El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, Mayor, whenever you are ready, we are ready to begin.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening. The time is 6-10. The City Council will now convene.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the regular August 18th City Council meeting. City Clerk, please call roll.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, Mayor Kincho? Yes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman?
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Cheer.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Councilmember Katsanis? Here. Councilmember Wysinger?
Councilmember Wysinger: Here.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Councilmember Motuyama? Here. And just for the record tonight, Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman is participating under the Just Cause exception for Contagious illness.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And Councilmember Wysinger is participating under the Just Cause exemption for the Caregiving for a Family Member. Both Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem have required disclosures prior to each vote tonight, which will all be taken by roll call. Thank you, Mayor.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag or observation of a moment of silence.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I pledge allegiance.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Goodbye.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Next, we'll have,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: teleconference and public comment instructions. Madam City Clerk. Thank you, Mayor. This hybrid meeting provides an option to participate in person or via Zoom with closed captions available. Meeting of the City Council are subject to the Brown Act and are held for the purpose of conducting city business.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The Brown Act ensures the public's right to be heard, and while City Council may not respond to your comments directly, your comments will be heard prior to Council taking action.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: For members of the public who wish to provide oral testimony, the Mayor will announce the time for public comment on each applicable item. A request to speak can be submitted to the City Clerk by completing a speaker card, by selecting the raise hand feature on Zoom, or by dialing star 9 if calling in by phone. In-person speakers will be called first.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The Council's adopted Rules of Order and Procedure specify that public speakers address the City Council in an orderly and respectful manner.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Proceed their comments with their name and city of residence, and be respectful of time limits. Thank you, Mayor, that concludes my announcements.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Next, we will go to, City Manager Karen Picas. Thank you, Your Honor. I do have several announcements tonight.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So first and foremost, the city's local road safety plan, which is looking at traffic safety on our local street network. Our public draft is available on our website, and we are taking comments through August 21st, so coming right up, so please go to our website.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: You can even do local road safety plan in the search, and it will bring you to the traffic safety page, where you can review the draft and make comments. You can make comments on our website, or you can send an email, or you can even drop something written off to City Hall, if you like, by August 21st.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Secondly, we have a El Cerrito Plaza parking management survey that is live, that is also on our website. If you… on our, homepage, there's the… the rotating,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: little animation there, you can click right on that. There's also a QR code. We're evaluating parking changes for the area around the El Cerrito Plaza BART station, so we're looking for input.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We have put forth a couple of ideas. Nothing has been decided yet. We're trying to just come up with some ideas for people to comment on and think about, and it does allow for, you know, open comments for people to provide. So, you can visit parking.elCerrito.gov. The survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And you could have the option of entering to win one of two $50 gift cards, so…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I encourage everybody to, to do that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, I wanted to announce that the Library Task Force's first meeting will be held on September 8th, 2026, on Tuesday, September 8th, here in the Council Chambers at City Hall. It is going to be a hybrid meeting, so if you can't attend in person, you can attend on Zoom. We will also be recording that, so…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If you're interested in that, please, we invite you all to join us. And then, I would like to call up Chief Keith for an update on our favorite topic.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The removal of flock cameras.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Alright, good evening, Council. I'm Paul Keith, your Chief of Police.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So as the City Manager said, I'm here to give you an update on FLC camera removal.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, initially, Flock indicated to us that they intended to have all of the cameras removed by today, August 18th.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I'm here to report that they are running behind schedule.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, in the last 2 weeks, we've been doing an in-person inventory, all the cameras in town, to see which cameras are still up on the poles, which ones have been removed.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I have to say the process by which Flock notifies us is a little convoluted. We get a notice that this many cameras have work orders, but because we no longer have Flock accounts, we can't actually see the specifics of what those work orders entail. We just know that some amount of work is being done on this many cameras.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, as of yesterday, when we did our inventory, we found that 7 cameras had been removed, 33 still remained, and I learned, just before this meeting started, that between the time we did that last inventory and now, 3 more cameras have been removed.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So right now, that's 10 cameras total.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: One thing I want to just put out there for the public is that during the inventory of cameras, our officer noted that of the remaining cameras, 9 of them had been vandalized in some form or another. So, our officers are conducting a criminal investigation into vandalism.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: As a reminder to the public, and maybe people who may be frustrated with flock, the cameras… we've been assured the cameras are no longer recording, our officers no longer have access to the cameras, and the officers in our neighboring jurisdictions do not eat them.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, for all intents and purposes, they're just a piece of inactive technology that still belongs to a company.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, please don't vandalize the cameras. We are investigating the incidents. We really don't want to have more of them get vandalized. There's really no point in it, because the cameras are all being removed anyway.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So that is our update so far. We're at 10 cameras out of 40 that have been removed. We are basically committed to doing a weekly update each week to see, you know, how that number keeps moving. But as I said, even between yesterday and today, it was 3 more cameras that got removed.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I'll just add that,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We are… believe me, we are just as frustrated as everyone else, and I…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: am very frustrated with the lack of service, but I do want to reiterate what the Chief said. I am sure I am preaching to the choir. I'm sure no one in this room and nobody watching would ever dream of vandalizing property that isn't theirs, but I'm just going to say this very publicly. Please, let's… we are, we want to make sure that they are abiding by the contract.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And so we want to make sure that we're doing that too, and that we're not taking things into our own hands. Again, I understand people's frustration. I am frustrated as well. But we want to do this the right way, so we're just putting that public plea out there. Like I said, I'm sure no one would ever dream of doing that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And the other thing that we're going to do now is, because the work order was supposed to be today, as ending today, that I have instructed our code enforcement staff to start preparing violation letters, because they are in violation at this point, and so perhaps if us
El Cerrito Council Chamber: you know, calling attention to this in the media, and calling attention to this in public meetings won't work, perhaps some fines might. So we are going to initiate that process beginning tomorrow.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, again, I just, like I said, I know the community's upset, and I am too, and I just want to make sure that we're doing this the right way.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: we expect them to abide by the contract, and so that's what we want to do as well. But at the same time, the contract is expired, their property is up on our property, and it needs to go, and so we're going to force that issue. So I just wanted to let you all know that, and if anybody has any questions.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: you know, please contact me or the Chief, so we're… we're definitely…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: keeping an eye on this as close as possible, because, yeah, it's been too long. Okay, we have a hand up with, Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman. Sure.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Yeah, first, I want to thank the Chief and City Manager Pinkos. I know you both have put, and others have put a lot of time into getting Flock to just take the cameras down, and I really appreciate you staying on them. I know I've been asking for weekly updates. Given that we don't have another Council meeting for a while.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: How will we keep the community updated on the progress of the removal?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Well, I do have a city manager's update that we… we're probably gonna put that out this week, so I could certainly… whatever, if we have an update in the next couple of days.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And perhaps we could put something out either on social media or looking at Will. We can… we can find a way to try to do some sort of,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: interim update, if necessary. And I'll say that, doing a weekly inventory, it takes time, so it's staff time away from their other duties, so I wouldn't really want to commit to doing it more than every week, but we intend to do it again next Monday, and we can put out information following that to give an update to the community.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Absolutely, and I understand how much time you have spent on this, and it's a shame that Block has forced you into that situation, so I'm sorry, and I wouldn't ask you to note more than weekly either. I just think it's important that when we do that, we then communicate that with the public. Really appreciate what you're doing on this, thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Absolutely. And then, did you want to announce one more thing? Oh, sure, just a, plug. We still have spaces available for our Community Police Academy that starts in mid-September. It's basically going to be a seven-session academy. Participants will learn all about the operations of the police department.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Some of the highlights for people are the traffic enforcement section, where we have them using actual traffic enforcement equipment.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: As well as our Use of Force Simulator block, where we teach them the fundamentals of police use of force, put them in front of a use of force simulator, and they get to make real-world decisions with the same equipment that police officers have. So, if you or somebody you know is interested in a course like that, please have them go to the police department webpage, just type in Community Police Academy, it'll take you to the link with more information about the course.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. Thank you, Chief, and thank you, Your Honor. That concludes my remarks. Okay, thank you, Karen Pincus. Next, we'll go to mayoral announcements and City Council announcements. Earlier today at 5 o'clock, we conducted interviews and made a couple appointments, for our boards and commissions.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: There is nothing to report on the last half hour, which was a closed session.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I also want to, report that
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We did have a great,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: which I enjoy very much as, National Night Out. We had 45 block parties, and I want to say thank you to our residents, for, inviting us into your neighborhoods,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I know the City Manager and Police Chief, joined me, and, enjoyed that, and enjoyed meeting, many of the new, families that have moved in, and, I just want to say to,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: our residents, we hear you loud and clear on the things that you've asked me to look at, and thank you for the responses on that. And more than 90% of residents in El Cerrito are very, very happy living here, and planting roots here, and living here.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm meeting so many of, the longtime residents. Residents, when they move here, for the most part, they're here until the end, until they're, they're, senior.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: ages. So again, thank you to our residents for participating, and I hope we get to see, our new neighbors stepping up and,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: creating a block party on their neighborhoods. Because we don't have block cameras any longer, the importance of watching and working with your neighbors, especially when you'll be out on vacation or for the weekend.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: having them pick up your mail or your packages when you're not, there, starting a relationship with your new neighbors. It's so important. So I'll turn to my left and right if you have any, updates again.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I'm looking at, Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman, do you have an update?
