleasanton went from one to two. And
san ramon, I believe I not looking at my slides, I think they went from
zero to one total robberies.
uh, we went from 41 to 40 improvement. Livermore
improved. Uh, pleasanton improved slightly, and ceremony
improved
sex offenses. Uh, double went up by six. Livermore
improved pleasanton, um, a little more than doubled. And
san ramon, uh, went up by five stolen vehicles. We
had an improvement there. Livermore had an, uh, a good improvement.
pleasanton had an improvement, and so san ramon saw all four cities
did well, uh, and then auto burglary. We improved.
livermore improved. Pleasanton improved, and so does san so improvements in those two
categories.
again, arrests. This is a table of our arrests that are included in the annual report.
not all the arrests. These are the ones that we report every year. So,
uh, our aggravated assaults in 2025, we had 55 arrests
up from, uh, 35, uh, 82 arrests for domestic violence up
from 84. Uh, duis declined 34%
down to 84 from 1 28. Firearms
possession went from 29 to 33. Narcotics possession
went from one 12 to 1 44.
uh, cases of shoplifting arrests went from 5 44 down to 4 72.
uh, our warrant arrests also declined from 3 95 in 2024 down
to 2 81.
and firearms data. So firearms possession arrests,
uh, those went up a little bit. Those are basically individuals that
we catch in. Car stops with, with firearms, they're not supposed to have. Firearms
recover is a little bit, it depends on how you interpret the data. So you can
see firearms recovered in 2023, went from 180 5 down to to
56. Well, in 2023, we did have a case where we seized
130 firearms in one, in one case. That kind of skewed the numbers.
and then 2025 we recovered. 116. I can tell you there's
one case we recovered 12. So we're recovering multiple firearms
from, from some of these cases. So those numbers are a little hard to interpret.
so carrying on
some of our, uh, proactive strategies, um, we, we are heavily
involved in our neighborhood watch program. We currently have, um, 85 block captains,
uh, around, around the, uh, the town. Um, and that, that program
has reduces crime opportunities and builds trust between the community and police. It's
a resident based program, but we've had it for a long time. It's done very well.
our business watch program is something we started within the last year. It's
a, a partnership between dps and local businesses to improve safety in
commercial areas. Um, we give businesses guidance on
crime prevention and environmental design. Uh, the businesses will authorize
us to enforce trespassing laws after hours, and they sometimes
will volunteer their, uh, security cameras that we can use in investigations.
uh, dare has been around for a long time. It's offered all sixth graders in the city of dublin. It's
taught by trained dps officers. It focuses on substance abuse prevention,
violence reduction, and decision making skills, uh, supports long-term crime
prevention and youth safety. Our
public safety cameras have been around for, um, about eight years right
now to solve crimes. They, they help us locate stolen vehicles, uh, uh,
missing persons and suspects leak to serious crimes. Uh, they provide
real time information during emergencies, allowing us to respond faster
and more safely. In 2025, we have been transitioning over
to flock technology, replacing old infrastructure that's been around for eight years.
uh, those cameras, that project should be pre done, done here pretty soon.
and when that's done, we're gonna have a network of 90, uh, cameras,
both, uh, a lpr and situational awareness.
our real time, uh, crime center is our hub over at the pd. Uh, we have a crime technician
that monitors camera, feeds, license plate data, calls for service, and does
crime analytics in one location. Um, she's able to provide
officers with real time intelligence on their way to calls for faster
response times, better situational awareness, improved officer and public
safety.
so
peregrine technology is a new platform that we're working on now. We're building it out to,
uh, to, to where we want it. Uh, peregrine is basically a program
that interfaces with our current systems. It interfaces with our report writing system, with
our dispatch system, and with county networks, and basically takes all the information
and provides it into a format that makes sense. It provides it in,
in, in a way that we can run these crime stats very quickly.
um, it helps identify crime patterns and repeat
offenders. It improves investigations and, and, uh, decision making, especially
with the deployment of our resources. Uh, it reduces time spent
on, on manual reporting. So traditionally, our officers every month
provide a stat sheet that they, that they fill out monthly. Once we get
this peregrine uh, program up and running to where we want it,
we can run all the officers stat sheets, uh, to get their numbers and
not have to rely upon them the self reporting. And I think that'll improve some of our officer
initiated activities that we were talking about earlier.
