City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Good evening and welcome to the meeting of the Hercules City Council. It is now 06:00. I'm calling the meeting to order. Can we have the roll call please?

Good evening. Currently council member Grimsley is absent. Council member Butterrey? Present. Council member Bailey?

Present.

Vice Mayor Walker Griffin?

Present.

And Mayor Kelly?

Present. Thank you. And we have one closed session item tonight. Madam City Attorney, would you like to read the item, please?

Sure. Tonight we have one closed session item. It's a conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation related to initiation of litigation pursuant to government code section five four nine five six point nine d four. There's one case. And I just wanna know for the record, don't see any members of the public here or on Zoom to take public comment on those closed session items.

Okay, thank you. We will now go into closed session. Good evening, and welcome to the meeting of the Hercules City Council. Today is Tuesday, April 28. It is now 07:03PM.

My name is Chris Kelly. I'm the mayor, and I'm calling the meeting to order. Can we have the roll call, please?

Good evening. Council member Grimsley?

Present.

Council member Butterrey?

Present.

Council member Bailey?

Present.

Vice mayor Walker Griffin? Present.

And mayor Kelly? Present. Thank you. Thank you. We just came out of closed session. Madam City Attorney, do we have something to report?

Nothing reportable this evening, madam mayor.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Bataray, could you lead us in the pledge of allegiance?

I pledge allegiance

to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We're on to our moment of silence. And tonight, I want to have a moment of silence for a Hercules resident, Christopher Todd Abdunis. He passed away at his home on April 1 here in Hercules. He was a a husband to Frida Abdonis, a father and a grandfather.

He graduated from John Sweat High School and devoted his life to engineering. And as an engineer, he worked for CalNeva, for the city of Conford, and, JLL, a real estate firm. In 1922, he became a proud chief engineer to Cushman and Wakefield. He was a very respected person, a loyal husband, and a man of strong character. Could we please have a moment of silence for Christopher Todd Abdunis?

Thank you. And now moving ahead, tonight we're going to have a proclamation, well a couple of proclamation, a proclamation and presentations. And the first proclamation that we're going to have here is for National Library Week. So I'd like to ask our librarian to come up, and I'm going to read this proclamation. So this is recognizing April 2026 as National Library Week in the city of Hercules.

Whereas libraries spark creativity, fuel imagination, and inspire lifelong learning, offering a space where individuals of all ages can find joy through exploration and discovery. And whereas libraries provide free and equitable access to books, digital tools, and innovative programming, assuring that all individuals, regardless of background, have the support they need to learn, connect, and thrive. And whereas libraries partner with schools, businesses, and organization to maximize resources, increase efficiency, and expand access to essential services, strengthening the entire community. And whereas libraries empower job seekers, entrepreneurs, and lifelong learners by promoting access to resources, training, and opportunities to support career growth and economic success. And whereas libraries nurture young minds through story times, STEAM programs, letters literacy initiatives, fostering curiosity and a love of learning that lasts a lifetime.

And whereas libraries protect the right to read, think, and explore without censorship, standing as champions of intellectual freedom and free expression. And whereas dedicated librarians and library workers provide welcoming spaces that inspire discovery, collaboration, and a creativity for all. And whereas libraries, librarians, and library workers across the country are joining together to celebrate National Library Week under the theme, find your joy. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that I, Chris Kelly, mayor of the city of Hercules, on behalf of the entire city council, proclaim April 2026 as National Library Week. During this week, I encourage all residents to visit their library, explore its resources, and celebrate all the ways that the library helps our community find joy.

In witness thereof, I hereunto set my hand and cause the seal of the city of Hercules to be affixed this April 2026. So Allison Peters, would you like to come up and receive this proclamation? And then we'd like you to say a few words.

And I do have a couple of words for you. I appreciate being here and really just overall the support that the library receives from this whole city. So I wanted to start with a couple of Herculean stats for the library for twenty twenty five, twenty six. As you may know, Hercules Library turns 20 this year. We have a wonderful seal that's on all of our things.

It's been twenty years of a community centric public library open to all and welcoming everyone. Twenty years of fun, diverse educational programs and story times, author talks, summer reading, and all of the good stuff that catches eyes and ears and minds and brings folks to the library. Twenty years of new library cards, the end to late book fees, and a welcome a 100 books you can take home at any one time. Twenty years of a multitude of computers and computer tutors, resume building, financial taxes, health, need to know workshops, and all of the digital resources you could ever want to support learning and growth. Twenty years of volunteers and outreach to all of the schools and teachers from all of the schools volunteering at the library of Hercules High Band concerts of senior sitter sitter senior citizen visits and partnering with this incredible city from Parks and Rec to Public Works to this city council and everyone behind the scenes working to make Hercules sparkle.

We appreciate it. Twenty five years of the Friends of Hercules library because they had to get started five years earlier to organize organize the community to raise the money to get us where we are today. And April twenty twenty sixth marked their biggest book sale on record, bringing in money to help support all of the programs we love bringing you. Couple of fun things. We held 310 programs at Hercules Library in 2025.

We welcomed 10,674 people to just the programs. We visited 3,600 Herculeans away from the library at senior centers and school outreach, national night out, all the good stuff. Our weekly door count averages around 2,500 people each week, 8,000 per month. In 2025, over 97,000 people visited the library. And expect that number to increase when I visit you next year.

We are currently welcoming folks from Panulla Library as their library is closed for refurbishment through 2027. Our door count is increasing by and this is not an exaggeration about 1,000 people per month. So we are really excited about this. We're 20 years old. We will celebrate this December November. Excuse me. Please save the date for Saturday, November 14 as close to the original opening date we can get. We're gonna have a celebration and invite everyone to come out and join us. And I'd like to close by just sharing something fun. Our library motto, the phrase we live and breathe by, is everyone is welcome.

And I wanted to just illustrate that by sharing a story from a library person who shared this with me and allowed me to share it with you. They say, I didn't share my mother's love of reading. She told stories of whole days at the library when she was a kid in Queens. I just wanted to ride my skateboard and sneak cigarettes. Libraries had books on shelves alphabetically.

They were dead things I could barely read anyway, and school was torture. Ironically, I became an English teacher. And today, retired, I work for a little bit of fun as a writing tutor and an academic coach. I volunteer at Project Second Chance and teach literally literacy skills to an adult learner, and I collect antique dictionaries and books about books about dictionaries. This elaborate preface prepares my point.

Libraries are not full of dead books shelved alphabetically, and all libraries are not created equal. Some are outstanding. Such a one is the Hercules Public Library. This is an ideal example of a library with its welcoming entry, knowledgeable and helpful staff, high windows, art and community exhibits, reading suggestions displayed, enormous section devoted to children, box of secondhand reading glasses, indoor outdoor spaces, computers, homeschool rooms, study rooms, and more. The Hercules Public Library is a bustling community center that welcomes all comers of every age, religion, ethnicity, proclivity, and lifestyle.

It says, here are some ideas and a place to be with them. See what you think. It is home to this chapter in my life, and I am reading it slowly. I am now a library person. So I'd like to add that I'm also wearing this lovely flower in my hair as a tribute to a young patron who gave it to me as I was leaving the library this afternoon. This is why we do this. I'm so happy to be here and share all of it with you. Thank you for all

of your support. Thank you. And don't go away yet. I'm gonna ask for comments from counsel here. So does anybody yeah. Vice mayor?

Thank you madam mayor. And thank you Allison for joining us tonight and accepting this proclamation. It's really amazing to see flexibility and adaptability that libraries present. I really think that that truly shined during the pandemic where, whereas a lot of people needed to pivot and honestly just have a place of equity whether or not they had an air conditioner at home, whether or not is they had WiFi or Internet access. Just the little things that I feel like sometimes we overlook when we just think of a library, think of these massive books so much what that poem mentioned. It's bringing the people together who ordinarily wouldn't have the same opportunity. So amazing work to everything that you're doing again with the different events, festivals, opportunities that are there. It's so amazing. So thank you for everything that you do along with your staff.

Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, council member Grimsley.

Allison, I just wanted to say that we are so fortunate to have you as our librarian. Everyone's heard me say a million times that the library was a major draw for me in choosing to move to Hercules. But to have you as our librarian, someone who is so engaged with our community and is so proactive in making sure that there are all sorts of creative projects, programs, workshops, things for people to do in this beautiful city all the time, and acknowledging all of our wonderful reasons to celebrate, whether they're cultural holidays or events or activities that are going on elsewhere in Contra Costa County or in the state, and making Hercules a part of it as well. And so it's a really beautiful wonderful thing that you do as our librarian. I believe you go above and beyond on a regular basis and it doesn't go unnoticed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Bataray?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. First of all, congratulation of your twenty years and then a thank you for your dedication making this welcoming space for the early learning to all the way to the life learning for the Alwax of Life. And it reminds me my, you know, the early days when I was in high school. I myself was involved to create a library collecting the books from each and every communities. And then that also contributed to my future actually who I am except to be a human being here actually.

The one important thing I see and I can vouch that, you know, Hercules Library plays the vital role to create another vibrant community and connecting the communities together. Thank you again for your support and then your service.

Thank you. Council member Bailey?

Yes. To my favorite librarian. Thank you very much. I remember when the library was built, which means I'm probably 25 or so now. But the services you guys provide and obviously the community, you do everything from toddlers, story stuff kids all the way up to and we sometimes reach the kids as well to the all the way up to seniors. And I know that it's a place it's sort of a daycare, I think, after school a little bit too. So it it provides so many different things for the community. And and I don't think I fully appreciate that till I was I'm on council and I just go by and and spend more time there. But we do appreciate all the things that you and your staff do. You have a great staff and and their ability to sponsor different cultural events throughout the year. I appreciate all of those things and look forward to being at the next event. So thank you.

Thank you. And lastly, Alison, thank you very, very much for all your work. You're just so creative and welcoming to have everybody there. You know, this morning I was at the library about twenty minutes before it opened because I was gonna go in and all of a sudden right before it opened, loads of people came and were just in the parking lot and walking and coming into the library. And it's not just older folks or middle aged folks, they're like some homeschooled kids. There's a whole variety of ages. So that was just really, really wonderful. And I have to say, my husband and I are looking forward to the Japanese taiko drumming on Saturday. Really looking forward to that. So thank you for everything. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much all of you. Take care. Thank you.

Okay, thanks. Okay, so now we will move on. And our second item tonight is National Volunteer Week presented by Christopher Roque. Is that correct? Christopher, welcome. Parks and Recreation.