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: I just want to say happy first day of school to all the El Cerrito and West Contra Costa parents. I think we're the…
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: latest school district in the East Bay to start, but we started today, and everybody's moving up a day, so it's an exciting day, and maybe, for some, a stressful day. So, you made it through the first day, congratulations.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: this is a question, perhaps to the city manager, maybe to the mayor. I've heard that number, 90% of the city residents. That suggests to me that you had at least the 90%
El Cerrito Council Chamber: response rate, or is it 90% of the respondents? What's… what's it measuring? That was in, our National Community Survey.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And, I think the last… some of the last polling that we have done, so it would be, they're both scientifically, randomized surveys, so the calculation was 90%. So it would be, yeah, it would be of the respondents, but the respondents are…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Meant to be a random sample of the community.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So 90% of that sample Okay. Bye. Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay. And all of that is on the National Community Survey results, or on our website as well. Okay. I just, I've heard that number and kind of thought is that, you know, I couldn't fathom 100% of the community responding to it. Yeah, no, that would be great, but so it's a randomized sample, yes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, thank you. Any other comments?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, next we go to oral communications from the public. Now is the time for members of the public who wish to provide public comments regarding
El Cerrito Council Chamber: matters not on the agenda, consent items and presentation items. Requests to speak can be submitted to the City Clerk by completing a speaker card, using the raise hand feature on Zoom, or dialing star 9 if joining by phone.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In-person requests will be taken first. Please remember to identify yourself and your city of residence.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the beginning of your comments. City Clerk, please proceed.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Sorry, thank you, Mayor.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, so at this time here, we have, 11 requests to speak. Per the Council policy, 11 to 20… 20 speakers, can come with a reduction to 2 minutes. Did you want to implement the policy, or would you like to keep it at the 3 minutes? Let's keep it at the 3 minutes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, perfect. So we'll start with our in-person request to speak, which…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Starting with Mike McDougal, and followed by Sue Duncan.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Hello, good evening. I'm Mike McDougall, I'm from El Cerrito. So I'm going to try to cover 3 items in my 2 minutes and 53 seconds. One is a thank you for National Light Out. I'm looking at you, Holly. Well done. And also to some other people in the police and fire.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I wanted to talk about the monthly disbursement and check register. There was a little bit of a frustrated sidebar, last month, and I wanted to make a few comments about that. The monthly disbursement and check register is particularly important to me as a member of the FAB.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And then, I'm actually looking at Councilmember Oksana's for this,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And, and our, and our mayor.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I would ask that we agendize for the next meeting, the findings, the partial findings, if they're only partial, of the ad hoc committee.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: On our boards and commissions.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Now, and I'm gonna go back through those in my remaining 1 minute and 56 seconds in reverse order. So, you sort of inspired me, Councillor Cassanes, because I've seen you a couple of times now actually think that something was important enough to put
El Cerrito Council Chamber: on the agenda, even though you don't get to set the agenda, right? That's the mayor. And I'm looking at you, Mayor Kinto, because you just get to do that, and so either of the two of you could, like, satisfy my request in less than 30 seconds.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, I think I've cleared that. Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Now let's turn to, so…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: on the Finish Advisory Board, I'm the vice chair. So the Boards and Commission makes a little bit of a bridge to this next section. The,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The monthly disbursement report and check register is… is sort of important to me. I sometimes go through it for hours, trying to, like, winnow small clues for how the city works. I'm not looking for, like, some felonious action. I'm just trying to understand, like, how do we do the thing that we do as a city?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And so, I wanted, Mayor Kinto, like, maybe you could point some of your frustration not at your fellow counselors, for getting in the weeds, but at me. I think it deserves more than, than, than, you know, a minute and a half.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I mean, I guess in the weeds is appropriate, since we were talking about, like, getting neighbors' new weeds to clear last week.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But I… I personally appreciate it for two reasons. One is… is I have questions, and I can't ask… I can't ask Karen Pinco's,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the answer to the questions. And so, when people come to you with questions about why something's on the check register, and then… and then Lisa carries that to the city council, like, it just makes me feel reassured that you have your eye on the ball.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Right? And so, it might seem like, like, really niggling minutiae that's bogging us down, but, like, I love it. And so, I just wanted to say that. I've got 6 seconds left. I want to reiterate the thank you. Thank you very much to everyone who came to National Night Out.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Our next speaker is Sue Duncan, followed by Rye Crawford.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening, Honorable Mayor, City Council. I'm Stu Duncan, resident of El Cerrito, and speaking this evening is President of the El Cerrito Fire City Council.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The El Cerrito Fire Safe Council held a community meeting last Sunday at the Veterans Memorial Building on the topic of homeowners insurance. We thank the speakers, Joel Lotcher of United Policyholders, a nonprofit
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Formed after the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley fires, and Sharon Smith from the California Department of Insurance. We also want to thank El Cerrito Fire Marshal Beckman for his support, for attending, and for answering questions along with the two speakers.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We were very pleased that 40 residents attended the meeting, were very engaged in the topic, and asked very relevant, important questions.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: A very big thank you also to Gary Prost and K Starkweather for arranging the event, for getting out the word.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: over various social media sites. Thank you also to the City for including an announcement in the City Manager's Report in Green Happenings.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I want to remind everyone that the wildfire threat in El Cerrito and surrounding communities is not just a hill issue.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: 60-90% of the structures ignited during a wildfire are ignited by the live embers that are blown ahead of the fire by the wind.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The hills are where it might start, as a fire might come from Wildcat Canyon, but it is certainly not where it ends.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If the hot, dry Diablo winds or any other winds of other seasons blow 50 miles per hour, the embers can be carried 2 miles ahead of the fire.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I mapped the distance from the top of Terrace Drive, above the Arlington, to the Costco parking lot, 3.2 miles, not very far for wind-driven fire and the embers blowing ahead of it for them to be pushed down on all of El Cerrito.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: El Cerrito is a community that is at risk, along with the other communities from Richmond through at least Oakland, from the hills to the bay. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Our next speaker is Rye Crawford, followed by Chelsea Sparty.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Bright Crawford from El Cerrito, and I just want to follow up on Manager Pincus's comment about how hard this has been to get any kind of
El Cerrito Council Chamber: response, and it's our responsibility, I feel like.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Collectively to remember this process and not sign up with another company may… we may end up in the same position around surveillance and data collection.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And so, also, there's a pledge that…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We're asking people to sign, committing not to…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: sign up for surveillance in El Cerrito. We have nosurveillancePledge.com. Simple. NoSurveillancePledge.com.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. Our next speaker is Chelsea Sparty, followed by Brian Fogg.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening, Mayor, Council, and residents. My name is Chelsea Sparti, and I proudly live in El Cerrito.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Neighbors, my husband and I chose to invest our lives and money into this community because we thought it was a beautiful and peaceful place.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Although, we soon realize this community is very online and exceptionally lonely, instead of very outdoors and perpetually social.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We have options. Choose wisely.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Surveillance companies like Flock cannot be trusted, so those violation fines, I hope, are very steep.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It's August 18th, y'all, and 24 cameras, at least, are still up.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Block made out like a student on an all-nighter.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The city needs to take action now, whether it's mylar bags over the cameras or unplugging their solar panel power source.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Surveiling us, but especially our children.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: is abhorrent.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This erodes trust. We're done waiting, and it's time to prove that residents CAN trust city staff.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: and this Council to follow through. I urge you to render those remaining 24 of 40 cameras visibly obsolete in the next 24 hours.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: On civility, the way I see it, we have three options on every agenda item that comes before our city. One, do nothing, pause action.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That's self-explanatory. Two, complain, treat each other poorly and take no productive actions, or share ideas so late in the process as to be useless. Both residents and council members have done this.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Our third collective option is to choose to be collaborative.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Generous to each other, and to generate mutually beneficial solutions together. I'll say it again, collaborative, generous, and solutions-oriented.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Shared leadership is the vision and the hope that I have for our city.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I call on every single one of us to treat each other with the utmost respect, patience, and understanding.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: El Cerrito is only as wonderful as we all behave.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Continue on the destructive path we're on now gets us much worse outcomes and deepens the state of chronic stress perpetuated in the limited community forums we have.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Why pay thousands each month to live here?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: to fight?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Durable plans of action for the common good take shared experience, tolerance, and optimism. Together, we make El Cerrito an attractive place to live. The alternative is to continue to rip each other to shreds.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: complicate issues, and repel possible renters, homebuyers, and shoppers. El Cerrito, treat your neighbors well, because boy, the alternative sounds like a Stephen King novel. Let's have peace once again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Brian Fogg, followed by Ryan Manicus.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, hello everyone, I'm back.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I wanted to just mention a couple things about the flock story in the last couple of months since we had our big showdown here.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This has turned into, like, a very national zeitgeist movement. John Oliver's television show did a segment on it, and many other municipalities are now following our lead. So, that's kind of a nice, confirmation that we made the right choice.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: With all due respect to the police chief, we do need to raise an issue about the cameras, namely that there is no way to validate that they're not still collecting data.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: What members of our coalition have seen, just walking around the neighborhood is that the cameras
El Cerrito Council Chamber: are not only still present, they're also still visibly active. So, what that means is
El Cerrito Council Chamber: When the car drives by the camera, at night, you can visibly see infrared LEDs that blink each time a car drives by.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Now, of course, we raised this to various council members, who then raised it to the manager, who raised it to the Flock company, and Flock sent emails back, saying to the effect that
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the data's not being collected, so there's nothing to worry about. The cameras are effectively off, whatever that actually means, effectively off.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And that the policy is that the data will not be shared with other cities.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But it's really impossible for us to actually validate any of that. There's no technical way for us to validate that data's not being collected. And we have every visual indication that data is being collected. So without the cameras actually being physically removed or covered.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: There's truly no way to guarantee that they're not still collecting our data. Furthermore, as a company, they're incentivized to continue collecting it, because the data itself is inherently valuable.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The data itself, if added to larger data sets, refines the data sets and gives more granularity to people's movements. And because there's also clauses in their contract that say that they can, you know, retain the data and resell it at their will, that opens them up to be incentivized to keep the cameras up as long as possible.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And we've seen, based on their behavior, that that is what they're doing.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And this has also been a pattern that's been seen in other municipalities that have tried to cancel their contracts with Flock.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, yeah, someone else said the fines. You know, if we… if we are at the vanguard of a movement of canceling flock, we could also be at the vanguard of a movement of making the fines as steep as possible. And if you are truly upset with them, just fine them to death if you can, you know? That would be great. We would really appreciate it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Yeah, the surveillance pledge, we wrote that up, we're gonna send it out to everybody. If you'd like to sign it, you're welcome to.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We'll follow up over email with that later.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And, yeah, that's about all I've got to say.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you for listening. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Our next speaker is Ryan Manicus, followed by Kate Bolton.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Oh, perfect. That's so cool.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thanks so much. Good evening, or I'll wait for my time.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. My name is Ryan Manriquez, and I'm a proud resident of El Cerrito, a wheelchair user, and someone who has dedicated their career to making transit and housing work better for everyone in the Bay Area.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm here tonight because I am living in the gap between what our community says it values and what a disabled resident actually experiences on the ground.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: For the past 8 months, I've been working through a formal, reasonable accommodation process with management at Mayfair Station, a transit-oriented development right here in El Cerrito, steps away from the El Cerrito del Norte BART station.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: My request was simple. To have automatic door operators on the building entrance and my unit door, so that I can access my own home independently.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And earlier this month, I finally received approval. But that approval came with a condition that I pay for it entirely out of pocket.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I am an AmeriCorps service member and a recipient of Social Security and EBT.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I do not have the financial resources to personally fund access to a building that every single resident at Mayfair Station walks through every day.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I am being asked, as one disabled resident on a fixed income, to bear the cost of accessibility for our entire community. And that is wrong.