City Council - Regular Meeting

702 will call the meeting to order. Let the record show that all council members are present. Can I have a motion for adoption of the agenda minus item five?

So moved. I second.

All in favor? Aye. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the people of the world. under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

As we meet this evening, we acknowledge that Lafayette is part of the unceded ancestral homeland of the Bay Miwok people. The Bay Miwok and neighboring Ohlone people have lived in and moved through this place for thousands of years. They stewarded and shaped this land for hundreds of generations. We express our appreciation and gratitude for this profound legacy, which enhances and contributes to our lives to this day. We will strive to honor this land and strengthen our ties with the indigenous communities that continue to live and work in our East Bay region as our neighbors and community members. We acknowledge and honor them and their ancestors, elders, and next seven generations. We are now at public comments. If anyone would like to address the council on any item that is not, on tonight's agenda or a future agenda and is within the purview of the council, please fill out a speaker slip or welcome to take the podium and fill out a speaker slip.

The mayor is taking comments for items not on the agenda. We will take comments for speakers in the Don Tatson Community Hall first, and then we will go to people in our virtual audience. Elliot Hudson is our first speaker.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Andurria and members of the council. At your meeting on January 12th, you directed more work on the objective design standards for multifamily and mixed-use development to make them conform more closely to the mission statement directive that Lafayette should have a small-town community character with semi-rural ambiance. I'm not going to address the item that's on for tonight. On March 5th, there was a working group meeting to move forward with that objective. Staff refused to disclose to me what happened at that meeting, so I'm talking to you now. Adopting those standards is years late and it should not be delayed any more than necessary. That's on the agenda item. What is not on the agenda is the status of the draft standards themselves. So in the interest of expediting drafting acceptable standards as quickly as possible, I want to update the council with the hope that what we get next time won't have to be sent back yet again with more delay. I'm pleased to report that the drafts considered on March 5th had material improvements, including important clarifications to the purpose section and prohibiting flat roofs, which I appreciate. I am not so pleased to report that the March 5 draft still had three major flaws. Concerning roofs, someone had the extraordinary bad taste to include among acceptable roof forms, butterfly and shed roofs. While they are not flat, they are ultra modern on a large building and have absolutely nothing to do with semi-rural ambience. There's no reason to add them and every reason to remove them. But the worst of all the provisions were two relating to windows. Hallmarks of the admirable buildings at 1000 Dewing, Town Center 2, Byron Park in Walnut Creek, and 600 Hart Avenue, all of which were shown to you in the video before the last meeting, is that they had windows that did not have overly large single panes and did not occupy too large a percentage of the exterior wall. the draft you sent back for reconsideration had allowed single-pane windows above the ground floor up to a monstrous eighteen square feet the march five draft had a meaningless reduction of that number by a mere two square feet to sixteen square feet To give you an idea how wrong that is, not one of the buildings I mentioned has even one single pane window that is even half that size. In fact, 16 square feet is even larger than on many of Walnut Creek's newest buildings. Further, the March 5 draft does nothing to prevent stringing 16 square foot single pane windows together all over an entire wall. At 16 square feet, no one will build with smaller panes unless they just happen to like the way they look, and that's not the objective. The second major flaw is that the total area of glass, while reduced, I'm almost done, from 60% of the surface area is still allowed for 45%. That's too much. None of the buildings I mentioned have more than 30%, and even glassy 210 Lafayette Circle is under 35%, according to the chair of the DRC. Thank you very much. Please talk to whoever is doing this, and hopefully you can approve the next draft.

Okay, thank you. Are there any questions for the speaker? Okay, thank you.

No additional speakers at this time, Mayor.

Okay, with the consent of my fellow council members, I'd like to offer a chance to speak during this period to anyone who's under 21 who had planned to speak later in the meeting.

I would suggest that we open up to anybody that's actually here now. It's going to be late, I hope.

no okay who's in the room would anyone like to speak at this time will the speaker please provide their name um my name is holden

My name is Holden Smith and I go to Spring Hill Elementary School. Like lots of other students, I walk to and from school and there's no light or crossing sign. I don't feel safe walking. home from school and i'm going to fifth grade i don't i can't imagine what the what the younger kids would think like the kindergarteners and if you take away the crossing guard i worry there will be accidents on the intersecting roads hey thank you very much would uh anyone who would be

accompanying her like this.

Thank you. I appreciate your time. My name is Caitlin Smith. I am Halden's mom. She also has three younger siblings who couldn't attend because this is past their bedtime. My husband and I moved to Lafayette for our kids to have a wonderful childhood, for the schools, for the safety, for the sense of community. We live on Prada Way at the end of Spring Hill Road, and the school encourages walking, biking to school as a healthy choice for our bodies, minds, good for the environment, reduces cars on the road. And it also builds their independence and confidence. And my husband and I, those are all values that we have as well. But to get to the elementary school coming from Spring Hill Road, our kids have to cross the Spring Hill Road and Sandra Lee's Court intersection, where Holden said there's no traffic light, there's not even a stop sign. And without Linda, our crossing guard, we would not feel like it's safe for our kids to walk on their own or even I walk with them on the way home. I don't feel safe. The way the sun rises in the morning, the sun is directly in your eyes coming from Spring Hill Road. And Linda luckily has a vest and a stop sign, and she makes sure everybody gets there safely. I've seen people speed way above the 25 miles per hour regularly.

Commissioner, who he or she will hopefully do some type of enforcement of community services hours, hold some proverbial carrot in front of the juvenile to have him or her do some hours, some education, and to make sure that they understand why the parents and all three of those understood And as far as I know from the officer, we were three for three for the parents better understanding what the law was and that they would all three be held accountable should the juveniles be seen on the bikes again. And all three of them had said that they're getting rid of the bikes, either giving them away or selling them. I mean, look, they're fun. I've seen people do fun things on them, but they got to be off-road. They can't be on the city streets. They're too heavy. They're too fast. And the juveniles who are riding them are not always, number one, it's illegal for the e-motorcycles specifically, but it's not safe. And we got to get them off the road.

Well, I appreciate that. I saw Talaria come online as a as a please take it away. Like, I want to sell it, but I need it gone. Right. So thank you.

You're welcome. and thank you for that update. I'm really glad to hear that you are shifting over. I mean, it's sad, it's terrible, but it is such a danger at this point to see kids doing wheelies down Deer Hill Road through the intersections. It's just, it's crazy. So we're trying to get the laws passed to make them better for you. They're getting watered down and that is just, it's just happening. I guess RBK's bill got killed in committee. I know. And so we'll do our best and let us know if there's anything we can do as a city to, if we have to pass our own laws, if you have ideas, I know Andy has ideas. And so if we get to that point, please bring it back to us and we'll take action. Thank you for that.

Yeah, thanks very much. This is a great report. And it's always good to see the trend line where crimes are going down. Yes, sir. Except for traffic citations. And part of that, I gather, is the shock and awe campaign that you are mounting with our two other departments. I'm kind of curious, what kind of feedback are you getting from that kind of an effort so far?

Well, what I've seen online when we post it is why are other agencies in our city enforcing those rules? And the fact is that we can do that. And... Overall, people are happy. I feel, I mean, just even given this report and seeing the nodding of the heads, just with the five of you here, I understand that's our goal, right? Slow down Lafayette, the traffic safety. When you see the end result of the traffic accidents going down, the fact we're on a four-year run of the no fatality, it's hard to sell not doing it, really. And I think we owe it to our community to do the enforcement. Again, it's not just for the citations. It's to get people to be aware and to slow down. Yeah.

We just had other speakers earlier commenting around people cutting around the road and off on the Spring Hill Road. So Clearly, there's a lot of need for attention to that. It's greatly appreciated the effort that you're making. Thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you. And just following up on that, you might mention there is really no financial benefit to those citations.

I was going to say that, but I don't have the numbers in front of me. It is minimal at best, right? There's not a lot of money to get generated in the city. We do it. I don't have the number in front of me for the actual money for the site, sir, but...

Is there any member of the public who would like to comment or raise a question?

The mayor and the city council are taking comments on item 10B, the update annual police report. I have one speaker in the Don Tatson Community Hall, Rob Sturm, and I have no hands raised in our virtual audience.

