City Council - Special Meeting

Good morning. Today is uh February 20th, 2026. The city council workshop will begin in a couple more moments. Thank you for your patience.

All right, it's 9:07. We'll call the meeting to order. Let the record show that all council members are present. But the record also showed that we've done away with all former public commenters by appointing Stella Weatherstone to the council and to adopt the agenda. Motion motion to adopt the agenda. Second. All in favor? I. Public comment. This is opportunity for anyone to comment on items that are not on today's agenda. Do we have any public comment?

If any uh members of the public on Zoom would like to comment, please use the raise hand feature now. Mayor, there are no hands raised. Okay, we're on to the main business of the of the day. And uh I'll start by introducing someone who needs no introduction because we've all worked with her. Nadine Le. Thank you. Uh let me explain. I'm not ill. I live with someone that has illness and I have to be overly active. Perfect. So, I do wear that. And those of you that I interview was on interviews with last month, I have recovered from my face plant for the most part. Bruisy,

but um other than my sight is a little off, but I am well. So, I was told by the mayor, no ice breaker. I have to have a little bit of an icebreaker. Good try. So it'll be very quick. So this is the question. Your favorite music or composer, the genre wasn't really just for you. Yeah.

Um and your current what you currently think about or want to listen to. I'll start. Jazz is my thing. Mostly vocal with some instrumental. Melody Gardau is my person. And if you don't know her, write it down. Unbelievable. So, the staff want to go first while they come up. What do you want to do? Suzanne, quickly. Is this quick? Uh, my favorite genre is punk rock uh music and uh a number of bands I really enjoy. One that broke up recently is No Offense.

Oh. Uh my favorite music was Tamil music and my favorite singer is uh SPM just takes me back. Yes, it is a common this is embarrassing. Um, mostly my serious XM is on 70s music. Takes me back to my youth and I like all the stuff with my car dance too and jazz as well and uh John Cold Train I'll say general 90s and 20s pop and always puts me in a good mood.

You got differences. Yeah. right now. I don't know what Andre actually is, but I'm really into uh Bill Withers looking on to stuff right now. It's a tough one for me. So, um when our kids were growing up, they had their flavor of music, our favorite music, and we settled on country music as the goal. So, and stuck. So, country music is it. I can't say I have a sing.

I'm probably if I'm listening to something on Pandora, it's new wave and it's dep mode. I'm going back to like the 80s. Um, and but an artist I've gotten into Brmy, who's like I listened to on a workout tape and I thought she's great. So, I've been listening to her work, which is a different genre. I think I'm on Teen Tracy pretty much. Uh, 70s, ' 80s. I'm not sure any good music has come after 198. It has. Okay. Well, mine is classical music. Anything by Chaikoski or D'vorjac, but my favorite symphony composer is Maul.

Absolutely classic rock. Led Zeppelin all the way every day. We have there's a tailgating with your dad that my daughter on on Spotify that she modified. It's called Tailgating with Papa Candell on Spotify. It is There you go. Yeah. All right. All right. Oh my god. I can't really say any genre. I'm all over the map. Um, but I I kind of prefer chill and not rot, not punk rock all the time. Kind of need to chill. And so, um, I think one that's always in my heavy rotation is Bonnie Bear. See, we took less than four minutes. We learned something about everybody in this room.

Okay. Um, do you mind bringing up what the slides are? And by the way, what's in front of you is a copy of the slides. Um and one other sheet. Um so we have if you want to just throw a couple passes in. So um

okay. Um well you'll see it in your package anyway. U just to remind to ensure a productive day we have a hard stop at 2:30. So we're going to take a 10-minut uh break and a 30 minute lunch break. uh we'll allow time for candid and honest conversation. We'll assume good intent and seek to understand and we're going to adhere to our schedule and allow the me to move the conversation along. So I become you know you work with me for four years now or so. I'm not overly forceful but my goal is to get you be as a get as much done as possible today. So I will move you at times. The next slide please. Uh so what I heard and I'll talk about that in a moment as well. I talked to all five of you and what came out of it is I said what would be a successful day for you and you should receive an update on current priorities and staffing and discuss and confirm the priorities for 2627. Next slide please. So the agenda um for right now in the introduction um setting the stage you're going to discuss current priority one and take your break and you'll you see and it's again in your package you can follow along with uh so I want to talk a moment I said I had an opportunity to talk to each of you and what I heard and again obviously something may change today that the three priorities you had were very important to you still now something may change. You may change the order. You may say, "No, we're not interested in pursuing any longer." I think we'd probably all be surprised at that, but it could happen. So, I also heard a number of um things that were important to you that may not rise to a level of a priority, but I wanted to memorialize it. So, in

front of you is a one sheet list of things, topics, interests that I heard. Many of them fall within your three priorities right now. Some do not. And I assume at um at a point today if they're still important to you that you'll raise it for discussion among all of you. So you have that list. You want to move to another slide please?