so other ongoing prevention measures. Um, dps
conducts regular retail theft operations with local businesses. We have great
relationships with dick's sporting goods and target, and we work with them to
prevent retail theft by, by, uh, doing targeted enforcement there.
uh, we do enforcement on tobacco and alcohol related, uh,
um, establishments using our grant funding. Our
crime prevention unit supports detectives, serves, warrants and assist patrol.
and, uh, we've also, uh, reassigned many of our swing vehicles to kind of
ups staff some of our patrol beats that are experiencing, uh, increases in crime
right now. Those are some of the proactive measures that we're taking.
uh, I think that's it. There we go.
that I'll be happy to take your, uh, questions. Thank you
so much. It's a lot of effort. It's very comprehensive report.
thanks. Uh, so we start with questions. I
you want to go ahead council member? Sure. Thank you for the presentation chief.
um, got, uh, a couple questions.
um, so the first is kind of going through, uh,
going through the, the, the numbers. The thing that stuck out is residential
burglaries are up, shop shoplifting is down. Dui is down.
um, what could we be doing more of on the residential burglary
side? Uh, I know you mentioned the neighborhood watch program, but beyond that,
what, what could be, what could we be doing more of to, to kind
of get numbers like the shoplifting and the dui, you know, get going in the, in
the negative trend? So the, the residential burglaries,
um, it, it, it, it's tricky 'cause it, it, it fluctuates between the
west and east side of town. And what we found that works is saturating areas with
high visibility of patrols to deter crimes. So I think if
criminals see enforcement action taking place, if they see
cars parked in the area, it's gonna deter them from, from doing
something in that area. It just involves reallocating our resources and leveraging
what we have, uh, using even school resource officers
in the crime prevention unit to up staff certain beats to get
more staffing up there. Um, and, but that, and working with our neighborhood
watch programs, I think will, will be beneficial to, to
lowering some of these numbers. Uh,
and any, any thoughts, uh, around drone technology and,
uh, trying, trying to aid in, in some of, some
of the recovery or, or prevention?
so, drone technology is a tricky one. Um, we,
we use a lot of drone technology when the situation warrants it.
um, our policies are very specific about the use of technology.
um, we can't arbitrarily fly a drone over neighborhoods.
um, some people will consider that invasion and privacy. We do, however,
use drones heavily when there is a call. Um, and, and we have several
operators within the department that have drones that can use that technology. But we have to be
very careful when we deploy that technology 'cause we have to report that every
year, um, to the board of supervisors. Got it.
uh, and then my final question is, um, kinda going back to the
public safety cameras. Uh, I know the information
that the crime statistics are reported to the state and make them
make their way up to the, to the fbi mm-hmm . Databases.
um, could you talk about how the public safety
cameras are used and, and where that data might go? The
public safety cameras? Right. So the public safety cameras, you have
the, um, you have the a lpr, the license plate readers, and then you have,
um, the situational awareness cameras. Um, I'll, I'll address real
quick how they might be used. So we, um, we have a
network of cameras and within california, california
agencies are allowed to share with one another. Um, our policies
say that we can't share without a state. We can't share with immigration. We can't,
uh, aid investigations for people seeing, seeking gender affirming care
or reproductive care. So within the state of california, we can all share
the agencies that have cameras, we can share the data. So I
can share a story that we kind of explain how the stuff benefits us.
um, about a month ago, we had a,
a grand theft at dick's sporting goods, where four individuals went in there and they stole
$5,000 in nike apparel. A witness got
a, a good license plate on the car. Uh, that plate was
put in to our system as a suspect vehicle. Um,
10 minutes later, that vehicle hit in the city of livermore going towards brentwood.
so we were able to get units looking after that car. We had a, um,
alameda county sheriff's office airplane and the air heading towards,
uh, brentwood. That suspect vehicle ended up going to antioch. And we were
able to coordinate with antioch pd, with the alameda county sheriff's office, playing with our
units to, to successfully apprehend all four of those individuals and return all that property.
so that's one example of how those cameras can help. As far as
the data goes, the data belongs to us for the, um, for the
lprs. Um, that data is retained for 30 days unless
it's used for an investigations purpose. Um, and the same thing
with the situational cameras. That data is retained for 30 days. If we pull it for investigations,
it has to be for our reason. Got it. So if, if I could
summarize, um, the information is used solely by
dublin and then across california agencies,
but does not go beyond that. Correct. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah,
thank you. Um, thank you for, uh, this very detailed
report with a ton of data. Um, yeah, as somebody mentioned earlier, council
is data nerds. Um, and so we love to see our data. Um,
and you gave us a lot of it. This report had a lot of what,
but not a lot of why. Um, and
without a narrative to go along with data, sometimes we draw our own conclusions.