Welcome. Hey, I hadn't planned to speak on this but as long as I'm here I figure I might as well try and make myself useful, and I want to, I'm here both as a member of the community and as a individual member of Lafayette School District Governing Board and I want to express appreciation to the partnership. that we have had with the city and in particular with our police chief and his staff. You folks have done a great job and we really appreciate the partnership on a variety of fronts. I did just quickly want to raise two issues for awareness purposes. First, at either the April or May regular board meeting, my memory is a little bit fuzzy, but within the last two board meetings, We did have an agendized item on whether or not the board supported pursuant to statute and our own board bylaws, putting forward a reward of some sort because we have had more vandalism in the last year at our school sites than we had in the entirety of my duration on the board. We have had a half dozen separate incidents, including a hate crime at Stanley Middle School and vandalism of property, including our brand new facility at Burton Valley. I think adjacent to the issue, you've done great work on promoting awareness and education. And that's where the board discussion ultimately landed, is there was not support for some more aggressive approach, like a specific reward. But I do believe there was broad support. support for continuing that partnership with the city and with the police to enhance awareness and sort of leverage the hive, our village. It takes a village, and sometimes you need the support and awareness of the village to effect positive change. But it is really saddening to see us on the one hand being so careful with every dollar and only to then also see it expended to repair and replace in some cases, literally brand new property that we have brought into the schools. Second, and I know you are already working on this, but I will reaffirm, consistent with the discussion that you just had on e-bikes, bicycle education is something is a key area for us to partner on. And I know there's broad support within the district for us, whether it's e-bikes or simply the traditional bikes and knowing the rules of the road and how how to you know, navigate safely. Our students have never been drivers, so they don't appreciate the perspective of a driver when they are navigating our trails and streets on a bicycle. And so whatever we can do there to improve upon that would be welcomed. Thanks.

Thank you. Are there questions for the speaker? No. Thank you very much.

No additional speakers at this time.

Okay. Chief, thank you very much.

Thank you.

OK. We are now on item 12A, settlement agreement between Housing Action Coalition and the City of Lafayette.

Do we want to do 11A?

Oh, sorry. Yep. Does anyone want to remove anything from the consent calendar? Nope. Is there any member of the public who would like to request? No requests. Okay. Have a motion for adoption. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. It's unanimous. And now we're on 12A. Ms. Subramanian.

Thank you, Mayor. As you're aware, the city adopted its housing element back in 2024. It was then certified by HCD. And then shortly thereafter, the city was sued by Housing Action Coalition in March of 2025. They made allegations related to our site inventory and our arena capacity. In order to see if we might be able to settle the lawsuit, we entered into discussions with HACC. There has been recent housing law, particularly new case law, that has posed risk to the city's housing element, and therefore we are recommending that the city authorize the city manager to execute the attached settlement agreement. The settlement agreement has some conditional requirements that would need to incur before HACC would dismiss the lawsuit. This includes upzoning a variety of properties. There are properties located in the downtown that would go from 60 to 65 dwelling units per acre. Those are shown in Exhibit A to the settlement agreement, as well as properties located in the downtown that would go from 35 to 45 dwelling units per acre. An additional up zone of two acres of the De Silva South property would be increased to 35 dwelling units per acre. As part of the settlement, the city would agree to not use the faith-based organization properties for no net loss purposes and pay HAC's attorney's fees of approximately $120,000. If the city completed all of the up zoning and payment of attorney's fees by the end of the year, Hack would dismiss the lawsuit. As part of the settlement, the city would be able to also use additional identified parcels to increase the no net loss buffer that the city would otherwise be losing from the faith-based organization properties. In addition, the settlement agreement does not require the city to amend its housing element. So the housing element will stay as is and certified by HCD. At this point, we're asking you to authorize the city manager to execute the attached settlement agreement, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Okay, we'll have questions for the city attorney, just questions, and we'll open it for public comment, and then we'll come back and we'll discuss the item. So are there any questions for our city attorney?

Thank you, Mayor. I have one. So we received correspondence on this topic. One of the questions that was raised in a couple of cases was, in as much as the Housing Action Coalition, they don't reside here. They're a Bay Area group. How do they have standing to actually sue the city of Lafayette? How do they have the ability to do that?

Councilmember Cervantes any interested party can enforce housing element laws, so they do have standing to sue the city.

You know, I think, for the benefit of public who may not be familiar with all of the fine detail of the housing element law, could you explain the no net loss provisions that you referenced.

Sure, as you will recall in our housing element, we identified numerous opportunity sites in which we presumed a certain level of affordability for those sites. Should those sites develop at levels that are not matched in what we identified. We have a buffer, but should we go below the buffer of our RHNA obligations, we are required to up zone in order to meet the RHNA obligations that we received. So that faith-based organization sites that we included in our no net loss calculations and included for our buffer purposes, we would no longer be able to utilize those sites. We would be able to utilize additional parcels that we have identified in place of those so that our buffer does increase.

Okay, public comments.

I have one speaker slip for persons in the community hall, Elliot Hudson, and currently I have no hands raised in our virtual audience.

Welcome back.

Good evening again. I'm not going to comment on whether the city should enter into this agreement because I understand it's essentially a done deal. I'm going to limit my comments to two provisions or rather omissions from the terms of the settlement agreement. To provide context and not to I have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about. I'll remind you that I was a litigation attorney for 45 years, including in major complex litigation. I wrote or revised literally hundreds of settlement agreements, including a vast array of cases. That included housing discrimination cases where compliance with state or federal law was challenged in multimillion dollar cases involving complex issues. So I've negotiated, read more than a few settlement agreements. None of them were ever challenged in court. The biggest issue I have with the settlement agreement is there is no what I would call escape clause in the event the state law changes so that these upzonings are no longer required. Under the agreement as now written, it is entirely possible that if state law changed to allow a lesser density, HAC could argue that Lafayette has contractually bound itself to retain this really horrific density. That cannot be allowed, and the fact that there is no specific provision protecting Lafayette's flexibility is inexcusable. The second omission, I'm a little less clear on, but I think this is right. There is no carve out for historic areas of the city. And after spending millions of dollars on, for example, the park theater, if it's going to be up zoned to residential, again, that should not have happened and it should not happen. Thank you.

Okay, thank you other questions for the speaker. Okay, is there any other public comment no additional comments. Okay, we'll bring it back to the Council, let me ask city attorney if you'd like to respond to either of those points.

We on the the latter question about the certain properties that might be considered historic we don't have any current protection for those properties, if you wanted to have protection, you would need to carve them out of the settlement agreement which would require additional negotiation.

And then, with the. The park theater doesn't border on mount diablo boulevard. So it's not part of a settlement.

I'm going to ask, I think our community development director is probably looking at the map as we speak. But they currently, to be clear, do not have any protected designations.

No, understood. In our discussions, we were always talking about properties that actually abutted Mount Diablo Boulevard.

Our community development director has confirmed that you're correct, that it's not being touched.

That's not an issue.

So at least the park theater and the wayside inn and all that is protected, is not included in the up zone.

They're not in this. They'll stay zoned as is. Not being up zoned. And then the other, on Mr. Hudson's first point, I may have this wrong, but we're entering into this agreement that basically says if we do, if we change the zoning, then the suit will be dismissed. If the law changes between now and the time we do that, we can make a decision whether or not we can move forward or not.

Correct. They would not dismiss the lawsuit. If the law changed in that window before the end of the year, that somehow favored us and made no sense for us to continue with this, then.

Yeah. Sorry. And if we change the zoning, then whether there's an escape clause or not, we can't go back and change our zoning under state law Just because we had an agreement, an escape clause in the settlement agreement, we can only change our zoning if we upzone other properties to equal it out. That doesn't change. You're correct. So I can understand reasons for escape clauses in settlement agreements, but that actually doesn't matter for this particular reason in this settlement agreement.

I think that's correct, Mayor. And then if I might add a third point, I don't think we would have a settlement agreement if we were to try to add an escape clause.

And I'm just saying, for this purpose, it's irrelevant.

I think the question was, if state law changes after, are we still contractually obligated? Like if a no net loss, for some miracle change.

At that point, it has nothing to do with contract. We have changed our zoning.

If we want to downzone it after that, we would have to upzone simultaneously other property.

If the no net loss went away, that's what he's saying. If state law changed. If it changed that drastically. I'm just saying, just hypothetically. And all of a sudden we were allowed to downzone without the no net loss. How would that be impacted by this? Or is this a contract that we signed that said forever?

I don't think we're bound forever because you can always change zoning, but we're going to be bound by the state law. That's in effect. I would be very surprised. I'm not. Yes. So hypothetically, I wouldn't want anyone in the public to think that was something that could happen. But, you know, we have to comply with state law in the future. So if there was some provision that allowed us to adjust, that would be something we would look at at that time.

Okay, other comments or questions?

Just a comment, actually, just kind of for the record. I mean, I think... I would say the council did not go into this lightly. I mean, we've been working many months on this. Some of us even more than others. And I just, I mean, stipulate, you know, the settlement is what settlement is, but I'm incredibly proud of the progress we've made on housing in Lafayette, despite the settlement. Even if we didn't have the settlement, we made great progress on housing and we will continue to do so, regardless of the settlement. It does, you know, tie our hands a little bit more than might otherwise, but we'll continue to move forward.

