City Council - Regular Meeting

City Council. Today is Tuesday, July 28th. It is now 744 PM and I am calling the meeting to order. Could we have the roll call please?

Good evening. Council member Grimsley. Present. Council member Butteray. Present. Council member Bailey. Present. Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin. Present. And Mayor Kelly. Present. Thank you. Thank you.

Vice Mayor, would 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.

Thank you. I do not have a moment of silence tonight, but we do have a presentation. And this is a presentation from Caltrans on the I-80 westbound Carquinez-Alzampa bridge deck replacement or rehabilitation. So is someone presenting this?

Yes, Madam Mayor.

Hello.

Hello. Can everyone hear me?

Yes, we can.

All right, good evening, and thanks for allowing Caltrans to come before you tonight. My name is Bart Ney. I am the Office Chief of Public Affairs for Caltrans here in the Bay Area. And my colleague, Ferdinand Cicerone, is the RE on the project. Ferdinand, could you unmute just to make sure that we can hear you in case a question comes up? I see him there. There you go. Perfect. Thanks, Ferdinand. You're welcome. Okay, so without further ado, Caltrans is here to speak with you tonight about an upcoming construction project that has a significant impact to regional traffic. We are going to be closing one of our iconic bridges, the Al Zampa Memorial Bridge, that handles westbound traffic on Interstate 80 to replace its deck. And if there's one thing to take away from this presentation, this operation is going to be happening in the weekend of August 21st, that's Friday night, all the way through August 24th. That's Monday morning. We'll be talking a little bit more about that. The Zampa Bridge, as you may know, is one of our iconic suspension bridges here in the Bay Area. At the time of its construction in 2003, it was the first suspension bridge built in the United States in over 30 years. And it was well celebrated, as you can see the fireworks in that opening slide that we had up just a moment. The location, I think probably everyone's familiar with, it's over the Carquina Strait between the counties of Solano and Contra Costa. We're going to be closing the freeway, Interstate 80, only westbound. Eastbound will remain open. From the I-780 interchange in Vallejo all the way to Pomona Street and Crock, mainly to do work on the span itself. Next slide. Okay, so why are we closing it? Very special bridge. It was the first suspension bridge to have a steel orthotropic box girder deck. And that's a structural thing. Just means it's cool. But we are going to be replacing the ride surface, the asphalt on the top of it. That was also unique. It's Trinidad Lake asphalt. It's long lasting and high quality. It is beyond its life. We were expecting to get 20 years out of it, got 23. So it's time to go ahead and replace that ride surface. Next slide. So that's what we're gonna do. That's the purpose of the project. We're gonna be removing the top layer of that in order to improve the ride quality and the structure of the bridge. There's no issue with the structural integrity of the bridge. It's strong, but that is a component of it, what we actually drive on. And it's just time to take that off and replace it with another one so we can get another 20 years of life out of the ride service. Next slide. So basically, the operation is to take off the first one-inch layer of asphalt concrete so that we can replace it. The bridge is a little more than a half a mile long, 3,500 feet, with a width of 67 feet. It's four lanes of traffic, as you probably know, along with two shoulders on either side. We're going to be pouring about 1,550 tons of asphalt over this weekend. so it's a lot of work that we got to get done in a short amount of time next slide okay so to be clear on the the closure august 21st is friday it's going to be closed for a total of 53 hours it will close at 10 p.m so you'll see our um our our contractor mobilizing probably around nine o'clock beginning to put the put the cones down and the structure will be completely closed, the freeway in that area, starting at 10 p.m. that night. It will remain closed throughout the weekend all the way until Monday morning at 3 a.m. There will be no access to the bridge at all. The bike and pedestrian path will be closed, and emergency vehicles also won't be able to go over the structure during this time. Next slide. So the need for the closure, why are we doing it now? Why are we doing it in the day? The asphalt needs a certain cure time and temperature. So we want to make sure that we're getting the best quality product and also the fastest curing time. So we want to be doing the pouring of the asphalt during the daytime hours where we have good temperatures. Now, pouring asphalt isn't the entire scope of the work. So the other hours, whether it be nighttime or daytime, we'll be doing prep work, we'll be getting staging together for the striping that has to happen. We'll also be doing other maintenance-related work on the bridge and over on the Vallejo side approaching the bridge. The other benefit that we have for doing this is safety. It is safer for our work crews to not be working next to live traffic. And with that many heavy equipment vehicles out there and construction workers, it's better, it's safer for the public as well. So by closing it, we can get it done faster, we can get it done safer, and we can get a better product. Next slide. Okay, so this is going to affect about a million vehicle trips. That's nothing to sneeze at. So how are we going to effectively manage the traffic? We are going to be using our regional changeable message signs to get information out there about where traffic can go. We're going to be posting our detours. We're going to have portable changeable message signs at strategic locations so that drivers have an opportunity to make the detours that they need. And there's going to be a significant outreach effort that has already begun. And in fact, this presentation is part of that outreach effort. Next slide. Okay, so we did something similar to this in 2023, but not exactly the same. So that we poured miles of reinforced concrete on the Contra Costa side of westbound 80 and eastbound. And during the times that we had those closures in the westbound direction, the bridge was closed as well. This is going to be a little different since it's just the bridge structure itself. On westbound 80, after you enter Crockett, the freeway will be open, but there won't be traffic coming off the bridge during this particular time. Back over on the Vallejo side, we're going to be closing all of the ramps that are just past the 780 interchange. We're going to be taking traffic off on 780. So go ahead and go to the next slide. So this is probably one of the best maps to see how we're going to be handling the local detour. So no access to the freeway westbound direction again eastbound completely open past 780. Then we'll take traffic across 780 over to the Benicia Martinez Bridge and then traffic coming back into Hercules Will be coming via Highway 4 or if you're going down into Crockett, there's the Cummings Skyway that they can also use for that local detour. Next slide. We will also be doing regional tours. So I'll talk a little bit about the communications campaign in a minute. But through that communications campaign, we're going to be letting drivers know that the bridge is going to be closed in this area. And to stay out of the potential traffic that could be queuing, you can be getting off all the way up in Fairfield and using the 680 freeway to come down. And if you're trying to get local again, you'll be using the four. You'll be using Cummings Skyline. And then even beyond that, up in the Sacramento area, we don't have a map for this, we'll be saying take Highway 5.

And again, Friday, August 21st, all the way to Monday, August 24th.

Now, this map gives you an idea of our changeable message sign. Say that three times fast. Placement. These are some of the key locations where we're going to be positioning portable changeable message signs to catch traffic that is going to be driving in this area to let them know that the freeway is closed. That's a one-to-one relationship with the traffic that's out there. With our outreach campaign, we hope to let people know to stay out of this area, to use regional detours in order to prevent congestion. And of course, All of those types of signs, they get lit two weeks before the event. We can't do it really much further than that where people start to lose connection with the messaging out there. But two weeks is the sweet spot we've determined for this type of thing. Next slide. Okay, so the outreach effort's gonna be all on the lady you see there. No, we'll be backing her up. That's Sabrina Martinez. She's the PIO in charge of this closure. She's our Solano County PIO. I'll be working with her closely and we'll talk a little bit more about the staffing in a minute. But the outreach effort looks like these city council meetings. So we've been going to the local cities, talking a little bit about what we're going to do so everybody knows that this is happening. They kind of get the background of what's going on. And we'll be talking more about where you can send folks for more information. We'll also be doing outreach to radio, TV stations, newspapers for earned media. We'll actually be doing interviews and talking a little bit about the bridge and why it's time to do this work. There will be a media buy associated with this that will put information out using geotargeting for vehicles that actually regularly travel this route. They'll be getting this message a full three weeks ahead of time so that they know that this is coming up. Of course, our website is going to be the hub where you can get a lot of this information. And then we'll do a social media blitz on our key platforms, which are Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube. So there will be YouTube content as well. There's a lot of history on Zampa, and we'll be sharing some of that with the public as we get ready to do this work. And then, of course, the classic stuff, press releases, traffic advisories, working with the local radio stations. That's the outreach effort. So the hotline and the webpage, you can pretty much just Google Carquinez Bridge Caltrans in order to get to our website. There's a specific hotline number that we're going to be publishing that people can call in with any questions or concerns. That number is 510-286-0319. Next slide. Okay, and the contacts. Our legislative affairs team is Jean Calderon and Eric Aguilar. They've been the ones setting up these types of meetings. I'm the public affairs chief, and I'll be working directly with the media on this and in the field. Denise Harding is your public information officer in Contra Costa County. And as I said before, Sabrina Martinez is leading this effort, the PIO for Solano County. Next slide.

Okay, well, thank you, Mr. Naive. Very much appreciate it, and I appreciate the outreach from Caltrans. I've gotten lots of emails about this. I saw a presentation last week at a transportation meeting, so I really appreciate it, and I think I'll just stay home that weekend. Any questions here from council? Yes, Council Member Grimsley.

Thank you for the presentation, Barbara. I appreciate you presenting at our city council meeting. and for all of the detailed information. And I imagine some of that information is already available either on social media, you mentioned on the website for Caltrans. We understand that westbound traffic will be halted from August 21st to the 24th. Signs will go up two weeks prior, I guess August 7th. And eastbound traffic will still be open But and there will be in a way for folks to get back, I presume.

Yes. So can you go back to the to the slide with the with the regional detours? Just a few slides up. It's what you might expect. One more. It's the one that's a little closer. Okay, so local detours. Yeah, so if you're in Hercules and you wanna get out and you're heading up to Sacramento, no issue, you're just gonna head you're gonna head eastbound. But when you come home, you're not gonna be able to take the Zampa Bridge as you normally would. So you'll be getting off. If you're all the way up in Sacramento, heck, you could use the five if you wanted to. Or you can come closer and use the 680 and take the 680 all the way down. But if you want to, you can come as far as the 780 freeway in Vallejo. That's where it's gonna be blocked off. You'll be able to use that to come all the way across through Benicia and over the Benicia Martinez Bridge. And then it's the routes you would normally take across the county for Cummings Skyway, those types of things.

Thank you very much. I think I'll stay home like Mayor Kelly. Okay.

Any other questions? Just a quick question. Yes, Council Member Bhattarai.

Thank you so much for the presentation. I have no question, but I just want to comment, especially when we're looking into this traffic impacted in the I have a poor, uh, I was wondering how that would, I hope it recorded within the, um. Our safety agencies, including the state and the local, you know, the. I believe, uh, I was just curious, you know, what is that? Of course, you know, if there is any available information and how that will be managed. Thank you.

So, I'll speak to the coordination. Really? There's there's there's 2 areas that that we work with with our construction team. One is the local public works departments, so making sure that they understand what's going to be available and what's not, and what may happen if we see congestion. We will see congestion on Highway 4 during this weekend, so it's something that we need to be prepared for. Then the emergency services like the Crockett-Volona Fire District, the Vallejo Fire Department, those are the emergency services we're primarily going to be working with during this weekend, along with the California Highway Patrol. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions here from Council? Council Member Bailey?

My question was just simply, do we have something like one of these graphics that we can post internally for our residents? And if not, can we get one? That's my question. And just to thank Caltrans for the presentation.

Absolutely. So we've got the contact information of the people that we worked with to set up this meeting. Fact sheets will be coming and you have this presentation. So any element of this presentation can be published for the public.

Yes, Council Member Mike Roberts, Interim Public Works Director. So we'll have staff standing by like all detours. You know, the traffic plan is adaptable. Obviously, you do have the ramp metering from westbound State Route 4 to southbound 80. So in prior discussions with Caltrans, that's going to be something they're watching to make sure we don't have traffic going onto local streets like Wallow for cut-through traffic. So they've assured us they'll be monitoring that and making adjustments as needed. Thank you.

Thank you, Director. I just meant like some Instagrammable type of a size thing that the city can post. And I think we did hear they can stay in contact, so that answered my question. Thank you, guys.

So we can have that on all of our social media from the city.

We appreciate that. There will also be a command center that will be men at the Carquinez Bridge Toll Plaza. That's where we'll be monitoring the region and making changes if we need to.

Yes, Mike. Lastly, one piece of information. The city's social media consultant, Tripeppy Smith, will be amplifying all of Caltrans' outreach.

Okay, that's good to know. Appreciate that. So any other questions or comments? Vice Mayor?

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you, Bart, for the presentation. Very informative. I will not be in town when this happens. I will be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, watching baseball. But, you know, if you are taking the scenic route to and from the North Bay, I encourage you to stop by some of the restaurants along the way. A lot of interesting history and a lot of cool restaurants, especially in the Manisha area. So thank you, Madam Mayor.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Nay, thank you very much. Really appreciate it.

All right, thanks for your help and support.

Okay, great. We're going to move on. Mr. City Manager, any additions or deletions to the agenda?

