City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the January 26 meeting of Livermore City Council. I call this meeting to order. Roll call, please.

Councilmember Barry Antos? Councilmember Branning?

Here.

Councilmember Dunbar?

Here.

Vice mayor Wong? Here. Mayor Marshawn is absent, excused.

And please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

You are in the right meeting. As we speak, mayor Marshawn is making his third attempt to go to DC for the annual mayor's conference, and we hope the third time's the charm. City attorney, was there any action taken in closed session that needs to be reported?

No reportable action.

Okay. We'll move on to 3.1, proclamations and presentations where presentation of military banners to the families of 17 honorees.

Yes. Honorable vice mayor Wong and members of the city council, this is your city manager, Mariana Birch. Item 3.1 is going to be presented by the director of public works, Carl Brown. Thank you.

Good evening, vice mayor council. I'm Carl Brown, director of public works, and I'm proud to present the city of Livermore's military banner program. So as I give a brief summary of the program, we're gonna click through a few slides here honoring the members and the banners that are placed up this year. Alright. The Livermore military banner program was created to give Livermore residents the opportunity to honor family members that are veterans or currently serving in the military.

In our inaugural year of 2025, 17 families participated. Banners were hung in Stockman's Park from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Each month, we told the stories behind the banners on social media, giving residents an insight to each honoree and their service. The post attracted more than 700 readers to the web page to learn more about our local heroes. The social media comments were overwhelmingly positive.

We are currently working on the 2026 banners and are encouraging increased participation from the community. The city of Livermore is proud to proud of our service members and their families. We're grateful for their sacrifice. We thank these men and women for their commitment and service to our country. And at this time, I will now turn the presentation over to vice mayor Wong for comment.

Does anyone on council have comments? Or no?

Just wanted to say thank you very much for staff for coming up with this idea. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback as well in the community. So I just wanted to say it's awesome for you to come up with the idea, and thank you for carrying on the tradition. And I hope it remains one. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. It's was really great to see those banners up for several months. And if if that's the end of your presentation, I'll invite the families of the honorees that are in attendance to come up for a photo and ask counsel to come join me. We will move on to 3.2, Alameda County Transportation Commission Rail Safety Enhancement Program phase a project update.

And this is Angelina principal program analyst.

Thank you. Good evening, council members. I'm Angelina Leong from the Alameda County Transportation Commission. With me here tonight is Jaydez De Los Reyes, Alameda CTC's director of project delivery and construction. We're excited to provide an update on the Rail Safety Enhancement Program phase a, known as RSA project to you today which is related to agenda item 6.2 which includes two at grade crossings in the city of Livermore, Junction Avenue and L Street.

I wanted to provide a brief background on this project. Safety at rail crossings in Alameda County is an ongoing need as Alameda County has high volumes of freight and passenger rail activity often in close proximity to residential neighborhoods, schools, and commercial districts with high speed trains. RCEP was developed as an outgrowth of planning efforts from the 2016 Alameda CTC Commission approved countywide goods movement plan and the 2018 rail strategy study, which provided the framework to prioritize the at grade crossings that needed safety improvements. In 2019, the Federal Railroad Administration, known as FRA, identified that Alameda County had the fourth highest number of fatalities on rail corridors in the nation. Alameda CTC is a sponsor and implementing agency for this project which will implement much needed safety improvements at 26 at grade crossings and two trespass locations across six jurisdictions in Alameda County.

One of the main goals of the RSAP A project is to improve safety at these crossings by reducing the number of crashes and fatalities that occur at agri crossings via trespassing or other unsafe behaviors by pedestrians and motorists. Trains often travel at speeds where collisions are fatal. There have been a total of thirty three incidents leading to twenty fatalities and fifteen injuries between the years of 2016 to 2024 at the RCEP a locations with one of those fatalities being in Livermore. The existing Junction Avenue and L Street crossings currently lack the needed modern safety features and infrastructure for pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicles to safely get across these grade crossings, which is of significant concern, especially near schools or a downtown area such as these crossings. Since 2020, Alameda CTC has been working closely with city staff, Union Pacific Railroad, the California Public Utilities Commission, and the FRA on the improvements at these grade crossings.