So I use this I've used it I think I use it with every point. Um you know that the iceberg uh metaphor here you have lots of things you want to do. There is staff capacity issues. So your goals and priorities and policy direction that at the same time as you know there's a routine work of the city that has to happen and it's just being mindful of that and as we discuss and I I believe the roof you're going to be talking about staffing later as well with the council. Next one please. So the process today we're going to you're going to discuss the current adopted priorities one by one and you're going to hear a status update uh from staff. Uh they will come in and uh they will be here you'll hear it. You'll be able to ask questions identify any new priorities if there are any and discuss and arrive at a consensus on your top priorities. The next slide please. Um the updates. So we'll start with the wild prevention preparedness response and utility safety. And with that I don't know do you want to introduce uh

we all know each other so I'm just going to turn it over to Andy. And before Andy starts we do I should explain public comment. We do have on this agenda the opportunity for public comment now. And for anyone who's watching or listening, we will call for public comment after each staff presentation. So there will be opportunity. So right now, is there anyone who would like to comment on today's anything on today's agenda? There's no one currently in Zoom. Okay. All you're saying? All right.

Good. Well, good morning everyone. So back again. So appreciate the opportunity to be with you. Um so uh I have 10 minutes in our hours worth of opportunity. So I think we're going to mostly do this a lot of this by conversation uh afterwards and um just a quick recap. We did have a a very good 2025 and a couple things with that and got some things kind of continuing on planning that we're already working on for 2026 that will roll into the 26 27 year as well. Um, before I get into all that, I I want to make a couple highlights of of some successes. So, go to the next page. First off, to our community, um, working together was amazing. Uh, two amazing successes. So, our Firewise communities, wow, they grew, uh, 76% year-over-year growth in terms of the number of homes we have in the city of Lafayette that are in Firewise communities. So, we've been working for a while. Our community has been working for a while to get 900 homes on in Burton Valley. And that just successfully closed just in the last couple weeks. So, we're one shy short of 2,800 houses in the city of Lafayette. And I think we've got 9,000 total. So,

not quite a third of the way there, but getting pretty close. Um, there's still plenty of other neighborhoods that are in the process and uh and working. So, very excited on that one. Again, this is all communityled. our existing firewise leaders helped make that happen. Uh and uh then the community particularly Burton Valley that banded together to make that happen. Second is CWS or community warning system is important for all of us. Um Happy Valley came up with the idea of let's have a comp friendly competition and see how many signups we can get. Um and they started in November. 24 hours after they started I got a call from CWS saying thank you for all the signups. Uh so they did an awesome job. Uh we got 64 signups uh for the month. We typically average around 20 to 24 in the normal month. Uh this is the largest normal month sign up that we have in in all the records I've got. Uh things like the palides fires you can see on the chart um tend to affect having people come sign up uh a lot a lot quicker as well too. Um, so two huge successes from the community, community-led and I think this is a good example in emergency services. We talk about the whole community is important and this is a great example of how Lafayette is really involved in the whole process of making our making our town safe. Uh internally, um our folks down in the parks and recck department work closely with the American Red Cross in terms of setting up uh our community center to be VA shelter for Red Cross, both for us and the four neighboring communities. Uh we got two recognitions and their partner recognition. One was specifically for the community center folks and the second was for the city of Lafayette as well. Uh so very excited to see that and and attend that. Um, great shout out to Trisha Young and John Warsaw in Parks and Wreck. They were the leaders of all of the work uh in terms of making the shelter happen. There's also some additional training, shelter training they're setting up and doing

with uh Red Cross that'll involve Morocco and a couple other cities, too. So, great partnership and good for us and also good for our neighbors should they need shelter. So, okay. So, where are we headed in 20 uh 2026? we're already into the process. So, we're continuing a lot on a lot of the things that we did uh in the past year. Um big thing we wanted to do was public outreach in terms of town halls and events and education. Uh getting utilities in to talk to us on a couple events. We've hit basically all of those goals uh that we had from uh this past year of getting multiple uh utilities in. Uh we're going to continue that process going forward. Last year, the big focus that everybody wanted was on evacuations, pretty much an outcome of what happened in the Palisades fire. So, I've been giving presentations on evacuations. Um, and, uh, this year we're going to add in more on defensible space, some of the workshop stuff we've been doing with Senator Grayson. Um, insurance is a big deal for everyone. Uh, so there's this institute of business and home safety that's recognized by insurance companies and they've got a base and a and a plus plan of things you should do for your homes to make them home hard and both a home and defensible space. Uh, so we're going to be promoting that into the community as well with the hopes that that will affect um insurance rates uh for the neighborhoods. Uh, continued support for growing firewise in CWS. Um we also increased our support for the Lamarinda CIRC community emergency response team. Um these are great organizations uh nationwide that uh do a couple things for us. One is they make uh our citizens uh and neighbors more self-sufficient. So if something happens, they can take care of themselves for three days. If something happens where they have to evacuate, they know what they have packed in advance and can get out early.