Madam Mayor, no additions or deletions to the agenda.

Okay, and then a question for the City Clerk. I have three public comment cards. Are these all for one of our agenda items? Yes, they're for an agenda item. Okay, all right. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak at public comment now on any item that is not on the agenda? And do you wanna see if anyone online wants to speak on any item not on the agenda?

I'm going to turn to my Zoom attendees. If you would like to make a public comment that is not on the agenda, or excuse me, a public comment on an item not on the agenda, please use your raised hand icon or dial star nine.

And seeing none, that will end public comment. Okay, thank you, so we move on. And our next item is a public hearing, Conditional Use Permit CUP26-01 and Design Review Permit DRP26014, Goodwill Retail Store with Drive Up Donation Operations. at 1551 Sycamore Avenue. So I was the person who suggested calling this up and I want to explain why before we go into the staff presentation and possibly the applicant presentation. I did watch this item at the Planning Commission meeting and I felt it was not adequately addressed. It was not addressed adequately by staff, or by the Goodwill, or by any of the planning commissioners. The reason that I say this is many of us who have lived here for a long time remember when there was a Goodwill store in Rodeo. The nation area behind there, it was disgusting, and it was horrible, and there were scavengers. So people in Hercules have a lot of fears about Goodwill. I have a concern about illegal dumping. I really don't want to see that happening here. So this is the reason that I have called this item up. So with that said, I would like to go ahead with the staff presentation.

Yes, Madam Mayor. I think our Vice Mayor would like to intercede at this point. Okay.

Yes. Madam Mayor, thank you. For the folks out there prior to this being called up and coming before us, I made a comment on social media. That can be alluded to how I would vote if this were to come before us. Didn't know that that was gonna actually happen, had no forethought prior to that. Again, we make these decisions on the spot, so you don't really know what to expect when you come before a council meeting. So didn't think that this would come before us. So with that, out of respect for the applicant and our community and the legislative process, I'm going to recuse myself for the duration of this period. So excuse me.

Okay, thank you. So with that said, then I'd like to go to the staff report.

Yes, Madam Mayor. We'll have our Community Development Director, Mr. Tim Rood, handle that.

Okay, great. Thank you. Mr. Rood?

Hello again, Mayor and Council. This item is a conditional use permit and design review permit for Goodwill of the San Francisco Bay to occupy the former Big Lot space at 1551 Sycamore Avenue. with a drive-up donation drop-off operation at the rear. The Planning Commission approved this project on July 6th and the Council called it up for review on July 14th, citing the concerns the Mayor stated regarding the drop-off donation area operation and controls. Staff continues to recommend approval. I'll walk through the project, the donation operation and controls that address the council's concerns, the sign area analysis, the required findings for the two permits, and the California Environmental Quality Act, and the recommended conditions of approval. Next, please. At a glance, this is a 31,631 square foot existing retail building zoned community commercial where retail larger than 2,000 square feet is conditionally permitted. uh... the project will provide about thirty one new jobs and will be open from nine a m to nine p m daily there is no expansion of the building area no changes to the site plan and no reduction in parking staff recommends the council uh... affirmed the planning commission's approval subject to conditions and find the project exempt from secret next please quickside shopping center has eight separate owners uh... this Project is on a 4.46 acre parcel inside Creekside Shopping Center, which is anchored by Home Depot and contains a mix of retail, food, and personal service uses. It's fully built out with parking and landscaping. This building was most recently a big lots. That entitlement and that conditional use permit expired, which is why a new use permit is required. Conditional use permits, actually all use permits, become invalid after six months of inactivity of the use of the space. So that process was carried out. Next, please. The proposal has two parts. Operationally, it's a general retail store selling new and donated goods, open nine to nine, about 31 employees, no alcohol beverages sold or served. Physically, the work is limited, the improvements. Interior tenant improvements, one new rear donation door with a landing and ramp, a trash compactor within one of the existing loading dock spaces, and updated signage. The key point for the compatibility findings is that there's no expansion of the building area, no change to the site plan, and no reduction in parking. Next, please. Specifically regarding the drive-up donations and controls, the one operating characteristic that differs from an ordinary retail tenant is the drive-up donation drop-off. It's at the rear of the building away from the retail frontage It's organized as a one-way loop where people making donations would stay in their car. The facility has an automatic sensor that detects when a car drives up. An attendant is present at all times from 9 to 9 when the store is open, and the attendant would unload the goods out of the customer's vehicle. Customers never leave the vehicle, and they would just continue on their way eastbound and around the center. The specific commitments that respond to the council's call-up concerns are listed on this slide and attended present during all hours of operation. Business hours only acceptance of goods with no overnight drop-offs, no outdoor storage, 24-7 video monitoring, plus a speaker after hours that could be used to alert anyone observed dumping that they are being recorded. tinted doors, screening the back of house, and queuing for four or more vehicles to make donations without spilling into parking or drive aisles. These are all carried into the enforceable conditions of approval. And like all use permits, if it were found that the applicant were not conforming to the required conditions of approval, there is a process to revoke a use permit in that situation.

Next, please.

On parking, the project doesn't make any changes to parking. It doesn't remove or reconfigure a single space and the use is comparable in type and intensity to the prior Big Lots retail use. So like for like retail in the same quantity. The existing parking supply for the center was approved by prior approvals, most recently the Americas Tire Project, which approved the construction of a tire store on what had been parking and the use by Home Depot of a certain number of parking spaces for outdoor storage. The 2007 citywide study found peak occupancy at this center to only be about 34%, and staff observations confirmed that utilization generally stays well below capacity. So there's no need for a new parking exception since the parking supply is unchanged. Next, please. The sign program replaces the primary facade sign face on the building, as well as the faces in the three existing freestanding sign structures, the two monument signs at the vehicular centers to the entry, and the large pylon sign that's visible from the freeway. So just like-for-like replacement of where the Big Lots sign used to be with the new Goodwill sign. It also includes a small west entrance directional sign as you drive in to locate the direct people making donations directly to the rear of the building, as well as some temporary banners that would be limited per the code requirements and therefore actually do not require permits. Those would be sort of grand opening kind of temporary banners. The freestanding work on the signs is just, again, new faces in existing installations. No new structures, no added height or area. The materials for the signs are high quality and consistent, halo-lit brushed aluminum letters on deep brown panels compatible with the center's design. Next, please. This is the replacement face for the primary facade sign on the south elevation, a little over 154 square feet, halo lit reversed pan channel aluminum letters on a deep brown background panel. Next please. Sign B is a new directional wall sign on the south elevation directing donors around to the rear drop off. It's about 34 square feet with matching materials to sign A. Sign C sits above the new rear donation door and identifies the drop-off entrance for arriving donors. It's about 28 square feet. And then the existing freeway pylon and monument signs would receive new faces. Next, please. The entrance sign sits within the median of the shopping center's west entrance drive and it would guide donors toward the rear drop off. It's approximately four square feet and complies with the sign code requirements for directional signs. Next please. So the only technical item on the signs is the sign area that's allowed under the code. So this slide presents that analysis. The code allows one square foot of signage per lineal foot of storefront. The store on the parking lot facade has about 191.5 square feet of allowed signage. The rear elevation is also effectively acting as a customer serving storefront because it's the donation entrance. So when you count the south frontage plus the roughly 35 feet of customer serving rear area, that yields about 226 square feet of sign allowance, which is greater than the proposed sign installation of 216.09 square feet. Each elevation also independently conforms to its own frontage-based analysis. This shows the new rear donation door and the donation drop-off area itself with sign C located above the door and the paved and striped customer queuing area at grade. The new trash compactor is installed within one bay of the existing loading dock at the rear of the building, partially screened by the existing wall and further screened whenever a delivery trailer is parked in the adjacent bay. The rear elevation has served this function since the center's original development. Next, please. So there are two sets of required findings. For the conditional use permit, the five findings are listed in section 1350.300 of the zoning code. And they include consistency with the general plan, the community commercial designation, conformance with the purposes of the community commercial district and zoning, compatibility in design, scale, and operating character, adequate access and utilities, and no significant environmental impacts. Then the five design review findings under 1342.500 include the public health, safety and welfare, sound site design, circulation and access, quality architecture, materials and screening, landscaping consistent with design standards and complying with all provisions of the design review chapter. Staff's analysis concludes that all 10 findings can be made and the supporting language is in the staff report and resolution. Regarding California Environmental Quality Act, our good friend CEQA, this project is categorically exempt under class one existing facilities and government code section or CEQA guidelines section 15301. It's a change of occupancy in an existing building with only minor alterations, interior work, one new door, a compactor pad and signage and negligible expansion of use consistent with the prior retail tenancy. There are no unusual circumstances and none of the exceptions in section 15300.2 apply, so a class one exemption is appropriate. Next please. The operational commitments are carried into enforceable conditions of approval for the permits, the nine to nine hours, attended donations with no unsupervised bins and prompt cleanup no outdoor storage signage per the approved program and master sign program for the center, a screen didn't maintain compactor and security cameras and loudspeaker to discourage off-hours donation, as well as a requirement that any materials left after hours be picked up upon the store's opening the next day. So these are the highlights and the full set of conditions of approval including the building, fire, and public works conditions is included as exhibit A. In summary, staff is recommending two actions. First, find that the project is categorically exempt from CEQA under Class 1. And second, affirm the Planning Commission's approval and adopt the resolution approving the CUP and design review permit subject to the conditions of approval. And I believe the applicant would also like to make a short presentation now.

Thank you. Yes, can we have the applicant come up here? Just please identify yourselves. Thank you.

Hi, good evening. I'm Kim Ryder on behalf of Goodwill. Thank you for having us tonight. I work on the real estate efforts. I also have our CEO here who's going to speak shortly, who I know wants to address some of the specific issues and concerns as well as some of what we've done over the last 18 months to address some of those things after the merger and we've kind of taken over operations in this area we also have some supplemental materials that we'll review as we kind of go through the the powerpoint here that were available to you and then there's some on the table here for any audience members that would like them as well tim

Thank you. Mayor, Council, thank you for your time tonight. I want to go through just a brief history of Goodwill, a brief history of the Bay Area and Goodwill's existence here, and a little bit about me and kind of my history in the Goodwill movement. First, I'm the CEO of Goodwill of San Francisco Bay, but we are under the parent company of Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona. That Goodwill is the largest in the world, and we operate markets across the country. We also have a subsidiary called Thrive Real Estate Group. That is who Kim directly works for as the president of that division. And I also serve on the Goodwill Industries International Board of Directors. So I think probably the best way to start this out is, Mayor, your concerns are valid and completely. But I'd love to give you some history about why it was that way and what we're trying to do today to make sure those things don't happen again. So in summer of 2024, we were approached by another Goodwill. And if you don't know the structure of Goodwills, we're very much like franchises. All the good things about... all of the good things about franchises uh... and all the bad things in the way that goodwill's operated were a hundred and twenty five-year-old brand and we are what's called a federated model what that means is you have a national brand you do not have top-down command and control so each market can look and feel totally different This market was Goodwill of San Francisco. It was Goodwill of Oakland, the East Bay. They merged at one point to become Goodwill of the San Francisco Bay. That Goodwill, unfortunately, was run very poorly. I can tell you our international office reached out to the operator of that operation multiple times over a 20-year period, basically just saying, please, you've got to get your act together. There is no top-down command and control, so that's all left to the local operator. I have been doing this business for almost four decades. When I got here, I was the first one on the ground, and the conditions of the market shocked me. I was here in the late 90s with a competitor. I started out in the business with a for-profit thrift competitor, and I hadn't seen anything that looked like this since the 90s. And that's part of the problem. The facilities that are here in most of the Bay Area today were facilities where leases were signed 20 and 30 years ago when the stores were five and 6,000 square feet. Modern thrift and the science, because there is a science to the way that thrift is done, doesn't look and feel like that any longer for exactly the reasons that you talked about. If a facility is undersized, The community doesn't care. They're very generous, and they bring us lots of great stuff that we're thankful for. But if the facility is undersized, you can't bring all of that stuff inside. Right now, today, the small facilities we still have here, we're having to service those facilities three times a day to remove all the donations and the excess of the things that you've talked about. We're able to do that short term. The answer for us long term is to replace all those small stores with large superstores. We've opened two of them so far, one in Fairfield, one of them in Pittsburgh, and surprisingly, both of those have had the largest grand openings of any Goodwill anywhere across the country in our 125 year history. So the community wants a great shopping experience. They want a great donating experience, and they expect us to be a great neighbor and keep the area clean. That's why we do some of the things that are very unique in the thrift business. Every site is monitored live 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that if anything is dropped off, we know it. We can clean it up so you don't have the issues of people rummaging through the stuff. It's as big of an issue for us as it is for any of you. because that is revenue for us. That's what funds our mission is the ability to have that merchandise and to be able to sell it effectively in the stores. Our plan is underway. You will see every small store in the Bay Area. And I've been dinged in the press out here multiple times for saying this. We're going to close every one of those small stores. San Francisco, the Bay Area, deserves a much better thrift experience than what Goodwill has given them in its history here. We are able to do that, but we're only able to do that if we can relocate into spaces that are operationally effective for us. This site, I drove this site probably September of 24, It is perfect. And just to give you some history, I've opened up 300 of these stores across the country over four decades. The size matters. 25,000 square feet and up is what allows you to run an efficient store where you do not have the issues that you've talked about. So you're completely valid in what was here before. I share your opinion on that. And what we're trying to do with stores like this is change that narrative. Because the brand out here, when we do national brand studies, The brand of goodwill here is in the very bottom of all goodwills around the country, and it is because of the poor business operations. That is literally what ended the operations of the goodwill out here. They were 37 days away from closing their doors forever. Bankruptcy, the inability to operate, no mission services, nothing. And that was all due to the problems that you talked about. These stores, they are the answer. We do have a mechanism for this. We've opened them all over the country and in markets where we've opened them. They are very effective, but we do need time to build that up. This will be the third store here, and we can absolutely guarantee you, based on experience, that you will not have those issues that you've experienced in the past. So Kim's gonna get into a full presentation on what the store will look like, feel like. I'll come back, talk a little bit about our mission and what we do with all the money that's generated from the donations that you give us, and then we'll answer any questions you may have. Thank you for the time.