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And it is exactly the kind of barrier that drives disabled people out of transit-oriented neighborhoods, the very neighborhoods that we should be designing with us in mind.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Because we know this, disabled people rely on public transit at disproportionately higher rates than the general population.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And transit-oriented development only works if you can actually get in the building.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Right now, we're investing hundreds of millions of dollars in housing next to BART stations, but we're not requiring that a wheelchair user can open the front door independently.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That's not just an oversight, that's a choice. And it's a choice that this council has the power to change.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: El Cerrito has a rare and urgent opportunity to get this right. The El Cerrito Plaza TOD is under construction right now, with nearly 400 market rate units still in design pipeline.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: These decisions are being made today, but once the concrete is poured, it becomes exponentially harder and more expensive to retrofit that access that should have been there in the first place.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And despite the threats facing my community right now across the country, I still believe in local government's ability to help people like me.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And that's why I'm here tonight, instead of giving up.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm calling on this Council and the Community Development Department to take actions on two fronts. First, I'm asking this Council and the Community Development Department to work directly with Mayfair Station's ownership to ensure that an automatic door operator is installed in our building's lobby entrance, at ownership's expense and not our community members.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Mayfair Station is a transit-oriented development in our city, steps away from BART, and its residents deserve to be able to freely move in and out of the building on their own volition.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This Council has a voice in how housing in our community operates, and I'm asking you to use it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Second?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments.oriented development within El Cerrito's jurisdiction. Embedded in our objective design standards and the Simpoplo Avenue-specific plan before the remaining phases of El Cerrito Plaza move forward. Mayfair Station has a chance to be part of the solution. El Cerrito Plaza has a chance to set the stage. Your time has ended. Thank you. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Our next speaker is Kate Bolton, followed by Josh Sanders.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: just… it just… yeah, it's wireless. You can just pick it up.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Perfect, thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Perfect. Okay, you can go ahead and begin.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening! My name is Kate, and I've been a resident of El Cerrito longer than I'd like to admit. I am here tonight just to echo the concerns of my fellow, residents that flock is still up, and we don't know if they're still recording, even though they claim they don't.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I trust them about as far as I can throw them, and I have a strained arm right now. I understand, too, if you don't want folks vandalizing things, one incentive to maybe get people to stop folks from vandalizing these cameras
El Cerrito Council Chamber: is to cover them. Multiple cities around the U.S. have done so, city councils have done so, all it takes is a Mylar dark bag to cover them with the solar panels.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And if the, you know, the city is too broke to do that, I'd be more than happy to chip in a few bucks to pay for those bags. Also, I understand the city is trying to buy a fire truck. Go ahead and find the crap out of that billionaire organization known as Flock. We could get somebody to buy a fire truck.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So that's my two cents. Also, I wanted to support my friend here with his quest to get some doors that are accessible to him as well. I understand his time ended short, so I just wanted to echo that sentiment too. Thank you for your time.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Our next speaker is Josh Sanders, followed by Cindy McPherson.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Hi, my name is Joshua Saunders, and I wanted to thank you to give me the opportunity to speak today. I've lived in El Cerrito since 1995, so that's a little bit of a while.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I'm here because I wanted to speak about a safety issue that's come to my attention. I am personally visually impaired.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If I'm looking at you, I can see the shape of you from here. I can see your hair color and the shape of your face and stuff, but there's limitations in my vision. And I… and all this time that I've lived in El Cerrito, I commonly walk along the Ohlone Greenway halfway, and I like the environment and the peace of it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In the last year or so.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'll be walking along this path, and I'll hear this sound, and I'll see something just shoot past really fast, and it's these scooters that people are using, and they're just zipping along, and it's my understanding that there are no speed limits on the… in terms of the Ohlone Greenway.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I would appreciate you to consider putting, like, a 50-mile limit on that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And, limit the amount of speed, because with… with what I see and hear.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I am personally convinced that sooner or later, someone's not going to pay attention, and I'm going to end up
El Cerrito Council Chamber: in the hospital somewhere, and that's just not something I wanted to have to think about, so I'd really appreciate it if this would be taken seriously, and I appreciate your time and your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Cindy McPherson, and then we'll go to a remote request to speak.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening, my name is Cindy McPherson. I live in El Cerrito. I'm also here out of concern about the flock cameras and surveillance.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I also do want to thank the city staff that have already done the work to end the contract and to make the work orders and are doing the follow-up, but we have acknowledged flock is not delivered. We've actually also had residents on foot traveling the route of all the cameras in order to observe the status.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, I echo the ask to please bag the cameras. It's not vandalism to them to cover them up with a dark plastic bag. It doesn't tamper with them or damage the hardware. And this is something other municipalities have done, as a way to deal with flocks not delivering on their own commitments.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And the other thing I want to echo is this, letting you know that El Cerrito residents who are concerned about surveillance are asking all the current
El Cerrito Council Chamber: City Council members, as well as potential future ones, to sign our no surveillance pledge, and we mentioned that we've put up a website
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, Rai. Literally, the words are nosurveillancePledge.com. And there are many residents here who feel that this is an important assurance that we want from our elected, so I invite you to visit it and sign it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, we'll go to our re…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Did you want to speak? Oh, I'm sorry. We have one more in person, Rebecca Kinney?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening. Hi, Rebecca Kenny, El Cerrito. First, I wanted to thank the team that put together the video explanation on the Hawk Light, both Will Provost and everyone behind the scenes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That said, I was a little alarmed that one segment included a limit line violation, and so whoever is editing clips, please feel careful of that in the future.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The second thing is I'm also here about Flock. I went on a short little 6-hour walk yesterday to check every camera location so I can verify the chief's count. I did see that there were 7 that were taken out and down. I saw 31 still up, and there were 2 that I needed rechecked by someone who was local to the neighborhood because they were kind of sneaky.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The pattern of what was taken down was somewhat random. There was some times where there was a single, tiny little median, and one camera was taken down.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But the other one was still up, which is an odd choice on Fox's part. I am glad to know, though, that the police department will be doing that, check in the future to spare me a little bit of work and to spare my legs.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That said, the fact that the cameras, so many of them are still up, shows that Clock… that Flock clearly lies. They had the capacity to bring someone all the way from the other side of the country, for less than 24 hours to talk to the council, but somehow they can't take a few cameras down and follow their own deadline that they set for themselves.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I, for one, don't believe that they can be tested, that the cameras are actually off and not recording anything. If they're lying about when they'll take them down.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: How do we know that they are not lying about this, too?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: For the peace of mind of residents, I'd like to ask that the remaining cameras be covered until they are removed. If that can be with mylar bags, to block any possible infrared signals, that would be fantastic, but if those are not handy, just black trash bags would be great as well. Thank you. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. And our last in person, Mary Ann Jubilee.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Amazing. City Council, fellow El Cerritans, I'm Mary Ann DeWili, and I live in El Cerrito as well.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: My comment here is about National Night Out, which I was very grateful for. We ended up having one on our block, and there were about 40 people in attendance, in and out throughout the evening, including some people who had no idea what they were coming across. They were just walking by, and we invited them over, and then we met them, and it was awesome.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I, I also want to thank, Rebecca for coming in and, showing up. So really great to have, the City Council representation at these events, I feel.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Something that I think could be better is, we had our event in full swing around 7pm, and someone still drove by that squeezed onto the street. This was Richmond Street. They… and they weren't slowing down. I think they were… they seemed to be going at least 10 miles per hour, and our party is, you know, like, at least 30 people at this point.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And they still drove by, and it was quite unsafe, in my opinion, very close to us, and…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I was very disappointed to see that, we… that people were still very…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: People could see that there were lots of people around, we were having a party, this was a joyous thing, and they still insisted on driving through.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: There were some people who drove past the barriers that we set up on either block, and they still wanted to drive by, even though we told them that we're having this party. And I told them, like, there's… you could go one block away, go one block over, and drive right down those streets, and carry on like nothing ever happened, so…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I wonder, like, if there's… if there's anything else we could do, maybe we can get more, street barriers, because I only… we only had, like, 2 barriers on each side. I think maybe for certain streets, we should have, like, 3 or 4 barriers on each side, is my recommendation.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But thank you again for making that, the National Night Out happen, because it was such a success, and everyone really liked it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I guess I just want to say, as a person who works on digital accessibility, I want to shout out, and, second, I guess, or third, Ryan's comment about, the door in his building, I think the TOD is a great opportunity for El Cerrito to really demonstrate, being inclusive to, especially with people with disabilities, because TOD really, enables people with disabilities to live independently.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I will also say shout out to Josh about his comment. So, I'm hard of hearing, and I wear hearing aids, and I do have to agree, even though I ride a bicycle, I would be very supportive of a 15 mph speed limit on the Loney Greenway. This is coming from someone who rides a bike, and that's because as someone who's hard of hearing, I…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: There are many times where people are coming by really fast next to me.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I'm afraid that they'll run into me, I have no idea that they're coming up until they're right behind me. And if people can go a lot slower, say, at 15 miles per hour, I would feel a lot safer. I know there are some cyclists, myself included, who would like to go…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: All right, we're done, thanks. Thank you for your comments. Okay, we'll go to our virtual request to speak, starting with Hing.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Hank, you should be able to unmute and begin your time now.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Check it again… Hey, Hank, you want to try again?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, Hank, we're not hearing you on this side. I'm gonna go to our next request, and then we'll come back and try you one more time.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We'll go to Megan.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Megan, you should be able to unmute and begin your time now.
megan: Hi all, thank you. This is Megan Stepan. I live in El Cerrito. Thank you to Chief Keith and City Manager Pinkos for putting pressure on Flock. It sounds like it's been very annoying. And I just want to reiterate what some folks said before me. This experience really shows
megan: how unreliable Block is, and how expensive it is, not just to pay a private company like this to be in charge of critical data infrastructure for our city, but also to hold them accountable.
megan: This is something that I hope that we don't repeat, and I think that it's a reason for us to invest the time, maybe on the Public Safety Committee, in creating a policy that would govern how we make decisions about which of these contracts we should go into, and which of them we shouldn't.
megan: I also wanted to ask for the city to please bag the cameras until they are down. I do think this is the kind of thing that could take a lot less staff time than, you know, basically checking flock's work and following them around the city, and go a long way to improve the environment of low trust that we have in the city.
megan: For current City Council members and any candidates who are present, I also wanted to alert you to that opportunity to publicly affirm your opposition to warrantless surveillance. You can sign the pledge at nosurveillancepledge.com.
megan: While I hope many of you oppose warrantless surveillance on principle, you don't need to oppose it for the right reasons. You can join us, because this is also becoming the popular position, and I genuinely think, for those of you who are running, openly declaring your opposition to mass surveillance will make you more electable.
megan: So even for those of you who are political opportunists… opportunists, please, there are good reasons to sign.
megan: Separately, I just wanted to thank the City Clerk and Mayor Quinto for explaining the boundaries and rules around public comment at the top of the meeting. This is the kind of education that I think, can help folks understand what they can expect from the City in these forums, and rebuild trust by managing those expectations.
megan: Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about how the city does public engagement. I held my Heal the Hill event a few weeks ago. Thank you, Councilmember Kitsanas, for coming to that, and to everything. Thank you for always showing up. And I just wanted to say, it's clear that there's a lot of appetite for people to talk with each other.
megan: about the city, and also to talk back to the city. I've spent a lot of time over the past 4 weeks talking to residents, and I think the prevailing mood right now is confusion.
megan: woundedness and anger. I'm surprised to hear that 90% number, too. And I hope it's true. I hope that the people I'm talking to are outliers.
megan: I want to offer my help to organize more ways for the city to have more frequent, casual forums for public engagement. So please reach out to me if you have ideas, if there's a standing committee I should join, I want to serve.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, we're gonna return back to Hank.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Hank, do you want to try again, see if we can get your audio?
Hank: Can you… can you hear me?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Yes, we can hear you.
Hank: Oh, thank goodness.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Start your time now.
Hank: Alright, I'm Hank, born and raised in El Cerrito. I'd just like to remind, City Council that, our police chief did stand in front of them several months ago, saying that the cameras would be down in a couple of weeks.
Hank: And it's been 73 days since the contract with Flux ended.
Hank: And the only assurance we have that the cameras are off is just because they say we… they're off.
Hank: In the 73 days leading up to El Cerrito Police taking administrative control of the cameras, there were over 172,000 searches performed of our cameras by out-of-state and federal agencies.
Hank: At this time tomorrow, that number will be 175,000 searches.
Hank: I'd also like to point out that the workforce hours that the police detectives now have to spend tracking down residents who were fed up being surveilled all could have been easily avoided with some trash bags and a ladder.