So uh saving themselves and not putting an extra burden on um first responders. Second is we build up a series of disaster service workers. So these are support people that we can call on and use uh in the event of a disaster. A good example is the folks in the green vests you see during the art and wine festival that help us with traffic control, traffic control and all the rest. uh so very important in terms of our uh our ability to support and involve the community should we have something major event that we need to support. Another piece we're working on is auxiliary communications. So what do we do when the internet's down and the cell service is down? And there's a couple aspects to that. Largely, this is around amateur radio folks and uh the family radio uh general member radio services. Um and I'll talk in a minute about some of the additional things we're doing that. But we're working closely with one of the local organizations that's very emergency services focused. So, uh, notifications was a hot topic as well, too, particularly in the Spring Hill neighborhood. Um, and, uh, one of the things that we're talking a lot about now are these all hazards Noah weather, uh, radios. So, as you, if you ever listen to the radios, they make a big blaring noise and they give a generic weather alert over them. There's also a version of these radios that has this specific area message encoding or same and uh that you put in a code for contraosta county and then you would get alerts that are specific to our county. Uh so mine at home personally went off twice before Christmas about flash floods with all of the heavy rains that we had just during the holidays. Um so proof that it happens and it works and it was targeted to our general area. Um, so the WEIA or wireless emergency alerts, those are the things where your phone starts blaring even though you didn't program it to do anything, but it starts making alerts. Those get

broadcast over this all hazards right here. Um, so we're increasing a focus on training on that to the neighborhoods as well. Uh, again, these family and general mobile radio services are another way for communications that go with any questions, but are you suggesting people get those? I'm I'm I'm kind of curious what the

Yes. So, the SER program um uh does training on radios. They offer radios that are programmed with a set of channels that everybody knows and use uses. Um we are working um with one neighborhood. One person was very interested in it. We got him up to speed and he's starting to talk to a couple other folks in that neighborhood too. So, um basically a grassroots effort. We don't need everybody to do it. We can we can get there eventually, but let's start with a core group. And uh the general idea would be you have some way to communicate within your neighborhood and then you have one or two people that have more capabilities that could actually reach out to the city or some else as well. So you can have this kind of tree rolling information up or down, right?

Uh leave early is still the important thing. You know, all these notifications, don't just sit around and wait. Um but uh if you feel that you've you're at risk um get up and go. So uh we're definitely pushing that today. Uh continuing work on uh reducing wildfire hazards. I think everybody's aware with what we've asked Senator Grayson in terms of can we get something from the state budget which has a minus sign in front of it right now. So we're not sure whether we're going to get anything or not, but we at least made the request for it. I know there was some questions about what does the fire break look like north of um uh north of Lafia as well. So this is it's actually called the Arinda shaded fuel break. Um and it goes all the way around and comes all the way down. It basically lands on the Bionis Park right next to Spring Hill School is the other end. So here's an example picture of what it looks like. Anybody's hiked the Lafayette ridge before? Um that's a major portion of of that fuel break. So, in my untrained eye, it looks pretty good. There's a lot of open space between uh the trees on each side of the ridges. There are some places where there is foresting comes up to the top. Every place I saw, trees are limbmed up while the brush is gone for 30, 50 feet out on either side of the trail. So, it's something that fire departments can also manage pretty well. And so can I just ask a question about so this one got a pretty substantial grant I recall that MFD did yes install this

we've been hearing about deferred maintenance as an issue don't have money to maintain did do you know if that grant came with that uh my understanding is it came with some money uh to help support that. I don't know exactly where they're at. Um there's a couple other fire breaks around this is we've got lots of agencies involved. Um and uh that's an open question because it was based on some state funding and federal funding that may or may not be there. So I think there's still open questions uh on where that'll go. This one is in good shape.

Um the other big one is the Lafayette field break which is between us and Rossmore basically in Burton Valley and my understanding is the funding is there to complete that. Um and Golden Rain Association Rossmore side is responsible for the maintenance of that. Okay. So it's like a local responsibility. Yes. And I don't know their planning situation for that. But that one is still being finished. So guesses it's probably not been down there. And do you know if there's any discussion of a field break on the well to the west and north of hill and Martinez from there?