The improvements at the Livermore Crossings include new train activated pedestrian pedestrian gate arms and flashing light signals with a manual emergency swing gate, upgraded train activated vehicle gates, new concrete track panels, new sidewalk, new handrailing, detectable warning surfaces, fencing, buffered bike lane, median islands, and new lighting. The project is being delivered in multiple phase construction packages and using an alternative construction manager general contractor delivery method. The Livermore Crossings and the Hayward Crossings are part of the first construction package. Environmental clearance and final design are both complete, and right of way certification is in progress and pending the execution of the necessary construction and maintenance agreements, which are part of item 6.2. Once right of way certification is complete, the project will be in a position to seek construction funding from the California Transportation Commission in May 2026.

After the California Transportation Commission's funding approval, Alameda CTC anticipates awarding the construction contract in June 2026. Construction of the Livermore Crossings is anticipated to begin this summer for a duration of approximately one year. Alameda CTC has been and will continue to work closely with city staff before and during construction to provide sufficient notice noticing and coordination with the transit operators, stakeholders, and the public. Alameda CTC wants to thank the city and their staff for all of their support to date, and we're excited to continue this partnership. That concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Any questions or comments?

I'll just note that I bike through Junction Avenue every single day right next to Junction Avenue Middle. We know that the asphalt sidewalk there is a little bit difficult as well, so we're looking forward to these improvements. Thank you.

Yep. I just wanted to say thank you also. I know this project's been a long time coming and required quite a bit of work to get here, so, I really appreciate the efforts from staff and ACT working together, on these improvements. I'm excited to see them when they're finished.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. K. So we

move on to advisory body appointments. We have none. And so we'll now go to open forum. And our acting city clerk will explain how the public can participate in open forum.

To provide comment, please fill out and turn in a speaker card found at the entrance of the council chamber. Speakers will be announced in the order received. Once public comment opens, each participant's name will be announced, and their three minutes will begin once at the lectern. Please note a speaker is not required to answer any questions from the council, and the city council is not required to answer questions from the public. However, the vice mayor has the discretion to ask staff to address a speaker's comments when a council member believes it is relevant to a particular business item. We currently have two speakers, and the first up is Joe Lee.

I'm here to continue encouraging city of Livermore to adopt more free software in its computing. So, for example, to use LibreOffice instead of Office three sixty five, Nextcloud instead of SharePoint, and Jitsi Meet instead of Zoom. In previous meetings, I've talked about the first three of the four essential software freedoms. I'll recap those. The first essential freedom is the freedom of every computer user to use the program for any purpose, whether it be for education, business, nonprofit, any purpose.

The second essential software freedom is the freedom to study the source code of the program if you wish and to modify our own copies of the program to make the program do what we wish. The third of the four essential software freedoms is the freedom to redistribute exact copies of the program, without having to seek permission from the original developer or distributor. And the fourth of the essential software freedoms is the freedom to distribute our own modified versions if we wish, by selling or giving away copies. The freedom, the, so the fourth freedom, the freedom to distribute our own modified versions, it fosters cooperation between users. In this case, the user is the city of Livermore, so it would foster, cooperation between cities.

If, for example, Livermore, made an improvement to a program that we used and then published our changes, other cities could benefit from our changes. Likewise, if a neighboring city anywhere, across the world, if they made an improvement to a program that we used, and they published the change, then we would benefit from that change as well. And that's pretty much all

I had

to say about that. Thanks.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Anne Butcher.

So we are here to speak about the urgent need to build more affordable housing in Livermore, and we offer our support toward those efforts. We acknowledge that Livermore is making a lot of progress, and we would like to meet with your staff to learn more about the pending projects, the timelines, what the roadblocks are like, and how we might help support those efforts to remove the roadblocks. A little background information. I'm Anne Butcher, and I've met with you at various functions facilitated by Lyonie Thompson. I'm a twenty six year resident of Livermore, and I own a home in the Portola Glen neighborhood.

I'm a parishioner at Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, and I'm here with Perry Young from Saint Clair's in Pleasanton and Lisa Perry from Saint Timothy's in Danville. And we represent three faith communities in the Tri Valley that are asking you to continue to accelerate building of affordable and low income housing. In addition, last October, the Episcopal Diocese of California, which includes 74 congregations in the Bay Area, unanimously passed a resolution affirming the support for building more housing and encouraging local congregations to make their concerns known to public officials. As you may know, St. Bart's is one of the founding congregations for the nonprofit interfaith housing.

The fact that the Pacific Avenue Senior housing phase one took eight years to break ground leaves us deeply concerned that the roadblocks that prevent the timely building of more affordable housing and lower income housing. The housing crisis is evident in the Tri Valley. Homes and rentals are unaffordable for many people that work here and support our quality of life. We have a vision for vibrant, multigenerational neighborhoods, and we support the changes in the size or style of neighborhoods required to facilitate the growth and vitality of our community. We also believe that reducing the number of people that have to commute to the Tri Valley will reduce traffic and resulting issues.