Hank: thank you for your time.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, and Mayor, that concludes our request to speak.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, very good. Thank you very much. Next, we'll go to presentations, and we have a presentation
El Cerrito Council Chamber: From, the Bay Area Rapid Transit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the Alternative Service Plan presentation. We have, BARC Director Barnali Ghosh here, but we also have staff member
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The Principal Government and Community Relations Rep for BARC, Henry Simons.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Where do you want me to be? Here?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It's wherever you're comfortable. I think we had set you up here with the clicker, if you prefer, or if you want to… Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And then just give me a quick second, I need to… Good evening.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, you can go ahead and begin when you're ready.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Hi everyone, I'm Bernali Ghosh. I am the Board Director for District 3, which includes El Cerrito, and grateful to be here to be able to give you an update on a system that serves El Cerrito greatly.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So today, I'm going to talk a little bit about, where we are generally, sort of the status of BART, how things have changed since the pandemic, and what to expect going forward, and I'm happy to take questions after that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, this is a defining year, not just for BART, but for the Bay Area.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I want to begin by just highlighting some of the things that, if you take BART, you hopefully have noticed. That we have a system that's safer, cleaner, easier to use than ever before. And this is because during the pandemic, we did have a lot of challenges with that, and as people started coming back.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Bart focused on service being more reliable, more frequent, and, more clean.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And we've done this through a variety of strategies. One of the most visible strategies that you might have seen are the next generation fare gates. These have been an absolute game changer. They've reduced fare evasion.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: and they're helping deter unwanted behavior on the system. One of the biggest outcomes we've seen have been that the hours spent on maintenance within the paid area has reduced significantly.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And early indications show that bot revenue growing by about $10 million annually through reduced fare evasion. There are also new infrastructure, which makes our stations look better. Another strategy has been to have more of our police officers ride the trains along with the police officers. We also have transit ambassadors and crisis intervention specialists.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So we can respond to the problem with the appropriate solution.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And this visible presence plus the gates has really helped reduce, actual crime. So our overall crime rate plummeted 41% in 2025,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That's 41% in 2025 compared with the previous year. And along with, actual safety, there have also been issues with the perception of safety.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: A big part of that is making sure our systems and our stations are clean. We are running all new Fleet of the Future trains, you know, if you've been riding bot for a while, like I have, we don't have the cushioned seats anymore. Some people do miss them. I'll say I do like that our
El Cerrito Council Chamber: trains are easier to clean, but we've also doubled the rate of cleaning, so that is what you're seeing. And customers or riders have noticed nearly 9 out of our 10 riders are satisfied with our service.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We're also trying to make BART easier for riders to use. Tap and Ride has been a huge success.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: You know, other parts of the world already have it, but I'm glad that we here now in the Bay do have it, and BART was the first system to implement it. And what that is, is that you can use your bank card
El Cerrito Council Chamber: a debit card, credit card to just tap. It's great for occasional riders, you don't have to sort of futz around to get a Clipper card if you don't want to. It's also great for out-of-town visitors to use. Transfers work on-the-bank cards.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So it's been a great benefit, especially with the big events that we have, where we had a lot of people here from out of town. We made it really easy for them
El Cerrito Council Chamber: To use that. Now, along with that, we also want to make sure that our, frequent riders, those who rely on BART, have a way to use it where it's not so hard on their pocketbook. So, Clipper Start provides 50% mean space discount to riders making less than 200% of the federal poverty line.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Henry, who's here with me, is always happy to send you more information if you have constituents, or folks that you know of who could benefit, from this program.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We're also installing LED lights. I know I was with many of you at the event where Congressman Garamendi recently secured $500,000 in federal funding to replace lighting at three stations in his district, which includes El Cerrito Plaza. And this lighting is another way for BART to save on our energy costs and also make our straight stations
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Feels safer and just more pleasant.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We continue to work with other transit agencies, like AC Transit, to align our schedules. This has been something that's been happening since the pandemic. They do a big sync every six months when new schedules come out. We did have a new schedule come out, I think it was…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Can't remember this week or last week.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But the yellow and red lines are now spaced 10 minutes apart from San Francisco, so folks are getting on there. The biggest benefit of that is reducing crowding on trains. So the train schedule is more even, then folks are not rushing to get on the first one. You know there's going to be a train 10 minutes later instead of it being, like, 13 and 7, or something like that. So this gives
El Cerrito Council Chamber: riders the option to take, the yellow line, and transfer at 19th Street to a Richmond train.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Or they can take the direct red line train later. And like I said, it helps distribute riders and prevent crowding.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We're also excited to be partnering with the city on the TODs, but it's not just a transit system that runs through your city, we want to become more integrated into the city, and a big part of that is by building TODs.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And in April, nearly 7,000 bot trips ended in El Cerrito on the average weekday, which is the third highest city in the East Bay after Oakland and Berkeley.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So it makes a lot of sense that we are building TOD on El Cerrito Plaza, where 70 units of family affordable housing are now under construction. The overall project includes 743 units, a new public plaza, and BART also secured a $24 million tourist state grant to help build bike and pedestrian improvements, a transit center.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: and a bought rider parking garage with the El Cerrito Plaza Unity.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We want to make it easy for folks who, want to get there in ways other than driving, but there is also still parking for those who have to drive or want to drive.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We're excited to make it even easier to live or get to BART in El Cerrito. Again, I was with some of you at the El Cerrito Complete Streets Improvement Project ribbon Cutting, which BART contributed $1.5 million in funding for the project through our Safe Routes to BART grant.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: What you might have heard in the news a lot, I hope, or if you've paid attention, is about the November 2026 regional transit measure.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So this will be on our ballots in November. This regional transit measure is the solution that has been put forward by the state to fix the deficit that all of our transit agencies are in.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And what this, tax measure does, is it's a five-county sales tax measure, which in itself is kind of incredible to have five counties and to really have a regional effort
El Cerrito Council Chamber: To solve the issues that have come up, because of historic underfunding of transit, but also because of the impacts of COVID that we are still facing.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So this, tax measure would be 0.5% sales tax in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and Santa Clara, 1% in San Francisco, an expected $980 million in annual revenue to prevent major service cuts to Bart Muni.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: AC Transit, Caltrain, and also local agencies, small bus services like WestCat, for example, which we know serves
El Cerrito Council Chamber: West County.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It does include several oversight provisions, including additional independent financial review of BART and other agencies to make sure that our tax dollars are being spent well.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I do want to dig a little bit more into how we ended up here, and a big reason for this is that remote work has changed how Bay Area residents live, work, and travel. Before the pandemic, before COVID, BART depended on fares to pay about 71% of service.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That's almost…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: more than any other transit agency. It's almost unheard of to have that much revenue come from riders. But what that meant during the pandemic is that total ridership went down, and now, today, we're serving almost the same number of people, they're just taking part fewer times a week.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: At the same time, we're seeing more people take it to go to a concert, so we're, you know, so BART has worked to respond to how people are using BART today, but it is leaving us with our fare revenue being down $300 to $400 million compared to pre-pandemic forecasts, and fares today are paying only for 32% of our costs.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So BART faces deficits over $370 million per year, beginning in the fiscal year 2027.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And though we need to continue our… to grow our ridership and control costs, that's not enough, because BART's going to need a new funding model that is similar to how transit is supported elsewhere.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: BART's operations are some of the most efficient. We have the lowest operating cost per passenger mile, when compared to peer transit agencies.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We run efficiently despite the Bay Area costs that are 10% higher than other U.S. cities served by heavy rail, and our operating costs are growing below inflation at the slowest rate of peer agencies.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So we at BART have been doing everything we can to manage costs, and it's not just before the… because of the pandemic. This is something that BART has had to do for many years, just because of historic underfunding of public transit agencies.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We and other agencies did undergo an accountability review, a financial efficiency review, as part of the regional transportation funding measure, and that Phase 1 of that was completed in the spring.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And through that review, it showed that VOT has taken significant actions to reduce our costs and increase revenue. Between 2019 and 2025, we reduced operating costs by more than $516 million.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So service reductions, workforce controls, and operational efficiencies, save $549 million in capital costs by better managing project costs.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Doing deferrals, and then investments to reduce future costs and improve reimbursements.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And we brought in an additional $99 million in increased revenues through fare increases, new fare products, and parking leases.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And Henry has this BART funding overview, which is this purple document that talks in much detail about the work we've been doing now, but also over the years. For example, BART moved to its new headquarters, which is a smaller footprint, to save money. So it's something that we've been doing
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Consistently, it's just that the deficit is too large to overcome.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We agreed and, forwarded, sorry, adopted all these recommendations as the Board of Directors to continue to enhance our revenue and reduce costs even further.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But like I said, the deficit we have right now, it's the result of a historic pandemic, and therefore is a historic deficit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Now, going forward in FY27, we are able to maintain current levels of service.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And that assumes that the regional transit measure will pass.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Now, we will continue to make cuts because it will not fix our entire deficit. We hope to get about $310 million annually, but that still leaves us with a deficit. But we are committed to doing that through operating shortfalls and not through service cuts.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: it's really important to us that when… if people choose to vote for transit, that we're not taking away, transit soon after. So, so we're looking at,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: lesser spending, and I've already sort of tried to find, you know, cuts from the elimination of vacancies, for example, in our staff.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That being said, sometimes you hear people say, hey, you need to right-size part.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And if we don't get the funding, from the transit measure, if the transit measure doesn't pass.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We would have to right-size it, and that's what this alternative service plan is about. This is what it would look like.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If the measure does not pass, and the new revenue source is not identified, we as the board initially have approved an alternative service plan. The first of these steps to close our budget deficit would happen in January 2027. And we feel like we needed to give our staff direction for what would happen.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If that money did not come in.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And what that looks like is closing, service at 9pm.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And much of this is looking at, you know, are we making money or are we losing money? So it's… a lot of these decisions are based on that. So it costs part more money, to run after 9pm, and so that was one of the first things that go away.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We would run only 3-line service, only yellow, blue, and orange lines. Train frequencies would be reduced to every 30 minutes. Again, we didn't do an hour, because at an hour frequency, we would start losing riders, where we would, again, make less money, so the 30-minute frequency was what was found to be
El Cerrito Council Chamber: what would maintain that balance of revenue and costs?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We would need to close up to 15 stations or line segments beginning in January 2027. Fairs and parking fees could increase by up to 50%.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And we would also be forced to lay off approximately 1,200 employees, and significantly reduce support services like leasing services that our riders have been asking for.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Without this new revenue, the plan is likely not sustainable, because it relies on the use of one-time funds, even with cuts.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And at some point, it would become impossible for us to run safely or legally without available resources, and we would have to stop passenger service.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This is really serious. I'm up here talking to you, but I feel quite emotional about the idea that we might have a Bay Area without BART. As an immigrant, this is something I used when I moved here as someone who didn't drive. This is how I got to my first internship.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In San Francisco. And, you know, BART keeps getting better, more affordable. We have B-Pass, where if I was a student at UC then, even going to that internship would be so much more affordable and cheaper.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If we are at that position where we might have to close part, we are going to continue to engage and advocate and educate the public to explore all funding options. But this is a serious issue, this is an outcome of a historic pandemic, and like I said, we have a historic deficit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That being said.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We are happy that riders have been coming back. FY26 closed on a high note with June ridership. This shattered post-pandemic records. This was driven by major events, concerts, and games.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In June 2026, ridership was 18.6% higher than June 2025, and FY26 ridership was 13% above the previous year.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And what this shows is that riders are coming back, they're just not coming back as fast as we would need them to to close the deficit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And it also shows that when major events come to the Bay Area, BART and the region's public transit network are ready to meet the moment, and that you cannot possibly have big events in the Bay Area, without our public transit systems. And all of that is connected to economic recovery.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And the health of our communities.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We are, with the surge in ridership, along with the schedule changes, we're also running longer trains during peak commute, which we hope will also reduce crowding on the trains.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: and,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If you haven't taken part, I'm always happy to take a ride with someone, so please do reach out. That's my information, compliments, complaints, everything is welcome.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I will stop there for any questions. Okay, great. Thank you very much for the presentation. We'll, go to my right here with, Councilmember Motayama as a question for you. Thank you so much,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Cornali, for this presentation, it was really bleak when I saw it in the packet, and,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I did not realize that potentially our Richmond line would be one of the… one of the lines to go. If the Richmond line is removed, what happens to the stations in El Cerrito?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, there would still be service, it would just not be two lines, from what I remember, but…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I think the bigger question, though, is not which station's gonna close, or how, you know, how… which line is gonna close, because I think…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Ultimately, what we're seeing right now is a service that's working.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: For the numbers that we have wanting to ride transit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Of course, we could have more frequency. We don't have the frequency that we had for the pandemic.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But… Generally, if you reduce service to that extent, where you have you know.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the line going away. With the stations that might be closed, our staff are looking at, you know, how does it get boarded up? How does it get secured?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: it's going to cost us money to also secure the stations, because it's infrastructure that needs to be protected. So those are details that STAP is looking at, but I think the bigger picture, what I want to leave you with is
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Every cut that we make is going to reduce ridership.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And with reduced ridership is reduced revenue, which will make it even harder for the transit system to operate.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We are still trying to see if we can make it work, but it's extremely hard for fixed rail to make it work.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: One of the things that has happened is AC Transit has also done what they call their contingency plan, and some of the conversations that BART and AC Transit are having are, when BART service is not running, if BART's closing at 9pm, can they run more trans-based service?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But it costs everybody money, right? But the agencies are working as each agency puts out their contingency plan. We were the first to do that, because we are the backbone, and our schedule and the decisions we make impact other agencies, so now AC Transit's done it, Caltrain has done it, so…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We're all trying to make sure there is coverage.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But that's…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: for me, just kind of a stopgap, and essentially, I feel like we're gonna keep losing riders, because it's not gonna be good enough.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Even as our freeways get more congested, we're gonna keep riding… losing riders, and