Uh I don't um I'm not sure of anything specific going on uh the perspective since I'm also a resident up there. What it is is the typical, not always, but the typical place that we have winds that are a problem are either directly from the north or the northnortheast. Those are the dry winds that come in that are fast and very low humidity. All of those tend to go down the side of these valleys, right? As opposed to being bloom. If we got a westerly wind that came in off off the coast of the fire, then better fuel rate might be might be good. Um, but there is a fair amount of open space along the ridgetops up there just naturally or however the East Bay Park has maintained it.

Okay. Uh, all right. So, that's um externally what we've uh what we're looking at doing and continuing on internally. So just over the past year, uh I think when I talked a year ago, uh one of the important things that pointed out is approximately twothirds of the staff in Lafayette have been hired in the last five years. And so there was a point where we had a lot of training to to just get everybody up to a base level. We've successfully done that over the last year. Uh everybody who's been an employee part full-time has taken at least a couple hours worth of training on what emergency services is, the basic work there. So, imagine a couple hour version of what I did for city council a month or so ago. Um, we've also got a group of 20 23 people that have had extra training. They were the folks that were in our um great shakeout exercise. Um, and they're roughly assigned to different of the major sections of planners and operations. Um, so we've we've gotten us house to that point. Um, that was mostly me pushing into the city. Uh the plan this year is to basically get it into the lifeblood of the city. Um so a couple things we're doing. First of all, we have multiple people that have been to classes outside of us that are official FEMA classes or Calas classes. Um and two of us actually just attended one for the last two days. So uh getting the professionals training our staff has been great. Um and we're going to continue to push that. There's a long laundry list of what county oes is hosting um this year and we've had a bunch of people go through stuff already in some of the significant classes. Um so that's a main piece is let's get some external experts training our staff. Um we're going to take these section groups and also uh do training within the groups. So the planning group specific training for planning um what they have to do. There's a lot of nuances of

things. Uh a lot of it is planning for the next operational period which is basically the next major shift. Um as well as situational awareness. Everybody needs to know what's going on and that's a planning job. Um so we'll work on some things of that. So the intent is to get these three or four or five groups separately training um and build it up in a way so as we get to the great shakeout time everybody's got a lot of experience on exactly what they're supposed to do and we can all work together uh for that exercise in October. U so that's uh that's basically the where we're at on that. We've done a good job on getting people basic training and now we're going to try to get it injected in. So multiple people are working on this within the city. Exercise-wise, uh we did a couple classes and then the great shakeout which was a what's called a full functional exercise last October. It was it was an multi- agency earthquake drill um that uh we hosted um and we worked with a couple other agencies. We had county oes with us. We had common buyer come by. Uh we were working with the um MOFD and the local radio folks in terms of communications and Red Cross was in there. So a bunch of different things. Um that was our shakeout as well too, not just an earthquake and you may remember we actually had a real earthquake during the exercise. So kind of fun. Um uh so um this year uh we're going to be more formal on that. So all the training we're doing will lead up to that. be a more structured thing and we may even do it with evaluators there. So bay shakeout's happening again. Um talked a couple times about auxiliary communications. So there the group uh in the coastal area of Northern California that has been doing a thing called the beacon exercise which is basically well communications have failed. How can we

get emergency information moved?

And uh so county oes is leading the charge in our area for this to happen. they're starting to have calls and organizations. So, uh, ourselves, plus Lar, which is the local emergency radio group, are working on a structure of how can we get information from the schools, from the neighborhoods, roll it up into our own basically situation report that we have, get that then transferred up to county, they can build their situation report, and they can roll that up to another location as if it was the region of the state. Um, and that's end of April. So we're in the early stages of figuring out how are we we can do it we can do it by voice without a problem uh but can we do this by data and that's the kind of thing we're starting to look in. So that'll be another one that's that's just a sort of sliver of uh potentially what we need to do. Um and then the lumber team too they do an exercise each year uh with all of the the folks that have graduated. Um, we're going to put that on this year in June. And I'm not sure exactly what that'll be, but probably it's be some kind of evacuation or major event exercise where they maybe help staff a location or help with traffic control or those kinds of things. So, we got a couple different things going on uh just to get different parts uh involved. Okay. All right. All right. So, that's the recap, a high level recap of where we've been, where we're going. I think we had a successful 2025. Uh there's more on our plate for 2026 in terms of working closely with the community and helping them get up to speed. Uh working with our partners. Confire's got a few things in the works you probably hear about in the next couple months and we're supporting them as well. Um and um growing to grow our staff, I think. I don't know if it was quite 10 minutes what the number was, but I think we're pretty close. So yeah. So questions,