Yeah, maybe by way of comment. City Attorney referenced the approval of the housing element at the December 16 2024 meeting. I remember that because that was my first meeting as a council member. And at the time, I made a comment that that marked the proctored four year anniversary of my time involved the housing element because the general plan Advisory Committee kicked off about then in year 2020, in the pandemic, to start this venture, which took the next four years. The GPAC spent about 15 months on it. There was the Planning Commission who considered our recommendations, made some modifications, went to City Council. Our Mayor, Councilmember Kandel, were involved in this. We went through four rounds with Housing Community Development, HCD, to get to the point where we could approve something in December 2024. So that was a long struggle to get there. And I'm profoundly disappointed that we got sued on this, given all the effort that was involved in that, to at least, I kind of felt like we should just try, it'd be great to try to make work something that the community spent four years on, but that's my complaint. I do know that, and can share, I think, that when we got, after we were sued by the Housing Action Coalition, or HACC, we spent a dozen closed sessions to discuss the matter, an ad hoc committee comprised of our mayor and current mayor were very involved in the effort beyond that. So this was a full-on attempt to address the litigation, the challenge to the housing element. And I can see from my perspective, which I think is shared, that there were two things that were of paramount concern, one of which was if the housing element got somehow overturned, it would take an unknown amount of time to get there, maybe not four years as the current one, but it would take time. And during that time, the city of Lafayette would be exposed to the builder's remedy, which is basically anarchy and development, where a developer could come in, if you want to put a 12-story building up, go ahead. So I think we were very conscious of the consequences of a failure in litigation, high-risk stakes. And the other issue that was a particular concern to me and I think my colleagues is we really wanted to avoid an up zone in single-family residential neighborhoods, which is what this settlement does. You look at it, it's really the commercial strip along Mount Diablo Boulevard. And we were able, the starting point for the other side was considerably different than where we ended up with. So I think, at least for me, in my view of this, it wasn't the case of the perfect is the enemy of the good. Maybe it's the perfect is the enemy of the good enough. But this protected the key elements that To me, which involved the protecting single family residential like in the in the downtown community and focusing the up zone on the commercial part of it, and you know. Not my ideal solution, but I think to me, this is something that's workable it avoids litigation which I think of this in terms of how much of measure H, do you spend on something at. ballpark $1.5 million for our side. If you lose, you pay the attorney's fees to the other side. Now, that's a full year in that case of Measure H. I didn't feel that that was warranted for us to spend that kind of money on this if we could work out a settlement that addressed our needs and avoided our worst-case scenario. I support this. I think this is the best outcome we can get to. The council spent a lot of effort on it. Our mayor and council member Ken Dell spent a lot of time on this as well. And I think it's time to sort of put this one to bed so we can focus on the 66 elements that comprise the housing element and get back to doing what we wanted to do back when we approved this in December of 2024.

Any other comments? Okay, well, let me just thank everyone. I'm going to do this in two stages, before motion and after motion. Before motion, I want to thank everyone who worked so long on the housing element, everyone who contributed to that effort. A lot of work, as you said, went into adopting the housing element. And I thought we had a good housing element. We were very happy where we were. I was very disappointed that HAC sued us to readapt a statement from an earlier time. Basically, they sued the wrong city. But they did. So I'll entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to sign the settlement agreement. So moved.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous. And now I want to thank BBK, city staff, planning department, incredible amount of work went into doing this. And, you know, part of this, you sued the wrong city. so much work went into this that we couldn't, we haven't been able to do what we should be doing in terms of planning for housing. I mean, it's just really a shame how much effort has been taken up by this over the last year. So it was not helpful. I don't think it's brought us any to any better place. So, but hopefully now it's over. Okay, so again, thank you, well, thank you to the team at bbk and Greg Thank you to you and your department. Okay we're on to item 12 be update on objective design steps.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. Good to see you again. So this item is actually closely related to the one you just heard in that the hack lawsuit influences your decision on the item about to present. So I'm here to with a request for direction on the timing of the adoption process for the objective standards document phase two. as you know phase one continues to be in place and be applied to incoming projects staff continues to work with lisa wise consulting to refine the most recent draft of the ods phase two document in preparation for the adoption process however there are certain aspects of the document sections of document pertaining to specifically to building massing surface and structured parking publicly accessible open space and common open space which may be considered to reduce the intensity of land use and would therefore need to comply with the no net loss requirement of state law. The city would either need to remove these provisions from the ODS document or wait until there is a concurrent up zone, as discussed, to ensure that there is no net loss in residential capacity. As just discussed, the city is in the process of settling this lawsuit as voted. And we'll be considering revising its zoning ordinance to allow for more density in certain areas of the downtown apologies for the wrong tense here, this was written before the decision. So if the council considers the upzoning at the same time that the sections of the ODS that could reduce intensity are also considered, it would comply with the net loss requirements and can be adopted as the total number of units and density of certain areas in Lafayette would both be increased. Given that certain sections of the ODS cannot be adopted until the time of rezoning is considered, which is tentatively scheduled for this fall, If the settlement is approved, the council has a choice as to how to move forward with the remainder of the phase two document. Option one is to wait and adopt all of the phase two document at once concurrent with settling of the zoning or the up zoning. And so the document would not come online until that decision likely this fall and phase one would continue to be in place. Or option to the bifurcation option where phase two would be adopted in two phases. This would be an adoption of all of the complying sections as soon as possible, and the three or sorry five sections mentioned would be delayed until the up zoning took place and could be adopted concurrently. So if the Council chooses option one, staff will simply wait until the up zoning occurs and then bring the entire document together. And if Council chooses option two, staff will bring the majority of the document as soon as it's able. It will go through a planning commission and then Council review and then bring again the other sections of the document when available with the rezoning. Happy to answer any questions.

Any questions?

Just real quick, Mr. Hudson brought up two pieces. Are those something with the window size and then also the flat roofs? Have those changed since that review that we had?

So the Council last reviewed the document in January, and then the DRC working group and the Council liaisons did review the document. I don't have it in front of me. I can look it up if you like. No, it's okay. Some changes have been made to the document. The Council is able to review that again with the approval process.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. Any other questions? Is there any public comment?

Yes, I have one speaker slip for persons in the Don Tatson Community Hall, and I have no hands raised in our virtual audience. And our speaker is Elliot Hudson.

All right. The hat trick.

I know, right? These standards have taken way too long to get in place. I mean, they've taken years too long to write the right standards. Every day that goes by without them, we have buildings that are submitted that go up and they're wrong. And those buildings will never come down in our lifetime. We should do what we can as fast as we can. So I support bifurcation and hopefully by the time you actually get the sections of the design standards that don't need to wait for rezoning, they will have fixed the three flaws that I outlined earlier. None of those affect the density and they could all be fixed in this first draft. So please, again, do what you can as fast as you can.

Okay, thank you.

And I do have a hand raised in our virtual audience. And Rob Lavoie, do you want to speak? Your hand went up and down.

Hello, gentlemen and ladies. I was just going to cede some time to Elliot because he's the expert on this, but since he seems to be done, I'm going to just close my comments. I just support the bifurcation option. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Are there any other?

No additional comments.

Okay, so we'll close public comment, bring it back to the council. Does anyone want to make a case for recommendation number one? Are we all in favor of recommendation two? Okay. Okay. You have your guidance, thank you very much. And that brings us to 13 a. Joanne Robin city clerk resolution adopting a policy on the disruption of telephonic or Internet service during City Council meetings.

Before you is resolution 2026-26 to adopt a policy for disruption of telephonic or internet service during city council meetings. This is an update to the Brown Act compliant with SB 707. I'm sure you've read the staff report. Do you have any questions for me? We will continue to do what we've always done. A lot of cities have stopped their virtual option, but we have not. So there's really no change for us. There will be a change in the back room, the IT staff in the back. If we lose internet service, they will have to notify me, which in turn I will notify you, and we will stop the meeting. And we must try for at least an hour to get our internet service back. And when we do we'll notify the public will allow people a few moments to get back on with us, and we can continue our meeting if after one hour. We cannot re establish the Internet service, it is up to us to decide to continue or to continue the items to a future meeting, but that is totally up to the Council after that one hour has passed.

Okay. Thank you very much for clarifying that. So if the internet goes out, we must spend at least according to this. But is that the generally in the state law that you have an hour? Okay. It is now.

It's SB 707.

You can't make the decision earlier that it's in the public interest to proceed.

Okay. All right. Any other questions? Public comment?

I have no public comment.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for putting this together. We have a motion for adoption of Resolution 202626.

I'll move approval of Resolution 2026-26. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. It's unanimous. Okay. Thank you very much. Ah, okay. Department work plans for fiscal year 26, 27. Our city manager and assistant city manager. Floor is yours.

Thank you so much. In February 26th, the city council conducted a special workshop to review progress on existing priorities and establish priorities for the upcoming fiscal year. And you had a comprehensive discussion and identified three multi-year priorities, wildfire prevention, preparedness, and responsiveness, the Mount Diablo corridor planning, and planning for the development and financing of the city's recreational needs. To ensure alignment with these priorities, the city's management team held a workshop in March during which Each department identified projects, tasks, challenges, and cross-functional needs for the next one to two years. These departmental work plans served as the foundation for the development of the fiscal year 26-27 draft budget. The attached work plans, what's before you, reflect a balanced approach that supports Council's priorities while continuing to deliver the essential services that our community expects. City staff devotes the majority of their time to core responsibilities including public safety, infrastructure maintenance, long-range planning, regulatory compliance, financial management, and responding to community needs and unforeseen events. The work plans also incorporate state mandated, sometimes unfunded activities and projects carried forward from prior years. And all of these tasks are funded through the general fund grants or other designated sources. We recommend approval of the work plans as presented with a mid-year review in January. to assess progress and make any necessary adjustments in conjunction with the adoption of the final budget. We're available to answer questions. You have four department heads here as well, should you have specific questions.