El Cerrito Council Chamber: we will get updates from staff about what the nitty-gritty or the details that you're asking for look for, probably later on. I hope that kind of answers. Yeah, that does. I also…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I know this not to be the case, but…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: recently, we had a lot of conversation around the El Cerrito Plaza TOD, that if BART were to go bankrupt, that the project would stop. So, can you just confirm that even if BART went bankrupt, the
El Cerrito Council Chamber: TOD development can still move forward, and it will be still under the agreements that we have.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Yes, a lot of people are concerned about what happens to the TOD. It won't be transit-oriented anymore.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And that's unfortunate, because that's the best way we have to, you know, get… to increase our ridership, right? So for BARD, it's our longer-term strategy. But BART is not paying for any of this from our pockets. It's the developers who are working on getting grants from the state,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And that is a multi-year project. The grants we're getting today, you will see, you know, 2 years out, 3 years out.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If our public transit recovers.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: that will help get money for the future. It's not an ideal situation, but in the near future,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The housing is sort of on its own track.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So to speak, and they will continue to ask for grants. Now, it might make them less competitive in some cases.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Possibly, if we don't have functioning transit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But right now, we're not seeing that. These, lead times are very long, and so the housing is on its own track for funding and construction.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you very much. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Go to, Councilmember Cassanis. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your presentation. I learned a great deal from it, and
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I know there's some,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: uncertainty about it, so I just want to state for the record that I absolutely support the transit-oriented developments that are happening at BART.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I also want to share with you a concern that's been expressed many times to me by residents who use BART, and I have my own personal experience with it, too.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: With the development of the housing, some of the lots that people have been using for parking are being taken away, and there's been a lot of concern about
El Cerrito Council Chamber: People who don't live near BART,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: what their access to BART is. At the same time, a lot of the AC Transit feeds that go to BART are also being cut back.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: my son realized that I takes BART… takes the AC transit down to BART stations, and has to wait longer, and walk more often.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I've actually gone down to BART
El Cerrito Council Chamber: to take part into San Francisco, and not found a parking spot, and I happen to have a parking spot in San Francisco, so I kind of throw my arms up in the air and say, okay, well, I don't want to drive in, but…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I can, so I will.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, and I know there's a…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: You know, obviously, a kind of give and take, or…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: gift battles the two. And I'm curious about what kind of analysis has been made about the loss of parking and how that affects ridership. And not only ridership, public support for BART. If people perceive that the BART station is not accessible to them because, for whatever reason, they're not going to take the BART, sorry, the bus there.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: it's a risk. So I'm just curious of… and also I heard you mention the parking garage structure at El Cerrito Plaza. Could you talk a little bit more about what that is, and how many
El Cerrito Council Chamber: spots, I guess is the right term.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I don't have the exact details of…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: all of the parking spots, and we will try and get that. It is on our website, along with the details, but I will say, thank you for flagging that. It's probably the most common question we get, is what's happening to our parking.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It's a valid question.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: However, I think what Port has done, and this is something I've been following
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I've been on the board board for a year and a half now, but I was, you know, in Berkeley, on the Transportation Commission, on the Planning Commission, so I have a little more familiarity with it. Of course, we also have Director Saltzman who could probably answer this as well as me or better, so I will look to her if she wants to add something.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But we have taken a real holistic view and an informed data-based view.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: to how to approach this. And planning, as you know, it's not a perfect science, right? It's not like we do this, this will happen, but based on the goals of the region, based on the goals of the city, based on board's goals, based on funder goals, it is…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the package that comes in front of you when it comes to TOD, and then also what is possible, right?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, Bart did, I used to remember it, I think it was, like, called BCAP.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It did a corridor study.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I think it was from Richmond all the way to Berkeley, or at least El Cerrito all the way to Berkeley, and they looked at each of the board stations to study how people got there.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And what they found is there were people walking and biking, and also there were people who were driving to part who lived within the radius that they would walk and bike if we had safer walking-biking infrastructure.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And that is why we have spent, as BART, not just money on our system, but that we are supporting
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Complete Streets projects around our stations. Because there is a segment of our community that would prefer not to drive, who be forced to drive because they don't feel safe getting to our stations any other way.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: However, there are people who would still drive, and that's why you have the parking structure, right? So it will have the right amount of spaces needed.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Another strategy that we've been using at our board stations, and this is sometimes counterintuitive, is to make sure that the amount we're charging for parking
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Is to create, availability.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So… These days at board stations, parking's free after 3 PM.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Because we don't see the lots get full after 3 p.m, so why charge people, right? So, you might not have to pay anything.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: If there isn't demand. But if there is demand, like in our Walnut Creek station, we increase the fares, and that is mainly to ensure that there is parking availability, that people aren't using it just to store their car, right?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I have sometimes used the North Berkeley station after 3 p.m. to go to something in the city and come back. I haven't had to pay a dime, right? But if it was getting packed, and I did the same thing, that would not be fair, right, to the people who actually might want to use it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: For a shorter trip. So we're using all these kind of strategies to make it easier for people who need to park and park, but also to make sure that those who can walk or bike are able to do that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I hope you talk to AC Transit about their frequency. I've been a AC Transit rider longer than I've been a BART rider, honestly.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And it is challenging. That being said, they are in a similar situation
El Cerrito Council Chamber: With funding, they have just, in my opinion, chosen to make some cuts before.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the measure and what strategy has been to make our system the best it can be. So our deficits look a little different. On our WCTAC meetings, I know Director Saltzman and I are always complaining about the 7 line, which runs once an hour. Where I lived was a two-bus.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: corridor. Now, it's pretty much a one-bus corridor, because a bus that runs once an hour
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Serves a very small population.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So I completely agree with you, and we need to make it easier for different other micromobility, right? If you're not biking, are there Veos? Are there, you know, some people who can't afford it might choose to take an Uber and Lyft?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Do we have, like, loading zones for things like that? That's not something I'm promoting, I'm just very aware of, like, the practical challenges of that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: and…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In my role, I will continue to ask AC Transit to improve connections to our board stations, because without that, it doesn't really work.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And it was the 7 line that had him playing. Yes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In fact, I have asked them if, when we all get our funding, the measure passes, I'm like, can you go back to before and bring, you know, improve some of these frequencies? Because it's no fun for people to support transit and not have
El Cerrito Council Chamber: some of the cuts we've made come back. Like, I hope Bart would do the same as we get more riders back. And I hope more people take it, because we do look at ridership, and if the 7 is not being used enough, that's when they choose to cut it, so…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you very much. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I wanted to point out that our TOD developments at,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Del Norte, a lot of them still have their cars, and they've been parking in the lot for free. Do you have any comment on that? Are you gonna start charging them? Are you going to work with the Mayfair building and their residents? So.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: They can have a safe place to park, and BART can make some money off this, because really, BART has done nothing about that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I mean, my personal opinion is parking should not be free. At the same time, I think it's…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I look at paying for parking as a resource management tool, and not a way for revenue.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, if it comes to a point where we… what riders need to park in those stations, we would need to come up with some kind of agreement. I don't know what it's now currently, so I don't want to over-speak, but, you know, it does frustrate me that even I live in Berkeley, in downtown Berkeley, there are private lots that are empty.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: After hours that could be used for parking for theatergoers, or something like that, and we just need to make better use of these resources so that we have parking for those who need it at the right time.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, but I will… I will ask our staff about what the current status is, and… Yeah, because that lot… there's a little part of the lot that's right across the street on… on…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I think that's Kearney Street, and the lot is full, and most of the residents are from the Mayfair and the Affordable Housing Project. So, you know, providing parking for the residents, you know, since parking is available.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But, I agree with you, this should not be free.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: and residents in my area, they did not support, the Mayfair project because they were concerned about, parking in front of their homes on Junction Avenue and the other streets surrounding. So, I'm glad you're going to look at that. Thank you. And as a person who still continues
El Cerrito Council Chamber: To, to take BART. I took BART, and I was on the first BART ride, from Fairmont School, and the very first BART ride when I was on sixth, sixth grade. So, I've been taking BART since a kid, and many of our residents
El Cerrito Council Chamber: also have been taking BART from the beginning, and so it's great to see the improvements. I know I've been checking in with the mayors, and appreciate you checking in with the mayors in Contra Costa County.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: all of us support, the, BART. And I'm looking at my residents now, the people watching. You think I-80 is crowded now. Wait till, if this, does not pass?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We will have gridlock on the 80 and San Pablo Avenue day and night, and especially on weekends. So, but, you know, I'm just warning you now, we're going to have 14 tax measures
El Cerrito Council Chamber: on the ballot in November. And if you're going to vote yes on anything, this is the one that is going to affect, everyone here in the city of El Cerrito and surrounding areas.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So we must get this, you know, looking at West County and the history of West County and El Cerrito, we have always supported
El Cerrito Council Chamber: all of the transit measures. The problem is the other side of the hill, they don't vote like us. Have you and the BART staff been reaching out to folks on the other side of the hill that believe they're paying way too many taxes right now?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'll just say that all of us board directors have been out in our districts making as many presentations to whoever will listen, because I think the one thing that's important for us is that nobody says that, oh, I didn't know.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I didn't hear about it. There's a lot going on, and for people, there's a lot of different crises that people are dealing with, so we're trying to do our best, make sure people hear early.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And, I think what I would ask of y'all, as y'all are in the Contra Costa space, is, you know, to look at something like this funding
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Overview, because we've been asked to right-size, we've been asked, what are you doing to save money? And we've been consistently working on it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And like I said, this is… the alternative service plan is what rightsizing looks like, and that is not fair, to our region or to our riders, right? So, we could use your help in communicating more some of the savings that part has already made
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And why we're running the service that we're running. If we were just to do it based on how much money we're making, I don't think that's a mandate for a public transit agency. It's to provide good, effective, efficient service. No, thank you. I know, Leo Pro Tem is there, here online. Did you want to… do you have any questions, or you'd like to make a statement?
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: I have a couple comments. Don't have a lot of questions. I've seen our Director Ghosh make this presentation before and asked my questions there, and of course was at BART a long time, so I'm very familiar with the crisis that it's facing, and I just want to emphasize.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: I think maybe Bart's not saying as bad as it will get, because nobody's sure, but the likelihood is after the first year of cuts, or the second year of cuts.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: that BART will have to figure out how to wind down service and have kind of a managed decline of BART. I mean, that is what we are facing, is the end of BART if this measure doesn't pass, or if some other funding at the same level isn't identified. And I think that's hard for BART as an agency to say, because…
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: They don't know for sure, but that's… if you look at the numbers and how much ridership they're gonna lose every time they cut service, and they're talking about doubling fares.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: And in closing stations, it's just gonna go into this transit doom loop where all of a sudden you don't have revenue to even keep base-level service
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: going. So, it would be catastrophic for El Cerrito with our two BART stations, and with, you know, us being the third most popular city in the East Bay for riders, so we just need to make sure that future doesn't come.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: So thank you for making this presentation and making it clear what's at stake. And then I did just want to…
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: say something about access, because I was the BART director for El Cerrito back when the Berkeley-El Cerrito Corridor Access Plan was completed. That was something that BART got grant funding for and worked very closely with Berkeley and El Cerrito, all the way from Ashby to Del Norte BART, acknowledging that there were the three TOD projects planned at Ashby, North Berkeley, and El Cerrito Plaza, and probably
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: in the future, Del Norte, which is now starting discussions.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: To look at, you know, how…
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: BART was gonna accommodate people who drove at the time.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: it's a little bit different now than it was when that study was completed. There's a lot less parking demand than there was back then, so the study was at, you know, peak ridership and peak parking when all those lots were filling up really early in the morning, which is not happening today, because of the pandemic and because of loss of ridership. But still, so the numbers are modeled off kind of the worst-case scenario in terms of accommodating that many numbers
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: of cars. But…
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: I encourage everybody on the Council to look at that study. Maybe you looked at it, some of you, when it came out years ago, but it has a lot of solutions, and some of those solutions are things that the city is now working on implementing. One of those solutions was this parking management plan that our city manager brought up earlier this evening to ensure that people who need to drive to the station and don't have any other option
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: have some place to park. Even if it's not at the smaller parking structure that's going to be built, then it's on the streets surrounding the station, which
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: pre-pandemic and even today, there's a lot of people already parking on El Cerrito streets that are, parking on the streets where it's free to park, and then walking in the few blocks to the station, because they don't want to pay for parking. So it's really a matter of managing that parking, so that people aren't able to park for free and need to pay for the parking, and making sure we can manage the demand, and ensuring that some people who are driving
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Short distances, and maybe have other options take up those other options, like biking and walking, or getting dropped off.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: or transit, and to Councilmember Katsana, absolutely agree about the transit service. You'll remember when AC Transit came to give a similar presentation, I definitely said, right after this measure passes, we need to look at increasing service in El Cerrito, and I will be championing that next year, hopefully, if this measure passes. So, thank you again for coming, this evening, and for just expressing
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: how dire a situation it is, certainly with you to ensure BART has a healthy future.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I want to, thank you for that, Mayor Pro Tem. I want to check with, Councilmember Wysinger and see if she has any questions or comments.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Councilmember Wysinger has stepped away from the computer at the moment. I just want to make sure. Okay, I want to thank you for this presentation. One last question. Have you had a chance to, do a presentation at the Contra Costa Mayor's Conference?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I don't think we have.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I think you should, then. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. To have the 19 mayors and the county supervisors