so there's a, a few questions I wanna ask you. And if you don't know the why, that's okay. Okay.
sometimes we don't know, um, the, there's a
huge drop in officer initiated contact or officer initiated activities.
sorry, I chose the wrong word there. Um, do you have a narrative around why that is?
did we change a policy or people just behaving themselves and the officer aren't, or
the easy answer is we're, we're we're doing less activities, stopping less cars.
no, I, I, um, I, I've pondered that for the last month since
we started getting these preliminary numbers. I don't have an exact answer, but I do have some,
some what I believe are contributing factors. If you'd like to hear them, I'd love to hear them. Okay.
so, um, as far as like, let's start with, uh, community initiated activities.
so those, those are down a little bit, and I think one of the reasons why is, um,
you know, I think crime down, I don't crime is down in the state of california. And
if you look at the california doga report from 2024 about state of crime in
california mm-hmm . It's down. Mm-hmm . Um, violent crime's down 6%,
property crime's down 8.4%, homicides down 10%, aggravated
assault, six and a half. Motor vehicle theft, 15% burglary,
statewides down 9.1% and robberies down 6.3%.
so that's just starting there with statewide stats. Um,
contributing factors, um, there's a few that I have. Uh, number one,
uh, our officers and officers statewide.
um, there is a, a, a very heavily increasing administrative
burden on them in their day-to-day activities. Um, they have a
lot more reporting requirements in the reports. They have to constantly
look at their body-worn camera footage and annotate it. Uh, they have to
spend probably another three to four minutes after every car stop putting in stop data
that's required by the state. Uh, talking to my officers,
booking somebody at the santa rita jail, a process that used to take 15 minutes.
now it takes 45 minutes to an hour just waiting for medical clearance. That's, if
you think about that, that's a lot of time spent out outside of their car.
um, our officers are also doing a lot of the early stage investigative work
for, um, the agencies. So before a report goes to investigations, they're
trying to get most of the investigations leg work done. So they're reviewing footage,
they're, they're seeking out cameras, looking for witnesses, so they're spending more follow-up
time on those calls. Um,
another contributing factor is that, uh, proactive work
or self-initiated work is done. Uh, when we don't have pending calls, our
priority is to get to the community and answer calls to the community. And I can tell you
working day shift, um, a lot of our calls are
priority two calls. Uh, we're going to, to to a, a suspect in
custody at target. We send two vehicles to that. So a lot of the calls we're
sending multiple officers, so there's less time for that beat to
go do proactive work. Um, and officer safety
is another reason why we send two cars. Um, that's, that's another contributing factor.
and, and another contributing factor is I, I believe, 'cause I'm not doubting
productivity among my officers, I think they're under reporting stuff. I
really do. Uh, when they go in to get a sandwich, when they go in to use the restroom,
that's a business check. We've always, we've always,
uh, logged those. If you're in seven 11 or a convenience store or what,
name a store, we logged it as a business check. If I'm
driving through a, a neighborhood on the east end or the west end, that's a patrol
check just driving down the street and not, not, uh, accounting
for your work. We're, um, we're underreporting this stuff.
uh, doing routine, routine patrol through neighborhoods and
commercial areas, uh, doing high visibility in hotspots,
parking your car in high crime areas, uh, preventing a crime that didn't
occur. That's hard to measure, but those are things that are being done.
um, you know, and, and, and I'm not saying that this is an issue, but you know, nationwide,
uh, I think there's a decline in, in, in productivity amongst all
officers nationwide. I think after, uh, 2020,
I think officers just became risk averse. So
that's, that's been a problem. Um, I, I think we've turned that corner.