Thank you. Okay, this slide really is just going into just some of the demographic information and sometimes misnomers about thrift and the idea that it's become much more trendy, much more popular. Thrift is very sort of acceptable now, very mainstream, and people aren't necessarily embarrassed to say that they bought something used. It's a little bit of a badge of honor these days. You can go to the next slide. Here's some of our kind of good neighbor policies that we've implemented in this market. And then a few photos that you'll see in a little bit more detail later. But on the left side here is our Fairfield store that Tim referenced that we opened probably about three months ago now. And then on the right side is our Pittsburgh store that recently opened as well. You can see that we receive new items every day, of course, through our generous donors. And then we put out about 7,000 new items to our sales floor every day. and those are items for sale to the public. So that's why we have a lot of repeat shoppers. We have very generous donors, and we have to get through and cycle through those items really quickly. Some people come to our stores every day or multiple times a day because we're putting out so much new product. In terms of donation location management, we'll show you some of that a little bit later as well, and I have some photos here of what that process looks like. But per the staff report, we're only accepting donations during operating hours, and we intend to have any product dropped off overnight, cleaned up within, well, not an hour of store opening, but an hour prior to store opening. Any illegal dumping, we work very closely with neighborhood services, code enforcement, the police department. We want to be good neighbors as well, and we don't want a bunch of items left outside. The area, as you've heard, has cameras. It's well-lit. It's monitored 24-7, and I'll show you what some of that monitoring looks like here briefly. But typically, when we're in a center and you have that level of attention to detail being paid, we often... End up enhancing the center because we're being very mindful of the dumping whether it had any association with Goodwill or not We want to really just be very high quality as an operator. You know the next slide So here's just kind of a peek at what the new Goodwill experience looks like. I think it's probably very different than the Rodeo location that has been referenced. That closed before we merged, I think it was two or three years ago. So I'm not too sure what the inside looked like, but I know the outside did not necessarily look like what we are rolling out here as our prototypical store. But bright, clean, well lit, very well organized. If you haven't seen our two new locations, everything is departmentalized, colorized, sized. It's a very pleasant, easy shopping experience. There's scent in the stores, there's pleasant music in the stores, so that you really want to be there as a shopper, a donor, and a team member. So again, to highlight some of our donation processes, they're accepted 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. If you want to reference here really quick, this sheet that was passed out, there were some questions about what the drop-off will look like in signage. So you saw some of the signage, and not to be repetitive, but I really want to focus on the striping here. So it's really clear, not only at the front, because it's signed in the front where to go for a drop off. But once you start circling the center, there's wayfinder signage to tell people where to go. And then the striping that you see on the asphalt here as an example makes it further clear of where to stay, where to queue. There's signage on the building indicating people can stay in their cars if they choose. They don't even need to get out and unload if they don't want to. We bring a bin out, unload it into the bin, it goes directly inside. Our attendants have 30 seconds to service a vehicle, so the idea is that they're moving through quickly, there doesn't become a level of impatience, and we can get people on their way. Go ahead. This highlights some of the signage. This will be what the bi-parting doors look like. So there's a sensor on top of the door for people to go in and out so that they're closed when people are not dropping off. That's the same signage that we'll put on the new doors. So you can't see in and see the product that's being stored back there, but team members can see out. There's also a sensor on the building so that we know it dings inside so our attendants know somebody's out there waiting. Take the bin outside and unload the vehicle. This is a brief little video. Hopefully it works to show you what exactly the donation process looks like. So you can have a little bit of a live view here. Or I should say a prerecorded view. OK, we don't have any video. It sounds like it's not going to work. You never know with videos and PowerPoints. Happy to share it, though, if anybody is interested in that process. But we do also have the two new stores. So we're happy to walk you through those processes, give you kind of a behind-the-scenes tour if you want to see that where customers normally wouldn't have access to those spaces. And you can see the donation kind of receiving experience yourselves and experience it. Here's our store in Fairfield, so you can see what the signage looks like on the kind of brown storefront that was mentioned, what our drop-off area looks like and the signage on there, and then just kind of the vestibule, again, demonstrating clean, bright, tidy. We have shopping carts for customers. We have a cart containment system, so the carts cannot leave the store and become a nuisance in the parking lot. So the idea is that we're keeping everything inside and contained, and we look like a nice, orderly retailer. Same thing in Pittsburgh. So this is our new store there. Without being too repetitive, you can kind of see the inside of them. The idea is that the stores on the outside, the front of them might look a little bit different as we're going into second generation spaces. But the inside of the store is really the same experience everywhere. So you would know exactly where the women's department is, where the toys are, where the children's department is. Kind of like when you go to Walmart or TJ Maxx, it's sort of all laid out the same. You know exactly where you're going. That's the idea and the experience that we want people to have. I'm going to let Tim talk about the mission, but really quick, anything else that I want to show you in the package here? This top photo, there was a question about cameras and that these are monitored by a live person 24 hours a day. So this is really just one snapshot. This is kind of a... Almost circular room, if you can imagine cameras surrounding all of the walls. There's multiple people, you can just see one in this photo, but that are physically sitting there 24 hours a day and their job is to watch cameras and see what's happening at stores. And if there's an untidy donation area or we see a mess outside or there's a report of a mess outside, we can immediately pull it up and address it and reach out to our operations team to get on it to figure out what's going on at that particular location. Talked about the striping, so you saw that. And then I just wanted to point out, we have a couple of letters of recommendation from our landlords and ownership of the two locations we just opened. One of them is a bit of a newer relationship with our newer leadership, but Goodwill has been in their center for about 20 years and it's been a very positive experience. And then the other landlord of the Fairfield location has been someone we've had a 25 plus year working relationship with. open multiple locations with this individual and they're very, they'll purchase centers just to put Goodwill in there because they find Goodwill to be such an attractive tenant and someone that they really enjoy working with and we have a clean operation. So those are some of the supplemental materials. Tim, do you want to talk about mission?

Yes.

As I said earlier, I'm sorry.

As I said earlier, Probably one of the toughest things about Goodwill is there's no top down command and control. And that means each market is its really own market. Where that comes into a real positive for us is mission is all local. So what we do in every community that we're in, we look at a needs assessment to determine what services we should offer in a community. They had done a community needs assessment here about 10 years ago that heavily focused on reentry. That is still an absolute need for the Bay Area. But as we grow the stores here, the intent is to operate some of the things that we do around the country we think are best in class. primarily around education and career services for a couple of very specialized populations. One of those populations are adults without a high school education. If you don't realize this, many states have restrictions that once you hit 22 years old, you can never go back and get a diploma again. And what that means to that individual is over their work life, from a GED to a diploma, they earn $600,000 less over their work life. We have these schools in operation around the country. This is absolutely a target for this market once we can get up and established. Also, a concept called micro schools. Have any of you ever heard of those before? They're for the most at-risk populations of kids, K through 12. And they've been proven out. The Aspen Institute did a great study on this. We kind of took their lead and started operating these where it's 12 students to one teacher, usually partnered with another not-for-profit. These are for kids that are in distress, whether it's abuse, whether it's life choices, whether it's just extreme poverty. They can come in and get the absolute attention they deserve because of the class size. What we've been able to prove out is that their reading and math scores and English scores go up one full grade point average above normal state standards. In addition to that, veteran services. Right now, when you look at the homeless population growing around the country, and the Bay Area is no exception to this, the two fastest growing segments are kids coming out of the foster care system, part of the reason we have the education systems that we do, and returning veterans. In addition to returning veterans have a massively high suicide rate, 22 veterans a day, they also have a tendency to end up homeless. if they can't get the help and the reentry opportunities that they deserve. So we believe that in addition to the reentry services that we offer, the ESL services that we currently offer, the career trainings that we currently offer, we absolutely see education for those folks that don't have a high school diploma. We see the micro schools and we see veteran services as something that we need to bring to the Bay Area based on the needs assessment we did when we first got on the ground here. All of that is funded by donations from you. We're a very different model in a not-for-profit world. We don't take a lot of outside funding. Our grant funding, from whether it's federal, state, philanthropy, is about 2%. All of the rest of the services are provided from your donations that we sell through the stores that allow us to run these programs. It doesn't mean that we don't get money, but the money we do get, those programs do not break even and they would not survive if there wasn't a supplement from the retail stores. That is part of the reason that this organization previous to us taking over didn't survive. They were trying to take outside funding, not realizing that there was a 25% shortfall. And so every year there was a pretty massive loss that they sold properties to mitigate. took out loans to mitigate, and eventually that is not a business operation. So these stores are critical to us being able to provide mission services throughout the community, and they're also critical to us being able to serve the populations in ways that you don't currently have in the Bay Area. I would just like to say, as Kim talked about this, I told you about all the stores I've opened. I've also been in front of lots of city councils, lots of boards of adjustment. And what you see in place are because of the experiences we've had in various places around the country, learning exactly what we need to do to be good neighbors. So this model does work. It works in most places that it can be implemented around the country. But I will tell you where it works the best are large metropolitan areas like the Bay Area. Even though there are suburbs, it's still a larger metropolitan, which allows us, the economies of scale, to have large transportation infrastructure, larger format stores, a larger workforce to pull from. And so we are very confident that we can provide a great product here handle the problems that you're talking about you've experienced in the past and be able to reinvest those dollars into very meaningful mission services so thank you again

Thank you very much, and I appreciate all of that. It's something that I have not known before. Since you're standing up here, I want to see if there are any questions here before I open the public hearing. Yes, Council Member Bailey.

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. I wanted to just briefly, so the mayor raised the call, I actually did the call, and I wanted to explain, first of all, thank the Planning Commission.

I think they worked very hard.

They are limited in what they can and can't do at the Planning Commission, but I think that they did their best. I watched a meeting as well to try and communicate that to the public. The council has a little bit more authority, but that's how this got here. We do have... Sorry, my notes got moved. We do have a economic development committee in town, so this is not so much to get, well, just yet, I'll get to you. So for residents who have asked the question of how do we choose this, we don't choose who the landlord rents to, but we do have an economic development committee where we look at what our needs are. Pretty much every category is in need for Hercules, right? Because we have so few retail, everything except for maybe a small restaurant is on that list. The city did work with and we tried to attract lots of businesses to Hercules to use up our spaces. Goodwill was the partner that the particular landlord chose for this particular space. But we don't ignore that. Again, we have a committee, myself and Council Member Grimsley, both sit on that committee and we do meet quarterly or so to look at this and figure out what our needs are. So we do do that, we do hear the public's comments on that. To bring it back to Goodwill, residents had concerns about this store and how it would work and drop-offs, and I do have some drop-off concerns. I did meet with the applicant to go to the store. I think that they will be a good partner for the city. I think that my drop-off concern goes to the front of the store, just because people may not be able to find the back, but I'll let you guys address that. Some questions that we discussed when we were walking through, I'd love you to answer here, is... The drop-off time, how quickly do we take something from the back of someone's car?

It is required to be out in 10 seconds. Does that happen? No, but that is the requirement. But it's usually a very quick turnaround. It also does depend on if there's four cars in the queue lane, then obviously you're waiting there for a little bit until you get there. But the requirement inside the store is 10 seconds from the time the bell rings inside. And that includes anybody in the building. If I'm there and I'm available to take a donation, my job is to go take that donation. So it should be a 10-second rule.