Thank you. So among other things, the month of April is National Volunteer Month. I'm here tonight to take the opportunity to recognize the countless number of volunteers that the city of Hercules has, including but not limited to those that are volunteering at the senior center, our police department, and the city recognized nonprofit groups that the city of Hercules benefits from. I also want to make sure that I give thanks to those who volunteer in our Adopt a Park, Adopt a Trail program, those that serve a role on a commission, or those who've helped out in our team up to clean up program that was run last year, and to all of the youth volunteers that we get at all of our events annually. There is certainly no shortage of volunteers here in the city of Hercules, and we benefit from this tremendously as a whole.

Part of National Volunteer Month is the National Volunteer Week, which was recognized last week, April '25. National Volunteer Week was established in 1974 and has grown exponentially each year with thousands of volunteer projects and special events scheduled throughout the year. The city of Hercules has been fortunate to work with many volunteers through the city in many capacities. Staff would like to recognize these volunteers that play a role in the success of the city. The city recognizes that we cannot do all that we do without the assistance from so many wonderful people willing to give their time and efforts in so many different ways.

So this presentation is really meant to recognize and appreciate the many contributions of the volunteers in the city of Hercules. It's also an opportunity to highlight the impact of the volunteers and encourage more people to get involved in their community. To show our thanks, staff put together a little wellness package for our senior center volunteers. The wellness pack is on the screen behind me. It was basically consisted of a bottle of water, a hydration packet full of electrolytes.

It had a little special message like a text message from a phone saying, you're amazing, keeping amazing, we appreciate you, thank you, all of those kinds of things. But really, the packet also included a special volunteer pin that they all loved and immediately put on. They were so excited about this simple gesture that they went ahead and organized that Friday to all wear their volunteer shirts that we gave them last year. And they took pictures by the sign as we roll through. There's a picture of these guys accepting the photos.

And then here's a sign that we had made and put out that was out all week long. Basically, the seniors absolutely loved it. There's one more photo, I think, in there where we just said thank you. But it's my pleasure to take a moment to recognize the many volunteers in the city of Hercules and this great community. And a fantastic place to live, work, and play.

And one of the things that the council has done in recent years is the Herculean Mile Award. And I do wanna make a plug on the Herculean Mile Award. The next round of applicants or nominations needs to be in by June 1. So I'll bring that up again. But the Herculean Mile Award just basically recognizes two different people in the city every seasonal activity guide that we have. But that's it. I just wanted to basically say thank you to the volunteers and share the National Volunteer Week this year.

Great. Thank you very much. Any comments here from council at all? No? You do a wonderful job, Christopher. It's just amazing. So really appreciate you're getting all these people together. Okay. So we're going to move on. And tonight we have a presentation. We have a presentation on Phillips sixty six Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex. And David Schoenthal here from Phillips sixty six is here. Welcome, Mr. Schoenthal.

Our operations manager, Jared Witchery, could not attend tonight. And he sends his regards, but really got the better speaker. So my name is David Schoenthal. I am part of the public affairs and government affairs team at the site. And so I've been with the company now for three years and have been having nothing but fun. Came on board right at the point in which we converted the facility. So we'll give you an overview of the transition and a little bit of information. We can go to next slide. Thank you so much for that. Phillips sixty six has about it had in its circuit about 11 refineries.

As you note up there, Los Angeles refinery has been shuttered and is idled with employees receiving severance packages, job offers, and now that's fully in idle mode with a transition now that they're going to turn it into possibly a fuels hub. So we'll be bringing in finished product into that market, into Los Angeles market, likely from our Ferndale refinery in Washington, Bayway is in New Jersey, Billings in Montana, Morger is in Texas, Lake Charles is in Texas, Ponca City is Oklahoma, Sweeney is in Texas and Wood Rivers, St. Louis, Chicago area. And then Humber is in England. And that Humber refinery also does renewable fuels too as well.

Next slide, please. Just a little bit of a slide here to give us some context for what our energy brings to life, which is basically everything. Everything in this room has a connection to petrochemicals. And you can see from transportation fuels, roads. If you might know this is that Valero facility that's about to that has shuttered provides 65% of the asphalt in the state of California.

So it's going to find out where we're going to be getting asphalt from is going to be the next thing. So agriculture, housing, EV, electric vehicles, have their genesis within the world of petrochemicals. Petrochemicals. So you can't get an electric vehicle to market without a semi truck that's using diesel. So we've got food and then personal care, clothing, recreation, there you go, recreation, all the partying that we just saw here, got to have that.

And one of my top favorites, medical devices. So when you go to a hospital, you can't escape that there's a lot of plastics that are in that facility to keep us safe. And gosh darn it, I do want some liquid fuels to be getting bringing that ambulance to me if I need it. So in emergency, you have liquid fuels to be able to get to market and then technology. Next slide, please. So about the Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex, formerly named the San Francisco refinery. It started out as in whale oil. We were making kerosene for lighting. That has swiftly changed now. We went into the petroleum area era.

So for about one hundred and twenty eight ish years, we were doing petroleum ish things. Now we're now in the age of sustainable aviation or sustainable energy. We're transforming fats, oils, greases into liquid transportation fuels. Next slide, please. The site has been now it's one hundred and thirty years.

Our total workforce is three eighty five workers, two twenty five contractors. If we didn't convert the site, it might have been the first site on the list to idle. So thank God, this came along. And the State of California has a program called the Low Carbon Fuel Standard that we're beneficiaries of. They provide credits for the different types of sustainable feedstocks that we use, and so that helps us stay afloat.

And we didn't lay anybody off during COVID. We laid nobody off during this conversion. We preserved family wage careers while redefining the facility. You'll might one of the things that's really interesting is we have our USWR, United Steelworkers President, went to John Sweat High School and is now the President of our union at the site that's been there for over ninety two years. So it's a proud heritage of union work.

Please, next slide. So we are the largest facility of its kind in the world, in Rodeo. So you've got 800,000,000 gallons per year or 52,000 barrels per day. We're actually edging up now at 54,000 barrels per day because we've learned how to optimize this facility. We produce renewable diesel.

Now renewable diesel takes about 75 of the diesel market. So this type of fuel source is now making its way to becoming quite the predominant fuel source. We'll talk a little bit more later about what it does for the environment, which is some really positive things, sustainable aviation jet fuel. Our feedstocks, like I mentioned, are cooking oil, vegetable oils, fats. But we I want to make note that we don't use any palm oil that leads could lead to deforestation.

And so we've made a commitment to not use any palm oil. And besides that, in order to get the credit from the State of California, it's actually worse than running crude oil. So we don't run any palm oil. Renewable hydrogen production from our facility and gas production. All right.

So these were so you're going to see some other stats shortly here. But these ones were the ones we were citing as part of what we thought we would get in terms of reductions in emissions. Sulfur oxides 80%, 20% PM and nitrogen oxide. We have reduced our even further and you'll see in the slide coming up even more. Reduced water usage, you might know we used quite a bit of water and now we've dropped that to only 160,000,000 gallons per year.

The construction jobs, there were about 1,500 people up to 2,000 people on this small site during the conversion. So we were running, creating crude oil, processing gasoline and converting the facility at the same time. We have had no serious injuries in the past five years, no bodily injuries in the past ten years. It's one of the safest sites in the country. Up two years in a row, we won top level awards in our industry this year. We're going for the we're top 11 out of 178 facilities in the country. We're about to hear if we win it next week. Hopefully, we do. It's a great team and then the continuation of the jobs. So next slide, please.

So here are some of the benefits out of when you right now, if you had a diesel truck, you could put in renewable diesel, go to a 76 station anybody knows where one is located in Hercules? Right down the street. And you can get that kind of tailpipe emissions reductions up to 10%, 30% in the diesel particulate matter, and you can use it can be used across in all kinds of different trucks, transportation and whatnot. All right. Next slide, please.

So this is our latest slide. This data comes to us from District. It is on their website. And you can see the start the first one you see that's really incredible is the sulfur oxide. That drop is nearly 98%. Do you know do you have an idea why it might have dropped that much? Because the carbon plant that was on highway floor is gone. And we don't use sulfur much. Actually, have to add a little bit of sulfur into the process to keep the catalyst going. So it's such an interesting thing.

You can see across the board, we've done extremely well in terms of emissions reductions. So your air is cleaner, and we're proud of it. Next slide, please. So this building you might have seen driving past on the road on Highway 80. It looks like a giant house. Well, it's got 41 leaf filters on it, on the top of it. So it's a system, and they're not cleaning out leaf. They're shaped like leaves. So they're moving around, high centrifugal force is moving through there, and out it comes. And then it's got a bleaching earth that clears out the contaminants.

Because you can imagine, have you guys ever baked or have cooked bacon? Well, that bacon fat is sometimes what we get. And so we have to use all of this technology to get all of those impurities out. And so it comes out. And then what's left over is what is called diatomaceous earth. Typically, would go to landfill because it's just earth, but we're considering making renewable concrete. So we're really excited about making this a full circular process. And those are some of the team members that were involved. So next slide, please. There are some examples of what we get.

So when we open up something coming from Asia, we might get something like this coming out of there. We receive feedstocks from all over the world. So South America, China, India, all over the world. And you can see that they're all the different types of how they look. When we get the finished product, it looks like a bottle of water When the finished product is ready to go, so from that to like this thing that looks like a bottle of water.

So filters, the gumming absorption. Some people try to think, well, what about biodiesel? This isn't biodiesel. Biodiesel, you would have to change the makeup of your car's engine in order to accept it because biodiesel would gum up the engine. And some people might want it to smell like French fries, but it doesn't.

Part of our permitting process was we were required to put on an odor abatement system onto this facility. There is no other facility that requires this. This is agriculture level technology. By a scale, we're probably 10x bigger than the nearest sized facility that's using this kind of technology. It is literally scale number one this is model number one.

So next slide, please. So here's the I haven't seen I don't know if you guys have seen, but I haven't seen anybody flying an electric plane yet. So in order to get to the transition that people are talking about in reducing carbon the carbon footprint of airlines, right now, there is a product called sustainable aviation fuel being produced in Rodeo at the Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex that they can put into an airplane right now and reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 50% to 80%. It's remarkable. So the transition is now.

We're living the transition right here in the beautiful city of Hercules backyard. Right? Next slide, please. Oh, by the way, if you fly out of San Francisco, maybe on United or British Airways, you might be flying sustainable aviation fuel from Rodeo. You might have seen this too on the highway. This is our solar field, the largest private solar field of its kind in The United States. It's 88 acres of solar. 30.2 megawatts can be generated from the solar field. We get about seven to eight megawatts out of it because you've got dark sometimes you got clouds and sometimes it's nighttime. So we get about seven percent to 8%.