I do have a lot of ideas and the captain does as well, uh, to improve
these stats. I I can guarantee you these stats will be a lot higher next year for officer initiated
activities, but I, there's many contributing factors. I can't point to this
one thing. Okay. Thank you for that very detailed answer. I wasn't necessarily highlighting
it as an issue. I was just curious as to why the, the, the big drop. And,
um, I wanna make sure that none of my questions sound like criticisms
in any way. Um, I'm really no, they're, they're low vice mayor. I, I, I, I would
like to see those numbers improve. Oh, okay. I, I'm genuinely just asking questions, but one of the
things that you said was that, um, you know, crime is down throughout the state.
we're seeing that we're seeing it, um, nationwide, actually. Um, you know, you,
you know, I said on the public safety policy committees, and we look at a lot of these things, um,
and also the newspapers are reporting crime despite what, anecdotally, you might see
the statistics say crime is down nationwide. Mm-hmm . Is that because,
you know, the old adage of if you don't test for things, you don't find them, is crime down because
we're not reporting the crime? Or is crime truly down by that percentage?
I mean, clearly crime is down, but is is,
are those percentages, do you think, accurate in your opinion? I know you can't speak
to the statistics. Are you talking about for dublin or for
the state? I mean, I'm, I'm just in general trends, it, it's hard
to say mm-hmm . It, it really is hard to say. I, I like to think that the
crime numbers are just down mm-hmm . Right now, and that, that we're doing a better job of
policing our communities and, and there's just less, less crime occurring. Mm-hmm . But it's hard
to say. I don't know a hundred percent why. Okay. But I think if our numbers are showing a downward
trend, I think the state's showing a downward trend. I think there's a, there's something going on. Yeah.
fantastic. Um, the, I actually, I'm
gonna do this a little bit out of the order I have, because this one pertains to what we're talking about, but the, the
dui, um, decline that, um, council member cadre brought up, um,
just to fully put a period on that theme.
is that because we did fewer stops? Um, or do we really think people are,
you know, checking themselves before they get behind the wheel? I think there's, I
think it's both. Um, so we've, we, we haven't reduced the number of
checkpoints that we've done. Uh, we've, we've done our checkpoints, but I will say that our
checkpoints that we do, we don't net a whole lot of arrests. Okay. Good. Uh, we had checkpoints
last year. We had zero, we had checkpoints where we had one, we had a checkpoint in
december, we arrested four people. Okay. So those are hit and miss. Um,
we've used our, our cannabis grant and our ots funding to put saturation
patrols out for duis. And, and some nights they're lucky and some nights they
don't get anything. Mm-hmm . Um, I, I, I will say this
and I'll bring this up. We did, we did look at some statistics and actually,
um, I'm not sure if you knew this, but duis, according to the national highway traffic
safety administration, or down significantly from 2005,
in 2005, they reported 1.4 million arrests nationwide.
and in 2024, that number dropped down to 805,000, uh,
state of california. And, uh, 2005, there was
a 180,000 dui arrests, that number dropped down to
a to 120,000. In 2024. Um,
the national highway traffic safety administration, they, they, they attribute the, uh,
the decline to, um, obviously less consumption of alcohol,
but also the increased use of ride shares and options. I mean, these days,
dui is a, is a, is truly a choice. If you don't
take advantage of these things and you get caught, that's shame on you. Right.
um, and, and, and one more thing I'll add. I'm, I'm not sure if you guys have heard,
but if you look online, um, there's, there's numerous articles
about genzer. Yeah. They just don drink, uh, 1997
to 20 20 12, uh, including an article in new york post that was, I read
today actually, that, um, genzer are just
not interested in drinking. They, they're losing interest in drinking after they try it for
the first time. So, so that demographic, that's gonna be the young ones
that are potentially going to bars, they're not, they're not out there.
um, so yeah, I think dui is one of those things that I, I'm not
saying that they're not out there. Right. Um, just I don't, we're not finding
them. Uh, dui compasses other things behind besides alcohol, correct.
oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dui it could be, uh, uh, drugs, uh, prescription drugs,
um, other illicit drugs. Yeah. Gen z's not drinking, but I'll
just, I'll just leave it at that. Okay. Um, moving on. Um, the, uh,
priority one calls, um, that seems
like just from a raw number, a surprising number to me. Maybe I'm the only one
that went 2,400 priority one calls. What the heck? Um, that's seven a day.
um, but medical calls are part of that. Yeah. Is, is,
are the medical calls a big percentage of our priority one calls here in dublin?