I know the answer to this, but do I hand it off to someone or do they come open the trunk and they come take the stuff out?

Can do anything you want. So one of the things we have to do in this market is train the donors that they don't have to unload their vehicles. Right now they're used to that, so they get out, they open it, and they start laying stuff on the ground. That's where part of your concern comes in. That is not what we want. We want to go out. We want to remove the product out of your trunk. We have large rolling bins that we put the product into, and it goes inside immediately.

And then after hours, there's this video system. So if I leave items out there, right, just trying to help, just trying to do the right thing, I'm gonna donate some items and it's after hours, it's 9.15, store's closed, what happens with that bag?

The first thing is the speaker system that is on the back of the stores, it's designed for somebody monitoring it to address that donor and say our operating hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., please bring your donation back then. If they don't, then we will dispatch a truck and have those items picked up. Once we can get this market up and fully established, and by the way, the market is not profitable yet. That includes us putting $20 million into the market and paying off $29 million in debt last year. That's how far in the hole they were. Once it's up and stable, you'll have a fleet of trucks that runs 24-7, 363 days a year. We don't have that right now, so it's a specialized pickup at this point.

Okay, and then things happen. We have holidays, so if your store is, how often are you closed?

We are only closed twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So any other time?

There will be people on staff. And something that's different about our model of retail is in a traditional retail store, about 85% of your staff is focused towards the front end. 85% of our staff is focused towards the back end to take those donations, produce those items, and put them out on the sales floor. So it's lopsided. That's what gives us the amount of humans that are able to handle that donation volume. Because in order for that store to put out 7,000 items a day, It will need 14000 items a day donated to it. The rest of it has to be taken from that site to our warehouse facility here to be recycled. So it's a pretty mass production process.

I drop off some items. How long does it take you to sell, generally speaking, the item that I drop off?

The good items? Yes. They sell within the first 72 hours. The average items sell in about two weeks. Nothing stays on the sales floor for longer than five weeks. It goes through a clearance mechanism, and anything that doesn't sell comes back, and we go through a whole recycling process on it. We actually have facilities not here. They sit in Arizona. We have a 500,000 square foot recycling facility where we do what's called grading, which is an AI-assisted conveyor belt system where we grade the product, meaning we sort it by category. Those items have been broken up and they're moved to markets around the world or they're put into some kind of remanufacturing process. We also do that. We have the world's first micro factory for plastics. It's full circularity. At some point, and the staff will get mad at me for saying this, but at some point, we'd love to be able to say to the community, bring us everything, including your recyclables, because there are markets for those things, and we can currently take plastic bottles, plastic bags, McDonald Land toys, and put those things through a recycling process where it's fully cleaned, fully remanufactured, and there's zero waste to it.

Thank you. And then just for the community, just so we know, I don't know anything about Goodwill or thrift stores, but most of the neighborhoods around us have them. I spoke with the mayor of Pittsburgh about their store. They like their partner in this. I'll also talk to Councilmember Belitz from Danville. It's a different brand of thrift store. When I was speaking to him, we were at a meeting. He had on a shirt that he got from the thrift store, and his wife works at the thrift store. volunteering, so it's an important part of that. I talked to Mayor Nakamura over in Concord. Same positive feedback. Councilmember Sakats over in Pleasant Hill, they have two thrift stores that are across the street from each other. They immediately abut a neighborhood The feedback that I have received, because I don't want the public to think I'm trying to sell something, is sometimes people, the residents, do leave items on the ground, and then someone may sift through them. All of the cities said if that ever happens, Public Works reaches out to the store, and they work that out. So I'm hoping that we'll have that same type of response. Here, understanding that you only close two days a year.

You can call me personally.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Those are the questions I have for now, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Any other questions here? Council Member Grimsley?

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you both for being here for a council meeting. So I'm a thrift shop person. I have two young adult children who like to shop. They're indiscriminate. But I've spent some time recently on our social media platforms, and there are a lot of Hercules residents commenting and sharing their thoughts about Goodwill. coming to Hercules. And there are concerns. And to have a large umbrella summary over those concerns are why Goodwill and what can Goodwill do for Hercules. So sort of the overarching concerns. In addition to things like illegal dumping and the perception that a lot of people have about Goodwill, and a lot of it, quite frankly, based on that Rodeo site, because that's what we in this community knew as Goodwill. Because of my kids, I've been able to see Goodwill stores in lots of other cities, including in Arizona. We were in Arizona last year. So I saw the Goodwill store in Flagstaff, and I saw the one in Phoenix. But... So the... why goodwill in this community and what can goodwill do for hercules specifically i heard a lot of you say a lot of great things about um what you can do for the community at large But for the Hercules community specifically, would any of your hiring come from Hercules residents? Everybody.

Everybody except the management staff will probably have to bring in from someone else, somewhere else that's trained already. But we hire people usually within a five mile radius of the store. And I would say that what you think about thrift, Thrift is retail. And you may not know this, but it's the fastest growing segment of retail and has been since about 2017. And it's projected to stay that way for the next 20 years because the needs of the shopper has changed. So we're going to offer great values. We're going to offer a clean environment for people to shop in, a safe environment. When Kim talked about little things we do in the store, so the stores have a custom scent. Thrift stores, if you don't take care of them, don't smell very good. Music inside the stores is also what's called day parted. So there's a psychological effect to making people excited about shopping in a Goodwill store. The thing that we offer that most retailers don't is the donation aspect of it and the sustainability and our ability to take those items from you that you no longer want. An interesting statistic and two things that are very important for California is you have, right now, 85% of all usable clothing still goes in landfill. That's California and that's across the country. That's about to change. You have a state law that's been put in place here called SB 707, which no longer allows clothing to be thrown in landfill. You are going to have masses of donations of clothing coming into places that can't handle them unless we retrofit sites. And that's not just us, that's every thrift operator in order to handle those things. So there's going to be a lot more donations coming in. That's something a traditional retail store can't offer. And the biggest thing is we don't have shareholders. We're a 501 not for profit. People are paid salaries, but they do not own any shares in the organization. And the dollars that come back are designed to go into mission services. If there's something special in Hercules that you think is a need, we would love to talk about that. We just wait for communities to reach out to us because we do look at the broader community. But we have people on the ground. We have somebody here that's been in the business for 10 years. We brought here specifically to the Bay Area to look at local needs and to help communities figure out how Goodwill can work with you. And then we also have a retail vice president here locally, specifically to address the operational concerns that we knew were going to happen.

Thank you for that. I think one of the, if I may, Madam Mayor, one of the additional concerns is we are a relatively small sort of up and coming community. This historically has been a rather quiet quote unquote bedroom community and now we are growing and we have different types of housing. We have different, we're growing in terms of our business community and not as fast as most of us would like. And I think the perception that most people have is that if we bring in a store like Goodwill, then it won't attract some other kinds of business in that location. Can you talk about where you've gone in other cities and the other types of businesses that might surround that?

Yeah, certainly. So again, you're correct in the way this market was operated. I wouldn't have wanted co-tenant with a Goodwill store either. But I can tell you in markets where we've done this, we're a very desirable tenant. And don't forget, if you don't know, Home Depot is the anchor in that center. They control what happens on that center. Even the ownership can't control what happens to that center. Home Depot is one of the most difficult operators in the country to get a waiver from for thrift stores to go in. If you don't know, Walmarts, Ross, Home Depots all have restrictions against thrift stores. We have had to work for the better part of a decade to show them that we were good operators in order for them to release those waivers. They only release it for certain Goodwills across the country. We are one of them. And so you will see businesses like Home Depot. You'll see Ross. You'll see TJ Maxx. You'll see local restaurants. You'll see chain restaurants. When the market looks and feels the way it should, we should have no more. effect than any other retailer in that center. Because what we try to do is we try to emulate their best practices, and then we bring the uniqueness of Thrift and our mission services side to it. So the concern is valid, and again, I've dealt with this all over the country. Once you can start opening a good product, you become a very desirable tenant, not just for landlords, but also for co-tenancy.

Thank you for entertaining my questions and comments.

Yes, Council Member Batarai.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. And I really admire for the sustainability cause that you guys are working. I cannot thank you enough for that. My concern, especially like my fellow council member shared and a lot of my community members shared that my concern more is into the opportunity cost of the commercial real estate and the sales tax. I think that is one thing that probably is the nature of the business that we are trying to consider here. But my ask to the goodwill here is, since this is our community donation, how we can assure and make sure that the donation remains primarily in Hercules as a part of the community give back or whatnot. I don't know what could be the good mechanics here, but the community give back type of the mechanics that we can establish so that I think that is where us, whatever donation is generated from Hercules, maybe get benefited to our own community. Can you please elaborate on that part?

Yeah, absolutely. So as I said earlier, each store requires about 14,000 items a day to be donated to it. We look specifically at demographics, but we look at two categories of demographics, and they're different. So we look at a shopper demographic to identify if a retail site is the right type of traffic for us to maximize revenues, but we also look at the surrounding area to understand if there's a donor profile that fits. This site fits both of those. What that means is that we've established that that store can handle a donation load coming from that community without too much excess. Now, in the early stages, it takes about a three-year window before a store matures. If it gets to the point that we are getting too many donations, we could do a couple of things. We can look at a store in the surrounding areas where those donations can be moved to if there's too many of them because you don't want messes, and that's what too many donations means. But in the most case, when a store matures to a three year level, we can tell what the trajectory for the next seven years. So the 10 year life is going to look like we have very few stores that are self-sufficient. And what you'll see is like one of the things that we're working on in the Bay Area. And this is not a promise. This is something we're working on is a partnership with Uber to be able to come to your house. with either a driver or an autonomous vehicle where you can load donations into it to make it easier for you. When that happens, they can either go to the local store or we can direct it somewhere else. So if there is too much that comes in, we cure that problem. But in most cases, finding self-sufficient stores is very difficult. We normally have to move product all around the country in order to make sure that our stores are full and not overfull. You mentioned competitors. When you look at competitors, there are a number of large-scale for-profit competitors that don't collect any donations locally. They ship them from markets all over the country to supply their stores, and that's something we just don't want to do. As a matter of fact, in this community, we've had so many donations, we've had to move them around the country in order to maximize the value of those donations. Once we have our store count to a critical level, this should be a very self-sufficient market, which means not too little and not too much.

Thank you so much for the clarification. I have one more follow-up question on this. You know, the first quarter period, you know, the sales tax revenue, since the trip retail is more in a trend, and what is the difference, you know, do you have any numbers that, you know, the regular retail sales tax revenue? Your sales tax revenue, so the... First quarter period sales tax revenue difference.

I do not know what your sales tax percentage is here, but the store in its first three-year term will do about $3 million a year. When it gets to maturity, it's about $7 million a year. What I would encourage you to think about though is, and again, we're very early in this process here. What we will normally do after about a five-year period is we do economic impact studies. And to give you an example, in Arizona, which is our home base, we have 111 stores across the state. That employs about 6,000 people, and it serves about 40,000 people annually with 500,000 free services. When the economic impact study was done, and you've all seen those before, and you put the multiplier effect into those communities, it's a $2.7 billion economic impact to the Arizona community from the stores that we operate. So it doesn't do the tax revenue the way you would think of a Ross or a Walmart, but we give back through our mission services and our ability to touch so many people in other ways that far exceed tax revenue.

May I ask one more follow-up question? What is your sales projection for the next three to five years, particularly from the restore?

Sales projections? I would assume that by year five, if we do everything right, it'll be about $4 million annually. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, and I appreciate your admitting that the previous store, then Rodeo, was a disaster. All the stores here were a disaster. And addressing all of our concerns, and this is educational for us here. It's also educational, I think, for the community. So a couple of quick receipts. When someone comes to make a donation, can they get a receipt for the donated item, or will you have a QR code?

We can do both. Most people prefer a paper receipt, and so we have paper receipts available. We do have the ability for a QR code.

Okay, and then are the cameras high enough off the wall so somebody can't take a can of paint and spray them black?

They're usually about 15 to 20 feet up in the air.

Wonderful. The trash compactors, can anybody get into those bins, or are they locked?

They're locked and tagged out every night whenever we close, and during the day they're locked but not tagged out.

Okay. And one last point. So this weekend, I drove out to the Pittsburgh store and went around it. And I have to say, it looked very good. Thank you. Now, I know it's new. It just opened up. I hope it stays that way. But it was very, the directions were very clear. The markings on the ground were clear. So I knew where to go for the donation area. I stopped to take a picture. And within 30 seconds, somebody was opening the door, coming to get my donation. Unfortunately, I did not have any.

They were late.

Okay. And one thing I noticed at the Pittsburgh store, in addition, is you have this big sign that says warning. And so I'd like to have one of those on the side too, just to let people know.