For me personally, I worked in Pleasanton for twenty four years and managed many young people who endured long commutes. We acknowledge that Livermore has some awesome recent successes, and we understand, more projects that are designed with affordable use, units like Pacific Avenue and Eden Housing, and others are coming, but we want to please do what you can to facilitate the timely building of these projects.

Let us know how sorry. I'm gonna have to stop you, but but I I think we'll get the idea. Thank you so much. Thank you for giving

know me how we might help support these efforts.

Okay. Thank you. Our our staff will connect with you. Thank you.

I do believe we have one more comment that's on its way.

Correct.

Hello, everyone. I'm Chirag. I'm here to introduce myself. I'm running for state assembly district sixteen, and I was looking for input from the city council. We as an we I run an open governance initiative, opgov.ai, where we cover all the cities, and we'll be soon covering Livermore as a news reporter as well.

What we have seen is every city has some other challenges, and all these challenges end up with the state assembly and state laws where which makes it very hard for city council to take decisions, like housing laws, numbers. So I would like to have inputs from all the council member or even the city staff if they want to give me some inputs on what should be the priorities as an assembly member representing this area. Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you. That was our final comp.

Okay. We'll move on to the consent calendar. Did anyone like to pull any items for discussion, Comments? Okay. So and we're not pulling anything, so let's let's start with public comment.

No public comment's been received. Okay.

Alright. So I'll close public comment, and we'll go to member branding.

Yeah. I just wanted to comment on one item. It is item 6.4. So this is something that we approved a while ago, and now we're finally seeing the resolution of our earlier actions. So it's allotting some of our general fund money as well as the SOE money.

For those who don't know the history, we had an SOE fund a long time ago. It's a social opportunity endowment fund. That fund ran out of money, and one of the things I've been doing is before I was even a council member is working on with staff for years to try to figure out ways to refill the fund and actually make it last hopefully in perpetuity this time to be able to really give us extra money to services. When we get funding from the state and the federal government, it is very restricted on its use. Most of it is defined in ways that we don't actually get to spend it on individual services, and those include things like medical, food, legal assistance, things that really do serve our populace to make sure that they are able to stay in their homes, stay in our community, and live healthy, welcoming lives.

So I wanna start by really thanking staff. This was an incredibly complex program to reinstate and to get going again. It took multiple departments, multiple years of work working together. It seems, I imagine, on paper, like, this was easy. We got some money, and we spent some money.

It was actually very incredible. It took almost every department in the city at some point working on this program to get it moving forward. Livermore dedicating some of our general fund money into our services is something that many cities don't do. There are others, of course, to do as well, but it's not something every city does. And I do think it's important to highlight that, you know, this is a priority of this council and of this city to say that we do care about the quality of life for everyone in our city, and we're willing to invest dollars into that.

The last thing I say is for anyone who hasn't seen what this money is doing, I really recommend you pull up the agenda and actually look at where this money is being spent and some of the quantities involved. It's not incredibly large amounts of money, but from serving on the Human Services Commission and from my work and council and other bodies, these sums of money are life changing for the people who are getting it and the services that are being provided for them. And so it is impossible for the city to meet every need. We work to do as much as we can. I'm always looking for us to expand, and in other ways, we can continue to serve better as a city.

But my final plea point here for anyone who's listening at home, look at the sums of money that are involved in this and realize that small donations even will make huge impacts. Donating to our service providers, particularly, they're find ways to leverage the money and to stretch every dollar. They're incredibly efficient with the number of people served per dollar. So, please, if you're in the community, our local service providers are very efficient with your donations. So please give, support them, help because we really are a community that welcomes everyone, and the ability for us to show it through programs such as this makes me very proud to be in Livermore.

Thank you again to staff and everyone who is involved in this.

And I I wanna thank you for your advocacy and all your work at both on Human Services Commission as a council member to support all the organizations and to direct funding. Any other comments on consent?

I'll just note that much appreciated in the annual financial reporting system. We're paying down our liabilities. Our general fund and reserves are in good places, so thank you for the hundreds of hours that went into that document as well.

Yes. I find that report so much fun to read. I mean, it's I I don't know why. It's like, I started, and it's just like, wow. I can't stop. It's really well written and easy for someone who's not a financial person to access and understand and see where our money comes from and where it goes. And it's honestly a report that's very readable and enjoyable as just a resident of Livermore to see how your money is used. So thank you for that.