I would say they are. I don't know what the exact percentage is, but we
do respond to a, a number of medical calls. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Um, and
the same is true for priority two calls and, um, traffic collisions,
correct? Yeah. So just, just for, um,
for reference, so remember I said priority two details include traffic stops.
so of those priority two calls, we, we did 5,951 traffic
stops last year. Okay. And also traffic collisions are priority two. Correct.
okay. Well, it depends on if there's injury or not. Okay. So if there's injury, it's
priority one. One. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Um, can you give me just a, you know, I, we
don't, in the interest of time, you know, a brief description of the difference between
priority three, four, and five. Sure. So priority three, as I mentioned in the, in
the report, those are, those are our reports. Uhhuh, , uh, most of 'em are for
reports. I actually have the list from dispatch. It's right here.
I have three, four, and five. So those are our reports. There's a couple instances and
priority threes where it's not a report, um, for instance, a security check,
a vacation check if somebody's outta town. And then, uh, a parking violation
is a, is a priority three. Um,
priority fours appear to be administrative act, or they're administrative, or
they're activities that don't require a report. Uh, getting gas,
ah, civil standbys, um, business checks,
patrol checks, stranded motorists, uh, reporting that a traffic light is out.
that's a priority four. Um, priority fives,
uh, we have seven on my list. Four
apply to what we do here in dublin. And they include a, an abandoned boat, ,
an abandoned bicycle, uh, fireworks and use of force.
that's it. Okay. But for the most part, priority three is
the, the lion's share of our, our reports. Okay. Um, thank
you. Mm-hmm . In the response time. Um,
and maybe it's just a, a false memory on my part, but it's seems to me that our
response times when I started this job used to be sub five minutes.
um, did we used to report the officer initiated activities
as part of our response times and now we don't? Or are our response times getting
worse? We did. Okay. Thank you. So we, so
we noticed that we are reporting, uh, officer initiated activity in
our response times, which remember what I told you in the presentation. Right? It's
zero. Right. So if I see a car vi a vehicle violation, I'm
stopping the car. It's, it's not, it's, it's instantaneous, almost, almost
mm-hmm . So the, the time seems a little bit high mm-hmm
. But we didn't think it was fair to report self-initiate activity into our overall
response time. It's not accurate. Um, if we include those officer initiated
activities that seven minutes and whatever it was, I can cut that number
in half. Okay. If not more. Okay. Thank you. Because I,
I'm comparing apples to apples, and all of a sudden I'm comparing apples to oranges and it freaked me out a
little bit. So I actually prefer that we are using
transparent data. So I, I applaud you for putting
the real number in there. Even though it, if people
look at, at as a comparator and other agencies are using their office or initiated activities
as part of their average, um, it's gonna make us look like we have slower response time. But that is
a true, accurate picture. Um, do you have a sense of
where that puts us in neighbor compared to neighboring
agencies? And do you know whether they use what metrics they're using? I, I can
find out, um, what their, what their times are. I, I, I don't
believe there is a, um, a national benchmark for response times.
I think it's something we can always work on improving. I will say this, if there
is a true emergency, our response time is gonna be significantly less.
and the reason why is because we have lights and sirens and we can, we can, uh,
get away with, uh, not following the traffic laws legally. Um,
so our response times to an injury collision or to a true crime in progress,
I don't have the exact number, but I can guarantee you it's 50% of what you're seeing. Okay.
um, now going back to that, not all priority
one calls warrant an emergency response. 'cause the vehicle code, uh,
is very specific as to when fire or police
can, can have their lights and sirens on. We have to be, be responding to a fire.
we have to be responding to an emergency engaged in a re rescue operations,
or be in pursuit of a law violator. Those are the four reasons. There's
many instances on priority one calls that are priority one, but
we can't establish that there's an emergency. Uh, um,
the number one example I can give you is the 9 1 1 hangup. Uh,
we've all inadvertently dialed nine one one on our cell phone. We respond to those.
but if it's a static line, uh, if, if we can't determine if there's an emergency,
we're still gonna go. But we have to obey the rules of the road.
so that's gonna slow our, our times down. We have to stop at stoplights and follow the rules
of traffic. So those mess with our response time as well. But what I can say is that
if there is a true emergency, we're gonna get there very fast. Okay. Perfect.
and then, um, the last question, I'm sure everybody's pleased with me saying that. Sure. The
last question I have is the, um, the, uh, flock and
peregrine, um, information and the, um, information about rtcc.
all those together for me. Um, I have a whole host of
questions about data and ai and integration and, and all of those things.