Okay, we'll do questions and public comments and then come back for a comment. Are there any questions?

I have one. And by the way, thank you for spending time with me to go through all the details. I'm sparing the council some of the nits or my particular questions. But there's some of these items that are contingent on other sources. I'm thinking specifically in the wildfire. Thanks to Senator Grayson, he's put forward a package to secure funds out of the state budget to help us with traffic management boxes, evacuation being a key issue for us. And fingers crossed that he's successful. But the state budget won't be, I think June 15th is the date for the budget, but it's often enacted through trailer bills which stagger out over the summer. So we may not know by the time of our next meeting what the status of that is. So it's important, would we still, let's say that Senator Grace is not able to prevail, I gather at some point later on, maybe in the mid-year budget revision, we could take that on or consider the matter.

That is correct. You can consider it at any time during the fiscal year. So if we find out, say in July, that we do not have the money for the projects that were identified in Senator Grayson's list, we can come back to you for a discussion about budgets.

Thank you. Okay, public comment.

Yes, I have public comments. Oh, well, this is budget, though. So now let's hold battle. That'll be later. Yeah, sorry.

Okay, so no public comment. We'll bring it back to the council what we're looking for today, as opposed to waiting till the next meeting is approval of the work plans. Yes, I don't see any reason why not correct tonight. So have a motion for approval. Or is there any comment?

I'm happy to make the motion.

Okay, there's a motion. A second. All in favor? Aye. Okay, and thank you for all the work. Thank you. City manager, our city manager, each of our department heads, a lot went into this, and there's a... lot that's going to be in the next item. So thank you very much for all that work. So on to the next item, which is the budget. And so everyone's aware, we will be discussing items in the budget, but we will not be adopting the budget and we will not be confirming the city's investment policy. We'll be doing all of that at the January, sorry, June 26 meeting. Okay, so Tracy, do you want to give the start of the report?

Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. The proposed budget for the coming year is overall a good news budget, but it is not a blank check budget. Lafayette is entering the year in a strong financial position. Measure H is performing better than we originally expected. Our core revenues remain stable in the city's five-year forecast. shows balanced budgets with reserves above the council's 60% minimum through fiscal year 2031. And that is a much stronger position than we were in not long ago. At the same time, the main message of this budget is caution and discipline. The proposed budget largely maintains existing services and continues work on the council's adopted priorities, which are wildfire preparedness, the Montiabo Boulevard corridor planning effort, and long-term planning for the city's recreation needs. It does not add a long list of new programs or expand city services beyond what we can sustain. A major focus of this budget is taking care of the assets that the community already owns and planning responsibly for assets that we will need in the future. The clearest example is the community center. The recent facilities assessment estimated that the existing community center could require more than $16 million in repair over the next 20 years. So historically, the city's been setting aside about $125,000 per year for that facility, but the assessment suggests that the real annual need would be closer to $625,000. And increasing over time now, while the Council has not yet determined whether the best long term solution is to renovate the existing Community Center rebuild it relocate it or pursue some other option. The additional 500,000 contribution should not be understood as a commitment to invest that money into the current building, however, it is a prudent step to begin setting aside funds for the future, because whether we. repair, rebuild, or purchase a new facility, significant capital funding will be necessary. This budget also keeps several important multi-year projects moving, including the Mount Diablo corridor study, housing element implementation, objective design standards, a comprehensive fee study, et cetera. It also includes support, continuing support for community events and a compensation study to make sure the city has current objective information before the next round of labor negotiations. I would like to remind you that we are also starting phase two of the assessment study, and it is likely that those findings will require the city to set aside additional funds for future infrastructure repair and replacement. There are several budget requests for the council's consideration. $350,000 for a recreation master plan and needs assessment. $100,000 for a formal ADA transition plan. Up to $250,000 in Measure H funds for additional fire safety projects. And $25,000 to support AARD. So the bottom line is this measure H and careful spending have put the city in a much better position, but the reserves above the 60% threshold should not be treated as surplus money available for new ideas unrelated to current priorities. The city has major known obligations ahead. as mentioned, and the responsible approach is to preserve our flexibility, stay focused on council priorities, and use today's fiscal strength to prepare for the costs that we know are coming. And I can take questions.

Okay, thank you very much. Yes, my question would be, should we hear from Mr. Moran at this point? Okay, so Mike can you discuss this would be the crossing guard.

request.

Just so everyone is aware, in the last year's budget, the city allocated and spent $120,000 for crossing guards. This budget increases that amount by $44,000 to $164,000. And what I'd like Mike to do is just go through the process, the metrics that were looked at in coming to that recommendation.

And Mayor, before Mike delves into the technical aspect, just wanted to give you a background that last fall, I believe, the city school subcommittee met. The subject of crossing guards has been a point of discussion with the school board as well as with the with the city, and at that time, city staff, Patrick Golier, our transportation program manager, was charged with looking at the 11 crossing guard locations and applying technical and professional criteria to evaluate whether they met the test of being needed at that location. It has taken a while to gather data, and Patrick has worked very closely with the school district, particularly Brent Stevens, the superintendent, who's been a real partner in this. Brent has also shared the information with principals to get their input. And at the end, Patrick did evaluate using the criteria that Mike will explain today, prioritize the locations. And given that we had contributed $120,000 in the past, and given our own fiscal challenges, we were shooting for somewhere around that as a contribution to the program. An added issue was that we would be taking over the management of the program since the school board had made the decision given their own financial constraints that they would no longer fund or manage the school bus program. So we had the list of locations. We did meet with the city schools subcommittee of the council. We did a further assessment. And what you see before you in the budget is what was being proposed. So just wanted to bring you up to speed before Mike explains the rationale.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, so there were 11 existing crosswalk locations. One of those locations, Pleasant Hill Road at Spring Hill has multiple crossing guards at the location. The proposal from the city would be to retain two of those. So we looked at retaining seven possible locations, one of those being Pleasant Hill Road at Spring Hill and having two guards at that. So really what you're looking at is preserving eight crossing guards as opposed to 12, which we used to have when the school district and the city shared the expenses. So the criteria basically were to try and look at this objectively, crossing volumes, traffic volumes, traffic speeds, the distances of the crossing, such as number of lanes and other issues that are related to that, such as visibility. Five-year safety record, existing controls at the intersections. Does it have a signal? Does it have a stop sign? Is it a mid-block crossing? Does it have a flashing beacon crossing? Or is it just a crosswalk? And if it's a crosswalk, is it a ladder crosswalk or just two bar crosswalks? And all of ours are ladder crosswalks at all of these 11 locations, by the way. So which rolls into some of the upgrades that we've made with the safety improvements near schools. I know most all of you are very familiar with those, but we did put $1.3 million into safety improvements near schools so that Pretty much all of these locations have some of these improvements, even if it was just added paint and delineation. But most of these locations have, they're either at a traffic signal, they're at a controlled stop, or we've added flashing beacon crossings, as well as at Happy Valley School and at School Street, for example, we have speed humps along with flashing beacon crossings. So certainly the council has made an effort to protect our children coming to and from schools. with that objective criteria just trying to cut the number we we came up with the seven locations um and the four locations that were would be left out are our first street at monroe st mary's at solana and i'll mention on that one um that was an easier one to cut because there's a redundant crossing just east of it that also has a flashing beacon and also has a crossing guard and and this one even if you didn't have a crossing guard does have a flashing beacon um that we added um spring hill road at san release court the council heard testimony on please save that one earlier today but um just based on this objective criteria it wouldn't have made the cut marywood at indian way and mostly those are lower volumes haven't had any issues at them in the past You can look at any location subjectively and say you should save all these or not. But at some point, if you're having to go by a budget based on the objective criteria, that's how the other locations were chosen. So just for the public and to run through those, those are Moraga Road at Brook Street, St. Mary's Road at Ocampo Drive, School Street at Avalon, School Street at Paradise Court, Happy Valley Road at Panorama Drive. And first street at school street. So those would be the seven locations proposed to include moving forward with the city doing 100% of the funding and 100% of the management of the program.

Questions?

So, thank you. I do have some questions. I wasn't on the subcommittee. I would love to hear from the subcommittee on this as well, but I just have a couple of questions. I remember when we were talking about this over the last couple of years, we had wondered, I mean, one of my concerns was when we had the equal funding from the two organizations, the school district and the city council, than who was really minding making sure we got the best bang for our buck, right? Where we actually, it seems expensive on the surface for what we're getting. I'm just going to tell you, it seems expensive. And so was that part of the, have we done that analysis yet to really make sure that we're really getting the best value for our dollar? Or did you really just kind of more stack rank the... the intersections or areas and just kind of using the rubric made an arbitrary cutoff.

i would say we did more of the rubric arbitrary cutoff i i can tell you we have done some research on for example can you have parent volunteers be crossing guards and and really the answer is no um you can have them be something else but they can't be out there with a stop paddle they need training they need insurance and and part of what is so expensive about a crossing guard program is you're going through a company that has that training has them in their vests has them with the right stop paddles has when they call in sick a replacement theoretically. So you're paying for a service, as well as just an hourly rate to a person that's splitting their day and working very few hours in the day so it's very similar to the school bus program where it's very expensive, so you try and utilize it as best you can, but. you know, it is, if you look at it on the surface, it's a lot of money.