There there's a fun line there's a fun section in there that shows sort of the talks top gen tax generators ten years ago and now, and

it's Yeah.

Always interesting to see how that changes. You know? We're dynamic. We have to make new things work every time, and we do.

That's actually one of my kind of icebreakers when I speak to a group of students is have them guess where who the top revenue generators are a little more. Okay. So this is the consent calendar. I'll entertain a motion.

I'll move approval of the consent calendar.

K. I'll second.

K. Motion made by council member Dunbar, seconded by council member Branning. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? Motion passed unanimously. We have no public hearings. No matters for consideration, so we move to council reports and matters initiated. Council member, Variantos, would you like to start?

I got only one thing. I'm not sure if you wanna know that the Heritage Guild is in the process of trying to get a one room school. Okay. If you don't know, I'm a teacher, so I taught. So it did something to try to get a a one room school from on the other side of the hills from Pass and Pass over here, and we already the city's helped a lot with permits and all getting getting it ready. So we met with a supervisor, Harb Halbert, and he's gonna find a way to support the effort. And that was the last night in a very cold room at Hangman Ranch. They don't have any heating there. But it was a good meeting, and he sounds very supportive.

Thank you. And some member

I'll just reiterate that the Three Valleys count Three Valleys Foundation twenty fifth annual MLK awards that vice mayor Wong and I attended this morning were quite powerful. There's a community of people working very hard to support all the residents of the entire valley and beyond in so many ways.

Yeah. And they lost their keynote speaker to travel difficulties at the last minute, and the Livermore honoree, Faith Alfer, stepped up to deliver the keynote and was fantastic. And I would say she brought down the house. She had a standing ovation. It was great. So very proud of our Livermore resident faith alpha. Councilmember Branding?

Yeah. So this is probably the shortest report out I think I've had since I've been on council. It was actually gone pretty much all of last week between Cal Cities and my day job. I was at a CTA state council. I will say for CTA state council, it is real pleasure that I get to serve on the governing body for CTA.

But if you ever think that things are messy in local government, just imagine if 800 people were voting on every single item. It is a very large body representing people throughout the state. And so it really it's it's interesting to see how a more parliamentary body works and figures things out, and then we come to agreements. And, of course, it was an exciting meeting because of endorsements were discussed at this meeting. So those will be coming out soon.

I do wanna say for Calcities, just so the other members of the council and the public know, we're we are coming close to cycle seven for our housing element, and it's already starting for some cities. So we were briefed on that at Cal cities. It's going to be a large project. And for the cities who have gotten their numbers, it is almost double what cycle six was. So the amount of housing that we're gonna be looking to build is going to be a large number.

It is something that is very important for our community, and I'm very grateful that in Livermore, we have been looking ahead at opportunities and options so that we can maintain our community character while still meeting the needs arena needs. But as it'll be coming in a few years for us, in the next couple of years, it is going to be a big discussion. And so for the community at large who want to be engaged in this, it is it is a lot of work to find locations and appropriate housing and making sure that it fits our community. So as that starts being discussed, be engaged early because the decisions we make, you might not see the buildings for a decade, but once those decisions are made, the plan is that we move forward from there. So be engaged.

It is coming. It was an eye opener to see the the needs that some of the cities who are starting cycle seven have gotten.

Wow. K. I one of the items I reported this morning, I reported before I attended, which was prior to coming to this meeting, it was TVMPA, our Tri Valley nonprofit alliance, did their Feed Our Families drive in November. I believe it was right before Thanksgiving, and people could donate food or cash to families in need. And this is in collaboration with Chef.

And so today, they presented the check and the the big check. And so they collected this is in the Tri Valley, $82,431.55, which I think is amazing, and, also 12,846 pounds of food. So that's I I'm always so astounded by the generosity of the community that when given the opportunity, people really step up. And so that was really great to see, and so I I wanted to add that to my report. And then just one other thing is on the left of board, I serve on the ad hoc Pleasanton bus service planning committee, and we met and are discussing changes to the route going into Downtown Pleasanton largely because of the traffic from Meadowlark Dairy.

Hopefully, we won't have that in Livermore. And then also changes in the demand to the school bus the school schedules, the school routes. So be on the lookout for changes to come up with those routes. They've been doing a lot of public outreach and gotten really good feedback and and surprisingly large numbers of people taking the surveys and attending the outreach meetings they held, and so that that's currently in discussion. So just wanted to report on that. And if there are no other items, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much.