You will have the exact. So one of the things we do, the professionalism is everything is cookie cutter. When you walk into one of our stores, any of them that we operate around the country, they look and feel the same way. Square footage may be a little different, but all signage is standardized, all messaging is standardized, operational procedures are standardized. And again, that's the tough part about the Goodwill Network, because unless the local operators take that on themselves, you don't see that across the country. But in all of the operations that we have, everything is standardized.

I appreciate that. And so what I saw in Pittsburgh looks exactly like what you're showing here. And I like the sliding doors, the fact that the workers can see outside what's going on. So greatly, greatly appreciate that. And then I just have one suggestion for you. And that is in order to ingratiate yourself with the community, you know, we do have some events here and there along with a chamber. If you could ever make a donation, have a booth or something like that.

So Cassie Lilly is the lady that runs this market for us from a retail perspective. We are happy to participate and it's the best thing we can do. We love community fairs and supporting local communities.

That would be great. Really appreciate that. Okay, thank you. So with that said, I'm going to open the public hearing. You can have a seat. Thank you. And take public comment. So I will now, unless there are any more questions, open the public hearing. And I have four comment cards. And the first person is Eric Williams.

Marathon. Alright I Guess for me first and foremost, this is a branding and reputation problem both for the city and for goodwill before I get into that I think that There's a couple things I I question me even bringing up the number of jobs, you know 30 jobs and I say a twenty five thousand. It's one thousandth of a percent. They're not high-paying jobs and I'm not sure that moves the needle. We're not going to get tax revenue. That's my understanding anyway. I don't know. I would say my feelings about this are pretty much the same as they are about the last thing we talked about. We have precious few parcels of undeveloped land in this city, and the best ones are still undeveloped. We need to preserve those. And the same is true for retail opportunities. We don't have a lot of places you could put anything because we haven't built a lot. And so given a choice between Goodwill and almost anything else, I'd go with almost anything else. We're surrounded by discount retail. All you got to do is go one exit or two exits that way, and it's Ross, and it's Nordstrom Rack, and it's Target, and it's Walmart, and big ones, small ones. Name one. Marshalls. They're all here. And I guess... Fundamentally, I I think that from a branding standpoint and a reputation standpoint for the city This does not it's not coherent with the vision that this city has And I think as much as I think Goodwill is trying to solve the problems that caused their reputation Problems and branding problems It's not there. It's a work in progress, and it may never come to fruition. That's an unfortunate reality. don't know I waited here with the hopes that somehow that might I don't know change things so that this one place in this one of few places where we can put a retail even it was the split the property the space and half or in thirds and put in a mix of different things but I just I I don't know. I'm struggling to see how this is going to benefit the city and inspire people to want to live here or move here and maybe preventing people that want to have businesses here from opening those as well.

Thank you. The next speaker is Darlene Almeida.

Good evening again. Great presentation. Love your presentation. Unfortunately, I don't believe you. And I'll be very honest. Goodwill, just like Eric said, is a well-documented pattern contributing to illegal dumping. We see this, that's why Rodale got rid of their Goodwill. Thrift Town in El Sabrani no longer exists. I think there was also Goodwill or another type of secondhand store in El Sabrani that no longer exists. It may be because of the stores, it may be because of the employees, it may be because of the community itself. I cannot see how after hours someone saying warning, warning, no illegal dumping is gonna stop anyone from illegal dumping. People cover their license plates. They wanna dump, they're gonna dump. And you cannot stop that. And I believe that is gonna happen here because frankly, we have other communities around us who do not share in the same feeling that we have for Hercules. And it's gonna happen here. I also believe, like Eric, that goodwill is not gonna attract other businesses. Frankly, I hate the smoke shop being there. If we're supposed to be illegal smoking and here we are selling cigarettes, I think it's ridiculous. But it's here. I see that we are also going to have the same problems getting other quality businesses coming to Hercules as we hope. And I think that what the hope, the community really hopes for. Your employees, you said you hire folks that are, who don't have a high school diploma, who need re-educating. I think that's all great as an educator. But you do that, you support them. You said nothing about supporting development of delayed adults or adults with physical disabilities. Why isn't that part of your picture? That's something you have and that is very important to our community also. We have many adults with autism, physical disabilities, developmental disabilities that cannot find work in our communities because of the stereotype they bring. I wanted to say Safeway is open in Rodeo.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Go there. Thank you. My next speaker here is Bill Barron.

Good evening, Mayor, council members. My name is Bill Barron. I'm the managing partner of North First Street Properties, the owner of 1551 Sycamore. Our San Jose-based family firm has been the owners of, long-term owners, real estate investors and developers for nearly 65 years. We've owned 1551 Sycamore for 22 years now and actually re-tenanted that building when Lucky's moved with Big Lots. Some two years ago in July of 24, three months prior to Big Lots filing for bankruptcy, we hired CBRE to release the building. About a year into marketing, goodwill came along. And as you all have expressed, we were very skeptical. We have goodwill of Silicon Valley and San Jose, and they're not the best operator. But I'm here to tell you that we were advised by CBRE that this particular offer from Goodwill of the San Francisco Bay was different because it was under new leadership, new ownership, if you will, by Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona. We were intrigued, and we began a rather extensive due diligence effort. We met with the leadership of Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona. We visited Goodwill stores in Arizona. We gained access and reviewed their books and financials, which is very important to us as long-term owners. We want a tenant that's going to follow their commitments in the lease. We learned about their improving operating protocols, including how they address the after hours donations. We also toured Goodwill's new Fairfield store just up the road, which, like Hercules, backfilled a Big Lots that closed. Overall, we came away very impressed with Goodwill's leadership, professionalism, financial stability, and commitment to operating clean, good stores. So on April 21st, 2026, we signed a lease, but it wasn't until after we visited Fairfield and then, again, all of the prior due diligence. If we weren't convinced, We wouldn't have put our name on the lease, but we are convinced that this is a different breed of cat. We believe Goodwill is a responsible long-term tenant and is a positive addition to Creekside and Hercules, and Home Depot felt the same because they allowed the use in the center. And again, we've owned the building for 22 years. We intend to own it another 22 years. We want stability, and we want quality, and we think Goodwill will deliver that. So I thank you very much for your time this evening. Happy to take any questions.

Thank you. My next speaker here is Cheryl Wright.

Good evening, y'all. I ran out after the first meeting, and then I've come back. I don't plan to take much of your time. I am a resident of Hercules since the 1900s. And so initially I lived in the gyms, and then now I live in Victoria-by-the-Bay. I was originally skeptical to hear about Goodwill coming, but I'm going to say that I was actually listening to the presentation driving back here. on Zoom, and I'm impressed about the plan for Hercules. And so I'm happy that Goodwill will be a welcome neighbor to Hercules, and I'm looking forward to hearing good things coming from this particular partnership. So I yield my time. Thank you all. Thank you to the city council for all of the hard work that you all do.

Thank you, and that concludes the comments here in the room. Is there anyone online who would like to make a public comment?

I'll turn to my Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on this agenda item, please use your raised hand icon or use star nine if you are attending by phone. I'm going to start with Diane Abaya. I apologize if I'm not correcting or if I misspoke. Go ahead.

Yes, it's Diane Abaya. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. Again, my name is Diane Abaya and I've been a proud resident of Hercules for the past 11 years. So I respectfully urge the Council to reconsider the proposed Goodwill store at this location. My concern is not with Goodwill as an organization. I recognize and respect the services it provides. My concern is whether this is the most strategic and economically beneficial use of one of our city's limited remaining commercial parcels. As city leaders, you are tasked with making decisions that maximize long term fiscal health, strengthen the local tax base and ensure that our land use decisions generate sustainable income returns for the community. This site represents a rare opportunity to shape Hercules's future revenue stream and economic identity for decades to come. So a single tenant, low intensity retail and Goodwill already noted they are not profitable in early years. This does not fully leverage the economic potential of this property. Instead, I encourage the city to prioritize a vision that aligns with long-term planning goals, such as split the space for restaurants, cafe, even breweries, family entertainment, or locally owned businesses integrated into a mixed-use environment. These types of developments create stronger tax revenue, more foot traffic, more local jobs, and a true destination that benefits both residents and visitors. Once this parcel is committed to a lower yield use, the opportunity cost is permanent. We cannot easily recover the lost potential for higher tax revenue, greater economic activity, and more strategic land use. I chose Hercules 11 years ago because of its strong community values and its potential for thoughtful, forward-looking growth. I respectfully ask the Council to consider a higher impact development that better aligns with Hercules' long-term economic vision. Thank you for your time and consideration. I'm complete.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to make a public comment? Gail, go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Gail Osana and I'm here again to speak. I'm a resident of Frick County since 2012. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. I respectfully oppose the proposed Goodwill Store, not because I oppose Goodwill's mission of providing job training and affordable goods, but because I believe this location is not the best fit for our community. Hercules is a growing city with limited commercial space. We should be strategic about the types of businesses we bring in. This location has the potential to attract businesses that provide services our residents have repeatedly expressed interest in, such as quality restaurants, healthcare services, gyms, specialty retail stores that keep shoppers and tax dollars within our city. Goodwill also presents unique operational challenges, and they've admitted to that. Donation drop-offs can create traffic congestion, particularly on weekends. Many Goodwill locations struggle with after-hours donations and illegal dumping, resulting in overflowing items, litter, and increased maintenance costs. Even with good management, these issues can negatively impact neighboring businesses and the overall appearance of the shopping center. Our city has worked hard to create an attractive, welcoming commercial environment. We should continue investing in businesses that enhance the vision, increase economic activity, and provide amenities that improve the quality of life for these residents. Again, I respect the important work that Goodwill does. My position is not to the organization itself, but to whether this is the right use of this particular commercial space. I encourage the city to carefully consider long-term economic development goals and prioritize businesses that better meet the needs and expectations of our growing community. Thank you for your consideration.

Any other speakers?

Maria, go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I think I don't want to belabor the point because I think a lot of great points have already been made. Just a few things. I feel like Goodwill does tend to target low-income communities as they've already explained the other locations they've opened. My main concern is that they've closed a lot of the nearby locations, making now Hercules the main primary dumping ground for all those other locations. Visitors for those locations. We've been talking about illegal dumping. That's going to be a big issue. Again, we're going to have an influx by having all this illegal dumping that can cause the vermin problem, transient community, just overall impacts on safety that I think a lot of residents are concerned about. Just because you're not seeing a lot of people here tonight, I assure you I've talked to several folks, including some of the commercial tenants next door to this property that are very concerned about this coming in, not only because of the impact it's going to have on them and their vitality as a commercial space, but just not attracting the type of demographic and clientele that they're looking for. I think even if you were to consider this tonight, the design that they've proposed, I mean, could they make it at least a little bit more attractive in the signage? I mean, they used these drabby colors. At the very least, you'd think that some thought would be put into that. The fact that they've already signed a lease, I don't think should be taken into consideration. That's on them, a risk they took by not getting the proper permitting prior to coming tonight. So whether they signed a lease or not should not sway your decision-making. I think as we talked about in the earlier housing project tonight, There was a strong emphasis on how community input is very important in your decision making. I think that should not be negated tonight. We should not look over it. I think it's very clear that the majority of the community does not want this. If we wanna talk from a technical stance, there is a finding you're being asked to make tonight regarding the conditional use permit findings. I think finding number three, ask that the location size and design and operating characteristics of the proposed use is compatible. The fact that they have a drive up donation component, that's not an operating characteristic that is consistent with the surrounding land use. That should not be ignored. Therefore, I don't think it meets the findings and the grounds or the threshold to approve this. This is not a needed or desirable service in Hercules. I think we all can agree. I think as the first speaker said so perfectly, this is such a missed opportunity for a real estate that is one of the very few commercial spaces we have left in town. We've all seen that there hasn't been a lot of activity in recent years. So the fact that we're just gonna allow this tenant to come in that's really not providing a service we're all excited about says a lot. Locking us in into another 15 year lease is a huge detriment and a loss for our city. We're losing out on this opportunity. Please don't let it fall on deaf ears.

Madam City Clerk, is there any other people who wish to make a public comment on this item?

I will turn to our Zoom attendees one last time. If you'd like to make a public comment on this agenda item, please use your raised hand icon or dial star nine if you're calling in. And seeing none, that will end public comment.

Thank you. So this closes the public hearing. And I'm going to bring it back here to council. I would like to remind the public that the city does not own this site. We are not the landlord. And I think that's very important. And I also want to echo what Councilmember Bailey said, that the city is very much aware about the need for economic development here. We have limited resources at the city to put into economic development. We try to do the very best we can. So I want to bring this back. Comments from, yes, Council Member Bailey.