Right. So, uh, I guess to say the question again, um, would we do, or do we, do we believe it's the best we can do? Are there other services that we can do? Cause I'm just, I'm just wondering about the quality versus quantity. If we can, I don't know that we could cut that rate. Um, but we have not shopped that yet. Um, Right, because I'm just thinking, I think there's one, and we're going to talk about joint funding or not, but the one advantage of having a single group that can manage this is we can, it's easier to hold accountable and ensure we get the best value for our dollar. So I just don't know if that's, again, but I take your point. So just to be clear, also, you're saying, so parent volunteers are not an option because of the insurance requirement, nor are, I mean, I was in fifth grade traffic patrol myself growing up. Right. Not an option anymore. Burton Valley had that, I don't know, seven years ago, but-

It's disbanded. I don't know what happened to it. Now we're talking about fifth graders that are afraid to go to school, yet fifth graders used to be the guards at Roar and Merrywood seven years ago. So I can't go into that, but I... Those are things that have happened in the past and they have worked.

But as you're understanding right now, the only option is paid insured adult employees.

To be actual crossing guards per the MUTCD recommendations manual of uniform traffic control devices. And I think it's probably more about liability and insurance. The training and apparel and so forth is, you know, just the detail.

I have other questions about the budget generally, but maybe if you want to do it just on this part first, how do you want to Questions for my

Sure. If, hypothetically, we were going to add two more back in, what was the swag on the cost? Is it about $20,000 per guard? Yes. Right. Okay. Thanks. Okay.

Yeah, Mike, you know, one thing that I remember seeing in the data, which would be helpful, I guess, if the whole council could get access to it, but it was the first in Monroe actually had the largest number of crossings, and it also was ranked highly by the principal of LES.

Let me speak to that, because that number is not accurate it when it was reevaluated that is not the right it had the highest crossings but that's just not true um and it's it's it's not we've re-looked at it based on just the morning observation yeah no of elementary school traffic not of the high school or middle school so i could actually i think i actually have the numbers here um because it had it at like 487 or something and I don't know how those numbers were obtained the first time. They were actually shared with us by the school, and we know they were not accurate. There are not near that many crossings. For example, the highest location of crossings is likely at School Street at Paradise Court. That's the most in any of the either morning or afternoon school drop off or pickup. So that was reevaluated, and Patrick did actually go out and do some evaluation and do another further write-up. Again, subjectivity, I'm not going to say nobody crosses there. Certainly kids do. And more of those kids cross there with their parents, by the way, because they're mostly going to the elementary school. If they were going to the middle school, they're probably going to stay on that 10-foot-wide path on First Street and not need to cross First Street.

But they cross Monroe.

They would cross Monroe, yes. But that is a controlled stop.

Well, right. But so is the crossing at First Street as well.

Correct. Yeah, those are both controlled. Yeah. Right.

My understanding was that Patrick went out on a Wednesday morning, and he was able to observe just the LES traffic, the pedestrian traffic, because it's a different time that they start. Correct.

He was trying to isolate the elementary school at that point.

Right. So his numbers are elementary school only. But then there's a Stanley component. And I think the thing that we've seen is that there are a lot of them because they're doing what we want. They're doing the remote drop off at the library here. Right there. And then they're using the 10 foot wide path. What I've read in some of the public comment and heard is that some of the kids on bikes go very fast. And so. It's a bit of a dangerous situation with the traffic on Monroe because it's coming out and turning left to go on to First Street. And the guard essentially is the traffic controller in that situation. So I guess I had seen this number of 413 or whatever in the spreadsheet, and I know Patrick was going out to look at it. My understanding was that he did, but that he only saw the elementary school portion. So we really don't have a good count or recount of the total.

We would have to do a recount during school. Obviously, we're in summer break. And again, so there's a subjectivity story and some knowledge that would give you reason to maybe want to also include that, or to maybe include that instead of something else. But just looking at them objectively, and by the way, Monroe didn't make the cut, even when it had the highest number of crossings, like it was just thrown into the matrix, it still was in the bottom. So but there are other reasons to maybe include it. So, and that's really, we tried to give it to it just by the numbers, not by the heartstrings.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay. We got a lot of comments about the Spring Hill and Seminole East Court. Do you have any numbers that indicate, or numbers you can share with us, indicate why that was put on the list to be discontinued?

So the San Luis Court did have lower crossing volumes. It had lower traffic volume.

How many kids does that mean?

26.

26 kids a day or each?

No, at each time. So this was the peak time. We call it the peak hour. And we looked at the student crossing and then also the volume of traffic and whichever one spiked the highest, whether it was morning or afternoon or 8.30 to 9.30 or 8 to 9 or whatever it was, we were going with the highest hour we could find, which would certainly include the entire commute to or from school.

Okay.

So volumes were 192 was its peak. Wait, 192? 192 vehicles. Okay. That was the highest. The speed, the 85th percentile was 26 in a 25 mile per hour zone.

and it's a shorter distance to cross you know two lanes most of them were two lanes but a few of them are four can i do a quick follow-up something sure um well with the testimony we heard earlier there was just a mention that the observation happened on some sort of cloudy rainy day and it wasn't representative are these observations it was just the one no no like over time or how these are these are more street light data driven and

The Monroe we were talking about was a separate visit to kind of question. So you're pretty confident in the numbers as far as... Certainly in comparison of one to the other, yes.

Okay. Do factors such as the facing into the sun in the morning... In the evening, does that take into consideration?

It wasn't for this. This is just strictly the data. Obviously, sunlight can affect a driver considerably, right?

um mike was turning movements and intersection part of the analysis so in other words people are not just going straight but they're making left turns or right turns no but they'd be picked up as going through the crosswalk right whether it was either side if it's a two-way okay but they were not isolated out okay any other questions for mike

Final one, I guess, is are we going to get a formal staff report on this? I mean, this is great. I really appreciate the context on this, but there are a lot of numbers and I can't really keep it all.

We would be happy to prepare a staff report for your next meeting.

I think it's obviously important. Intense community interest would put it mildly. And so I think for us to have data to make decisions is super helpful.

Okay, thank you very much, Mike. Okay, so now back to questions for Tracy. Any other questions?

Are we, sorry, are we continuing with this particular topic? Are we?

No, we're on the budget. Right. And so any question on the budget for Tracy. So what we'll do, we'll have questions from council members. Then we'll have public comment. And then we'll come back and we'll have a general discussion. And then what I want to do is start first with the items that are on page three under budget changes. And I'm just going to ask, is there anything under budget changes that anyone wants to discuss? Because those are already reflected. in the numbers and then we get finished with that we're going to go to budget requests and we now have well there's four budget requests and we're going to discuss each of those we may or may not make a decision uh during this meeting okay great thank you okay so we're further questions for Tracy

I do have.

All right.

Great. Thank you. All right. So, Tracy, I guess a couple of questions, just specifics. One's just my own. Well, two on kind of law enforcement. On page 65, when we look at the sheriffs, our kind of contractual number. That on police services, you know, obviously, I appreciate everything that Chief Williams is doing with the police, but our cars, number 862, our contract sheriff services has a pretty significant, a 30% increase. Am I misreading that?

Well, it's an anomaly because I believe that I mentioned in the... managers memo we um we actually had police services in three different places right um we had two programs within the general fund but we also had two officers budgeted in um i can't remember the fund name but it was uh supplemental law enforcement and that was outside of the general fund And that's an artifact from long ago. We get cops money from the federal government and we, I believe at the time it was set up, we kept it in a separate fund to show that we were in fact funding two officers with that money. There is no longer a need to do that. So rather, I moved all of the police services into now one program so that we can see actually what the cost of police officers together are. So what you're seeing there is we used to only be showing the ones that were charged to the general fund.

Right.

So I moved the ones that were outside into the general fund it's really the same amount of money, because I was transferring money from the general fund to the other fund. So it looks like it's an increase, but it's actually...

Right. When that was 675,000, I saw it was moved in. It just feels like the increase was 1.7 million. So you're saying that's both? I guess maybe that's... Okay. I guess I knew we were consolidating 675,000. I didn't realize there was more. So from an apples-to-apples comparison, is there any significant increase in how much we're charging? A little bit.

Yeah, they're not not by that much. Let me just look in police services. Yeah, so most of that came from the officers and it was not that was see how much was it? Yeah. So it wasn't a huge increase in the off in the number for officers themselves. We had some big increases in services and supplies. And that's the numbers charged from the sheriff's office.