We also have three cogen units or steam power plants. So between those two, we're producing our own electricity on-site. This solar field was a partnership with a company called NextEra Energy. So we're leasing those solar panels. They come out, maintenance them, take care of them, make sure the grass is cut. And so there, we have this great partnership. There was a lot of consultations. The Ohlone Indian tribes were in this area. And so there are Indian kitchens in here that we wanted to make sure we did not disturb. So it looks like think it looks like an ocean of waves of solar fields.

So it's really great that we're making the site a completely circular facility, right? So it stays within the site. Next slide, please. All right, one of my favorites. You know our good work, of course, because we have right out here, we supported the installation of the Veterans Memorial outside.

And we're big fans of the Hercules library because your fine librarian coordinates every year this summer. In the summer, our employees come and pick up the free and reduced lunches from various libraries, from all the libraries. And we get them from Rodeo Hills Elementary School, we get them out to the libraries. So it's volunteer efforts for every hour that one of our employees volunteers doing that, dollars 25 goes to the nonprofit of their choice. It's typically foundation.

So this is great because since 2008, we've raised about $2,750,000 for vocational programs at John Swett High School. So career pathways like carpentry, welding, we put money to work in that program. And also coming up on May 16, Armed Forces Day is our annual Walk of Honor event, where we walk across Carquinez Bridge, and we have a nice lunch and some presentation. My daughter is going to be singing the national anthem, so come check it out. There are registrations available online, but it's a great way to give back to our veterans support services in the area.

So we provide about, in this estimation, about $761,000 in local funding and about 125 plus local nonprofit organizations we seek to support five zero one(three)s or in partnership with other organizations to support other local activities. We've got a whole host of things going on. The far right is the Walk of Honor participants. We also give scholarships to high school students, John Swett High School, and that's what that picture is down there at the bottom. And then we improved Lupine Hills Elementary's garden.

We put some about I think a total about $120,000 to work over two years in that garden. So we're really all about giving back. And this month and April, the company is doing good energy month. So all of our employees go out into the community doing volunteer work, and the company is riding $25 per hour for each of those volunteers. It amounts to millions of dollars going back into the community. So really love working for this company because we live our mission. And I think that is that the last one? Yeah. Questions? Do you have any questions? Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Schonthold. That's really comprehensive. So do we have any public speakers on this item?

No public comment at

this time. Okay. So questions here from the dais. Yes, Council Member Bailey.

Yes, thank you for the presentation. I think it's great to, as someone who's interested in aviation, I think it's great to hear that we're doing some cleaner fuels over there and then sending them down to SFO specifically and then hopefully other reports I as think it's we have to figure out we're gonna reduce the amount of emissions those planes put out. They get us where we have to go but they do burn a lot of think I've seven thirty seven, I it's eight gallons a minute or something like that. So they burn a lot of fuel. So great to hear that we're doing that. I think it's also great that you guys get back to the community. I didn't know you guys contributed to Lupine Hills Garden. But I've been over there several times and they've been very proud of what they have. So they did a couple of different, I think, funding and they had a Gardner actually as part of the funding. So great to hear that you guys did that as well.

And I just wanna say thank you again, appreciate the presentation. Thank you.

Council member Bataray.

Thank you for the great I really didn't realize that you guys have been doing so much things. Was just, I think, overlooking what is going on out that historical place. Thank you for keeping the job close to the residents hopefully. And I hope you provide our continued support and hope that we can make a sustainable fuel, aviation fuels for the whole nation I guess at some point. And thank you for doing that again. Thank you.

Vice Mayor?

Thank you, Mr. Shonsal for the presentation. Really complex and honestly really interesting, some of the things I learned today. Question though, the renewable diesel, where does that start out? Is it still the animal fats or is it like,

yeah, elaborate if you can. So where it starts out is it's coming, it is coming. We have different what are called pathways, different types of feedstocks. So a feedstock is the input into the site. So it used to be crude oil was the feedstock.

Now we're receiving feedstocks like animal fats, greases, tallows, vegetable oils. I should have brought some little containers so you can see them in person. But that slide that I referred to where there were little containers, so we can receive via thank you very much. Awesome sauce. So we can receive on a tanker, you can see what would be at our wharf, it could be a whole facility full of used cooking oil.

Used cooking oil is the highest credit value because what happens with used cooking oil? It goes into landfill. So we're making it into renewable diesel. So it goes through the process. It has to often most of these, maybe not soybean oil, but most of these have to go through this process through this pretreatment unit that we spent nearly $1,000,000,000 on to build this facility.

There were three or four tanks right there, storage tanks, and we got rid of them and put this in there using union labor. Skilled safe laborers put this together. This was done in Contra Costa County. That in this day and age, this is a huge achievement to have done this. I can't sell it short. It's just so it's such an incredible project to have done. But I think does that answer your question?

Also, was just wondering, where do you even get the animal fats from? Like, could someone just hypothetically, I'm just sitting on this in my kitchen right now, just knock on the door and be like,

a little different. You want to get into a side business, yes. So around the world, in China, it's already an industry that's well put together, meaning there's access to channels to get things like used cooking oil. It's still a nascent business in The United States. Like there are really very few entities where we can get it in aggregate that much.

I mean, you saw the numbers. We have to have a lot of feedstock to produce 54,000 barrels a day, right? So we need we had to go out and procure this around the world. We have a rail rack of 20 it was six cars, train cars, now it's 24. And that brings primarily domestic soybean oil to the site.

And so it's really this we had to build out supply chains all over the world in order to get access to consistent amount of supply chain, right? And the diesel is tied to regular diesel, right? We make this sustainable this renewable diesel, but it's tied to the market. Whatever the market is at in terms of diesel is what the price is for this too as well. So there's complexity around tariffs.

There's complexity around getting it from different parts of the world. So economically, it's got a lot of challenges. But we're now starting to turn a bit of a profit. So we're excited about that. Last two years, we've lost since 2000 about $320,000,000 So to get this off the ground, the world's largest startup, it is taking a lot of time, money and effort and now we're just starting to see the turn. So we're excited about it.

Right, start a side hustle, drop off.

You're like, I'm going go drop off my bacon fat. That may be a business someday. There are some small players that are doing that kind of thing, right?

We have a

special arrangement with McDonald's in Singapore where we get all of their waste cooking oil. So it could be all over the world.

Well, putting it to good use. Councilmember Grimsley?

I don't have any questions. I just wanted to say thank you for the presentation and thank you for just kind of apprising us of all the things that is going on at Phillips sixty six. It's exciting to know that the fuel company in our backyard is at the forefront of advancement in the industry, and also that you're partnering with so many parts of our community and giving back. I know that you do a lot of partnership with the Rotary Club locally. Knowing that you're partnering with the schools in the area and providing really valuable not only financial contributions but actual physical contributions to things like the Loupine Garden.

It's really exciting and wonderful. Thank you so much.

It's our honor and privilege to be partners in the community. I mean, one of the things we kept saying to ourselves is, we think everybody knows what we're doing. We're not tooting our own horn, we're just getting to work. We just go to work and we're doing the right thing by the community. That's what we're striving to do every day. It is lovely to get recognition. So thank you very much for that. Footnote is that the carbon plant on Highway 4 is completely demolished and it's been remediated and it's ready for something new to go in. So if you hear of anything, call us. But it's zoned as heavy industrial and light industrial are the two zonings within there and there's agriculture around there.

But you probably didn't even notice there's no more columns there. They went down, nobody even said anything. It was a pretty incredible operation to drop it and nobody had said anything. It was just done. So we're happy to do the right thing. So thank you so much. And thank you to the mayor for this fine invite because she saw this presentation at another location. So thank you for the invite for me to come here and speak.

Yeah, sure. And I got a couple of questions here for you. The renewable feedstocks, when I heard feedstock, I thought like plant matter was coming, but it's all kind of liquidy. Is that what you get pretty much?

Pretty much. It is in liquid state. I say that we have to keep it warm at all times. Like the rail cars have to

be at

temperature. We have a 300,000 gallon storage tank that we offload to, and that has to be had to be converted fully converted to receive and keep things warm in there. As we discussed earlier about bacon fat, you don't want it to get hard because it turns into a candle, right? That's what I do with all my bacon fat, turn into candles. But this is the thing of the matter, right, is that we have to keep it warm at all times. And so it's liquid. It comes in some liquid form such as that and we have to keep it in that kind of liquid form, otherwise it gunks up.

Got it. And then the renewable diesel itself, so who uses that? Do truckers use it? Buses use it?

Anybody with a diesel engine can use it.

Like our bus systems?

Any and if it's got diesel, if it runs on diesel, it could run on sustain it can run on renewable diesel.

That's great. And then one last question. So for your solar farm here, how much energy does that provide to you for your plant?

Yes, it's about we get about seven to eight megawatts out of it. It is a 30 it has capability to bring on 30.2 megawatts of energy. Thank you so much for that. So because of the clouds or nighttime, we don't get a full 32 megawatts out of it. But what it does do is it gives us half of our energy, half of our electrical.

Half, yes.

About half, alongside of those steam power plants. So we are taking nothing from the grid. So that leaves space open for the grid for maybe no brownouts. Things like that. It it takes a lot of energy consumption to run a refinery. Actually, now it's not a refinery, it's a renewable energy complex. And it takes a lot of energy to run. And so our whole idea was to keep it inside the fence line and help out the system too as well. And help us too as well. We have the space, perfect spot for it.

Yeah. It's great. I see it when I drive by on the freeway. Great. Well, I wanna thank you for that. And also, thank you for your donation here to help with our Veterans Memorial. I know you were at that event and it was wonderful. We really appreciate everything that Phillips sixty six does for our local community here.

We appreciate that and we appreciate you all too as well. It's a partnership. It takes it truly takes team team teamwork to do this thing, both internally and with our community partners. You know where we are. We're going to be helping out, continuing to help out. We'll continue doing that going forward and appreciate you all for having me this evening. Will be real quite a bit of fun.

Well, you, mister Shenthal.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. So now moving on. Mister city manager, do we have any additions or deletions tonight?

No additions or deletions.

Okay. And the city clerk, do we have any public communications for items that are not on the agenda?

I'm gonna turn to our Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment at this time, please use your raised hand icon. And seeing none, that will end public comment.

Okay. So the next item is the consent calendar. We have two items on consent meeting minutes. Does anyone care to pull an item or to make a motion?

Madam Mayor?

Yes.

I make a motion that we approve the consent calendar as is.