El Cerrito Council Chamber: there, the importance of, making sure that everyone knows what's at stake, especially here in Contra Costa.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Because the largest ridership is coming from this county. 60% of riders are coming from Contra Costa County. So I appreciate your leadership and listening to Contra Costa residents about what matters the most for our riders.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We weren't getting that before, but I appreciate you now, because you are listening to us. If you, definitely, check in, with the Contra Costa Mayor's Conference, I'm sure they'll make room for you to speak. So, thank you. Thank you, Mayor Kinto, always for your support. I know we've been going city to city.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I think there was a presentation to the supervisors, but it makes sense to ask to see if it, you know, it would emphasize the message and…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: allow transit advocates to support it. So, thank you all for listening. I know our city clerk, who,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: works on the agenda with me for the West County Mayor's Conference. We'll make sure that we can see if we can invite you for a future, presentation. That would be amazing. That makes it so much sense. Thank you. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, next, we have El Cerrito Fire Safe Council.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And we have Chief Eric Sailors.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Oh, one sec, give me sec- one second to get the technology set up for you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Hit the…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Give me one second, and the microphone is not on, but I need to get the technology set up really quick.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Can you all right? You're fine. Thank you for being here. Sure.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Sorry, give me one second. I'm actually controlling that computer, Gary, if you can just give me one second. I'm controlling it from over here.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I cannot read your hat until you sat this close, now I can read it. I've been wondering, what does this say?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Sorry, we're still working on some of the kinks when we have virtual council members on the call. It's a little bit harder for our typical process.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Just screen share.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, now you can go ahead and you can control with the mouse to do your slides.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Great.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So… Mayor Quinto, Council, I'm Gary Prost.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: with the El Cerrito Fire Safe Council.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you for the opportunity to present or review the results.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: bar… Evacuation Route Vegetation Mitigation Grant.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: as I mentioned in front of Council exactly a year ago, we got this grant.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: from the California Fire Foundation.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: With money provided by PG&E.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The purpose was to clear vegetation along evacuation routes at the YLAN-urban interface, so that means the ridge top, basically.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The focus was on Rifle Range, Club View, and Vista Roads.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So… We were… the only…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: grant that was awarded in all of Contra Costa and Alameda County, so we're kind of proud of that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: A subcommittee, of the Fire Safe Council.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Consisting of Jim Dolgonis, Kay Starkweather, and myself.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Got awarded… wrote up and got awarded this $15,000 grant.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Along with, battalion Chief Beckman, we identified 16 properties that needed mitigation.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: 12 properties were actually mitigated.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Because… We didn't have that much money, just $15,000.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Grant was awarded in August.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It was completed in March.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It's completed ahead of schedule and under budget.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I think it's important to mention
El Cerrito Council Chamber: that it takes a tremendous amount of volunteer time. We figured we… between the three of us, we spent over 400 man-hours
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Monitoring and progressing this grant.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Another observation was many residents probably could have afforded to do some of this work themselves, but they wanted somebody to take charge.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, when we set this up, They were glad to participate.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Actually, when we were done, some expected us to do more.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So… In that sense, it was a success.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So this shows the area that the project, was. It's within the dotted line.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It included the area from Arlington to Rifle Range.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And extended up into… Into Richmond.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the Vista Heights condos. So there's hundreds of homes here.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We targeted roadside fuel reduction within 5 feet of the roads.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Again, Rifle Range, VISTA, and Club View are highlighted in yellow, and the two stars indicate that for all of this area.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: These are the only two exit points, so it's critical that people be able to get out if there's a big fire coming up Wildcat Canyon.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, so to repeat, it was awarded in August, it was $15,000.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Fire Marshal Beckman helped us identify 16 properties. 15 homeowners responded, but work progressed only on 12 due to limited budget.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The work was done by Heavenly Tree Service of Concord.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I want to shout out to Eduardo and Diana Martinez, the owners of the company. They worked with us on the price. They worked 7 days a week when necessary. They followed the El Cerrito noise ordinance and quit on time every day. They cleaned up afterwards, and they were a pleasure to work with.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So I just wanted to mention that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The process that we went through
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Was first, with the fire department, we identified properties that needed work.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We wrote up a scope of work for each property.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We gave out an invitation to participate to the homeowners.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We got an expression of interest from the homeowners. We contracted 5 tree companies. Only 3 responded, but we did a walkthrough with each of them.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We got bids, and we selected a tree service company based on the best combination of work and cost.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We let the homeowners know the timing.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We got them to sign a waiver.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We got contributions from two of the homeowners to help out.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We had at least two of our volunteers present to not only supervise the work, but interface with residents who would come by asking questions during the two weeks the work went on.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Afterwards, we did a final walkthrough.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And prepared a summary report.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So now I'd just like to go through a couple of before and after photos of some of the work that was done very quickly. So this is a property on the corner of Wildcat and Rifle Range, where we removed two Monterey pines that were within 5 feet of the street, and we trimmed the oak canopy up to 14 feet above Rifle Range.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: See, this is on Vista Road.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I don't know if you can see it on the left-hand slide, but there's a power pole there.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We contacted PG&E to remove these trees and the ladder fuels and cut back the eucalyptus.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: They said that it met all of their safety requirements for being at least 4 feet away from a live wire, so we went ahead and did it ourselves.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Removed 5 trees, 3 pines, and 2 redwoods, the latter fuels, and we removed a large overhanging limb from the eucalyptus. It was over the power line.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Can we… There we go.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, lots of junipers, lots of properties had junipers right up alongside the road. The owners were agreeable to having those removed, so we did that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And this is on, Club View.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This was our big tree.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It's a 120-foot eucalyptus.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It was on the property line between two different properties.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Also, two Monterey Pines, right next to the road.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We, at this point in our project, only had $2,000 left, and it was a $9,000 tree to take out.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We leveraged our $2,000 to get contributions from the two property owners, each contributing $3,250, and we got
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Heavenly to reduce the price by $500, so we were able to take that tree out.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, just to summarize the takeaways.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It is possible, with a small grant, to get community buy-in and get some work done.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In addition to the $6,500 contributed by these two properties.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Four homeowners took advantage of Heavenly being there on-site, and contracted by themselves to have more work done, mostly around their homes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In addition, the Country Club and the Park Summit Homeowners Association
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Decided not to go with us, but they contracted their own contractors to come in and do the work that we had recommended.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So… Big thank you to El Cerrito Fire Department, Chief Beckman for his assistance.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It was an amazing amount of help.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In order to get homeowner buy-in, to have the fire department behind us, and it gave our work a lot more credibility.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And just to summarize, conclude, we're going to continue to try to apply for these grants and try to help the community any way we can. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Very much appreciate the presentation.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I wanted to find out if any of my colleagues here in the dais would like… would have any questions. Go ahead, Councilmember Ward, yeah.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. You know, you guys are so impressive that you are just volunteers, and you get so much done, and I don't think people understand how many hours you guys put in to not just
El Cerrito Council Chamber: grants and doing the work, but also informing people. So I just want to say thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Let's go over to, the Zoom. Mayor Fotem or, Councilmember Motayama, do you have any comments or questions?
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you and wow. I mean, it's really… compared to the grants the city sometimes gets for these issues, it's a small amount of money, and you did a lot, and I just really appreciate the
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: all the hours you put in, because without those volunteer hours, this couldn't have happened, and I think it is a model for everybody else in our city to think about what they can do on their own properties, so thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I personally want to say thank you. I remember the tours that I've taken with all of you, when Kay drove me all through that area.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Several years ago, and again, you gave… also gave me a tour of that area, but also the Wildwood, property. Very much appreciate that. Question regarding the Wildwood property, with all the eucalyptus trees, has that, been taken care of?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: No. Okay. But we're… We're always looking for sources of grants that we can
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Maybe start… make a… make a start at it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Very much appreciate the volunteers with that. You have, you know, kept your neighborhood safe by doing all this work, and I'm sure your neighbors very much appreciate it. I know the City of El Cerrito and our fire department appreciate it as well.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So again, thank you for that. I know we're going to celebrate, later as well, and I just want to say congratulations on all your work. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Go ahead. Lisa has one more thing.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I have one more question. Do you guys have a website that people can go to to get additional information? Yes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Is it a Cerrito?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: El CerritoFiresafecouncil.org, I believe. Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: El Cerrito Fire Safe Council.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: dot org. Yes. Okay, thank you. You bet.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thanks again. Next, we'll go to adoption of the consent calendar. We have, A, advisory body youth member and a service reflection. B, monthly disbursement and check register report for July 2026.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: C, Amendment to Joint Exercise Powers, agreement forming the West County
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Integrated West Management Authority. D, authorization to enter a purchase agreement with Gladstone Inc. for 26 trash recycling cans. E, agreement with, Powers Forestry.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: for the Hillside Natural Area Quarry Hill Fire Fuel Reduction Project, F authorization to enter into a general service plan agreement with NOR Systems for swim center maintenance and on-call service, and with chemicals.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Do I have a motion to approve, or do you have some questions, or would you like to pull anything? We'll go to my right here.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I have a couple of questions on the 6B Check Register and 6F, the NOR Systems contract, and I'd just also like to make a comment about 6A.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: 6A?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Yeah, I just have a comment about the website that you mentioned. I looked for it just now on my laptop, and it's actually El CerritoFiresafe.org. No, no council.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm looking at the Zoom meeting. Do you have anything that you would like to pull?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, we'll go back to Councilmember Sotiana.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I just want to say thank you to the youth member of the EQC, the Environmental Quality Committee, and I'm sad that that person can't be here, to get our thanks in person, but, you know, it's always great to see,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: you know, people that are younger stepping up to do things in our city, and hopefully, participating on the EQC helped them get into college. So, thank you very much.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'll go ahead and beat.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, on 6B, I have a few questions. So, on check items 96775, GovClarity SW license for $24,950, what is Gov…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: GovClarity.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening, Councilmembers, Mayor and Council. My name is Claire Coleman, I'm the Budget and Financial Services Manager, but I am actually going to pass this one to my colleague, Eric Ng, who's our IT Manager.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Mary King, your IT Manager. So, the Gulf Clarity is the GIS system that the city currently uses to manage the geospatial data, but this is the, I would say, limited version. We are looking to upgrade
El Cerrito Council Chamber: to the ESRI, the gold standard of GIS data. In this fiscal year, your council has already approved the budget and the additional funding for that, so this should be the last payment we make today.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, so this $24,000 is to get to that gold standard? No. This is to…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: let the city keep having a GIS database to use, the platform to use, until we move. So, within this time frame, this renewal that we had just paid for, that we will use that time to move us to the gold standards.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, thank you. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, on check 96815 for the Dell laptops for $58,104, this seems to be over the City Manager's authorization limit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: How did it come to Council before? So this one came to the City Council, it was for last fiscal year, so it was actually in June 2025 when the Council adopted the resolution for spending authority over $45,000, similar to the one that you just did this past June.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: A year prior, the City Council approved $100,000 with Dell for those laptops.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I spoke with Eric earlier. That actually wasn't in the June this year, and that's because the city, has now caught up with all of our, or most of our laptop expected needs, and so we do not anticipate that level of spending with Dell in the next couple of years. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And, last check, 96992 MPA annual premium. Is this our insurance? Yes, it is. Okay, seeing a check for $3,800,000 was kind of alarming, so I just wanted to know what that was. Yes, we, watched that one carefully in the bank.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Again, next one. Okay, I have a question on 6F, the NOR Systems contract.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Reading the materials, it seems like the contract only covers one year, but the costs that we are approving are higher. And, you know, are we getting into a multi-year contract, and are those costs that were shown fixed as we move forward?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, I may defer some of this to my colleague, Chris Jones, who I believe is on Zoom, but one thing I want to flag for the City Council is, as a part of our ongoing transparency efforts, one thing that we want to do is
El Cerrito Council Chamber: highlight, or at least clarify the total cost associated with a multi-year contract. So in the past, we typically would have said $105,000,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: for 4 years, every year. And instead of just saying $105,000 every year for 4 years, we actually are trying to say $420,000, to make it very clear that not only is Council authorizing those expenditures each year.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: budget, if the Council also adopts an associated budget, but also to be very clear and transparent about the total costs and the total, contract costs that's associated with the action.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And in…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I was gonna say, I don't know if Chris is there, but in this case, in June, the City Council did approve spending authority in the amount of $105,000.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This now is the contract that encapsulates that spending authority, it is not in addition to. So it encapsulates the spending authority, and now it's a four-year agreement that will renew each year, and as Claire said, as budget is available, or passed by… approved by the City Council, then we will continue to move forward with that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And we did that to make sure that, as Claire said, to encapsulate that the agreement now matches the spending authority. We had a time constraint to make sure that authority was granted so that we could continue with NOR while we were negotiating the contract.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And, thank you also for including Exhibit A in the supplemental materials. I think some…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: members of the public were concerned that the Exhibit A was attached.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, great. Do I have a motion? Thanks, Chris.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm sorry, did anyone have a comment?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: No, Chris was available, who are any other questions. Okay, good. Good to see you, Chris.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'll move the consent calendar.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Second.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, we have a motion by…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Motion is second by Mayor Pro Tem.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Absolutely, Clerk, go ahead. Thank you, Mayor Kinto? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman?
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: No one is in the room with me, and I vote yes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. Councilmember Quizales? Yes. Councilmember Mochiyama? Yes. Councilmember Wysinger?