we've asked for that to come back to us. Can you, do you know when that's coming back? That's coming back
february 17th. Okay. 24th, no,
february, march. March is, yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Little
little misunderstanding over there. Thank you very much for the report. That concludes my very long-winded
questions. Thank you. But good questions. Thank you. Any more questions?
good. I do mayor. Yeah. We'll let him go. We'll let him, so go,
go ahead. Um, council member marada. Thanks. Uh, I have,
uh, one question, nine parts for chief. Just kidding.
uh, actually, just, just one question. Uh, so on, uh, chief, on slide
eight, uh, I was somewhat taken aback by some of the numbers.
uh, so, so a question that I'll ask and, and please respond with
the necessary level of discretion, uh, which is in some
of the categories, uh, notably aggregated aggravated assault, uh,
domestic violence, sex offense. Uh, is there a specific at-risk population
that, uh, you noticed or caught a trend around? And if so,
how are we helping them? Uh, do we, you know, apply for grants?
do we have programs? Just gimme a sense of the, the proactive
things you're doing to service the at-risk population. Thanks. That's
it. So, uh, council member,
marti, you mentioned aggravated assault as an example, or is that, is that what
you wanted the answer to? Well, can you address for
me all of the line items on slide eight
that have a positive net change in 2025?
see if I can get to it. Yeah,
this is the one right here. Perfect. Yes. Is there, I, I'm,
I'm asking for more of a summary chief, which is, of all the net
positive line items, is there an at-risk population that
you found through your research, through your analysis, that we should, could be concerned
about? And if so, how are we serving them? Um,
not that we've identified council member marada. Okay.
thanks.
uh, no further questions. Back to you, mayor. Thank, thank you. Uh,
yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Um, so
I'm glad I'm last because about 90% of my questions
have already been asked. Right. I, I, and you've responded very well, the response time
and the, the trend and the statistics. I guess what I, I'd
like to know is, um, and incidentally, um, there was, there
was the use of data, and maybe you can explain how you've,
you've modified or filtered out on flock,
um, uh, over the last year or so. Of my understanding is
at one time that we, we were kind of open and that we've made some changes
recently. Uh, with regard to that would be the first question. Maybe you can identify, maybe
elaborate on that, and then I'll get back to the stats a little bit.
is that something you want to address tonight? Or, uh, is this, is this for the 20?
I think that's more in line for our next presentation and we'll on on, push it out.
push it out. That's fine. Um, and then,
you know, the, I had very similar questions, like the trends. You know,
these, these statistics, they're going up and they're going down and they're going up and down.
and, uh, you know, are these within range? Uh, are
you, are you satisfied with, with these, um,
numbers? Um, and as council member marada said, there's some that are
going up and, uh, you know, assault, assault, sexual
violence, et cetera. Um, you know, do we know the reasons for
those trends? Uh, um, for
all of 'em, not necessarily. I think you can attribute, um,
some of the, the shoplifting and the, the,
the burglary, especially commercial burglary to, to maybe some changes
in the laws due to prop 36. Ah, um, it's changed the laws.
it's made a lot of cases a felony where they would normally have been charged with a
misdemeanor or not charged at all. Um, I think that's a contributing factor. 'cause
you see burlar went down 34%. Yeah. Um,
I am, I'm satisfied with some, there's obviously some, I, I don't like seeing
sex offenses. I don't like seeing domestic violence or any violence whatsoever. I think we
can always improve on all those. Um, but some of the property crimes,
I'm, I'm very satisfied with. I, I do wanna work on our, our residential
burglaries and our, and our, and our burglaries in general. Those are important to me.
they're all important. Actually, that actually was my next question is where,
where is your focal point? And is there anything that, that
we can do to support? What areas would be more supportive
to you, whether it's, uh, technology or, or anything else?
uh, you know, where do you see that, that need? Uh,
from a strategic standpoint? I think from a strategic standpoint, the city has
always been very supportive of the pd. And so is the city, uh, the city manager
and, and getting us the equipment that we need. We have a lot of technology that a lot of cities
don't have, and it's very beneficial for us when it comes to solving crimes or
investigating crimes. Um, so I think we have what we need
right now. Um, but our focal point right now, and, and my
priority right now is lowering residential burglaries. Uh, that's a, that's a, a big,
big problem in my eyes. And, uh, I want that number to come down substantially.