Yes, excuse me, Mayor Kelly, thank you. I think you made a comment that I wanted to make, and to the folks that were online, I do hear you.

It didn't sound like me? Really? We're not taking any more public comment now.

I want to say that we do hear you, and we probably should have prefaced the part that Mayor Kelly just said, and I'm going to ask staff to kind of say it as well, but we don't get to choose the tenant. We choose the use, basically. And so I want, if staff can, I'll go to the city manager. The question is, do we get to choose the tenant, whether it be Nordstrom's or Goodwill?

As a general rule, the answer would be no. We don't have the ability to direct what a private property owner can do with their commercial or retail space. We can certainly try to work with them to look at alternatives to bring in a potential tenant that the city might find appealing or something that might be desirable from our resident standpoint. Just so you know, we did reach out to the owners at one juncture and tried to discuss options. And one option was to bring in an Asian grocer. And I was told that there was potential for that, but the party wanted tenant improvements of some several million dollars Neither the property owner nor the city was agreeable. The property owner was not agreeable to that, and the city certainly didn't have the money to try to bridge that gap or otherwise influence the decision at that juncture. So what transpired was sometime later we found out from the owner that they were interested in bringing in this goodwill. That's how we got here.

Thank you very much for that. And again, I think the questions that were asked were good. We just don't have that control. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Yes, yes. Any other comments here? Council Member Grimsley.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just wanted to say to everyone who made a comment this evening, thank you. We do, someone commented that in the prior session, session we talked about the importance of community engagement we certainly do value community engagement I think it's one of the things that is special about our community that we feel as residents that we have the opportunity to come out and make our voices heard and I am so grateful that we live in that type of a city many of us who live here moved here from many of the same reasons we like this type of community it's comfortable It's relatively quiet. We have low crime. We have an engaged police department that knows many of us as residents. We work together, residents, city council, city staff, to make this place the kind of community that we want to live in. And we work or try to work with our business partners as well. So I really want to thank Mr. Barron for coming out this evening as well and speaking as well. I think that's important. We had the CEO of Goodwill of the San Francisco Bay Area join us this evening and I think that's really important and special that you would care to come to our small town to talk about this project that we're still discussing. So I just want to say all of that first and I want to say also that just an observation and I'll probably, I'll probably receive the ire of a lot of folks by saying this. Living in Hercules and knowing that we, because we have a limited number of businesses, a limited number of services, that we as Herculeans go outside of this city for other reasons. One of those reasons is shopping, and we shop at places, stores were mentioned, Ross, TJ Maxx, Goodwill and there are other thrift stores that we shop at in neighboring cities as well and I'll just say I was commenting on my kids earlier Yes, they've gone to Goodwill, but they've also gone to Savers in San Pablo I believe that is or yeah, I think that's San Pablo and I run into Herculeans in the dollar store. I run into Herculeans in other stores that are not that different from Goodwill. So it's not that we're not going to those places. And I also saw a lot of Herculeans donating at the Goodwill in Rodeo. So we also donate. So I'm not saying that to dismiss all of the folks that are saying we don't want this in Hercules, but I am saying that so that is another point of consideration when we're really thinking about how we live our lives and what we do and where we spend our money and where we donate. I just want folks to factor that in. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Battarai, do you have any comments?

Yes, just a quick follow-up on the comments that were made by one of the Zoom attendees earlier. Is it the compliance? We are not fully compliant on that? the dumping areas or whatnot. I think, can you just elaborate on that one? What was that question earlier? There is some.

I'm sorry, what was the question?

I think there was some concern from one of the Zoom attendee that I think we have a basis for the reconsideration on this approval process based on the comments they made. Looks like there was a dumping safety reason or something like that.

Staff does not believe that there's, well, staff supports staff's recommendation for approval, and the public comment did not provide any new information that would cause us to revisit that. The applicant has explained at length what the protocols and procedures are for deterring and dealing with dumping, and staff believes that that the conditions of approval and the ability if needed to revoke the conditional use permit are adequate to protect the city from that threat. Okay, thank you.

Maybe, Council Member Battarai, maybe I can address your comments. I do know that people do dump things, mattresses and so forth, all around the city, and I have to commend our Public Works Department for going around and picking up all of that. There's a couch dumped in my neighborhood. I heard about it online, and then I went off to the grocery store, and there was one of our Public Works people picking up that couch and taking it away. So that is an issue, just in general, and that's why we have a cleanup day on the first Saturday in May every single year. So I am heartened by what Goodwill has said of the San Francisco Bay Area about what you will do to prevent this and your new way of collecting donations. I think that's important. I'm willing to look at that and see how it goes. I don't think that we have any valid reasons, I can see up here, for denying the conditional use permit. However, I would like to ask our city attorney, and Madam City Attorney, if we do go ahead and approve this, could we possibly add a condition to have a check-in in about six months? Is that something that we could add?

Yeah, that would be permissible if you wanted to require them to come back and either, you know, just give a presentation and an avenue for the council to ask questions about operations and how they've been going. That would be fine. If the applicant is amenable to agreeable to that tonight, we can add that to your resolution as well.

And so I'm just telling the council I would like to add something like that I think that and I'm seeing a nod here from Goodwill folks You know just as a way to check in see if there any issues I think that that would make me feel Much more comfortable about going ahead and approving this so councilmember Bailey

Yes, and I had to ask as well. I talked to the folks at Goodwill about this earlier, and I will leave it to staff, but the drop-off site is at the rear of the building. My understanding is that there are signs that guide you to where the actual drop-off site is, and there are arrows on the ground. The intent is for folks to continue on down towards Home Depot behind the building. I think we stopped having signs at the store, so I was wondering if we could add maybe two signs, one that says keep going and then one that kind of points you out towards the lot where you exit. Does that make sense? I see Director Roods.

The project is at the sign code allowance, so adding additional signs would make it difficult to make the findings for zoning conformance.

Can I suggest something? Because I did go up to the Pittsburgh store. It may not be so much a sign, but on the ground there were markings like arrows. So I drove around the back, I could drop it off, and then there was an arrow guiding me out to the front of the shopping center, and it made it pretty easy.

My understanding is that those ground markings are included in the plans before you.

Okay, so thank you, Madam Mayor.

So for clarity then, the markings go beyond the Goodyear site, because Goodyear's like in the middle of the building, so do they get you out? Through the mayor, you'd have to go to the mic.

Yeah, could you just come up here and explain, please, on the ground how that would work?

Yes. Again, thank you for tonight. I'd have to look at the site to understand it better, but the striping can probably only go to our property line, the property line from the owner, but what we can do is on the ground say something to the extent with verbiage, please pull around center or something like that to help people. I can tell you that... again, training donors. Once they see the first person do it, it becomes a pattern, and they learn how to do it. And again, this model, when it's striped well and signed well, people learn pretty quickly. So it's a problem probably in the beginning of the process. Once it's established, it's going to be pretty self-explanatory.

Okay, and then we will have that six-month check-in, so if there's any issues. Yes, we'll have that on check.

You know, one of the things that I regret is I'm out here every couple of months, and we've tried to meet with every city beforehand. We did not get a chance to meet with you. We probably could have headed a lot of this off at the pass ahead of time had we have done that, but we're happy to meet as often as you need us to.

Thank you. And I would just like to say I appreciate your coming out here and explaining not only to us but to the community because people can come and watch this online now. Had you just explained it to our council members and to our staff, then the community would not have heard what you have to say.

Thank you.

Okay.

One more question if I could?

Yes, please.

This will probably go to staff. We've heard lots of comments about dumping. I think there's a fence behind there. I'm almost certain. the standard fence, can additional signs be placed there if necessary or do they meet, do they fill that up? So if dumping became an issue, can signs that say no dumping be added or are you saying that that's not permissible there either because of the sign plan?

I'm not sure how we could do that tonight, Council Member, given that additional signage would put them over the sign code limit and we'd need a different process than what's before you.

Right, let me clarify the question. I'm asking that if it was necessary in the future, we're gonna have the six-month check-in, if we needed no dumping signs, could that be done? It's just, could it be done? I'm not saying we should do it, but can that be, can signs be posted? No dumping's illegal, Hercules Code 1234. If you don't know the answer, it's okay. I'm not trying to put you on the spot.

I think maybe we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. How's that?

That would be my recommendation. I'm just trying to address... Right, I'm just trying to address the... I'm sorry. Correct. I'm trying to address the concerns we had over the... to the public speakers. That's...

I think the six-month check-in will reveal some things if there's a problem.

Conditions could be modified depending upon the conditions present at the site in six months.

Okay.

Yeah, I think the six-month check-in condition, my proposed language would be if you're going to do that tonight, we would have something say, that the applicant shall appear before the city council approximately six months from the data store opening to provide a report on operations and receive feedback from council and the public. And then if the council has an issue with the operations or with their responses or anything like that, then we would just schedule a public hearing on revocation if that was something that you guys directed staff to do at that time. But Director Root is right, the CUP runs with the land.

You would have to have a notice hearing in order to change modify anything But you could provide that direction to staff at the time of that six-month check-in Okay, I understand all right, thank you very much appreciate it so I'm bringing it back here to to council and we have two recommendations and Yes.

Before we move forward, there was a public comment with regard to the signage, the branding of the store, the facade. And I noticed that the image that we received in our agenda packet was somewhat different than the one that's on the brochure. I heard Kim say something about buildings that were already in existence as opposed to newly built stores but i'm wondering if there is any wiggle room and maybe i'm working with mr baron for something that looks a little bit more like what we saw on the brochure if there's any room for negotiating around the facade

In other words, giving it a more sort of modern look. Is that what you're saying? I don't know.

Again, I don't think that's something we could do tonight. You have an application before you and it needs an up and down vote. I don't know how we would write a condition to make the signs look more like the brochure. And the applicant could probably speak to their coordinated branding across all the different sites if desired. If I can help with the question.

I think, yeah.

If staff can just confirm, so this is a halo-lit sign, so this would look more like the sign at Aventine. It's gonna be the same letters here, but does that mean it's halo-lit, so Aventine would be an example of what the sign would look like?

I'm not familiar with the Aventine sign in question. Has anyone seen Aventine at night? I'm not sure, but these, I believe, are reverse-channel letters illuminated with white LEDs, so they would kind of stand out from the background.

Okay, we're just trying to help the community understand that they're getting what they're asking for, so we might help us validate that. So, again, Aventine has backlit signs that I approved as the planning commissioner. They're halo-lit, similar to what is at the exchange. Is this similar is what I'm just trying to find out. Is that?

Well, these signs would be backlit. Okay.

Okay, I think this is a point well taken, but I think we do need to move ahead now. So if that's okay, there are two recommendations here. One, to find the project categorically exempt from CEQA. So Madam City Attorney, do we need to have a motion for that?

Yes, please. If there's a recommended motion at the top of your staff report and or on the agenda.

Okay, so would someone like to make that motion? At the top of the staff report.

Madam Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that the City Council approve a conditional use permit, CUP 26-01, and design review permit, DRP 26-01, for a retail store with drive-up donation operations at 1551 Sycamore Avenue.

And would you like to add that you find the project categorically exempt from CEQA? I think that's one thing that we have to do.

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.

then also reference as proposed and modified by the conditions of approval yes thank you director okay so there's we have a motion is there a second and and the six months check-in and the six-month check-in thank you there you go are you okay with the wording that i used before yes okay sounds good are you okay council member grimsey with the wording yes okay is there a second Okay, so motion by Grimsley, seconded by Bailey. Any further discussion? No? Can we have a roll call vote, please? Council Member Grimsley? Aye.

Council Member Butter, aye. Council Member Bailey.

Mayor Kelly. Aye. So it passes with three approvals and one abstention and one absent. Thank you very much. Appreciate everyone. Appreciate Goodwill coming out and I appreciate the comments from the community. So now we will move on on our agenda. And we have a consent calendar. The consent calendar has... My gosh. Eight items. Would anyone care to pull an item from consent? No, then would someone like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar?

Madam Mayor? Yes. Can I make a motion to approve the consent calendar as it presented tonight?

Okay, is there a second to that? Second. There's a second. So a motion by Bhattarai, seconded by Grimsley. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Council Member Grimsley.

Aye.

Council Member Bhattarai. Aye. Council Member Bailey.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin.

Aye.

And Mayor Kelly.

Aye. Thank you. So then moving ahead, where am I? Okay, so moving ahead, we are at discussion and our action items. And our next item is November 2026 election for a voter-approved revenue measure. Mr. City Manager?