So that's bundled into this number? Yes.

Separated at the bottom of the page in 210. You'll see that only a couple of years ago, it was like under $20,000. And this year, it's $133,000. So again, that's for everybody. So I moved everybody in here. Right. We are paying significantly more because of the technology, the body cams, the vehicle cams, the data processing, but that's a pretty significant amount.

Okay. All right. That makes sense. Next, back to crossing guards, but more in your belly wick than Mike Moran. So I see, I guess it's on page 71. We have our new crossing guard fund, which is higher now. It's only the contractual number, but we're taking over management as well, right? I mean, isn't there staff time required to manage this? And shouldn't that be accounted for here? Because I think that's not trivial to deal with everything that happened with this.

Vice Mayor McCormick, there are two aspects to the management of the Crossing Guard program. One is really paying the bills, reviewing invoices, and that is something that actually Tracy is going to be doing. And the other is what happens on a day-to-day basis if somebody doesn't show up. We've spoken with the superintendent and asked that each school be responsible for that aspect of the management because we're sitting at the city offices. We have absolutely no idea or control over what goes on. They have agreed to that verbally. We also spoke to the vendor to indicate the same thing. While we would like to be copied on the correspondence, as we take this on, we will not be handling the day-to-day management of the program.

So that's the schools will still do that?

It's the schools, the superintendent's office and each individual school will be doing that. And in speaking to the superintendent and his colleague, we were told that currently it's operating quite smoothly. that they do replace an absent crossing guard with another. They're still informed. If there is no crossing guard at a location, they're told that as well. That's a function that the city really cannot take on because we are so far removed from it so we are going into this with the understanding that that aspect of the program will be managed continue to be the school's responsibility okay it just it wouldn't surprise i guess that's fair i guess i'm just supposing it's gonna take more time than i mean this feels like it's a dynamic program if there's live interaction with

PB, Jorge Boone, Schools and the Community and everything like that it wouldn't take somebody time may be buried in the budget. PB, Jorge Boone, But I accept that i'm sorry i'm almost done with this part, the. PB, Jorge Boone, i'm just observational on page 33 we talked about the parking meter revenue, we have is going to be almost 8% higher, why would parking meter revenue be higher we're not installing new parking meters are changing the rates when that be flat. PB, Jorge Boone, it's a small thing, but I just kind of like sure it is page 33. yeah yeah i guess you're right 33 overall with a pdf but uh okay let's see what i did um

So I'm sorry, which parking meter?

It is line 631.2. I was just kind of wondering why we expect to get more revenue because.

Well, we got lower. Okay. So if you look back in 2425, we got $374,000. And It actually went down a little bit. So I'm just bringing it slightly back up to 350. Okay.

So you're just, it's just higher utilization of existing.

Correct. And I think that we're bearing that out. Yes. I don't know why it dips so much, but then it. No, I don't know. I don't know either.

Actually, it feels like everything is about the same, but. Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you.

This actually is probably for Jonathan, is the $350,000 for the community center study. What does that cover? Thank you.

the other way. So that's numbers based on reaching out to other local park and rec directors regarding similar studies that typically had a needs assessment and an update to plans. Some of the other cities did multiple needs assessments. This may actually have an architectural component as well because we're looking at the community center. So as I looked at a number of the other communities, including Moraga, that has a meeting tonight where they're reaching out to the community and doing some of that outreach, theirs was about 350 and involves an update, comprehensive update to their facilities plan as well.

Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions? Okay, so we'll open it for public comment on any aspect of the budget.

The mayor and council members are taking comments on the budget item 14 a I have about five speaker slips in house and I have no hands raised yet I have one hand raised in our virtual audience and we'll start with rob stern.

Yeah, sorry, I'm not trying to compete with Colin Elliott. This will be my last set of comments. And so I come here wearing multiple hats. I think first off, although I believe our board president is also going to present, I'm here in a representative capacity on behalf of the board. Uh, because I believe that we collectively want to express our gratitude to the city council and staff and everyone who is involved in bringing forward a path for the city to assume responsibility for the school crossing guard program. It is greatly appreciated by our board. On a more personal and individual note, I also wanted to make sure that I was here because you have heard me speak on this issue many, many times. And I acknowledge that my advocacy at times was passionate. And perhaps frustrating to some. And I simply hope that you you also appreciate that it always came from a place of concern for the district's fiscal is the district's fiscal stewards. And what I ardently believed was the appropriate alignment of responsibility and accountability. And so we may have in the past agreed to disagree, but I believe and hope that that was done with an understanding of the intent behind it. I particularly appreciate the city's willingness to apply its expertise. We heard that and very impressive and expertise that we, the district, lack. determine operational needs and ensure that resources are deployed where they have the greatest impact on safety. I appreciate the time and attentiveness and thoughtfulness that the collective group has brought to the process and recognize that you, much like our school district, are also doing the very best that you can to appropriately prioritize public safety and support managing risks within the realities that you lack a crystal ball and unlimited funds. I applaud the work that you have done to date. The relationship between the city and the school district is one of the most important partnerships in Lafayette. We serve the same families, we serve the same neighborhoods, and the same future and desire for a happy, healthy, and vibrant community. Those goals were recently affirmed by our community with the strong results on the Measure H parcel tax. Maybe the solution is every act should be Measure H. That seems to be a lucky letter. And I want to extend special thanks to the City Council and so many of our community members for your advocacy, partnership, and commitment to Lafayette students and families. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Eden Hall to be followed by Grace Dixon.

This is still online. Yeah, great. So I want to express that we are on the cusp of a great opportunity. When you look at this room, mostly we are volunteer council or paid staff. Could you imagine being able to communicate to 110 of your residents every day? That's what you know, collaborating with ARD in this downtown space would afford. The value of the research, not to mention the service, of course, the service of all ages recreation, but we rely upon our public for advocacy, support, voting for measures, engagement. So look at that opportunity and put a value on that. I'd also like to discuss that 20% of our general fund is sales tax. So to use 2019 Vistas that I still have around the house, 3.3 million sales tax went into the general fund in 2019. If having a downtown space made that 3.3 million 1% better, Every year, that would be $33,000. The general rule of thumb is a 4 to 1 to 40 to 1 return on investment. What if it was just 1%? $33,000. What we are suggesting is not a support of ARD. ARD supports the city. Many think we are the city because we provide a service, and we do it because it doesn't exist yet. We do it to great expense and effort. We are 100% volunteer. And what we are proposing is that there is a commensurate investment in downtown recreation that complies or meets the 20% sales tax general fund contribution. Right now, when one looks at the 20-year capital funding need, less than 1% is slated for downtown, less than 1% of the 20-year capital funding need, not even near 20% of the general fund where those sales taxes come from. We're just asking for a little bit of service and engagement with the public. Just in our first month and a half of 33 days open, we're averaging 110. Could you imagine two 35 foot long walls, 10 and a half feet high. You wanna give me some of your time? 10 and a half feet tall, full of information about what the city is trying to accomplish with all of the programs. I didn't even include the recreation parks facilities master plan. I didn't even include that in the letter. Can you imagine that huge 10-foot by, I don't know, 15-foot long front window communicating what the city wants to do? People are coming to our downtown, and we have this tremendous opportunity to engage, communicate, and also make a little bit more general fund money along the way.

I didn't think that.

Okay, thank you. Are there questions? Okay, thank you very much.

Hi, Council. Just here to thank you for your partnership on three things. One, on supporting Measure H, which we're so, so grateful. It looks like that's been resoundingly supported by our community. Second, I just got off a webinar that Jonathan was on. You're incredible partners with our after-school care needs right now. We're really happy to be able to deliver some good news to our families today. And third, for the crossing guards, thank you for your flexibility, partnership, and expertise is a priority for you. So thank you on all three.

Thank you. Are there questions? Okay.

That concludes speakers in the community hall. And I have one speaker in our virtual audience, Rob Lavoie.

I had a question. I wasn't quite sure if I heard in guards is 120,000 and the proposal is for 220. So if she could clarify that. And also if someone could remind us of the history of the city partnership with the schools, because it seems like the schools used to pay all of it. And then maybe a few years ago, they came to the city and asked for help. And it seems like the city was, paying maybe all of it and then went down to half of it uh most recently so maybe somebody can clarify that but my thinking is uh the school uh passed a substantial increase in the temporary partial tax went from 290 to 575 I believe and uh would this have been something that was requested to be paid by the city if they had known that they were going to have the additional income from the parcel tax that just passed. So that's my question. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. That ends Mr. Lavoie's comment. And now I'll turn to Ms. Robinson to respond or Ms. Rovazza.

I'll respond to the numbers. So the number in the budget currently is $160,000. To fully fund all of the crossing guards would be about $245,000. Last year we paid $120,000, $160,000 in the budget, $164,000. And we can talk about that.

the benefits of being here for a long time, but recall when we had two crossing guards, a couple on Spring Hill Road, and I maybe.

That is my presentation to you.