comments, thoughts? I can offer go ahead. Really a note of appreciation uh for everything you've been doing. I've been seeing you monthly in preparedness. We talked multiple times during a month after that too. Um and I just want to say I really appreciate the sort of I don't know the attitude you bring to it because it's very inviting. I've seen that at the emergency preparness commission the sort of like methodical step by step okay let's get everyone trained up build a foundation you know it's like it's a really structured approach to in my my view and I think it's helped facilitate what we've seen on the emergency preparedness commission where kind of feel that's stepping up too in a way

so that's just part of the equation as well but I just want to thank you for what you've done and the focus you've given us by pulling people in good thank pulling all together really great. Yeah, echoing the emergency preparness. I mean, one thing I think is going to happen this year and next year is emergency preparedness, which is already a very good committee. I think it's going to step it up. I mean, Duncan's done a great job. Stephanie Bonts as vice chair is like she's a force of nature and uh she is just like taking the bull by the horn running and I actually expect over the next couple years they will just really do a great job. So, I think we should ask a lot of them because I think they're going to they're going to deliver. So, I think this is going to be even I think next year we do the year after we're going to go Gosh, there's so much happening because they're really going to be taking the lead.

I think the two of you know too, we've done some restructuring of how we run the meetings and some things coming down the pike that eventually maybe changes to municipal code to make it even more focused on exactly what parenthetically there been like behind the scenes efforts with that, you know, with key people there. You've been a part of that. Yeah. John has been as well to just like up the game. Um and I I feel really good about Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

One question. So I I know in some of the meetings, you know, we had the with the Grayson big meetings, there was a whole presentation from Berkeley, you know, and other thing that they've done. And one of the things that kind of always struck me was that they've got the on high danger days the no parking rules on evac routes. And I it seems like that is something that Lafayette would I know. I saw your that's a great idea, right? And so it seems like we should throw that in in the conversation at some point. Yeah, we've gone down that path a couple times. Yeah. And I think the main point is we don't particularly have parking and that our evacuation,

but let's prove that, you know, let's get that solidified that we know that that actually isn't an issue for us. And that's great if that is the case. the place I' I've seen in the past, not necessarily on I risk day, but sometimes people kind of sneak over the white line on upper Happy Valley Road, you know, so there's a car on the side and there isn't really space to park. So, one of the things we can do was basically enforce parking and be rigorous about getting out on those red flag days, too. But most of those areas, the Happy Valley, up the Happy Valley, you know, most of those there's not a lot of parking, right? There is parking on Mount Diablo and and um like Moraga Road, but I'm it's a pretty wide road to start already. So, I don't know that we need to restrict that.

So, we can we'll do a last check, but yeah, just but don't just include those areas. Include, you know, up behind Stanley School and stuff like that, you know, everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking also like the Bacon Way, right? That side, too. Yeah. where there's a lot of of communities with culde-sacs that are all feeding into a fairly small collector arterial. I'm wondering about Mount Diablo as a evacuation route and just if we might see just a volume that overwhelms the two lanes that we have. I mean it's pretty wild but

but it would be that would be a big deal. Yeah, it would be a big deal. But for be potentially at certain levels like maybe the um the purple like beyond the the high fire or beyond the um red flag the purple flag days. Okay. Parking restrictions on a particularly dangerous situation. Yeah. PDS. Exactly. The really bad days. Yeah. I know. No big deal.

But I think it's something to consider because that would be where everyone goes. Not to doubt you too much because like I could see why we've like on you know windy two-lane road you want not have parking on the side because you need to have access but Mount Devil already has two full lanes plus parking off the side anyway. So if you didn't have parking you're not going to have people drive on those lanes sure what I don't know what we might I don't I don't know I guess yeah I mean I I excited about it but I'm also like we want to take people away from post putting no parking signs on something if they need be doing something else. So I don't disagree it's a good idea it's like on the priority of stuff I guess be like how is the how would you well allocate the resource

but another thing that I have quite many thoughts about is evacuation study to really understand is this really a a potential and under what scenarios what type of evacuation scenarios because without the data you know kind of just making hypothesis why don't we come back to this when we look at specific steps I That's good. So, are there any other questions for Andy? Because I believe Narup, you're going to address this topic also. Uh, not particularly after public comment. Later later you'll be talking, right? Is that why you're Yeah. But on this first

I've got you down here, right? I think that was maybe to introduce Andy, but not in terms of specific comments. Okay. get back. Can I? Okay. Yeah, sure. So, maybe to put one back to you. So, just based on your experience working over the last year and some on this field, if there were like a couple of things you'd said, "God, I wish we could do X or Y." What would those be? Uh, so probably the list of what we sent to Senator Grayson were were the ones. And um so one was um basically cleaning up Maraga Road

from Lafayette to the Moraga border. Um it's a narrow windy road with no extra space and just basically limming up everything, painting everything. Uh was one. The other one we had was pre-staging um basically traffic control devices, cones and barriers at significant uh evacuation route intersections. So we don't have to have public works or police running around trying to find cones and getting them out there. They're there. We just need to get somebody at the intersection and get them set up. I think those are a couple of the key ones that we had that we talked about.