okay. Well, I think, uh, the other council members, uh, have very
well answered or asked the, the right questions, and I don't have anything else
right now. Thank you. Yeah. Any questions? You're good.
okay. Awesome. So thank you so much. Um, I have, uh,
just a, a couple of questions here. So I, I, I'm looking at
the comparison to other cities, and thank you for putting that together. Mm-hmm
. And most of the numbers are, I, I feel are fine, uh, except
like one number we ask significantly higher than other cities
that is a robbery.
that's like on second page of that, uh, compared so,
so mayor, I'm not sure how the other cities are reporting robberies.
um, like I told you when I was explaining the statistics,
we had 40 robberies, um, but 21 of those robberies
involved retail theft where, um, a loss prevention person was maybe
threatened or pushed, which elevates it to a robbery. I don't think it's the, the
it, you know, it's, it's a felony, uh, but I don't think it's the, the
robbery that, that most people will think of, um, that occurs on the street.
these, these originate generally in retail stores. Mm. Um,
starting with, uh, basically simple theft. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That I understand
both. Thank you. So, uh, a couple things. So I just, uh, uh,
I, I, you know, we heard this residential, um,
community, um, burglary happening. And,
um, I want to to know like how many communities in
our, in our city, do they already
have flock cameras, and like,
how can we, like, how much they can help with this, uh, um,
crime, um, situation and how we
can help out to get the message out or just, uh, help to
get the footprint connected to our police?
um, information? Well, the cameras are very helpful.
um, and as far as communities that have them, um,
I know that they have 'em in shafer ranch now. They have 'em, um,
in the pinnacles development up off of, uh, fallon. Uh, there's several communities
that have them. Um, but the, the cameras are not, they're not
cheap. So I, I wouldn't expect every community in, in town to be able to
afford that. Um, but the communities that have,
um, purchased one, that, that information is helpful for us. Um,
and may serve as deterrent too for, for residential burglaries. Okay.
thanks. Another thing is we, we got, um, like many people
through the past two, now, they'll always ask, do we have enough
swan officers, uh, like a national data use, like 1%
or one out of, um,
I, I don't know the statistic I, so if strictly
use that number, we are like a fewer number than that number
indicated or something like that. I just want to want to hear from
you, like how you always look at this numbers of officers
to make sure we have enough, uh, coverage for our city.
so the, the, the number here often is there should be one officer
per thousand residents. And, um, I, I don't know where that number came
from. It's not from the international association of chiefs of police. Um,
I think staffing levels in the department depend on a lot of things. It depends on call volume, it
depends on, it, it, it's unique from community to community.
um, we'll take all the officers you want to give us, but I'm also
mindful of the city's resources. Um, so I, I, I think we're
sufficient and we have to use the resources we have and get creative with our staffing levels
and just leverage those resources to deal with problems. So
residential burglaries, we have to up staff certain beats with more cars.
we have to maybe pull from our school resource officers or our crime prevention
unit to supplement that staffing level. I think our staffing levels are sufficient
right now. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that's all my questions. And
do we have, do we have a public comments? I have no speaker slips
on the side. Mayor. Alright. Thank you. And, um, this is just for
information only. So I want to ask, are, are there any additional
comments we want to make on this one? Anybody has any
comments? I would say great, great job. Um, definitely wanna see some improvements and
I think you have some ideas in, in terms of how, how to make those improvements. Um,
uh, yeah, looking forward to, to seeing, seeing more green,
uh, in, in subsequent years.
thank you. Any comments? You know, this was already brought up by a council member, uh, and
that is maybe a little more explanation on trends.
um, you know, because the numbers mean something, right?
and, and the trends mean something. So maybe some idea
of what, what would these numbers really mean in terms of the, the,
where we're going as a city? So that would be my only comment.
any comments? The report? I, I thought that you included, um,
a lot of data. I love this comparison, which we've never seen before. Um,
it's presented in a way that's really easy for us to follow, um, and for the public to
follow. Um, so I just, I appreciate all the information you gave us tonight. Thank you.
um, council member marada, any comments? No further
comments, mayor. Okay. Thank you. So I want to thank you for great work
and it's very comprehensive data and we learn a lot. And also
the strategies you mentioned about the focus are all like,
uh, right things for us. And I want to thank you again and thanks
all the enforcement, um, officers there, and
which is look, looking forward to working together and support
all, all the needs of our community. With that said, thank you again.