Okay. Okay. So motion by Bailey, seconded here by Walker Griffin. Any discussion? No. Can we have the roll call vote please?

Council member Grimsley. Aye. Council member Boudreaux.

Aye.

Council member Bailey. Aye. Vice mayor Walker Griffin.

Aye.

And mayor Kelly. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So now we come to our discussion or action items. So the first one tonight is a presentation from Costa Costa County representative on the Contra Costa County Regional Alternative Compliance Joint Powers Authority. I have no idea what this means. So I think mister Dombec, can you explain what we're talking about here?

Happy to do so, mayor Kelly, members of the council. Council this evening is asked to receive a presentation on the Contra Costa County Regional Alternative Compliance Joint Powers Authority. There will be additional actions to approve participation if the council so desires in this joint powers authority at an upcoming meeting on May 26, but tonight we're just presenting this information. The municipal regional stormwater permit imposes several obligations on the city of Hercules. Particular provisions require design and construction activity that may be better addressed through a regional program.

These include provisions C3D, which regulates new development and redevelopment projects and requires them to incorporate on-site low impact development or green stormwater infrastructure to treat stormwater before it reaches local waterways. Another provision, c three j, requires the municipality of Hercules to retrofit an amount of impervious surface with low impact development. Specifically for the city of Hercules, this requirement requires the city design and fully fund green green stormwater infrastructure to handle 1.58 acres of public right of way. And this requirement must be met by June 30. And there's a third provision in the MRP, provision C12C, which requires all cities to comply with pollutant load reduction targets for PCBs.

And this would require locating stormwater treatment facilities in areas that have historically high pollutant loads. So to address these challenges, the county, the city of San Pablo and Walnut Creek and the county flood control district have partnered with the EPA to pilot a regional alternative compliance system. So as a result, the participating agencies are forming a JPA, Joint Powers Authority, that would be responsible for administering off site green stormwater infrastructure, the certification of that infrastructure, accounting of compliance and verification of the project, as well as identifying long term funding mechanisms for the operation and maintenance of those facilities and to perform the annual reporting to the regional water board. The JPA formation is in progress and the goal is to have all participating agencies adopt and approve the JPA by the May 2026. The city of Hercules is currently on track to achieve compliance with provision c three j, one of the three provisions I was discussing, on our own independently.

However, there may be benefits for the city to join the regional alternative compliance EPA. And this could include reduced staff time to manage the design and construction of green stormwater infrastructure. Additionally, the JPA may assist in achieving compliance with the C12C provision requiring that we address PCBs. Additional analysis and a comparison of the city handling these measures independently versus joining the regional alternative compliance JPA will be included in the 2026 meeting agenda when the council formally considers membership with the JPA. So Rinta Perkins with the county is here to present more information about this regional alternative compliance JPA.

So I will pass, pass the baton over to her to share more information with you.

Thank you, Glenn, for the introductions. Good evening, mayor Kelly and council members, Hercules staff, members of the public. Thank you for inviting me to present on the Contra Costa County Regional Alternative Compliance System or the REC system for short. Just a quick introduction, the Clean Water Program is a consortium of 19 cities and towns, the unincorporated county and the flood control district. Established in 1993, the program's primary objective is to coordinate and implement countywide and regional activities as required by our municipal regional stormwater permit or MRP.

As Glenn mentioned earlier, our member agency must comply with the MRP issued by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. The permit contains significant requirements for installing low impact development facility refer in this presentation as green strong water infrastructure or GSI. You can see on the slide here a picture of a bio retention. So, this is one of the example of the GSI facility. Any new and redevelopment projects creating 5,000 square feet or more of impervious areas must treat their runoff with on-site GSI.

This requirement now applies to roadway reconstruction and frontage improvement. Additionally, as Glenn mentioned, City of Hercules must retrofit 1.58 acres of existing impervious. And I think also mentioned by Glenn previously, the San Francisco Bay has mercury and PCB total maximum daily loads or TMDL. Installing GSI in targeted areas help to meet this goal. Many municipalities face challenges in meeting these requirements due to limited land availability, conflicts with underground utilities, and other site constraint.

Aside from the initial capital cost of designing and constructing this GSI, cities also have the obligation to maintain, repair and replace them on an ongoing basis. Most grant funding can cover construction costs, but it's typically not available to fund ongoing O and M. And I mentioned earlier that that, let me see here. I think I skipped this one. I mentioned earlier that piece mercury PCB, DMDL are located within both industrial areas.

So you can find that these areas can only be located around the edges of the San Francisco Bay. Since Hercules does not have all industrial areas, meeting this requirement is difficult. So, to meet permit requirement while overcoming challenges mentioned previously, the Clean Water Program developed DIRECT system. It provides a flexible, cost effective, and scientifically defensible off-site alternative compliance option for new and redevelopment projects. CIRIs, private developers and other entities such as Caltrans can participate.

The REC system offer a framework for funding and building regional GSI projects that treat runoff from larger areas. These projects are typically more cost effective to construct for treated acreage and can strategically be allocated, such as in old industrial, to address the PCB and mercury requirement. Beyond water quality benefits, they can revitalize communities by transforming underused spaces into functional GSI. One city manager described the REC system as a redevelopment tool for her city. Many municipalities struggle to fund O and M, the ongoing operation and maintenance.

The REC system incorporates a sustainable long term funding source for maintenance. So what is the legal basis for this system? First of all, we'd like to acknowledge the US EPA Region nine San Francisco Bay office that funded the development and implementation of this system. This system was made possible due to a provision contained within our permit, allowing an alternative compliance option, which became the legal basis. It has underwent, undergone technical, legal and regulatory reviews with contributions from numerous agency partners and stakeholders as shown on this slide.

I also want to note that the San Francisco Regional Water Board has endorsed this concept and recognized that the REC system is the only system currently meeting the permit requirement. So, this is how the system works. Think of the REC system similar to a regional strongwater in lieu fee, managed as a credit trading or banking system with sellers, buyers, and a centralized rec administrator. So here's how it works. We start with the seller on the top, which is noted in the orange color box.

This can be a public agency or a private entity. Design and construct an off-site GSI project. This project generates compliance units, which represent treated in previous areas. As an example, a public agency that has just completed a roadway project may want to sell excess treated in previous areas to help recover a portion of its capital investment costs. And then instead of constructing the GSI facility on-site, you have the buyer, which is at the bottom here noted in the blue color boxes.

This buyer can also be a public agency or a private developer. The buyers pays an upfront one time cost to the seller to purchase these compliance units that would cover the capital cost of the construction. Additionally, buyers will be required to pay the ongoing O and M cost of this facility. Then in the middle, you have the rec administrator, which is noted in the green color boxes that certifies the that certifies the transaction of compliance units, collects payment from buyers, ensure that O and M activities are carry out and is responsible for the annual reporting to the regional board. In this scenario, the administrator role of this, will be assumed by a joint powers authority, which I will explain in the next slide.

And finally, the last box is the community facility district, noted in the gray box, which was found to be the appropriate mechanism to collect and manage this long term O and M cost in a reliable manner. This is the organizational structure of DIRECT system. On the left is the Joint Powers Authority or JPA. Currently, 16 out of 21 member agency of the Contract Cost Acetylene Water Program have expressed interest in joining the JPA. In this setup, the JPA serves two primary functions.

The first one is serving as the REC system administrator, overseeing transaction and payments, certification of compliance units, ensuring the projects are properly maintained and preparing the annual report. Second, forming and administering a CFD to manage the ongoing maintenance and operational costs. Under this arrangement, only participating JPA members can buy or sell compliance units through the REX system for their capital projects, as well as for private developers and nonprofits within their jurisdiction. So let's expand a little bit more on the implementation. Many cities and counties are probably members of joint powers authorities, and the purpose of this REC JPA is similar to what you may have experienced.

A REC JPA is formed to create a legal entity separate from its member agency. It has its own liabilities, debt, and obligation that are independent of the members. The JPA can only be formed through the approval of a joint powers agreement by the city council and county board of supervisors. Next, the clean water program has circulated the JPA agreement to city and county attorneys for review, and we have revised it accordingly. This agreement contained provisions for admitting new members, outlining roles and responsibilities, indemnification, termination, and so forth.

To avoid unfunded liabilities and pension risk, the will not hire its own employee. Instead, it will rely on member agency staff and third party contractors, consultants, legal firms to manage its operations. Now, please keep in mind that the REC GPA is intended for projects only. So, I'm going to underline this that this is not the same as the solid waste authority, as an example, which covers all residents within the jurisdiction. This REC JPA applies only to selected property owners who choose to purchase or sell compliance units to meet their projects permit compliance obligation.

There will be some shared JPA administration costs, such as on call legal services, bookkeeping, JPA operation, and annual reporting. These costs will be split equally among members. One of the primary goals of the direct JPA, as I mentioned earlier, is to create a long term sustainable mechanism to ensure that private buyers contribute to the ongoing O and M costs of public and privately owned GSI project. Fortunately, the Melrose Act has already provide legal framework for this approach. It authorizes the formation of community facilities district, which can lobby special taxes to finance maintenance, including repair and replacement of flood and storm protection services on both public and private properties.

Under the joint powers agreement, the JPA would have the authority to form a CFD and levy special taxes within the member agency territories. Once the agreement is signed, the JPA would handle the entire CFD formation process requiring no further actions from initial members. The process began by identifying a private buyer seeking to join the CFD to meet their project permit mitigation obligation, followed by adopting resolution, holding public hearings and conducting a landowner election to finalize CFD formation. Once a future annexation area is established, it includes one or more parcel as the initial CFD boundary and jurisdictions over all initial participants. This designation enables a much faster annexation process than traditional method.

It requires only the property owner's signature on a unanimous approval form. This form serves as their official vote to join the district and accept the special tax levy in future years. So, no additional steps are needed beyond that signature. When a new public agency joined the JPA, say in the future, its parcels must be added to the future annexation area. And to accomplish this, the JPA board would adopt a resolution of intention to expand the CFD and annexation area, followed by a second resolution at least thirty days after the public hearing.

If a parcel within that new territory is ready, it can be added to the CFD boundary at that time. So, this table outline key tasks and milestone for this year. We, we deliver informational workshop for various stakeholders group last year, ranging from, city engineers, public works directors, planning directors, city managers, and and other stakeholders. We held several JPA formation meetings with interested agency to discuss operational and logistic matters. We anticipate, as Trein mentioned, forming the JPA by the end of the fiscal year.