That's very good. I have a couple of follow-up questions, or I want to add on to that. So you would kind of support the idea of Measure H funds. because we were very careful with how those are allocated. But are you think, are you, do you have your opinion that kind of crossing guards funding would fit within the scope of what we propose for Measure H?

I think so. I mean, yeah, you know, I was just reading.

Yeah, no, I'm just kind of, I'm reflecting on that because I think that's interesting because I think it does. It's an existing program to do. So I just maybe should put that just as a, we can put that in there. The other thing I really... It was great, it was a really great thing. But that is, so I'm constantly pushing on this cost thing. I feel, I'm actually, I appreciate what the city manager said, but I'm actually kind of frustrated with our plan going forward with how we're gonna manage the program. Because we're not there, we're relying on the schools to kind of give us feedback. They don't have a stake in the game because they're not paying for it and we're just gonna have this indirect thing. Your thing, that's super creative thinking about how we get the best out of our money for the safety of the kids. And I am just really, that's one of my hesitation. I don't want to, it's like, we just, we had, we were paying 240 before. We're going to put 240 now. We're just going to let it ride with inflation. And boy, I'm sure it's doing well without really thinking about, um, the best way the best use of our money to have the safest for our kids so just what you're saying oh should we look at different kinds of traffic kinds of shrinking traffic that's a better way to save you know money we don't pay for traffic guards plus it's safer for the kids so i just would really hate to say we just turn on the the full-time spigot we just let it run for 10 years until whatever you know i would love the idea of really looking at smartly i want i mean i just would like to have an active i think we just need active management I don't want to have passive management and I don't want to have a choice given circumstances, but I just love the idea of really kind of digging into it to see how we get the best bang for our buck that for the safety of the kids and best value for the dollar.

Yeah. I mean, I would advocate for making a continuation for the next year, but also incorporating an analysis that's at that level of just what kind of radical change can we do and would it help

And also renegotiating the contract or whatever, you know, all these things for sure. But we're kind of in a bind. Oh, in a bind.

I totally appreciate the bind right now.

I think all of these things definitely should happen. And I agree with Stella on the analysis of adding those other two. We pulled them off. to be honest, saying, OK, we're going to try to pull all four off and we'll kind of see what happens, you know, and to see what which ones the community are going to let us know what is going on. And they did, you know, and that was great. And I was really glad that Linda showed up, too. I didn't know when she walked in the room. I go, wait, I know you. Where do I know you? Oh, I look at you like every day. And so I'm really glad that she was able to report the conditions there. And it is an uncontrolled crosswalk, you know, and it's two. She does the two streets and it's it's it is well needed in that neighborhood.

So I guess it goes without saying that you definitely endorse the ones that were kept even under this current one, that you still agree that the seven that they're not set to keep, those are more important even than before they were taken off. I mean, we knew I'm saying, I mean,

Yeah, each of those have really high volumes and all the right conditions. And we will get the staff report. You'll see that justified in the announcement.

I'm assuming you guys were on it. I really wasn't worried. I'm just kind of just...

The Pleasant Hill Road scored number one. I mean, obviously, right? These kind of things, right? So the analysis is self-evident, right? The analysis was sound. And I do think that we do need to do the long-term study to figure out how better we can do it to cut the number of crossing guards if we can. You know, if there's a way to do that, that would be good. But we did get a lot more background. Lafayette, on the flip side, has more crossing guards than Walnut Creek. Yeah, mind blowing. So we definitely are a little bit concierge. And so if you look at it that way, right? I mean, but, you know, you hear from the community and they're really relying on it. So maybe we rethink this, but to rethink it so quickly right now, maybe we just do this as a work in progress.

I really appreciate this. And Council Member Weatherspoon, I appreciate admire the logic and also because I've been struggling with this one. My bent is to be more of a fiscal conservative, I think. And I but my instinct is to hold the line of the budget as best we can. And I said earlier, I kind of like referenced the measure age, the city measure age and what that meant for our budget. But part of our duty is to sort of make sure we're mindful of that, where we we honor the trust that the voters put in us. But when I was thinking about this, I kind of thought this is something which is sort of a measure age item. I've been sort of thinking about that in my mind. And because a lot of it, this is transit. And so for me, my struggle was trying to be budget conscious, but by the same token, we're talking kids here. And if I'm going to err on any side, I'm going to err on the side of trying to protect the kids who are trying to cross the road here. And I don't have a scientific perspective on this. I do drive down Spinning Hill Road. And I don't know, you see a bunch of kids walking there in the afternoons and in the mornings getting to school or from school. You know you really want to protect that population, I think, perhaps, but customer with this one is suggested or something it is a is a good approach to it. Which is to sort of instead of dropping for drop to but that's been a lot of time to sort of figure out how do we best optimize this I feel like i'm operating. Where i'm flying on instruments, but I don't even can't even see all the instruments it's kind of like the view i've got on this right now, so I I like that approach that you've offered.

okay well one comment that you made is the school subcommittee as you said okay we'll drop the four and we'll see what the reaction is is it fair to say that the community is accepting of doing away well not having a crossing guard at merriwood okay yeah we haven't heard any public comment on that all right Okay, so what I'm hearing on this issue is that I don't think any of us feel comfortable making any decision until we can actually see the data. And so we've been told we'll have data for the next meeting. And I really appreciate all of your comments and we will definitely keep those in mind during the next discussion. And we'll come back to this then on next week to talk about it. But I think where we're heading for next week is either to reinstate two or reinstate all four, although I haven't heard that, but we haven't seen the data, so I want to leave that open. But again, and we say this each year, for this year only, not making any decisions for subsequent years and with a commitment during the next year to look into whether we can renegotiate the contract, whether there's an approach that's better. But the only thing I would add to that is keeping in mind that the total amount involved here that we're talking about right now is $80,000. That is a lot of money, but a lot of staff time can be taken in doing other things. We have to be mindful of that as well. Okay, so... Are we okay with leaving that issue here? Okay. And I didn't hear any other items that we want to discuss under budget changes. So now we're at budget requests. And the first item is, and I'm going to refer Jonathan is up to 350,000 for a master plan needs assessment, or just generally looking at what we need to do in the recreation area to meet the needs of our residents over the next twenty year period. And so does anyone have any particular questions or comments on that?

Just quick question would be, and this includes because obviously much of our year this year was taken up with ball fields and all that implies that this includes the community center analysis. Cause you mentioned architecture, all that kind of stuff. And obviously I think community center is top of mind for us, but this also is going to include the ball fields also, or how, how do we,

So, by starting with a needs assessment and considering an advancement towards a facilities plan it allows us to address those needs in the community. We, the existing facilities master plan is from 2009. The needs of the community have changed just tonight. There was the meeting regarding aftercare and the need for that at the school district. We're hearing about the ball fields and the need for additional softball facilities. We still have unmet needs for neighborhood parks, for fields in general, the dog park, bike park. All still needs that were in our last master plan. But then this offers an opportunity to do any needs assessment for the full community and look at these spaces where they should be located, and what what will need to serve at those various facilities.

And how Good, right. That's good. Because I have to, I looked at that number gave me a little bit of a surprise, because I look at like what we're getting with the M3 mobility study, which I view, I view as kind of as much more comprehensive. It's like, well, that's 300. So this is the same pie. What's your estimate on when we would see results from this? I mean, how long does a study like this take if we if we kick it off?

it has in talking to other communities it's a two to three year process because with the needs assessment you start uh you start with the needs assessment and then you roll into your master plan so to go into that and then come up with uh the fiscal component after we find out what the community's needs are traditionally it has been a rollout similar to that and is it also going to include like

I'm kind of curious, funding options, like, because I think we would all, we're going to, because obviously it's not going to, we're not going to get this out of the general fund. So, I mean, it'd be good to get the different aspects and how we would, how you generate kind of fees and revenue. Good. So you'd, okay. So you'd expect a two to three year period with maybe with multiple report outs during the time or so we can get, figure out kind of where we are and how we're doing.

Yes, still early in that process and gathering the information, but we'll be able to put together a request for proposals and work with the various companies to outline a process and bring that back to council for approval. Thank you.

We don't need to talk about the details of this now, but I'm going to ask you if you think this is possible. But I think what we need to do is put a two-year timeframe on this to be able, two years from now, to know what it is that the community wants and wants to consider. and a proposal for how we might finance it because that's going to be 2028 and um our measure h so i think our our target time is two years for this project so you think it's you don't well

Well, it is in our absolute best interest based on the life expectancy of some of the community center, as well as each rainy season we pass, we see more and more water coming to the roof of the community center. So finding out more about the state of that building and what the future of it is so that we can address the needs of the community. Time is of the essence.

Okay, thank you.

And just state the money versus over the years, 350. Like, I guess I would like to see, I only want to put in the money that we can actually spend the next fiscal year, right? I mean, there should be a whole punch list of stuff, right? But like, what do we put in there has to be the stuff that we would spend the next year, right?