That's good. So we were think disappointed a little bit in the last update we had from racing to put it mildly. Those are such good ideas. So what right now I think we're waiting to see what happens because like we don't want to fund anything or do anything because the money may be coming but at some point yes do we decide that needs to shift into our or like or or we pick the the best 20% of that collection of stuff to just fund ourselves or do we have a do we have a timeline because you know we fire season coming in six months and I or whatever. So their timeline is our timeline. They're they're talking about budgets that start July 1. And so anything that would flow to us, I heard was like, you know, fourth quarter.

So it's not happening anytime soon if it does happen. So we should decide whether we want to jump on some of that. I don't know. I don't know if there's we have some sort of June 1st tripwired day or something. Oh, sorry. Uh we are starting to get uh requests from our legislators both at the state and federal levels. They do this every year in February. Ask for projects that they can potentially fund. That's the way we got money for School Street and uh for other projects. We can certainly uh doesn't hurt to ask, right? Um so we can certainly package something and send it through Casey.

Okay. Well, at some last year when we did this, we came up with the nine steps, the nine subcategories. So, at some point we should go through those and see where we are because I know some of them aren't in your purview here. Um, go through them, discuss whether we want to keep them, update where we're going, and then whether we want to add things, take away or add things.

Yeah. Um, so the way I structured to to meet those requirements were I broke it into pretty much how I presented this like what what can we do with the community, right? What do we do for our own training? Uh what do we do with mitigation? What do we do with partners? So maybe that's a way to think about what kind of priorities we had things like a couple town halls with the ability to accomplish.

Yeah. um is there a bigger picture we could say in terms of town halls are probably educating us but I think mostly putting it out to the community too. So um something that as us proposed you know more trainings and uh spot education for neighborhoods might be a good way. So, so with that, I I all had the nine pass. Um, and uh, as the mayor was saying, and I also should ask, may I address all of you by first name of that? Okay. So, as Carl was saying, um, to go through those uh, some have been completed, some are ongoing, and to see if there's something else that you feel should be added for 26,27. Um, so Carl, how would you like to do that? Would that do you want me just to walk through them or everybody has in front of them? How would you like to do it?

Yeah, let's walk through them. But picking up on what Andy is saying, how's organizing it? Andy, would you say we would discuss one and four together? You probably? Yes, that was exactly the way I organized it. Yes. So, it's basically town hall meetings and public education. We're together, right? It's a community outreach is really what it is. And they're continuing.

Yes, it's an ongoing thing. We had some specific things about getting two utilities to come present, which we got PG& and East Bay to do for us. Um I I would say we're I'm sorry. We I would say, you know, I think we're still um uh inadequate, but I don't know what the C about the broader community. I think we're doing an excellent job on the 75 people that are really into it and we are still flailing not I mean it's not your fault it's all it's it's a process how do we get community how we get the broader community engaged and uh and so we have not hit 25,000 people

no you know so I don't know I mean we're talking about doing I think a separate um maybe a separate uh emergency preparness booth at the wine which should be good which will be helpful but I still think we're still I think that's still an ongoing strategic discussion how do we reach the broader community and I I don't know the answer but it's I think it's still an ongoing problem but we're doing a phenomenal job with the the people of the inner circle. Yeah. And I take it our firewise effort is in this category everything we do. Yes. Yeah. Firewise and is the other one's got I don't know a couple hundred people yet. Right. That's another way we can reach people. Um, I think the other one we talked a little bit about with uh the emergency preparness commission helping get us in is HOAs.

Yeah. And can we go through other neighborhood communities? I don't know faith-based organizations would be another path but something like that. And that might be I mean to me strategically make that might be a a choice we make that instead of doing I know we're not really wasting a whole lot of time out but instead of like okay doing broad town halls so nobody shows up for that we have a bunch of people go to maybe we say we're just going to try to do the leadership. We're trying to get 5% of Lafayette really trained and assume they are local leaders that will do everybody else. And I don't know at some point maybe we just have a different kind of model in place. This other way is just like it's just kind of waste unless there's a fire some you know big fire some place everybody gets interested for a few weeks. I don't know.