Concurrently, we are identifying projects to exchange. We have one project ready to be exchanged under this system. We also have one private developer in the central part of Contra Costa interested in building GSI on an underused parking lot within an old industrial area. We have initiated discussions with Caltrans district for office regarding their needs for off-site mitigation measures and as well as potential funding opportunities. We plan to circulate the CFD terms this summer with the goal of establishing the CFD future annexation boundaries by the end of October.

With this schedule, we hope to initiate our first compliance unit exchanges in the fall of this year. Oh, excuse me. So what is the next step? Currently, there are 16 agency that have expressed interest in joining the JPA. We have finalized that agreement, the JPA agreement.

We invite interested agency to participate in future technical and operational discussion. Program staff has prepared a fact sheet, frequently asked question, references, and other guidance document that our member agency can use as a resource. And the next step for the agency is to have their governing boards adopt the resolution to form direct JPA. There is a strong incentive to complete JPA related tasks before June 30 to fully utilize the allocated regional funding. This concludes my presentation, and I'm available to answer questions you may have.

And That's I'd like to just

that's very, very detailed and kind of complex. I'd I'd like to bring it back to mister Dombek. So mister Dombek, you know Hercules. We're a city of 26,000. We are primarily residential. We really don't have very many, commercial sites. We don't really have industrial sites. So can you just, in a nutshell, explain to me how this might benefit us? I don't know if this would be worthwhile or not. And I do know that sometimes when we have developments, as we recently had the Owl Ranch development, they created a bioretention basin. So in a nutshell, how might this help Hercules? And would it be applicable to us or not?

No, those are excellent questions. And we're in the process of trying to do due diligence to provide a comprehensive answer for that. But simply put, the three different provisions, which are only three of numerous provisions that we have to meet as part of the municipal regional permit, These three provisions do require either private developers that are trying to build in the city of Hercules or the city itself is required to also build bioretention area that would treat part of the 1.58 acres of public right of way. That specific requirement is due at the June 2027, so a little over a year from now. At that time, the city is required to have a design for that bioretention system and to have that system fully funded.

We don't have to construct the system by that time frame, but we do have to fully fund and have the design ready. So at this time, we as a city need to make a decision whether we continue to try to meet that requirement on our own independently, which we can achieve, Or the alternative would be to join the JPA and rather than design and install a system here in the city, we would purchase credits from an existing system elsewhere in the county through the JPA. So it would provide the city with flexibility to meet this immediate requirement that we're facing as well as the future requirement, even though the city of Hercules does not have industrial sites that contain PCBs or mercury, we're still required to assist in the mitigation of those. And so that would require the city on its own if we were not to join the JPA, to go find another community that does have PCBs and mercury and has built a system, and we would have to develop an agreement with them to help fund their system. That's part of this permit requirement.

One thing that neither myself or Rinta had mentioned is that we're currently on municipal regional permit three point zero. They're working on municipal regional permit four point zero. And so there will be additional requirements. This C3J requirement to treat 1.58 acres of public right of way, there'll be additional public right of way requirements. So, we're only in the early stages of this, and it does appear that the RAC, JPA would provide flexibility in achieving these goals.

So what we do intend to do is evaluate the costs of each of these alternatives and provide that information to you in the upcoming May 26 staff report.

Okay, thank you for that summary and overview. Questions here from council? Councilmember Bailey?

Yes, thank you to, I'm not sure who, I can't see her name, but the Rinta. Rinta, And to staff of the report and for the mayor for the good the good questions. I had a question. So I think what I've heard is that we have either do it by ourselves, and there's a funding issue. We could do it together, but there's still a funding issue. And if we do it together, we're gonna use Mello Roos, for lack of a better word, to to fund it. So if we don't use the together plan, how do we fund it? Melarus also? What's the city's plan to date?

And Rinta can speak to the Melarus. I think she was referring to that as a mechanism that they were using to form this CFD, which is a component of the regional alternative compliance program. But the funding for either alternative as far as the city is concerned would have to come from the city. So we currently have a capital improvement project to fund the design and construction costs of a bioretention system that would satisfy the C3J requirement. So we can either apply those funds to a design and also the funding the construction, the future construction of that facility, or we can use those funds to fulfill that upfront payment to join the JPA.

And then there would be additional cost once we identify a seller that we would be purchasing credits from. So we would have to then also fund those credits. And then as Rinta mentioned, there's also the ongoing operation and maintenance cost. So all of that does need to be funded by the city. The funds that we have currently identified are available for either purpose. So.

And then

if the city does

it, sorry, are we going to go out and buy this somewhere? Do this somewhere else or do we, if the city does it we do it local with local. Do we have a much land here? So we have to purchase a certain amount. We have to have a certain amount of land. So we would be still be doing sort of the purchasing the credit still. So I said on the energy board, when we do that, when the timeline comes in, it gets more expensive because the person who has the thing says, we'll sell it you. You have a timeline to meet. We'll sell it to you for for more. So do we have any control over this or are we just sort of in this boat?

Well, so if we were to go on our own, we do have control over the design and the construction costs to some extent. I mean, obviously construction costs fluctuate. If we were to join the JPA, I am projecting that those upfront costs there's the upfront cost to join the JPA, and then there's the upfront cost for purchasing the credits. I do think that we have enough money set aside for that public right of way buyer retention capital project that we could apply towards joining the JPA and purchasing those initial credits. There would be additional costs that we would have to identify funding for.

And I do hope to have all these numbers presented to you in the upcoming staff report.

And you said purchase additional, so this is do the mayor it's like an initial timeshare fee, and then we can get more days if we pay more. So We need that there'll be a mandate to pay to have more credits over over That's a question. It sounds like a statement. But is there will there be a need to to have once we do this initial, will there be a need for more later?

Again, the credits are essentially equivalent to the acreage that we're trying to satisfy. So if we're purchasing 1.58 acres of bio retention that treats a 1.58 acre area, that's a one time purchase. It's completed. It would not increase in the future. It would

be two or something like that. Okay.

Correct. But there is the ongoing operation and maintenance. And then the one other factor to consider is that future permit may add to the requirements. There may be in the future additional area that we have to mitigate.

So then if we went with JPA

and we're buying credits on someone else's, why do we have to maintain it? I'm sure there's a reason, but why are we maintaining somebody else's?

Good question. But essentially, let's say another city has a two acre area and we're only buying 1.58 acres of that two acre area, we would be obligated to pay that proportional share of the operational cost. Essentially is in a sense our portion of their system. So we inherit the operational costs for maintaining that system.

May I

Yes, please, Marta,

if you want Yes. To there is a benefit to purchasing compliance units from the regional projects. So in this case, regional projects, the one example that I mentioned, it is a regional project that receives grant funding. So, that in itself offsets the construction costs that say, for example if City Hercules would like to purchase a compliance unit. So just by the cost, the capital cost alone, is subsidized.

It is offset. So there is that benefit. And then having the REC JPA sort of like the clearance house to manage the O and M, there is an economies of scale. So yes, whether the city of Hercules would have to construct the GSI on-site, they still have the obligation to maintain that on-site GSI treatment. Now, if you have to purchase it somewhere else, City of Hercules would be responsible, as Glenn mentioned, the prorated cost of that OM elsewhere. Except in this regard, it's going to be pool, so there is going to be some economies of scale.

Thank you. Other questions here? Other questions? Yes, Councilmember Grimsley.

Okay. In addition to the fiscal impact, I thought I read or maybe heard that there was some benefit in terms of impact on staffing. Can you talk about that a little bit, the difference?

Sure. Yeah, was just referring to if we were to do this independently, staff does have to procure a design consultant. We've already done that part of the process. So we do have proposals to design by retention. But we would have to manage that design.

So that's essentially what I was referring to. And then when it does come time to construct it, we would also have to oversee the construction and there is staff time involved in implementing these types of projects.

Through the mayor, is there any distinct difference between being part of the JPA or not being part of the JPA in terms of staffing requirements, requirement for city of Hercules public works, city staff?

Well, I mean, there would be a lower requirement of City of Hercules staff time to focus on satisfying this bioretention requirement if we were a member of the JPA. Because we would essentially be all of that design and construction effort would be handled by this third party that we would be purchasing the credits from. And then also the oversight of the O and M portion would also be handled by the JPA staff.

Thank you for that clarification.

Yes, Vice Mayor.

Yes, thank you Madam Mayor. Director Gombek, who's on this board? How is it managed? Where are the decisions coming from? I've tried to go through, but I don't see anything on that. Rinta, can

you speak to that, please?

Yeah. Yes. Of course. Yes. Every city may designate their own representation. So in this case, so again, this is not like your, solid waste authority where city council sit in the board. It's not like that at all because this is strictly project related. So you may designate Glenn as an example or as the public works director or his designee. It is strictly just staff level. And, and the commitment so if I may, there is a state requirement for JPA to hold, an annual meeting at least once a year. There might be, two times a year or so, but just really, truly, project related task or responsibilities.

Awesome. Thank you.

Mister Dombic, so it seems to me like this is another one of those unfunded mandates. The state comes down and says, okay, you cities, you've gotta do this. And we as a city would be on hook for a 1.58 acre with bio retention basin. So we could try and build it here ourselves or we could buy credit somewhere else and we could possibly join this JPA to do that. And then there's also the PCB issue even though we don't have any PCBs around here. Is that kind of the essence of it?

Yep, you have summed it up pretty well. With the one exception that it's not a 1.58 acre bioretention, but it's a bioretention that treats the runoff from 1.58 acres.

Okay, so do we have an idea how big that would be or how small that would be or is that too hard to guesstimate?

Well, haven't done the design yet, so I don't have a number in mind. But I can come back with an idea of what that would be.

Okay. Well, I think we'll probably have to hear more from you about whether or not joining would be beneficial or not for the city. And, at least for me, if you can boil it down to something really simple because this is way over my pay grade.

I appreciate it. It is a lot of information which is part of the reason we tried to break it up into, you know, to allow you to digest some of this information now and then we'll bring it back in a month or so.

Yes. And Ms. Perkins, thank you for your detailed explanation. Miss Sittig, I just wanna Oh, yes.

One more question for

you.

Yeah, please, please.

So the ongoing cost is is so we have regardless of what which side we go, we have staff costs for being a part of the JPA and the stuff that goes along with that if we do JPA side. If we don't do JPA, we have staff costs for city employees just doing the work. Then there's the ongoing cost for maintenance either way, which gives us city staff the greatest control. To control cost, that is.

To control cost. Well, I mean, theoretically, local system that we construct here in the city, we theoretically would have greater control. But again, we're subject to the procurement that we would do for either the construction or the operation of that facility. So when we talk about operation of a bioretention system, we're primarily talking about landscape maintenance, some minor construction just to make sure that the system is operating as intended. We're already doing that on other facilities.