Yes, Madam Mayor. I'll present this report. The recommended action before you this evening is to adopt an urgency ordinance calling for an election for a voter-approved one-cent transaction in use or sales tax, and requesting the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors to direct the Contra Costa County Election Department to conduct the election and to direct the City Attorney to prepare an impartial analysis and to authorize preparation of arguments for the ballot measure. The City of Hercules' ongoing revenues are barely adequate to sustain our current levels of service which remained reduced from the staffing and service levels prior to the Great Recession, when nearly 40% of our staff had to be let go. While we have seen some improvement in revenues overall, Hercules still receives a low share of the property taxes, and our retail tax base is not robust enough to fund anything more than basic service levels. Even with city employee wage and benefit concessions remaining in place, costs continue to increase, thereby continuing the need to look toward ways to generate revenue through economic development and to reduce expenditures by becoming more efficient and effective. However, these efforts will not result in sufficient increases in revenues to avoid a projected budget shortfall beginning in fiscal year 2028-29. Earlier this year, the City Council began to explore the possibility of asking residents to support a one cent increase to current sales tax rates. Part of these efforts included an independent community survey. This survey showed residents think the City is moving in the right direction and want to continue the positive momentum with locally controlled funding to maintain essential services, including maintaining the city's financial stability and enhancing fiscal accountability, maintaining the local Hercules Police Department, maintaining the number of police officers patrolling neighborhood streets, improving 911 response times, expanding neighborhood crime prevention programs, attracting businesses to Hercules, and preventing cuts to street maintenance. Our residents have continued to give the city feedback that too many streets in Hercules are old and deteriorating, contributing to hazardous driving conditions. Nearly 25% of the city's neighborhood streets representing over 35 miles, are rated as poor or failed. As always, the city's priority is to make it safer to drive and walk in the city by repairing potholes and cracked sidewalks. Under current funding allocations, this is not possible to keep up with. The City of Hercules wishes to thank the more than 1,300 residents who took the time to provide survey input to the city over the past year on the city's priorities and how we can continue to work together to maintain our quality of life for generations to come. Today, nearly 60% feel our city is headed in the right direction. Majorities view our police department, city government, and city council favorably and trust our financial management. We know the community wishes to maintain its tradition of local residents exercising their right to local control over local taxpayer dollars. In the community survey conducted just last month, as many as 68% of respondents would support a simple majority requirement, one cent sales tax measure. The council's action tonight is not to take a position on the measure itself, but to simply allow our local voters to decide in November. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you. So do we have any public comment on this item? Madam City Clerk?

I'll turn to my in-person attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on this item, please come up to the podium. Seeing none, I'll turn to my Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on this agenda item, please use your raised hand icon or dial star nine if you're calling in. Seeing none, that will end public comment.

Okay, so I'll bring it back here to council for questions and comments. We have the possibility of putting on a sales and use tasks measure on the November ballot for 1% or up to 1%. And I'd like to ask the council if you have comments. Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you, City Manager, for this. Quick question. With this item, Are we raising a tax right now?

No. The vote tonight would simply be to place it on the ballot and allow the voters to decide.

The reason why I asked that question is because sometimes there's often a little misunderstanding that local governments raise taxes. Actually, for those at home, we can't. So voters have to approve these measures. So that's the reason why I asked the question. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. That's my only question. Madam Mayor.

Okay. Any other questions here? Yes, Council Member Bailey.

Thank you, I think the Vice Mayor made a good point. My question, and I had a brief conversation with the City Manager on it, but there's, the staff report makes some claims, I guess we could say, but there's nothing to show that data. Can we see that, can we get that information?

Yes, Council Member Bailey. The survey results that were alluded to in my presentation should be uploaded now on our website. If it's not present now, it will be by tomorrow. Basically, it was a comprehensive survey. Folks could participate online or otherwise. There were a lot of mail-in ballots as well, and those results were tabulated, so you'll see that in the online link to the survey results.

So the public will have access to it, if not now, by tomorrow morning? Should be there now, yes. Okay. And then just in what the Vice Mayor said, this is just to advance it to the public so they can make the decision on Election Day. Thank you.

Okay. Any other comments here? Yes. Council Member Grimsley?

Just for further clarification for folks who are listening or watching, this measure would go on a ballot for, and this would apply to Hercules residents only, and only Hercules residents.

I believe it would apply to anyone who purchased something in the city of Hercules.

I misspoke. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you for correcting my speech. For retail in the city of Hercules, and this would be on this November's ballot, November 2026. Is that correct? And the people in the city of Hercules would vote on this ballot measure. Okay, thank you.

That's all correct.

Council Member Battarai, any questions or comments?

No comments, thank you.

Okay, so I would like to address this issue. I think the discussion tonight about economic development, we do not have the resources to really go at economic development in this city of Hercules 100%. As a lot of you know, and I keep saying over and over again, we had to lay off 40% of our staff 15 years ago. We're on a very basic budget. I know Council Member Bailey and I are very much concerned about the general fund. We're gonna be seeing a slight deficit starting in fiscal year 28, 29. We really value our police force. We would like our streets to be better. Our pavement index is not very high and it's getting worse. So there's a lot of needs for funding. And as a public entity, we have very limited means to try and to raise revenue. So by putting a one cent sales tax or up to one cent sales tax on the ballot is something that we can do. I know the city of Pinole did that, what, about a year ago or more. And they were successful. I will also let you know that it's not just Hercules Residence, but a lot of people come to our Home Depot store. That is a contractor store. So they come from outside the city and they spend money here. So that's very, very important. The other thing I want to tell people, and again, we often make this comment, we are a low property tax city. For every dollar that we pay in property tax, the city of Hercules only gets back 5.5%. I'll give you an example from my own home. I bought my home 15 years ago. My 1%, I believe it's ad valorem property tax, is $4,913, $4,913 a year. My husband and I, we pay that to the county. And what do we get back from the county for the city of Hercules? $270. So even though people here say, gosh, I pay so much property tax, we don't see it back here in the city. Most of it does go to the schools and the county and other things, but we don't see it here. So we have really limited means for getting more revenue. So that's why I think that it would be prudent now, and we've done some research, we've brought in some organizations to do the polling and so forth, and I think let's put it on the ballot and just let the voters decide whether or not they want to do this, because otherwise we're going to be kind of strapped. So that's my suggestion. I'd like to bring it back to council and to see what the rest of you think. Yes, Vice Mayor.

I echo a lot of the sentiments and the comments that you mentioned. And also, this is looking towards the future. As we've seen, honestly, more and more recently, a lot of the resources that historically have been available to us from the federal government have largely been cut and have been significantly more difficult. to access, so this is really planning for the future. I think we've given ourselves a lot of good momentum, but we gotta continue with that work, as we see with just recently, the addition of a new Foxboro playground, not just modifying the area, but a new playground itself, the recent re-street paving that's gonna take place. This is all momentum towards of what we've been building for the past couple years, And I think it would be a disservice to our residents and our city if we were to try to slow that down right now. And as things continue, you know, we love seeing our economic base grow, but we know that that's going to mean more services that the city needs to provide. It's going to mean, you know, evaluating our police staff at some point and seeing, you know, do we need to expand this department, but also making sure that we can keep paying their salaries so that way we can keep officers here so we can keep that continuity of someone going to the police academy and then making their way up through the chain. So I really see this as an investment into our future. Thank you.

Okay, other questions or comments here?

I think this is one of the few times that we all sort of agree on the thing, but I will say that I think, so I agree with what they said, I'm not gonna repeat that part, but I think it's important that residents, earlier tonight we approved money to fund a project, but the larger issue is we have to keep our retail space available to build retail. The more we chip away at that with housing, we reduce our ability to generate sales tax, which again pays for all the services that we like. Keeps the pool clean, chlorine, all these things we do. Staff here on the dais, staff in the office that we never see that work very hard behind this wall here. So I think that's just, as a community, we have to keep that in mind as we chop things up, what the future looks like, as the Vice Mayor just mentioned. That's all I have to add.

Okay, so if there's no more comments here, we do have an emergency ordinance before us tonight.

Madam Mayor?

Yes.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt an urgency ordinance of the City Council of the City of Hercules calling an election and requesting that the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors hold an election to be consolidated with the November 3rd, 2026 statewide general election for the purpose of submitting to the voters of Hercules transaction use quote-unquote sales tax of 1% to direct the county of Contra Costa Elections Department to conduct the election on the city's behalf to direct the city attorney to repair an impartial analysis and to authorize arguments for the ballot measure okay motion by Walker Griffin is there a second seconded by Grimsley no further discussion roll call vote please councilmember Grimsley councilmember buttery

Council Member Bailey.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin.

Aye.

And Mayor Kelly.

Aye. So passes for one, the one being an abstention. Thank you. So we're now on to the next item, and this one is to adopt a resolution approving an assignment and assumption agreement by and between Hercules Block Q&R Development Partners LP and IECRTVI Holdings LLC to facilitate the sale of the Dillon. Yes.

Madam Mayor, I will have to recuse myself from this as I am a resident of the Dillon.

Okay, I'm sorry that you have to leave, but I understand why. Thank you. And so do I have all of that correct? Mr. City Manager.

Yes. We'll have our Community Development Director present this item. Thank you.

Good evening again, Mayor and Council. This item is the city's consent to an assignment and assumption agreement between the current owner of the Dillon, which is an LLC called, or an LP rather, called Hercules Block Q&R Development Partners, and what turns out to be a wholly owned subsidiary of IECRT 6 Holdings LLC. Staff learned yesterday from LEDCOR that the buyer of the building had assigned its interest to a purpose-specific limited liability company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the buyer listed in your staff report. Thank you for your patience with the late breaking change. This was not something staff was aware of. So as sort of a global caveat, the documents before you all refer to IEC, et cetera. When they are prepared for execution, they will need to read the Dillon Apartments LLC, which is the wholly owned subsidiary. The building was originally entitled to grant, was completed in 2021 by Lead Corps as part of the Bayfront development. It includes 232 housing units, of which 15 are deed-restricted affordable, along with 311 parking spaces and common amenities, including a gym, lounge, and meeting room. This property is bound and remains bound by the Bayfront implementing development agreement, the parking operations agreement that provides for up to 10% of the building's parking or 31 spaces to be made available to the public during certain hours once certain triggering events are met, such as the commencement of rail or ferry service, as well as the affordable housing covenant that governs the the governance of the 15 affordable units. All three of these agreements are to be assigned to the purchaser. So staff, Ledcor notified staff of this potential transaction on June 24th of the sale of the Dillon to an affiliate of Interstate Equities Corporation, or IEC. Established in 1981, IEC is a real estate investment company specializing in multifamily properties in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle areas. They report that they manage their properties by an in-house management company and have over 5,000 units in their current portfolio. Staff participated in a conference call with the seller and purchaser at the seller's request on June 25th to review and clarify the city's role in consenting to the sale. Part of that role at the staff level includes providing what's called an estoppel certificate, which is a city statement confirming that the development agreement and other applicable agreements are in good standing and that the city is not aware of any defaults. It provides assurance to both buyers and sellers that the city will not later contradict these stator conditions, helping facilitate a smooth transfer. The city's written consent to the assignment of the implementing development agreement is required, and that consent shall not be unreasonably withheld. The IDEA provides in Section 10, Transfer and Assignments, that the owner and its successors and assigns shall have the right to sell, assign, or transfer the agreement with respect to all or a portion of the project site and all or a portion of its rights, duties, and obligations here under to any transferee provided, however, that no assignment of owner's rights, interests, and obligations under this agreement shall occur without approval by the city which approval, and this is the key part, which approval shall not be withheld, conditioned, delayed, or denied in a commercially unreasonable manner. Accordingly, staff is recommending the council approval of the consent agreement. You have a resolution in your packet as well as the consent agreement and then the agreement between the buyer and seller, which the city is not a party to, but is consenting to happen via the resolution and the consent agreement. Mr. Silver from Lead Corps is here as well as Brendan Gibney from IEC and they're both available for questions. That concludes the staff presentation.