Well I I just wonder you know given what's happened with the emergency preparedness commission and given that we've got Andy who's now been on the on the job for over a year now in this area. whether one and four basically is just directed at empowering the emergency preparedness commission

and Andy to come up with plans for how to do this unless we want to talk about specifics but I I don't feel qualified to do that and I think we've got a great team now you two are the council liaison Andy and the commission to just take this combine these two categories you know public education, all that, awareness, all of that firewise, and let the commission run with it. Great. They're the right group. Yeah.

Just personally, one thing I really like about some of these major organizations is they tend to have one person at the top, right? So, Firewise community, they've got one person, Stephanie, who was kind of set up the email list for all of the Fire Wise leaders. So, I have one person I can contact and hit all the Fire Wise communities by email. Same thing with CERT. I have one person I can contact with CERT and they can hit everybody that's on the CERT mailing list in Lafayette. So I think there's a HOA ed group. I'm not positive of that in Lafayette, but there's there's some larger group. So that to me would be a good place for us to start. We talked about having emergency department mission reach out to set things up where I can go talk to if we can do things like that where there's a tree structure where we talk to a couple people and they in turn then get hope get the word out out. So basically item number four that's actually just one element of number four then

combine them and that's one tool that could be used but the main thing is focus on public education and engagement. That's correct. Yeah that's right. One is one is like two of four or yeah I think that's that's the right way to do it. Four becomes one really that and one is sort of subsidiary. Yeah. Okay. So that takes care of one and four. So then uh number two take steps to ensure that wildfire risk is considered during the 203138 reena process. It's for collaboration with Morau.

So and this is something we haven't been able to uh to get to. Um uh having said that uh we you talked about at a council meeting the fact that uh others other areas in the state have their seven cycle numbers. So u in 26 planning staff will at least reach out to their counterparts in Ninda and Moraga to lay the groundwork. We still don't know what arena allocation. We know nothing about the seven cycle process in at least coming up with that understanding would be

yeah well my my understanding it's underway now the seventh cycle. Yeah some but in terms of even planning for it started already for sure with NTC with MTC is a group a NGC it's the same thing. Oh is it okay? Yeah. So, the Plan Bay Area um document that we reviewed and then there's an EIR with it. Um it talks about wildfire um but the EIR gets into some some more detail which pretty much discounts evacuation concerns. Yeah. Just says, "Well, you'll harden your homes." Yeah.

And and that'll be it. It's concerning. And I don't know, you know, if the horse is out of the stable at this point because that document is been in draft. It's gotten public comment and yeah,

it's it's the foundation. Well, I do I do a separate topic that we could talk about later maybe as a non- thing is I mean how we talked about part like how do we get ahead of the arena conversation this is one aspect of it probably our most compelling aspect but like what what steps are we doing to really get ahead of the game right when you say this is I mean this is it I agree well I guess I think of it as yes this is true obviously because we we want them to consider the fire evacuation but also you know it was working with BART it's whatever else we need to do to try to Oh, you know what I'm saying? Just the the broader kind of context about that. I I think that goes maybe in in tusk too. Yeah, it does.

We can talk about Okay, I see what you're saying. But there is this critical element. I mean, I really think we need to work, you know, work with Baraga now that the maps have flipped and they've got more uh to see if we can get ahead of on on this particular element, make sure that uh our fire situation somehow yeah well it's considered when the arena is allocated and then there's the much discussion of getting ahead, right? But this is one the critical

it is you know and I'll just add one one thing that in that EI and in the plan they talk about growth geographies which are basically like a footprint for where a bag thinks the growth will be concentrated for a variety of reasons. Um, and that's exactly like the, you know, it's like that's the cookie cutter. Um, that sority in place and that the ER references as, yeah, there's fighter risk. So, I I hope that staff could look really closely at the ER and just see, you know, is there anything that that we can do at this point? We could certainly still raise concerns, but I mean to get on it now.

Yeah, this may be something that we'll want to have on a council agenda in a in a month or so. Give you a chance to look at what's involved here and then come back and can you be a little more specific? What would we bring back? look at planned area 2050 and the EIR

just any any anything that's involved in you know whether it's it's um you know working with NTC a whether it's it's hiring a consultant whether you know everything that's involved in the uh the parameters of the reena allocation and making sure that our fire situation or Moragan or this fire situation somehow gets into pounds that are probably Yeah. involving towns at least a minimum. Yes. Oh, for sure. And we have the joint legislative agenda. And it's in there. It's in there.

So, let's talk about number three. Hold the conversation with e mud about the reservoir and hydrant capacities that has been completed. Yeah, I think we can eliminate that one from Yes. So that's gone. Florian, you're on number five now.