Councilmember Wysinger: My grandmother is in the room with me right now, and I vote yes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. Motion carries. Okay, very good.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. Next, we'll go to Policy Matters. A is the adoption of Memorandum of Understanding between the City of El Cerrito and the El Cerrito Public Safety Management Association. We have a presentation with Shannon Bassey.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good evening.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Mayor and City Council, my name is Shannon Bassey, Human Resources Manager. I have before you a request to adopt a resolution to modify salaries, benefits, and conditions of employees for the City's Public Safety Management Association Bargaining Unit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Specific… it's also known as PSMA for short. Specifically tonight, we're discussing the, Police Chief Unit and the Fire Chief Unit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This resolution also includes an amendment to the City's salary schedule and appropriating additional funds from the General Fund for increased salary costs to do with this resolution and request.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I'll… it's, all outlined in the agenda item, but I will, highlight the… some summary of the changes that were proposed in this agreement for the Fire Chief and the Police Chief. Both agreements will be effective July 1st, 2025.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Through June 30th, 2030.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Regarding salary, so we did, overhaul the salary, schedule, and so we aim to eliminate the control point system.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This was done by establishing a clear bottom and a top.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Step, and those bottom and top step figures were determined, based on market data that was gathered. Part of the results from the classification and compensation study
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That was done and finalized back in February of 2024. This was compared with our comparative agencies, and we applied those market adjustments to the salary grade ranges themselves to bring the grades up to a reasonable market value.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So that salary chart is in Exhibit C, and also in the drafts of the MOUs for each of the police chief and the fire chief.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: with those proposed new salary grade ranges. I did want to note that the salary grade ranges include a 3% COLA, which is a cost of living adjustment, but also includes approximately a 2.4% market adjustment through that study that was done.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So that we could bring, again, those salary grades up to market value. To be extra clear, the market adjustment was not applied to the incumbent, or it's not being proposed here tonight, but rather just the salary range itself.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Furthermore, on the salary note, so just to be, clear that there was, for each fiscal year of the contract, for the… both the police chief and the fire chief.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It states that they shall receive a 3% salary increase, cost of living adjustment, also known as a COLA,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And then lastly, effective the first full pay period, at the start of the MOU, July 2025, the Fire Chief's education incentive shall be increased from 5.5% to 7.5% in recognition of his doctorate degree.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: There were, many details outlined in the agenda item, regarding the financial considerations, but just to highlight, this resolution is asking for additional appropriation, authority from the general fund assigned balance for fiscal year 26-27 in the amount of $71,643.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: This amount includes both the increased costs associated from fiscal year 2026, but also from 25 to 2025-2026 fiscal year, due to the timing of this proposed, new contract.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The increased costs associated with fiscal year 28 and 29 and 29-30 will be incorporated in the upcoming biannual budget process and formally adopted by City Council, in fiscal year 28 and 29.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Also, I did want to remind everyone that, having said that, the financial considerations, it's important to note that any agreement, with, to do with fire, Kensington does pay a third of all personnel costs, so that would be applied here as well with any personnel, costs.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And then lastly, I'd like to thank PSMA, especially Chief Sailors and Chief Keith.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: For their leadership, and also a successful negotiation process with the city. And that concludes my report, and I'm available for any questions. Okay, very good. Thank you for the presentation. I'll go to my left here with Councilmember Pisces. Okay, thank you very much for the presentation. I have a few questions.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I thought I heard you say… it was…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It was not… it was for the position and not the incumbent?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Meaning, to me, means it's a position, but not specific to the particular person in the… in the position, is that right? Did you mean the market adjustment reference? Yeah. Yes, so part of building the new salary schedule, we didn't want to eliminate the control point system, since that's been very, confusing in the past.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, part of that process was establishing new salary grades, and that first year of the salary grade chart, you'll see that, there's a new bottom and a top step.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That was done by giving a 3% COLA, and then also building in a 2.4 market adjustment into the salary grade itself. But it's not an automatic market adjustment to the incumbent.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, so maybe there's someone else in the position, they would still follow this schedule, is that right? That would be the established salary grade range for the classification. Okay. We only have one incumbent in each classification. Right.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, I ask because in the Memorandum of Understanding, it says.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: it would have no legal force if the chief ceases to be the police chief, so I just kind of was wondering
El Cerrito Council Chamber: if I'm misunderstanding.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It's not a big issue to me, I just thought I read it differently and had a different conversation, and thought… I was trying to figure out whether it's specific to particular people or to the position.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But it sounds like you're saying it's to the position, not the person.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Does that make sense? Just the market adjustments? Well, yeah, when I heard it, I didn't hear it as just the market adjustment, but if that's all it's applying to, then yes, but I'm not… Yes, it… the salary schedule that's being created would be for the classification.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: That is correct. What we are paying each incumbent would be per the contract, based on the salary that they receive. So they can't… So, second agreement over it? Yeah. Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: All right, thank you. And then, really, my biggest question is… is about the…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the financing of it. There's several mentions of
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The funds coming out of the general… general fund unassigned balance.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So… from my perspective, when I think about the availability of funds, I think of
El Cerrito Council Chamber: revenue and expenses. And going into the next year, revenue ex…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Expenses, excuse me, expenses do exceed revenue.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And that… I'm not making any kind of adjustments for one-time expenses or anything, I'm just flatly looking at expenses and flatly looking at revenue. So I don't see… I don't understand what the general fund unassigned balance is for the future years if we're looking at, actually, a deficit for that year.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I have our budget and financial services manager here to help with some of the finance questions. Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm not entirely sure I understand the question. Can you… So, when it says…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Appropriating additional funds from the general fund unassigned balance for 26-27.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm looking at… thinking about the budget that we pass.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And simply looking at revenue and expenses.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: there was more… slightly more expenses than revenue, and certain things were taken out, and we debated that. But just flat out, how much revenue is coming in, what are our expenses? Revenue was not as high as expenses, by a little.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, when it says here, pulling from the general fund unassigned balance.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm… my initial assumption is that means whatever additional revenue you have beyond expenses, but maybe I'm wrong. In this case, it's a synonym for reserves.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It means reserves. Yes. So the salary increase would be paid for by pulling from reserves. Yeah, the unassigned general fund balance is just a different phrase of fearful of. Yes. Okay. Do you see a conflict with that? Ultimately, it's the Council's decision of
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Of how you… directs the city to spend the budget. Okay. Well,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: you know, that's… to me, that's huge. I mean, I have no objection to…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the salary increase, but I have an objection to paying for it from the reserves. So my perspective and my
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I guess my philosophy is that you make a cut somewhere else in order to accommodate the increase. And it's not…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I'm not criticizing the increase, I'm criticizing not funding it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I would add that part of this, part of, part of those, the $71,000 is, I was trying to look Claire through one of the… what you and I had talked about earlier. Because this is a retroactive,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: there's retroactive payment back to when the contract expires, so what had been budgeted for last year wasn't fully included. So, if that is the case, then it
El Cerrito Council Chamber: you know, if we end the year without spending that money, the only place for it to go is the General Fund Reserve. So, in effect, a lot of this is a reappropriation of budget that might have happened from last year. There are increases, because
El Cerrito Council Chamber: some of the percentage pays, like longevity or education, does depend on the salary, so there is a slight increase, so I'm not saying that there isn't, but
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But some of this is because of the retroactivity that we would pay back because this… of when the contract expired.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: What would be the feasibility of changing the language that doesn't state that it's coming from the reserves?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It… well, it would be an appropriation of adding to the spending authority, and that is unless you wanted to bring
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the funding from another source, but there would not be another source to bring the funding from. So, you know, again, if this money isn't spent, it would go into General Fund Reserve.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It's…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So it's essentially being reappropriated. I'm sorry if I'm not making sense. There's… it's general fund money, it would go back into the general fund if it's not spent. So that's what the reserve is for. So there's no way to pay for it without pulling from reserves?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Is that what you're saying? I don't see any other funding source that we would be able to pay for these salaries.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, and then just… The obvious that reserves are already dipping below the minimum that's been mandated.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Let me just be fully transparent, I have absolutely no objection to the pay increase. I have an objection to not making a cut somewhere else to make room for it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And it's hard for me to support it when you're dipping into reserves to pay it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, we'll go next to, Mayor, to Councilmember Motown.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, and… Thank you, Shannon, for the… the explanations. I think that the… there's…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: these MOUs are very complicated, and so it takes us a little bit to kind of understand. When you talk about the retroactivity to 25, does that mean we don't adjust the books of 25, we just take it out of 26?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the expenses must be recognized when they occur. And so, while this covers the period of the last fiscal year, the expense actually occurs when it is paid out, and that's when we account for it. And so, while about, I'm gonna get the number wrong, I think about $25,000
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Is effectively for last fiscal year, because it is paid out in the current fiscal year, it is from the current fiscal year's budget.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Yeah.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, so,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I have another question, which I don't know is… it's not really a financial one, but on… in the MOU, it's 2.4 in the police MOU, and the… I think it's 2.3 in the fire MOU about the
El Cerrito Council Chamber: vehicle allowance, and why we do not have… I want to know why we do not have any requirement for, like, an electric or sustainable, more environmentally friendly vehicle.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Yes, and I see the section that you're referring to. So that was not part of the negotiated process with these particular negotiated items in this session.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It would need to be negotiated.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: However, the vehicles that are being used were the ones that have been approved by the City Council, and per our policy, we do bring hybrids or EVs if we can, if they're feasible and they're allowable, or to be used,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: in ways that public safety is able to use them, so we do follow that policy, as we do with all of our vehicles, as you know. So, if that is the direction, perhaps, for the next negotiations, we can keep that in mind.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And I have… Back to the financial question.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: May I, may I please have our budget manager back at the podium, or the lectern?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Because this is retroactive, and because we have some additional costs,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: At what point do you do the analysis for, like, the trending of the general fund?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: When… do we hold all these things to, like, mid-year, and then it's adjusted?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: And what… how do you account for it?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Going forwards in a way that we can see it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I can run the forecast virtually anytime, preferably with a little bit of notice, so I can make sure that it's accurate.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But… if the Council makes any change in budgetary authority in the General Fund, I will update the model
El Cerrito Council Chamber: after that action is made. And that's to ensure that the long-range forecast is consistent with the most recent and most current version of the general fund adopted budget.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Can I add that in the past, this might have been something that we may not have brought to the Council as it happened?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We might have waited until mid-year and made adjustments at that time, looking at where we were trending, which we have tried to get away from. We have actually tried to come to the Council and be very open. Okay, this is going to cost this much extra. We want to be able to increase the authority so that by the time we get to mid-year, we're not bringing you
El Cerrito Council Chamber: a whole lot of different transactions that need to be reconciled, if you will. And so, this is, I mean, I can understand the concern about, you know, oh, it looks like we're dipping into reserves.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The other, you know.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: by the time we get to mid-year, we would be able to trend those expenses. We could see, perhaps, we might not need all of this to be appropriated.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, we keep an eye on that, but we have taken the step in recent years, and I have to, you know, give, really good shout-outs to our finance team, who we've worked with, to bring this to the Council as we go, as opposed to waiting for mid-year and doing all of these
El Cerrito Council Chamber: transactions at once and kind of seeing where we're trending. So, at the next meeting, we will be bringing you, the general fund update for the soft close of the fourth quarter.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: For the last fiscal year, which is… is trending really well, we're doing really well. And you'll be able… we'll… we'll update everything, so at the next meeting, we'll be able to show you, the most re… the most up-to-date projections, including all of this.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I hope that there will be an update to the trending, and maybe just before and after, so we can compare. I know that we have other labor negotiations coming, so I just want us to be very, very, very careful about how much
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We can dive into the general fund reserve, because it's not… it is… these are ongoing costs. They're not one-time costs, so it's… it's a concern.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, and I just want to say thank you to Chief Keat and Chief Sailors. You guys are doing a great job. This is not about you, this is about the budget. Thank you.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Here we go.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm looking at, the screen right now,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Mayor Pro Tem or, Councilmember Wysinger, do you have any questions?