So I think we do have good experience with that. But in general, we have contracting most of that work out. So, yeah, I mean, I don't really know that there's that much that we can I mean, there's not that much opportunity to reduce costs? There's kind of a threshold of what's required to just keep the systems operational.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you Madam Mayor.

At this time, the city clerk, is there anyone from the public that would like to comment on this item?

I'll turn to our Zoom attendees. We have one hand raised. Tanya Little, go ahead, please.

Hello everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on this topic. In my experience at the state level and traveling and dealing with different utility companies, water companies that are dealing with JPAs, I have found my observation of cities that join these come out a lot better. Reason being the economies of scale, ability and if we pull that back and just looking here at in Hercules, we don't have a lot of space to to really cover that, especially when we're we have a mandate to increase our housing. So have the the other project we're doing with the transportation.

So I think it moves us to really, you know, join the power. Jeep JPs are great to if we wanna play good, and we always say we wanna help and partner with other people, this is an opportunity to partner with people that know what they're doing. We'll take a lot of pressure off of staff. We'll be able to we don't have to contract out because most work is contracted out. But I would recommend you give a great consideration, and I would be in favor of it. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Little. Any other commenters?

If you'd like to make a comment on this item, use your raised hand icon. Seeing none, that will end public comment.

Okay, unless there are other comments from the council. Ms. Perkins, thank you very much. Mr. Dombic, thank you. And this will be coming back to council in the near future.

Thank you very much. Have a good evening.

Okay. So now we will move on to our next item, which is a familiar one for us. And that's the landscaping and lighting assessment districts approval of the preliminary engineers reports and declaring the city's intention to levy and collect assessments for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven. So Mr. Dombek, is this your item?

I'm just going to make a few brief remarks and then

I

will pass it off to Mr. Espinoza to provide a more detailed summary. This item is a part of the multi step process that council has been following each year, which includes the preparation of annual engineers' reports to approve the levy of assessments on parcels within each landscape and lighting assessment district. The city of course annually levies and collects special assessments to maintain certain improvements within the city's five landscape and lighting assessment districts. Each LLAD provides continued maintenance, servicing, administration and operations of various landscape and lighting improvements and other improvements that benefit parcels within each district.

Each property is assessed only of of the COVID-nineteen on process by adopting resolutions initiating the the fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven annual approval for the city's five districts. The second required council action is approving the preliminary engineers reports and setting a public hearing for the districts, which is the subject of this agenda item. So with that, I will pass it to Ed Espinoza with Francisco and Associates who will discuss this in more detail.

Thank you, Glenn. Good evening, City Council. As your public works director mentioned, there's the city Of Berkeley has five landscaping lighting assessment districts, also known as LAD. And they provide ongoing funding for operations and maintenance of public landscaping, parks and street lighting through the levy of annual assessments on property tax bills. The five LAD can be described as follows.

There's Lab 1980 Three-one, which is the oldest lab in the city. It's comprised of 11 benefit zones scattered throughout the city. Next is Lab 2002 -one, which consists of the Victoria By the Bay Neighborhood. And then there's LAD 2000 and two-two, which is comprised of the Hercules Village neighborhood, which is otherwise known as Promenade. There's LAD 2000 and four-one, which consists of the Baywood neighborhood.

And lastly, LAD 2,000 and five-one, which consists of the Bayside neighborhood. The multistep city council meeting process that the public works director described includes the preparation of an annual engineers report for each district that must be approved by city council. And on February 24, city council initiated the process by ordering the preparation of of the annual engineers' reports for each district, which brings us to this evening where we're asking city council we're recommending that city council preliminarily approve the engineers' reports and also set the public hearing for June 23. The assessment rates for each lad are authorized to increase annually by the change in the consumer price index, the CPI, as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, except for the Victoria By The Bay Lad, which is authorized to increase by CPI plus $50 as approved by property owners in that neighborhood last year. So that's what's reflected in the Victoria by the Bay engineers' reports.

The proposed assessment rates for all other labs and benefit zones are proposed to increase by 2.48% from last year based on the calculated change in the CPI, except for three benefit zones within the 1983 district. Those being Benefit Zone two, which consists of the Foxborough neighborhood Benefit Zone 5B, which is comprised of miscellaneous commercial properties throughout the city and Benefit Zone eight, which includes the Trees And Flowers neighborhood. The reason these three assessment these three benefit zones are not proposed to increase by CPI because the current assessment rates are sufficient to cover their respective budgets. That said, the engineers' reports that are before you this evening for fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven generally show a positive financial trend except for the Hercules Village lab, which is experiencing considerable annual operating deficits due to the need for higher level tree pruning work, increased irrigation watering due to climate change and also East Bay Mud utility district water rate increases, which have far exceeded the allowable increases district's assessments. At City Council meetings earlier this year, the financial condition of the Hercules Village Ladd was discussed along with options to consider conducting Proposition two eighteen proceedings to approve an assessment increase for this neighborhood.

At the City Council meeting in March 2026, this last month, it was decided that Prop two eighteen proceedings for the Hercules Village lab will be postponed until next year as part of the annual process for fiscal year twenty seventwenty eight. Postponing the process will provide additional time for staff to conduct public outreach and also confirm updated costs associated with the pending renewal of the city's landscape maintenance contract. City staff is recommending City Council adopt five resolutions this evening, preliminarily approving the engineers report for each of the five labs, also declaring the intention to levy and collect assessments for upcoming fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty seven and setting the required public hearing for June 23. That concludes my presentation this evening. I'd be happy to address any questions City Council or members of the public may have.

You.

Thank you, Mr. Espinosa. So any questions here from the council? Yes, Council Member Bailey?

Yes, this question goes to staff. It goes to because we I get this question a lot. So with the tree trimming, are these estimates or are they actual cost? What's in the actual Francisco and Associates reports?

And Ed can correct me if I make a misstatement, but I believe that these are the budgets that we anticipate to need for maintaining each of the districts. Doesn't necessarily mean that we'll use the entirety of that budget, that is roughly what we anticipate is necessary.

Okay. And we can't go backwards, it's hard for residents in time to to see that. So so they don't see the money come back. Like, if you look at our budget, we could see where money gets wasn't fully used and then it goes back into the general fund in our case. Is there a way for future that we can show what the actual immediate cost was on that sheet? A lot of the boards that sit on show the, you know, the projected and they just show the next column over what they actually spent. It may help residents understand because we're gonna have a lot of question about understanding from Promenade in the coming year. And it's hard to show someone if I because they'll say my tree wasn't trimmed, right, will be the response there. So that's a question I had. So thank you very much for that.

And then were we able to I think there was a goal of ours was to reduce personnel cost per district. And we did that by some new positions or a new position. Did that actually did that solve that problem for us? Or is it solving it going forward? That challenge, I guess, I should say. It's not a problem, but it's a challenge.

Yeah. Ed, are you able to maybe address that question? Because I'm not sure I have the breadth Sure. Of experience to

Yeah. I can address. If I understood your question, Councilmember Baile, I think you were asking if how do personnel say personnel costs compared to prior years? And is there a reduction anticipated for this upcoming fiscal year 2026, 2027?

Correct.

And I believe last year, the city implemented the new position of the LAAD program coordinator. That position was implemented with the anticipation that personnel costs that addition of that position would be cost neutral. So the budgets are reflect a similar personnel cost as prior years. But with the addition of a lab program coordinator that will oversee the program and the budgets and enhance the services that are provided for the city's five landscape and lighting assessment districts. To summarize the costs are similar but we've added a lab program or program coordinator position to enhance services.

And that's I misspoke. You're correct. That was what we did do. I'm sorry about that. We were trying to just have a more focused person on the project is what it turned out to be. Okay. Those were my questions. And then under if I could do one more. Victoria By The Bay with that extra $50 that's gonna reduce that down over a ten year period. That's our expectation and whoever can give me the answer to that.

That's correct, Council Member Bailey. Property owners in Victoria By The Bay last year approved the $50 increase for a ten year period starting with current fiscal year twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six. So 2026, 2027 will be the second year two of the ten year

timeline. Okay. Thank you. And then just to ask the same point here is we say water is part of the reason why it's up. If we if we had that extra column we could actually see what we're spending versus where we're estimating the spend or look at last year's expense. So as we explained to residents we have sort of a it's the same amount landscape and we didn't build anything new and the price is $50,000 more this year than it was last. It would help us explain that as we get into next year. That's all the questions I have for this.

Thank you. Any other questions here or comments? Council Member Bhattarai?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, I had a question I think probably Council Member Bailey already addressed that. I think we also need to look into the how to reduce the structural deficit down in the line for the long run. Maybe we need to see there might be some technologies or maybe some water consumption reduction or maybe new plans or I don't know what could be that, but I think we need to look into that and then I have to curve the cost that is growing faster. I think I also wanted to encourage to look into that as well. Thank you.

If I can make one comment, we did receive the city had received a grant from the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation to install smart irrigation controllers. And within the last two, three weeks, we received notice to proceed for that grant. So we're in the process of preparing to implement that. So that should result in a noticeable reduction in water use for most all of the city parks and a few other select areas.

Thank you so much. I think that is exactly what we need to do, be more proactive. But thank you. We are in the right direction. Good to know that.

That's great to know we got that grant. And that's much easier than trying to change a lot of the turf because that's expensive. I know I changed my plantings at my house and it was expensive with that addition of a drip system and so forth. So Mr. Dumbach, I have one question here and maybe Ed Espinosa can answer.

I did speak to him earlier. I also spoke with our landscaping coordinator. So on eighty three-two, of all the zones there, Zone 1 where I live in Hercules By The Bay, there is for the first time in tree trimming, there's a $12,000 guesstimate for tree trimming. Now I went back about eight or nine years and I looked at all of these that Mr. Espinosa prepared before and there was no line item in there for tree trimming at all.

I think 12,000 is way too much. I know what trees might be trimmed. It could be those pine trees, about 16 pine trees in the median on Hercules Avenue, and a few smaller trees. And then maybe a couple of trees in the cul de sacs. But really 12,000 is a lot and I'd like to reduce that by at least half.

The reason is if we have that amount in there, it's gonna put my zone here into a deficit. And per what council member Bailey said, I'd like to have real numbers in here and not just guesstimates. So I'd like to reduce that 12,000 to at least six. I don't know about Village Parkway whether that would apply or not. It really doesn't cause them to go into a deficit.