so we'll move on to agenda item nine,
eric council members. Um, we have our volunteer recognition
event on february 25th, and I just wanna, uh, remind the
community that you've got three, four more days to get in your nominations
for citizen, young citizen and organization of the year for 2025. The deadline is friday.
that's all. Perfect. Thank you. Um, who wants to
start first? Michael, you want to start first?
you know, I, I'll be real quick. No, I don't have anything. Okay. Okay, perfect.
so you want happy to go? Yeah. Um, I don't think I said it earlier.
so, happy new year's, uh, attended the opening for kaji kin
ramen, which is right in front of emerald, uh, really great food. They have, uh,
at least one super delicious, uh, vegetarian option on the ramen,
which was, which is great. And it's a, it's a breathless ramen. So,
uh, new, something new for me to try. And then, um,
attended, uh, a cfd, so the alameda county fire department rescue boat presentation, which
is a lot of fun. Uh, went out on a boat in, uh, through
san san leandro marina and, and, uh, got to see what they're up to. So,
great, great experience. You want
to go ahead? Oh, no. So john, you want to start?
uh, of course. I'm happy to go, mayor. Thank you. Uh, I too will go fairly quickly.
the, uh, two items I have is the attendance of the alameda
county library, um, uh, commission. Uh, I'd like to ask
everybody to join me in, uh, welcoming deb
sika. Debra sika, who is now the, the, was appointed
as the new county librarian. So she'd been serving in that role,
um, as interim and, uh, then she was officially appointed. So congratulations,
deb sika. And then, um, also at, uh, with, with
regard to ava, uh, I'll take just a little bit of extra time. Mayor, I, I,
I apologize. I know it's getting late, but I, it does, does, does warrant a little bit of explanation
to the public, which is that, uh, there were two articles written in the
independent about the ava energy bill credit. So allow
me to explain the context of what that was, because
I don't think the independent gave e enough to, to, uh, credit to that.
so in the summer of last year, uh, ava,
um, forecasted a surplus of $137 million.
the board, uh, and also the, the, uh, customer advisory council,
uh, voted to give 10% of that surplus
back to the public as a bill credit, which would've accounted to about
$13.7 million, or for us specifically of
residents, about $80 off of your energy bill. That was the
summer in the fall when we actually did our financial
analysis as well as our pursuant budget. We found that in
2026, uh, there is a potential for ava to
be at a $250 million deficit.
so that came at the heels of the rate changes by pg
e, which when pg e reduces rates,
ava loses money as well. So that's the part that I don't think
the articles explained very well. So in order to fulfill
that deficit, we had to remove the bill
credit. We also had to, um, trade back some
of the local development dollars that we had originally, um, allocated, but they were unmarked.
uh, so they were un they were not earmarked. So we were able to return those.
but then also there was a 25 basis point increase in energy,
um, cost as well, that all together,
uh, and I I, I hate to be the bare bad news, but that altogether was far
less of a financial impact than the 5% that we would've
had to pay to borrow money in order to keep the company running.
so as mayor jack bch had provided during his, um,
his, his, um, uh, commentary was that we should
not be debt financing operations of the business. Uh, so
that is the commentary. Uh, and I'll close out on that simply by saying that, um,
I feel we made the right choice. I do apologize to the public that you
will not be getting that energy credit that we had originally promised in the summer.
but, um, it is something that we had to do in order to maintain
the, the sustainability of eva energy. That's it.
mayor, back to thank, thank you. Um, so, so lot of
activities before the christmas, um, yeah, including
that, uh, grand opening of the ram place, like that,
and also meeting. And also there's
a new year's celebration. There's a lots of things going on. Governor's office
have a representative representatives visited us
and itv board
meeting, so lots of meetings. With that said, we'll adjourn our
meeting at, did you, did you want me to give a report? Oh, I forgot.
sorry. That's okay. That like a okay, please. That's okay. Yeah. Um,
just very briefly, we did have, um, a couple of stop waste meetings, um, where we're
talking budget as well. Um, and then also lta, um, talking
about the hydrogen. The original plan for lta to meet the
state's mandated, um, zero emissions bus plan was
to get hydrogen buses. Um, we are rethinking potentially that
plan, so if you're interested in that, um, come see either
mr. Mcc or myself. Thank you so much. So we ajour meeting
at 11 4:00 pm.