Thank you. And Mr. Silver, do you want to say anything about this? You've come all this way.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council. It's a pleasure to be back. Staff, it's good to see some old faces as well. Again, Jason Silver, Vice President of California for Lead Corps, one of the partners of the ownership of Hercules Bayfront and currently the Dillon. We are immensely proud of our baby. And we think we found a great new caretaker and steward of the property. It's been an extensive search for the right group. We started this early this year. And we are excited to partner up with IEC for this. And we will still be here. We have the rest of the master plan to work through. And we were looking for a partner, not just to be, again, a steward of the Dillon, but to help with our vision going forward. I'll turn this over to Brendan Gilby, and also just want to mention that another person represented from IEC is on, Kelly Tang, who oversees our property operations as well, and who will be also very much involved in the Dillon going forward. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Gilby?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thanks to the council and everyone else here. My name is Brendan Gibney. I am the Director of Investments at IEC, and I'm happy to give a little background on IEC and what our company is. So IEC was founded in 1981 by Marshall and Julia Boyd's father, Jim Boyd. Marshall and Julia, it's a family-owned business, took over in 2007. And we buy apartment communities up and down the West Coast, from San Diego up to Northern California. And our thing is we want to be where people love to live. Our locations locally are Mountain View, Redwood City, Santa Clara. Sometimes we step out of Silicon Valley and we look at Marina. great quaint town right outside of monterey and uh you know driving in to hercules i'd flown by on the highway many times over the years uh it kind of was like stopped me in my tracks like wow like what is this place uh and it was it was cool uh i think you know the lead core team has done a great job with the the waterfront development and it's exciting to see you know all the new plans coming in, town homes, new neighborhoods. Really, IAC is good stewards. We're good neighbors. We're local to California. I've lived in California from the East Coast originally, been here for 12 years, live in San Francisco. Our whole team is either in Northern California, Los Angeles, or Orange County, and we just opened a San Diego office. We've had employees who are residents in buildings that we own. And yeah, we just like to stand up and do the right thing and be good neighbors in the community. And I will add that we work on behalf of primarily charitable investors. So university endowments, a big UC down the street from here is one. healthcare systems, utility employee pension plan. So it's all of our returns that we generate over time. They go back to fairly great causes and we're honored to work on behalf of them.

Thank you for that introduction. So I want to bring this to council. Do you have questions? Council Member Battarai.

Madam Mayor, thank you for that. First of all, thank you so much for being here tonight and for waiting so long, and then giving your introduction. Good to see you, and you're welcome to Hercules. What is your, basically, the ask basically is, you know, what happens here, you know, the 15 disrespected affordable units, you will keep that as an affordable unit as well, or you'll bring back to the market rate, or

Oh, yeah, no, no, so they're required to stay that way, so they'll maintain as they are.

Okay.

Yeah.

And what is the benefit for you? I'm just out of curiosity. What is the benefit of, you know, changing the ownership from part A to B? You know, is there, you know, the...

so i i can say for us so uh when when our when the groups who invest with us and invest with us uh we have a shot like a timeline for when they need you know to get their returns back uh it's not uh forever forever money um in our case it's 12 years so um i would imagine that that's similar to uh leadcore's position there comes to be a moment when you you know you You need to return your investors' money to them. So that's driving it.

How does it translate to the community as Hercules? I was just curious about that part. Is there any community benefit? With the new hand, with the new idea, with the new benefits plan, is there something that the community can expect? From new order, I guess.

Yeah, I would say so. And I have Kelly Tang here. So yeah, we operate well. We are vertically integrated, which means we have in-house property management. So we take great pride in property management. A lot of groups will go into neighborhoods and contract out property management with someone else who they don't know i know all of our regional property managers by their first name i know their families like we have big team events so there is like this kind of community vibe within our organization that like it extends down to to the residents of the buildings we own but um I think Kelly might be able to speak a little bit more on the go forward. So Kelly's our president of IEC Property Services, a subsidiary of IEC. He runs property management. And I think he'd do a much better job getting on the property management side.

Thank you for the introduction, Brendan. Madam Mayor, City Council, thank you for your time. I've had the privilege of being with IEC Properties Services Corporation for seven years now. I've been in the industry for over 25 years. I currently sit as the Uh, as a member of the national board of directors for the Institute of real estate management, I'm also a faculty instructor for the Institute, uh, providing the coursework for the certification. I've been published in the property management field as well. So I am passionate about the industry. Um, former to, I was the senior vice president of property operations for line living, which is the current management company there. And I think line is a fantastic job of managing and maintaining the operations there. My goal and intent with my, my team of, you know, my, my senior leadership team has just approximately 150 years of experience in property management. And our, our intent is to continue to maintain the standards at the property. And continue to be positive contributors to the local community.

Okay, thank you. And then my last question on this one would be, usually when the hand scenes that have a price action reflected on the residents or the tenants, I hope that is not the case here, or if there is any amenities or anything that can be added with the new chain that I was kind of curious to hear about. From you. Two part of question. No, based on your, you know, the ownership change, there's no price action reflected on the tenant side. So is this still the same pricing structure from the rent standpoint, I guess? And the calamities that you guys adding on anything that with a new hand, new idea?

Yeah, that's good questions. Yeah, on the rent side, I mean, those move nominally over time with inflation. That's how we, you know, that's how we underwrite rent growth over the years. In terms of amenities, IEC, what we normally do is we buy, we have new buildings, we have old buildings. We like to mix some old with some new. So obviously the Dillon is a very new and beautiful building that like, really spoke to us. So we're not going to put a pool on the roof or anything crazy like that. But we have considered and we're looking into adding tenant workstations in the common areas. It looks like a lot of residents do work from home or have hybrid work. work set up. So anything that can kind of like increase or enhance the tenant experience that way. But the building is beautiful. I mean, and that's part of the appeal for us is we stepped in or like, hey, we don't like whatever they're like they're doing here. Like, let's let's continue that and keep it, you know, keep the momentum going. So, yeah, we don't have major amenity plans or changes to anything physical of the asset.

Thank you for the clarification. And I appreciate that you are And hope that we can work together for a long time and then one of the arena waterfront district You know the reason would be like a mixed-use or you know the workspace Enemies probably we can add on or we can discuss more and down on the line But thank you again for the clarification and your time tonight.

Thank you so much Thank you.

Any other comments or questions here councilmember Bailey?

Yes. Thank you madam Marion. My question is more for staff, but Remind us why we're involved

Basically, you were involved because the implementing development agreement for the larger Bayfront project requires the city's consent to any transfer or assignment of the agreement. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Okay. There's always that part, right? Thank you.

Okay, so then before us, we do have a resolution here. So do I hear a motion?

Madam Mayor? Yes. I make a motion that the City Council of the City of Hercules adopt a resolution authorizing and directing the interim city manager to execute a consent agreement to an assignment and assumption agreement of land use agreements and project approvals by and between Hercules Block Q&R Development Partners, LP, a Delaware Limited Partnership, which is the seller, and IECRT, is that six or V? Holdings, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company purchaser to facilitate the sale of the Dillon. That was the change?

Yes, yes. Okay, so is there a second there? Second. Second, so motion by Bailey, seconded by Grimsley. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Council Member Grimsley. Aye. Council Member Badarae.

Aye. Council Member Bailey. Aye.

And Mayor Kelly. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Pass this 4-0. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate. Good to see you. Okay. So our last discussion item tonight is a designation of voting delegate and alternates for the League of California Cities Annual Conference and General Assembly Meeting. And I think our city clerk, you're going to be taking this item? Correct.

Good evening. The League of California Cities 2026 annual conference is scheduled for September 23rd through the 25th in Anaheim, California. An important part of the annual conference is the General Assembly meeting at which the League membership considers and takes action on resolutions that establish League policy. To vote, the City Council must formally designate a voting delegate and up to two alternates. In order to cast a vote, the voting delegate and alternate must also be registered to attend the conference. The General Assembly voting guidelines are included in your packet. Following the Council action this evening, The city clerk department will submit the name of the voting delegate and up to two alternates for the city of Hercules to Cal Cities by Tuesday, September 1st, 2026. So this evening we're just asking or requesting council to designate a voting delegate and up to two alternates to vote at the league's 2026 annual conference. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. And so who will be attending the annual conference? I will be on vacation and I will not be attending. So, Vice Mayor, will you be attending?

I am also attending.

And so, Council Member Bhattarai will also be attending. So, do I... Make them... Yes, please, would you like to make them... Can we do it just one? Just one alternate, I think is okay. Okay, just up to two is what it said, I think.

Okay, so in that case, I nominate Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin as the primary, because he would be acting for the mayor, and then Council Member Bhattarai as the alternate.

Okay, is there a second to that? Second. Okay, motion by Bailey, seconded by Grimsley. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Council Member Grimsley? Aye.

Council Member Butteray?

Aye.

Council Member Bailey?

Aye.

Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin? Aye. And Mayor Kelly? Aye.

Thank you very much. So it passes 5-0. So that ends our discussion and our action items. We're on to public communications. Do we have anyone who would like to make a public comment?

No public comment at this time.

Okay, so moving right along, we'll go to city council, city manager, attorney announcements. Mr. City Manager, any announcements here?

Yes, Madam Mayor. I'd like to ask our Parks and Recreation Director, Christopher Roque, to come up and inform us regarding some upcoming events.

Welcome, Mr. Roque. Always good to see you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council. A couple of items coming up. Next Monday, we are having a ribbon cutting event for the shade structure project at Refugio Valley Park. So we are excited to announce this to the public and invite people who would like to come along. It'll be at 10 a.m. at Refugio Valley Park. The project includes the two fully updated picnic sites, new tables, barbecue pits, shade structure, and a whole lot more. The last of the trees were also planted. New sod has gone in around the site and the parking lot was slurry sealed and lines were restriped. So please join us for the celebration on Monday, August 3rd at 10 a.m. at Refugio Valley Park. The second thing that I wanted to announce is National Night Out is going to be here on Tuesday, August 4th. It'll be from 6 to 8 p.m. at Refugio Valley Park. We'd like to invite the public out. This is a free event. It features activities for kids, food trucks, vendors, music, and more. Come for the activities. Stay for the movie Under the Stars. We'll be showing the movie Bad Guys 2. The movie will start once it's dark enough. Just a reminder, National Night Out is an event that focuses on promoting police and community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie. So come on out to a great event coming up on Tuesday, August 4th. And then... Project updates you want me to go through project so just a quick update on the Shoreline Park project repairs The city of Hercules is addressing needed repairs at Shoreline Park playground Replacing parts have been ordered for the slide and approximately 400 square feet of playground surfacing will be replaced we anticipate replacing parts to arrive mid-august and The surfaces should be redone or should be done approximately around the same time. In the meantime, I do want to say that the City of Hercules public works staff has completed the painting of the bathrooms at Shoreland Park. So it looks really nice. If you haven't been out there, take a look in your next stop. And that's all I have for tonight.

Thank you, really appreciate it. So moving along, I'll ask our city attorney if you have anything to announce. And for me, Madam Mayor. Okay, so bringing it over here to council, I'll start with Council Member Grimsley. Any reports, announcements?

I don't have any reports, but I will announce that the West Cap Board of Directors did not meet in the month of July. They will meet on the second Thursday in the month of August. And the meeting takes place in the city of Pinal starting at 6.30 p.m. at Pinal City Hall. Thank you.

Okay. Council Member Battarai?

I just wanted to thank you for the committee, you know, the planning, public works directors, you know, and then committee directors getting this project done. And I would like to look forward to be there on ribbon-cutting ceremony. Thank you so much.

Okay. Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin.

Yes, I attended the Green Empowerment Zone meeting a couple weeks ago. I am so sorry for forgetting the name of this past event at St. Patrick's. It was really fun. Shout out to everyone that got to see me perform Beyond the Sea spontaneously by Bobby Darin. I was not expecting that. And it was actually at Home Coffee. They had a nice little two-hour little gig with DJ Shortcut. Really fun just to see what that coffee shop is doing. I think they're setting a great foundation and a role model for what a coffee shop can be. and just even a community partner outside of that. And then lastly, I want to give a huge thanks to Director Roque and the folks from St. Vincent's for putting together those spaghetti kits and passing out to the community. It was really great to see the surprised looks on people's faces that they were being passed out with no obligation other than just let us know how we can help you. So truly thank you, Director Roque and all the folks who were involved with that. Thank you.

Okay, Council Member Bailey.

Nothing to add this week. It's actually been a quiet week for meetings, so I'm grateful.

Okay, and just a couple of things. I won't belabor this. I attended the July 15th CCTA Authority Board. We're discussing the Transportation Expenditure Plan that might come around in 2028. That would just be a renewal of our current Transportation Measure J. Some funds for the city of Richmond for paratransit, 75% were released. There was some issue with their audit, and they've gotten their act together, so that's pretty good. For SB 63, the split for the small bus operators, 11.41% was approved, and CCTA will get their return to source from SB 63 if it passes, which will be 19.2%. And at the moment, these small operators, you know, they're not getting the feeder bus funds. They're in danger of losing that. They've applied for reserves from Mr. J, but they decided that they would hold off until after the November election. And then I was at the WCTAC meeting last week. We had the presentation about the Carquinez Bridge, an update from AC Transit, and then just the work plan for TDM, Transportation Demand Management, at WCTAC. I will be at the August 4th National Night Out. And then just a couple of other things for the public. So this is our last public meeting now in July. We will go dark in August unless something comes up, but I don't think it will. And our next meeting will be on the first Tuesday in September. And I want to remind council that I will not be here for the second meeting in September and that Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin will be running that agenda. So with all of that, any future agenda items? No, I think we're all exhausted. So thank you, everyone. The meeting is adjourned. See you in September.