But I'd like to reduce Zone 1. And then next year, I'd like to have real costs in there. I'd like to know, well, if you folks went ahead and did work on trees, how much did it really cost and not just guesstimate it? Because when the budgets go up here and the reserve balance looks like it's in the red, that's going to have issues for us going forward. So if that's okay, I would like to request that.

If I could make one comment is, I believe the historic homes section is part of the Hercules by the Bay zone.

The Talley Way.

Right. Talley Way, Bay Street and Pinal Street.

Bay Street and Panola Street are covered by, I believe, by my HOA. Is that correct?

We've had this discussion a couple of times and my understanding is that the trees in the public right of way in those

You might be right on that.

Are city maintained. And I do know that we did maintain those trees most recently in November of last year. I don't recall the precise cost for that, but there are costs associated with maintaining these areas. There's also all the cul de sacs in Hercules By The Bay that the city is responsible for maintaining?

There are three cul de sacs in Hercules By The Bay. My HOA mows the lawn in one of them. They have very small trees in two of them and big trees in the other one. But like Councilmember Bailey, I'd like to see the actual costs when this comes around again so that we're not just throwing a number out there.

We can definitely work to try to provide the actual costs. I hear that request. Do know that part of the challenge in doing that historically has been the accounting for these costs. So we'll work together to try to make some improvement in that area.

Okay, I'm just gonna ask you to track it going forward for the next twelve months. And I don't think that that should be too difficult.

We can work to do that.

Okay, thank you. Council member Bailey, do you do have something to say?

It was good. It's still on the

same lines and I know that we're under compressed time because we have to get the budget approved by the end the month. But I think that is it's a thing I hear from residents all the time. They'll ask why. I'll say it's for trees, and then they'll say they didn't cut my tree. Right? And then we come back and talk to staff and they say, well, there's all these trees in the neighborhood, but it's hard to explain it to someone. Right? So if we actually had a cost and when it's not and a it's whole number like that, even number, it looks like it's an estimate. But if we knew we spent, you know, $12,732. Right? And they cut this many trees, it would help us explain it because this is a contagious thing for many residents, especially in the districts that have a higher fee per per per tax bill cycle.

Yeah. I I concur on that. I agree. So any other questions or comments here from council? Madam City Clerk, do we have any one from the public who wants to speak on this item?

Turn to my Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on this item, please use your raised hand icon. And seeing none, that will end public comment.

Okay, so I'm going to bring it back to counsel if there are no other comments, questions or comments. We have five resolutions before us. So do I hear a motion for the first resolution for eighty three-two?

Madam Mayor.

Yes.

Can I make a motion? Yes. To resolution number 26, resolution of the city council of the city of Hercules for preliminary approval of the engineers report and declaring the city council's intention to levy and collect the assessment for the fiscal year FY twenty six-twenty seven for the city of Hercules Landscaping and Lighting Assessment District number 80 three-two percent to the landscaping and lighting act of 1972.

Okay. All right. So motion by Batrai, second by Walker Griffin. Can we have a roll call vote please?

This discussion real quick.

Oh yes, sure, of course, please.

And this

is a question for staff that I should have asked. We knew this twice, right? This is gonna come back again from the reading or is this one reading of this? I can't remember.

So tonight we are basically declaring the council's intention to place a levy on the assessment and then part of the resolution should also be to set the public hearing for June 23 and at that time that's when you would adopt

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.

So we'll go ahead and roll call vote please. Council Member Grimsley. Aye. Council Member Butterye.

Aye. Council Member Bailey. Aye. Vice Mayor Walker Griffin.

Aye.

And Mayor Kelly.

Aye. And Council Member Bailey, you for that clarification. Appreciate it. Okay. So then there's another resolution number two for Bayside. Do I hear a motion? Anybody?

Yes. Madam Mayor, may have a motion again? A resolution of the city council of the city of Hercules for the preliminary approval of the engineers report in declaring the City Council's intention to levy and collect assessments for the fiscal year FY twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven for the Victoria by the Bay Landscaping and Lightning Assessment February pursuant to the Landscaping and Lightning Act of 1972. Okay.

So this is for Victoria By The Bay? Yeah. Okay. So motion by Batrais, seconded by Walker Griffin. Roll call vote, please. Councilmember Grimsley. Aye. Councilmember Butterrey.

Aye.

Councilmember Bailey. Aye. Vice mayor Walker Griffin. Aye. Mayor Kelly.

Aye. Thank you. Okay, so resolution number three. Do I hear a motion? Madam Mayor. Yes.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Hercules for preliminary approval of engineers report and declaring the city council's intention to levy and collect assessments for fiscal year twenty six twenty seven for the Hercules Landscaping And Lighting Assessment District number 2000 And Two-two pursuant to Landscaping and Lighting Act of 1972.

Second.

Okay, so motion by Grimsley, second by Walker Griffin. Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Grimsley. Aye. Councilmember Butterrey. Aye. Councilmember Bailey. Aye. Vice Mayor Walker Griffin.

Aye.

And Mayor Kelly.

Aye. Thank you. Okay, so let's go ahead to the next one which is resolution number four. Motion someone.

Madam Mayor. Yes. I'd like to make a motion to adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Hercules for preliminary approval of the engineers report declaring the City Council's intention to levy and collect assessments for fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven for the Baywood Landscaping and Lighting Assessment District number 2004 Dash 1, pursuant to the Landscaping and Lighting District Act of 1972.

Okay. Motion by Walker Griffin. Is there a second? Second. Second by Grimsley. Roll call vote, please. Council member Grimsley.

Aye. Council member Butterrey. Aye. Council member Bailey. Aye. Vice Mayor Walker Griffin. Aye. And Mayor Kelly.

Aye. Okay and I think we're on resolution number five. One last one.

Madam Mayor. Yes. I can make a motion to adopt a resolution of the city council of city of Hercules for preliminary approval of the engineers report and declaring the city council's intention to levy and collect assessments for fiscal year 02/2027 for the Bayside Landscaping And Lighting Assessment District Number 2000 And Five-one pursuant to the Landscaping and Lighting Act of 1972.

Okay, is there a second? Second. Okay, motion by Walker Griffin, seconded by Grimsley. Roll call vote please. Council member Grimsley aye. Council member Butterey

aye.

Council member Bailey

aye.

Vice mayor Walker Griffin

aye

and mayor Kelly aye.

Thank you. Council thank you very much for all of those really appreciate it And thank you, mister Dombach and mister Espinoza. Always good to see you.

Likewise. Have a great evening, everybody.

Okay.

Good to you. And madam mayor, I would just like to confirm for the benefit of the public that in passing these resolutions, you are also setting a public hearing for 06/23/2026. That language is within the resolutions themselves.

Correct. Yes. Thank you for that clarification, mister city manager. Okay. So our last item discussion item tonight is the fiscal year twenty six twenty seven co sponsored special events and a request for additional budget allocation of $10,000. Mister Roque, you're on.

Good evening, madam mayor, city council, Christopher Roque, your parks and recreation director. I'm here to talk about the city cosponsored events for the fiscal twenty six twenty seven. Staff recommends that the city council receive an updated report on co sponsored special events between the city and Bayfront Chamber of Commerce and to approve an additional $10,000 in twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven to account for additional increased costs. As directed by City Council staff has worked with the Bayfront Chamber to collaborate on a variety of special events to be held in Hercules over the past five years. The current fiscal year twenty five-twenty six the events include National Night Out, Bayfront Festival and Run, Crab Feed, Lunar New Year and Cultural Festival.

For fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven staff proposes to hold the same five events with an increase of $10,000 to offset the growing costs to deliver high quality events to the city. Beginning in fiscal year twenty one-twenty two, City Council was looking to give the community something to celebrate as we began to recover from the pandemic over the last five years. Council has continued to allocate funds to work with the Bayfront Chamber of Commerce to deliver a series of special events that have become known as staples, in our community. Hercules the city of Hercules has been fortunate to work with the Bayfront Chamber over the past several years to bring these series of events to Hercules. Without the assistance of the Bayfront Chamber of Commerce, the city would not be able to produce these events for the community.

All of these special events have been and continue to be both well received and well attended by the community. At the time of this report for the five special events that are run by the Chamber of Commerce for the fiscal year 2526 have already been held, including the Lunar New Year event that recently was held for its second year growing and increasing from 800 people the first year to over 2,500 this last year. It's a magnificent start to a wonderful event that's happening. There's still one more event that's gonna be taking place in fiscal year 2526, and that is the Cultural Festival, which will be held on Sunday, 06/07/2026 at Hanna Ranch Park. As mentioned in November when I reported to the council, there are a couple of things to consider as we plan for our future events.

Number one, with National Night Out always following on following on the first Tuesday of August, Council has already previously agreed to allocate funds for this events in advance of the budget process. And the cost to hold these events has steadily increased, creating a growing concern from the Bayfront Chamber about sustainability of these events. While the chamber continues to work to secure additional scholarship dollars or excuse me, sponsorship dollars to continue to provide these events to the Hercules community, they've made it clear that continuing to run these events would likely require increased financial support going forward as evident from the attached recap of events over the past three years. I included the last three cultural festival events just to show you the increase that has gone up in just that event alone. And looking back historically, that event was originally canceled because of the absorbent cost to the city back, you know, a decade more than a decade ago.

But anyway, staff is recommending that council approve the same five events for fiscal year twenty six twenty seven with an increase of $10,000 for a total cost of $55,000 in advance of the budget. Part of the reason to do this is to get the contract underway and done prior to the fiscal year that ends up happening to help set up for the national night out, which is why we're here tonight. So that concludes my report. I'm happy to answer any questions that may come up.

Thank you, mister Rokin. I just wanna thank you and your staff. You folks do a tremendous job working with the Bayfront Chamber to put on all these five events. And I think the whole community really, really appreciates

it.

Thank you. So questions here from council? Yes, council member Grimsley.

Director Rook, I just wanted to ask about the change in location for the cultural festival.

So obviously, with the shade structure project that's happening currently at Refugio Valley Park, the park is not available to hold the cultural festival. The Bayfront Chamber at first was a little skeptical about moving a venue and was considering canceling it. Collectively, we thought the momentum would not be great for the event if we had done that. They took a look at Hanna Ranch as another viable option. There are additional increases in costs by moving it to a Hanna Ranch, for instance, There's no power supply that goes.

So generators have to be rented to power everything that's going to be happening there. But we think the parking is adequate and it's a big enough park, a big enough venue to hold up there. We're excited about running it in a different location to see the viability of that location for potential use in the future. But it's certainly not ideal. Obviously, I think everyone's first choice would be to have it at Refugia Valley Park.