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: I don't have any questions. I just want to note, and I don't want to get into a long back and forth, but I would just encourage Councilmember Kutzanis, there's been a few items that have come to us over the past few months where we've had lots of discussions over a long time, and then we get to the end, and you feel like you want to see the things offset. I just think it would be
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: More helpful to bring those things up earlier, because then we could have time to have some consideration about
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: you know, entertaining any ideas you have of how to offset costs, which I would be open to exploring, and I think others might be open to exploring, too. So, just encourage you, next time, early on in the process, when we know we have an expense coming to
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Think about what you might want to propose where we have some savings, or make some cuts, and we can have those discussions.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I… I appreciate that feedback, and I will just go on record that I am not going to support deficit spending. We have to make choices, and we have to approach it that way, that we're… you know, we have options on the table, and I don't manage the city finances, so I can't go in and micromanage and say, cut this and cut that, but I can say, just as a matter of
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Fiscal prudence, that if we're going to spend more one place, we have to spend less somewhere else, and that's not been our habit.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: And we have the say on the budget. I mean, the city manager implements the budget that we approve, but we are the ones who approve the budget. So, if you have ideas for ways to offset these costs, I think it's incumbent upon us to either bring those ideas up, or to ask
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: the city's management to bring those up. But again, much earlier in the process so we can Fair though.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'm being very consistent. I voted against the budget as well, for the exact same reason.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, okay, I appreciate the feedback.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Councilmember Wysinger, do you have any, questions? Okay.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Now is the time for members of the public who wish to provide public comments on this item. The request to speak can be submitted to the City Clerk by completing a speaker card, using the raise hand feature on Zoom, or dialing star 9, if joining by phone.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: In-person bequests will be taken first. Please remember to identify yourself and your City of Residence at the beginning of your comments. Madam City Clerk, please proceed.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, Mayor. We do have one request to speak. Let me just pull up the timer…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Oop, we checked those.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, so we'll go to Megan. Megan, you should be able to unmute and begin your time now.
megan: Thank you so much, I'm Megan Steffen, I live in El Cerrito,
megan: I thought this was a really interesting and helpful discussion. Councilmember Kitsanez and Councilmember Montoyama and Councilmember, Saltzman, thank you all for asking these questions and, like, having this conversation in public.
megan: I also…
megan: Councilmember Kitzanes, I think we've talked about this, but maybe I can put, like, the feedback a different way, which is that, I understand that you have been very consistent in being against deficit spending.
megan: And something that I have heard a lot of in the last 4 weeks is that we want, you know, citizens in El Cerrito want best-in-class services for everything.
megan: And they want it to cost nothing. And these things aren't possible, and I think there's something similar that I'm sort of picking up in this conversation, which is that, like, we want to have, like, amazing employees, but we don't want
megan: to have to cut anything. And I think to be against deficit spending, you must also be pro-cutting something. And pro-cutting something concrete.
megan: you know, like, making hard choices. I do think that in terms of the city's history of low trust, and perhaps the history of some of the people on the dais right now, there could be more transparency. I think, like, if there was a way to dig a little bit deeper into the numbers, and if…
megan: the city manager were open to sharing more of the books with folks. I think that would go a long way in terms of helping people have a constructive conversation about what we would want to cut in order to keep
megan: Like our amazing employees, and improve the services that we think really need to be best in class.
megan: But…
megan: saying that we're just against deficit spending without making a concrete choice about where we're going to shift from is really hard, and I think that's… that's the ask, Councilmember Kitsan, is to be able to say, you know, like, I want to keep paying for our amazing fire chiefs in order to do that.
megan: you know, we need to cut from somewhere else. There were a lot of, like, hard cuts that I think people talked about during the budget.
megan: Oh, I'm so sorry. Anyway, so that's… that's the spirit that I would offer. Thank you all, though, really, for having this conversation, and, like, I think I know how the boat is gonna go, and I'm so sorry, and I… Thank you so much.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, Meg.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, Mayor. That concludes our request to speak. Okay, we'll break it back here to the Council. Any last thoughts?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Speaking. Yeah.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I appreciate the feedback. I…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I did have a discussion about this with the city manager earlier. I did not understand it then to be
El Cerrito Council Chamber: pulling from reserves, it wasn't presented that way, and, you know, it was clear to me from this discussion now, and I appreciate
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Claire, and how direct, and…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: honest, she was, and that's part of my decision-making process, and I don't have the ability to go into the budget. I mean, I haven't… I've… I mean, to that end, I have asked for significantly more financial information, and…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: don't get it, so it's not… I'm not… and it's not my role. It's not my role to go in and micromanage and say, cut this, cut that. If we're given choices, we can vote them, and we'll… the outcome will be wherever the council decides the outcome is, in terms of
El Cerrito Council Chamber: A lot of budgetary items that, you know, I've been on the other side. I've been the one vote who's said no, largely for that reason, that it put us into a deficit.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But… Yeah.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I do hear the feedback.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Go ahead, Councilmember Motown. So, I think… when we…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Where we do this discussion is in the budget, and as a council, we agreed that what is important for this coming year is that we put money aside
El Cerrito Council Chamber: For some future, you know, capital needs, and vehicle needs, and service needs, and we cannot do that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: if you wanted to take the $71,000 out of the existing budget. But that was a discussion we had. This is what we prioritized. We prioritized doing that to get back on track. So, I think it, you know.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: we're giving conflicting direction to staff by saying, well, what are you going to cut? Well, we should have talked about that back before the end of June. So.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I think we… we had these big discussions, we had to make different choices, we made the choice,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: you know, to fund the fire engine and these future reserves. So, it's…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Future reserve, current reserve, it's just money, the same money.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: But I think, you know, the thinking behind it is really our policy decision to approve the budget in June.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, we'll next go to Councilmember Wysinger. Go ahead.
Councilmember Wysinger: I just wanted to say very quick, this is why it's so important to pay attention through the entire budget process.
Councilmember Wysinger: I'm gonna push back a little bit on the idea that we don't see what's in the budget. We do see everything that's in each department's budget, because the departments present their budgets. There are steps that we get to before we get to June. And if we're just waiting to pay attention until the actual day that we approve the budget, yes, there's gonna be things that be missed. So I would encourage everyone next year, if you have the opportunity to
Councilmember Wysinger: go through the budget process. That's why there's a whole process.
Councilmember Wysinger: And that's all that I wanted to say, because I don't want anyone leaving out of here and saying that they couldn't see the things that the departments had in their… in their budgets, or the things that we're spending on. There's the department head presentations, there's the entire budget book, it's all there laid out, but there's a process for a reason, and as Councilmember Motoyama said, that's why those things should be brought up during the budget process.
Councilmember Wysinger: I'm complete.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem, do you have any,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: last thoughts, or questions, or comments. We'll go right back to Councilmember… The last point… thank you. The last point I will point out is that
El Cerrito Council Chamber: A portion of this expense is beyond what was budgeted.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So it's not fair to say we agreed to this in the budget. We made certain assumptions, and it was budgeted a certain amount, and now we're above that, which is fine, but if we're going to push it beyond what the budget was, we have to make a cut somewhere else.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: We don't have, so we're not… probably not going to, but personally, I believe we should. We have that obligation.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I'll leave it at that.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Would anyone like to make a motion?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Do we have to make a motion to close the public hearing?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So I'll move to approve, the MOUs for the chiefs.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: That can't…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Okay, we have a motion by Motayama, a second by Saltzman, Madam City Clerk.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Mayor Kinto? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman?
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: No one is in the room with me, and I vote yes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Councilmember… Councilmember Catanis?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Nope.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Councilmember Bonsaiama?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Yes. Councilmember Wysinger?
Councilmember Wysinger: My grandmother is in the room with me, and I vote yes.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you, motion carries.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Again, thank you for the presentation, very much appreciated. Next, we'll go to, City Council Local and Regional Liaison Assignments. Would anyone like to, give an update?
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Yes, go ahead.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: On July the 22nd, I attended the East Bay Wildfire Coalition of Governments meeting in Oakland, where our chief sailors talked about the pilot no parking on high-fire danger days,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: program that we have, and that went very, really well, so I want to thank you, Chief, for that. I did attend National Night Out, and went to a number of parties, and I think it was a, you know, again, thank you to staff for organizing that, and
El Cerrito Council Chamber: On August 12th, I attended the ABAC Housing Committee, where we're looking at,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Sustainable, loan products for more housing opportunities.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to Councilmember Wysinger.
Councilmember Wysinger: Thank you so much, Mayor. Just a few weeks ago, and I apologize, as I have a lot going on here, I don't have the date, but we did close out our public safety committee for the League of California Cities, so we've closed out our public safety year. We did the recap of the legislations that we did weigh in on, or did give recommendations to the board on, and where those were, so I'm very proud of the year that we had.
Councilmember Wysinger: It's a little bit difficult, you know, we know that our East Bay contingent were a little bit more liberal than a lot of… some of our other cohorts, so I just want to thank my other East Bay cohorts, the folks there in Dublin and Fremont who served with me on the Public Safety Committee. Hopefully, we'll get an opportunity to serve again next year together and continue to push towards public safety legislation that supports our community.
Councilmember Wysinger: We did actually have our bi-monthly meeting of the REAL Council, also for the National League of Cities, as we get prepared for the convention in November. So, thank you to both of those committees for a good closeout of the year.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Next, we'll go to Mayor Pro Tem.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Thank you. On July 24th, I attended the West Contra Costa Transportation Commission meeting, where we got presentations from AC Transit, just like the one we had had at our City Council, and discussed some other items. On July 25th, I went to the El Cerrito Vigil, which was part of a national vigil
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: for people who've been murdered by ICE.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Thanks to the folks who organized that. It was a really powerful event, and very peaceful. And on August 4th, I attended National Night Out, which continues to be one of my favorite days of the year in El Cerrito, and my, block, for the first time, I didn't organize it, but one of my neighbors organized National Night Out, I think, for the first time in our block's history, and it was really fun. It's just such a
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: great time for people to get out and meet neighbors, and for kids to just be kids in the street and not have to worry about getting hit by a car. So I heard a lot from folks, both at my neighborhood National Night Out and the other ones I visited about the need to slow cars down, so I'm very excited about what we're doing with the local road safety plan, and I did attend the open house for that last week.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: I also, on August 10th, attended a rally and lobby day up in Sacramento, to undo the major cuts to transit and affordable housing that, the governor and, the card board have put in,
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: Giving kickbacks to the oil companies and taking this money away from transit and affordable housing that could have really big impacts.
Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman: on El Cerrito, I'm happy to say our Senator, Jesse Aragin, is at the forefront of leading on this to get that money back. I actually ran into him on Capitol Corridor, on the train, on the way up there, and he spoke at the rally, so we have good representation there. And then on August 10th, virtually, I also attended our ad hoc committee meeting on advisory bodies. I think that's it.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Lastly, I will, let folks know about my schedule. I did attend,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: the Contra Costa Mayor's Conference, where we had great presentation, there in the City of Oakley. I did attend
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Cal Cities, I flew down to, the South San Joaquin Valley to Fresno, and I met with mayors in that area. That area is going through difficult times right now with the foreclosure prices, with job losses.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: They can barely pay for, the high energy prices going on there, so…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: They've asked me to be in touch with them, and I encourage them to meet with their legislators there.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: more often, and to let them know about the difficulties and what is going on down in the Central Valley. There are a lot of job losses there. Farms are closing.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: difficult times ahead with these small rural towns. And a lot of times, Sacramento does not listen to the Central Valley and these small rural towns. This is the same thing that I heard from cities in the North Coast.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: So, you know, I'm hoping that, we will, work together. We are strong together as cities when, we are supporting each other. So, look forward to, the end of my term as president of the League of California Cities, and look forward to our convention next month.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: I also attended the LAFCO meeting, where we did, have a discussion, on the annexation of some properties
El Cerrito Council Chamber: on, with the City of, Clayton.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Clayton, the city of Clayton, decided, they have… they're not in the position to look at any type of annexations.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Right now, they are a small town. They're aware of, city budgets going sideways right now, with… because of what's going on in Washington, which is trickling down to the state of California.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Sprinkling down to the counties, And it's happening here in El Cerrito as well. So,
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The county, as I said, they have a $1 billion deficit because the sales tax was not passed. So, difficult times ahead.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: for the majority of cities and counties in California, stay tuned. El Cerrito, we are in a better place, because we have had a head start in getting our house to order. I know, with Councilmember Cassanis.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: It's, not at the place where we should be yet, but we are working on it. We have, again.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Our, place, financially is in a much, much better place than it was when we were state audited. So I thank staff, the city manager, and
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Our employees here, but also our volunteers.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Who, support the City Council. Again, we are…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: The next City Council meeting will be on…
El Cerrito Council Chamber: September 15th at 6 p.m, so I look forward to, meeting with everyone then. Have a good night, everybody. The time is 8.33.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Meeting is adjourned.
Councilmember Wysinger: Good night.
El Cerrito Council Chamber: Good night, everybody.