Now, usually when we, same thing, we have had the M3 study on the budget for the full amount for many years. We spend it down. And I think it is actually important if... if you're going to spend the money and you know that it's a project that's going to cost that you should put it there so that you don't get halfway through and be like oops we forgot we had another half to go

So you would just prorate over the five-year budget. All right, so it wouldn't hit our next budget. I get it.

No, it would hit the whole thing this year, but it wouldn't. And then I roll it forward into the next budget.

Because the difference is we don't do, beyond the next year, we don't do a detailed budget. Right, I know. If we did a detailed budget, then we'd put it in, but we don't. So I think it's better to put all the money you plan to spend in the next year's budget.

Okay. Okay.

They don't think that you gain anything by spreading it out. It doesn't really affect the five-year too much.

Okay.

It just balances.

We'll see the list then and see what we can do.

Okay. So that'll come back. We'll talk about that some more. Okay. The fourth item on the list is the ARD requests for 25,000, which we received today. So comments and

Do staff have any thoughts on this? I mean, it was interesting. You mentioned we have four items, but all we have is just, I mean, I appreciate the comment from Grace, but it doesn't have the same scrutiny as these three that are in there? Because I'm just kind of curious how that works.

Jonathan and I have been talking to AARD over the last month or so about a potential part-time use of that facility for recreation youth and seniors so that the city would establish a downtown presence for a limited period of time. Because that kind of gives us some... experience about how a downtown facility might work. We have not finalized how much, how many classes, and the terms of the agreement. Our initial thought was about $12,000 taken from the three budgets, rec, seniors, and youth. so that Jonathan can continue to service those three cohorts in the downtown. We are still working on it. We're not ready to come to you right now with an agreement because we do need to have an agreement before we enter into such an arrangement.

Do you think it'll be possible to have something in the next set of council materials?

I don't think so. I think this will take a little longer. We only have two weeks in between, which means we need to finish up in one week.

Okay. But if we do decide to go forward, this is something we could add in July or August? Yeah.

As mentioned before, council can amend the budget at any time during the fiscal year.

okay all right is it comfortable with that so okay all right so the the items that we've been looking at we haven't um the 350 for the uh recreation master plan needs assessment 100 000 for the ada transition plan and if let's just say 250 on the wildfire, that adds up to 700,000. So Tracy, can you just tell us what, if we were to add those, what impact would that have on the five-year outlook?

So that would, at the end of the fifth year, the reserve would be down to 63%. Okay.

And yeah, I think at least from my point, that's the main control number, because I would ask, okay, what's the deficit going to be during the next fiscal year, but that really doesn't, we know what we're doing.

Okay.

All right. So is there anything else on this? We'll resume this discussion on the 26th? Not the 26th. 22nd? How about the 22nd? Do I hear 22nd? Yeah. All right. Okay. Anything before we leave this item? Okay. Thank you very much for all the work on this. Okay, so we're now on to council commission reports. Anything to report? Jim.

This is a follow-up to the last session. So, Councilman, Vice Mayor McCormick and I met with our East Bay MUD representative, Luz Gomez, last Thursday and walked her or talked her through and then walked a bit through the aqueduct pathway. I'd gotten from staff earlier a really great, you know, eight-foot-long map of this, and we kind of talked about it. Then we walked behind the branch Um, and along the trail has been done, and then beyond from the loris up to the crest where you can look down to the Bart parking lot just to give her a feel for what would be coming. Um, and it was a good session. She seemed frankly kind of a mental to it. She's meeting with the general manager tomorrow. And I gave her the map and said we're happy to talk and try to figure out what works, we just need to know we want to work cooperatively with them, and you know try to make this it's ambitious but let's try to figure out how we can make it work, so it was a good session.

yeah very encouraging actually very encouraging yeah so. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Okay um I did send the mayor's conference this past week and there's a couple updates from that we did get an update from a bag executive board. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, meetings talking about the next housing element so just a couple of things under preserve you heard the two, so the seventh housing elements coming our due date is going to be January 31 2031. Um, HCD, same thing. Give me a bag. They're gonna allocate among the 101 cities, nine counties. Um, there are gonna be two new considerations that were not there before made for homelessness and fire danger. Um, Which is interesting. Unclear, though, to me, what map are they going to look at for fire danger, right? Because they're only going to look at very high fires. I mean, it's great for Moraga and Orinda. I don't know what that means for us, but it's interesting. Because obviously different maps show us with different impacts. They're adding two new income levels. Right now, obviously, we are used to the moderate low and very low. They're going to be adding acutely low and extremely low. which is interesting. And they couldn't even, whoever, I forget who it was. Cindy. So was giving the report out. Didn't even remember which one was which, as far as the, which was lower. Cause they both sound pretty bad, but, um, But it's, and they did say just that the overall allocation will be higher overall that will be allocated out. So it's not, I know. So it's going to be, we just buckle up. Yeah. So it's going to be even, even more. Yes. So anyway, that was, that was interesting. I'm hoping that again, obviously. We hope the fire danger, we are considered appropriately, not just basing on the one high severity. I just have to mention that Clayton finally got their housing element done just like last week or two weeks ago. Congratulations, Mala. Three years late on this thing. But they did not have any builder's remedy, apparently, which is just amazing, right? Because obviously, they are really lucky. I think just a variety of factors conspired, but I just think that was very notable. And the county, they are obviously, they're meeting this tomorrow night, I think, to deal with the implications of not getting their sales tax measures passed. So they're going to be doing their cuts. And so they were, I mean, obviously, I think for Citizens Lafayette, the cuts are not going to be that impactful, truthfully, but it is going to be impactful for the county. Even though I think they're probably asking for more than they needed, but still, it's a big, big deal. And BART is very worried. They're they're they're reading that the county sales tax. Failure and projecting out to November, and they are very worried, so they should be so anyway, I thought it was interesting to get that thing and then, finally. I on mayor injuries behalf to present it was at the spirit van 20th anniversary celebration and presented a proclamation there, along with moraga and I read that so that was exciting.

A quick SWAT update is the Youth Ride Free program is gonna happen again this summer, which is, we voted on that and funded it, which was very nice. And then the other thing is that Council Member Cervantes and I are going on a trip to Sacramento on Wednesday to advocate for all things Lafayette and especially wildfire. Yes.

I wanted to just report that I also attended the Spirit Van 20th Anniversary Party.

So sorry. You were there. Absolutely.

It was such a great party. It was such a great event. It was just so cool to see all of the patrons there, to hear about how much that program means to them. It was very, very inspirational. Really great event all around. I also gave... a welcome address, welcome to Lafayette address at the MOVE Bay Area Summit that happened here last week. It was a group of transit advocates that came together to talk about transit funding, expansion of service, all of that. A pretty big challenge, big kind of nut to crack, but it was an interesting group that was assembled. I unfortunately couldn't stay for very much because I had folks coming in from out of town and a kid graduating that afternoon. But it still looked like a very good, full crowd, and I hope they had a good visit to Lafayette.

I can't feedback that Matt Pease from the Chamber attended that, the whole thing. And he said it was very encouraging. He said it was great. Everybody was just top notch and on it. And he was very, very encouraged. And his takeaway was that every one of those transit agencies that were here and represented, there were a ton of them, BART is the lifeline. all they care about is all their linkage gets to BART and then BART takes it, whatever. It's a, it was really fascinating that, uh, you know, without BART, all of those subsidiary kind of transit, at least local-ish transit agencies just kind of fall apart because they don't have to worry about getting to San Francisco. They sort of worry, get people to the BART train, for example. So it's an, it was, he said that, and I was like, oh yeah, it is interesting. If you think about it, it's a, that's the backbone. So anyway.

And just a quick reminder of some dates. We have a special council meeting on June 29th for state of the city address and recognition of all of our volunteers. And then on July 2nd, Thursday, July 2nd, we'll have a 250th anniversary program focusing on the Marquis de Lafayette. and his role in the revolution, and we'll have family activities and other things that we'll be hearing more about. And then on July 30th is the next, the second Hello Lafayette event, and all council members are invited to attend and participate in that. Okay, anyone have anything else?

The park-related development fees, is that something we're supposed to be discussing?

Yeah, I think, Jonathan, we're going to do that for next meeting, correct? We got the staff report.

Yeah, we can. That is just back up to the adjustments to the fees that were included with the budget. So that is just the backup material for that. So it can be included in the next. If you have any questions for it, I'm happy to answer at this meeting on the next one.

Okay. So we're on to item sixteen B. Council members. So thank you.

So Vice Mayor McCormick and I and chair of the Commission, uh, Crime Prevention Commission Tracy Riley did interviews a few weeks ago. Uh, we had two candidates, good, robust discussion. Um, and I'm always just amazed or impressed by individuals willing to commit time to better our community. And so it was You just have to appreciate someone being willing to step up. We had a good discussion after the interviews and the three of us recommended Bill Frazier to take on that open spot for the Commission. So that's our recommendation.

Are there any questions? Is there any public comment?

None.

Okay, so we have a motion to adopt Resolution 202641.

And I will second. Appointing Bill Frazier.

So moved. Okay, all in favor, say aye. Aye. It's unanimous. All right, the meeting is adjourned at 1010.