Will the shuttle service continue this year for the cultural festival?

There'll be a shuttle service, I'm assuming. I haven't nailed that down with Sylvia yet, but I don't believe it's going be coming from the BART parking lots. It may be coming from the community center and the school because it's different location, obviously.

I heard that as well. So you could go and park up at the community center then just hop on the shuttle and go up. Yeah. Other questions from council? Council Member Bailey?

I just had a question on the increase amount. It's a 20% increase. And noticed we can do it as a percent, we did it as a whole number. How do we cost go up, how are we the reason that we came up with the scheme was so that the city wasn't paying the full, but it looks like we're incurring a large part of the increase. So just because it was sort of saying two things I think.

So there's a couple of things at play. Number one, there is loss of sponsorship dollars all across from everyone in general. So they're not having as many sponsors that are stepping up to do different things. If the city wants to continue to do these events, there is a cost. And the cost for these events have far exceeded what they expected previous years. That's why I was showing you the example, the three examples of the cultural festival. If you look at the first year, the cost for the cultural festival was $38,000 It's gone up. Last year was at $48,000 They hadn't even finished calculating everything before that report went in. I don't know what the final numbers were. I haven't actually gone through and looked at it again.

But I do know that there is a massive increase in everything. Everything has just gone up, know, from rental stages to equipment to people who are performing or any of those kinds of things, but just costs in general. So yes, this was something that we had talked about at great length with the chamber and talking about looking at other avenues for sponsorship. But without this increase, they're really not going be able to do these events.

Maybe the narrative should not be that we're sponsoring them. We're paying for more of them I think. I think it's just that there are people who have issue with that. I've gotten calls and emails in the past. We had a very blunt conversation about fireworks a couple months back. So it may be time to do that or we sponsor it. And I have a recommendation that we may just sponsor extra for this year as opposed to just increasing it because I don't I'm concerned it'll just kind of continue to grow every year because cost you go up as we discussed with fireworks for So we needed to just figure out a way to contain that. So I'll make a motion but I'll just suggest that we do it as an add on for the year as opposed to being the cost. And we have to look at which one of these we wanna support. We have added events.

We added the New Year was added. Right? So there but that wasn't the deal that we made with the community is what I was what I'm trying to say. But but I'll do that in the motion just try and do it as an add on of the 10,000 versus it being the new the new number going forward.

Because we've

raised it more than

one We're

not looking for 10,000 this year. We're looking for it to be increased for 26, 27 for next year.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Understood. Okay.

Councilor, I think this is a year by year thing. So every year we can evaluate it.

Yeah. I think it's gone up a couple. I think we've increased it a couple times.

Not recently, the last three, this is the third year at the same rate. So I mean the only thing we changed was we did add the Lunar New Year. So that was the difference.

Other questions or comments here? No? Mr. Oak, I think the Lunar New Year event was wonderful. The first year we tried it was 800 and we were all wet from marching through the rain. And now 2,500 people, that was amazing. It was a lovely sunny day. And I think it really helps the community a great deal. Really wanna thank everybody for that.

I would agree 100%. I mean, if we want to have these big events in the city though, there is a cost, and we know that the cost was more than double that amount for the event years ago. And if we went back, I mean, that's probably fifteen years ago, it was more than double.

More than fifteen years ago, yeah.

Yeah, more than fifteen years ago. Was more than double the amount that they spent last year on the event. So it's an expensive proposition to do any of these events no matter what you're looking at. But if that's if this is what the council is interested in doing and what the community wants, you know, we're more than happy to help facilitate get these events going to the community. And like you said, the Lunar New Year was phenomenal this year.

Mean, I it grew exponentially and, you know, I thought it was very well done overall. And I don't know how much bigger it could get at the current location. We may have to look at moving the location maybe to the park or something. I don't know how that would work with an event afterward in February or March because we're of obligated to that Lunar New Year time frame.

I completely understand, and I have some ideas, but it it may not grow beyond that. Okay. Thank you. So I'd like to bring this back to counsel, and, does anyone wanna comment on this? Do we have any members of the public?

I'll turn to my Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on this item please use your raised hand icon. And seeing none that will end public comment.

Okay so bringing it back to council. I think council member Bailey you wanted to make a motion?

No actually it's it I think

what we said was this we're doing it for next year and we'll reevaluate so that's fine. The way it was is fine. Somebody else will make some motions.

Okay so we don't need a motion is that right?

No no I wasn't gonna make the modified motion is what I was saying. So let me make the motion.

Okay. That's what I thought you were going Okay. To

And I'm just gonna look to staff. Do we do additional 10 or we're gonna just say the $55,000 number? What is our motion? What should it be on? The additional 10 or 55? Okay. So in that case, make a motion that we allocate $55,000 for community events in cooperation with the chamber. Second.

For fiscal year twenty six twenty seven.

Correct.

Yeah. Okay. Motion by Bailey, seconded by Walker Griffin. Any discussion? Can we have a roll call vote please? Council member Grimsley.

Aye. Council member Buderai. Aye. Council member Bailey. Aye. Vice mayor Walker Griffin.

Aye.

And mayor Kelly.

Aye. Thank Thank you. So it passes five zero. So that's the end of our discussion and action items. So we now come to the end of public communications for anyone who's not commented. Do we have any public communicators?

If you'd like to make a general public comment at this time, please use your raised hand icon. And seeing none, that will end public comment. Thank you.

Okay, so we're bringing it back. So city manager, city attorney and council comments. So Mr. City Manager, do you have anything to report?

Yes, Madam Mayor. Just a couple of things. I've been informed that our new public works superintendent has started. That position has been filled, and he's now in house. So I think today was his first day? Monday. The other item I'd like to bring up is that the new search the search for the new permanent city manager is underway and on track. And we'll get updates from our HR director over time. But things are on track.

Okay, that's great. And for the new public works superintendent, in maybe a few weeks we could just come and introduce him here at council when he gets his feet wet. Okay, great. Miss city attorney, do you have anything to comment on?

Nothing for me tonight, madam mayor.

Okay, so bringing it back here to council. Anyone, council member Bailey?

Just report out, I attended the MCE meeting on the sixteenth of this month. Hercules got its actual allocation for voting shares. That's something that we do periodically as required by the the And it's a 2% of of the total vote for the for the which is about right in line with Lafayette and cities our size. Otherwise, we're just sort of having a large debate with the community about, know, we we currently have rates of clean energy 60% versus 90 plus percent. Some communities want more, but clean energy is very expensive.

So we're kinda having a debate of what is the middle ground there. Do we go for a higher number which makes rates go up or do we keep the numbers where we are so that we can keep rates. We're currently lower for our energy charge than PG and E is. I think that's a goal of many of our customers. So that's kind of a debate that's been kind of ongoing for the past month or so is how do we do that. So I'll provide more when I have it but that's it. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Council member Grimsley, do you have anything to report?

Yes, madam mayor. On the sixteenth, I attended the Hercules Pinal wastewater subcommittee meeting. It was a very, very short meeting. I think the shortest on record. And we discussed some recent upgrades changes to the wastewater center.

One of the things that's in terms of upgrades, some new machinery that's scheduled and one that was recently replaced in the facility itself. And also cleaning, which is also kind of an oxymoron, so like cleaning the wastewater facility. But there was recent cleaning for the wastewater plant. And I know when some of the committee members visited a few months ago, one of the things that was noted is how remarkably clean the facility was, which is great to know that we are cleaning the wastewater that the facility itself is also clean. Also, on the twenty fourth, I attended the Titan tributes at Hercules High School.

Hercules High School is making an effort to acknowledge students who are improving in their academic work as well as behavioral improvements. So, which I think is really great to sort of praise to success. So that's my report for Tono.

Okay, Council Member Bataray?

No, for denied Madam Mayor.

Vice Mayor?

Yes, so last week I attended the Cal Cities Leaders Summit. It was really great to see all the different colleagues from up and down the state engage with our legislative delegation from here in the Bay Area and even those who I normally interact with. With that, the Cal State Board of Directors met this past week and a little project that myself and my dear friend from River Bank, Rachel Hernandez have been spearheading the young electeds working group was passed. And so the the point of that group is to advocate for Californians 40 and below about issues that are directly impacting the states. Being that we're the ones who are inheriting a lot of these issues and are on the front line of dealing with them, rising child care costs, housing costs, name it.

We thought it would be great to come together and formalize and do that. And it was three long years of fighting, but we're here right now. So I'm really excited to announce that. Driving straight from Sacramento, I went to San Francisco and spoke at the Commonwealth Club, to a bunch of young folks about civic engagement. And we even did a mock advocacy day where they had to pitch an idea to me and I had to give them my feedback and I'll be honest with you, I was pretty tough on In addition to that, this Thursday I will be at our League of Cities meeting in Fremont. And in addition to that Friday, I will be at the Hanna Ranch. I forgot the name of the title, I apologize to the Hanna Ranch PTA event, but that event on Friday and the mayor's conference the week after. And that'll be all. Thank you madam mayor.

Thank you. And I also also at the Cal Cities City Leaders Summit, there was a conference about 400 people in Sacramento was very well attended. I went to a good report on water in the state of California and the state water project organized by Rudy Mendoza of Woodlake, a friend of mine in Tulare County. And that was very, very informative. And we had a meeting with one of our legislators and Alex Walker Griffin was along with me on that.

I also attended a webinar on Buffy Wick's AB nineteen oh three. This is a bill to address defect liability law in California. And there are a number of insurance people and developers there. If we can resolve this then it would make it easier for developers to build housing condos for people to purchase. And developers don't do that in California now for the first ten years because of the defect liability.

But if we could get this straight, I really wanna commend Buffy Wicks for taking this on. Also went to the Friends of the Library book sale, a great event at the Bayfront Chamber up at the Berkeley Country Club. I will be at a school event at the library on May 1, and Clean Up Day on Saturday, May 2, one of my very favorite events. My husband and I will be there. A lot of folks will come and bring your stuff.

Be prepared to take it out of your out of your vehicle and help us put it into the bins. Really, really appreciate that. And line up early because it can be a very, very popular event. I will also be at the mayor's conference next week. And then one other thing to counsel, which is that at the May 12 council meeting, think we're getting the first of our budget workshops.

So council and residents be prepared, take a look at the agendas and I know that the finance commission on tax day April 15 got a peek at that. So there are some documents online. So with that all said, do we have any future agenda items from council? No? Okay, so at 09:13 the meeting is adjourned. Thank you everyone.