Okay. So number five, there are some words that we adopted last time that are deleted here which I think are important just and I think this was just put on to summarize but after suppress the risk of wildfires. It goes on to say including fuel reduction and shaded fuel brakes, methods for early detection of ignition and rapid response to ignition. And there was a period and then obtain clarification on roles and responsibilities. And the the words that were in there sort of broaden what we were going to do because we had looked at whether we should be encouraging uh whether it's on a state level, whether it's given the county involved in beta testing, but these the satellite

uh detection of ignition, whether we wanted to encourage that. That's something I've not gotten to at this point um on the list. Yeah. So, um yeah, I mean there's a couple things we can look at technologies too. Ultimately, most of that will end up being probably on fire like things that responses for fire related activities. Is there anything more to say about that? I think we just I think that's still an active item. Yeah, there sure. Okay. And number six,

let's see manager. So that's currently under in progress. It's underway and um it's going to take at least six to eight months to complete. Is that your Stella? Is this your Well, part of it. Yeah. This is a CCTA. This is a county based one. I mean, I've advocated in the past for a city one with more granularity because the county one got so broad and so little money. I just asked for it and I have to read it to to be knowledgeable in what I'm saying. But I my concern is just is it

is it um at the level specificity that we need to make our own decisions for our roads. Yeah, we had that tri city meeting in Arinda and we had that presentation to just I won't I said but we all know what happened and um before I'm just wondering what happened with that. It actually got delayed the issuance of the RFP because cities were commenting based on on your comments at the tricity meeting. Um, and so it just I think the RFP was released just a few months ago rather than several months ago.

I do not know whether it entirely addresses all your comments. So I might suggest after I'd be happy to send the scope of work to all of you. Council member Wtherspoon had asked for it yesterday. So I Okay. Um and then uh we can return with at a council meeting and you can make that decision whether you want to consider doing our own. I would say it will be an expensive undertaking

and um it I don't know whether there is the technology there to do to get what we exactly want. I want to echo that point. I read the Berkeley one. I think they paid about $1,000 a page for their study. 83 pages. Yeah. And the net conclusion was get out early. Um

there there were a lot of other that was like the bottom line. Arend has done something been back and forth with emergency preparedness. People thought that very expensive. You for the amount of money they paid, you could probably give everyone one of those evacuation radios. Um, so I think we want to be careful about yet another study where maybe there's other ways it might be more cost effective. I don't know. I'm not decided on that. I think now that they've done a lot of that good work, paid those hundreds of thousands on it, we might be able to be more targeted and use what they found and say, "Okay, these are areas that we'd like to know the answers in our neighborhood, in our with our network."

Yeah. I mean, we we were trying to get them to put in their study um things that would help us with ours and I I didn't get a lot of hope that that was going to happen based on the scope that we saw. Really like it was just going to be so general, right? That's what I would guess. I haven't read it, but countywide is a big area. be happy to bring the item back to the full council with uh after I send the scope of work out and also I identify what Orinda purchased software very expensive software

that will you can plug in um scenarios which way the wind is blowing temperature and then it identifies evacuation routes. Uh but it in my personal opinion that needs to be in the hands of fire experts when something actually happens because we we're not qualified to do that. But happy to share the the current state of information out there and then you can make a decision. It's part of the budget whether you want to invest.

Okay. And number seven and I I think we can delete this. I think it comes within number five. Yeah, I would agree. Yes. I like having smaller numbers of things that we can Yeah. had on fire present multiple times. Yes. That's right. I think we were well I think now let's say we have a a closer liaison. So this item is not not does he need to scan the

Okay. All right, then we're still in the discussion. Okay. After the CCTA evacuation study is complete, consider developing objective standards for wildfire risk when making land use decisions. Okay. But the predicate to that is having an adequate evacuation study. Yeah.

And so somehow we have to get there. But I just want to make sure everybody understands and it is still an agreement that after we have an accurate evacuation study then we want to look at our own even if if the arena doesn't take it into consideration a doesn't take into consideration whether we want to take wildfire risk into consideration when we're making our land use decisions. Are we all still on board? Okay. So I don't I think we leave this as it is then. Sure. be there for a while. Okay. And then number nine, work with utilities and communications partners outlined in the safety element.

I think I don't know if we need to have that here. That's just part of what we do. We do. Yeah. Take it out. Sorry. You are taking that one out. It does feel like it. It says well be working in 26. So but it's part of the the be part of our normal scope of work. It's part of the part of the lower part of the pressure. Right.

Okay. So then the question is do we want to add things and this brings us back to our discussion of the uh the roads and the parking. And what I was hearing, we wanted to have a look at the current situation and whether there's uh our roads, right? Where that is a problem if there are. Yeah. I don't know if we need to write that in. I don't think we need to write that in there. I think you just say that's something we'd like to see see done. But can you describe the task? So can we capture it?

Uh it's I think it's evaluate whether uh parking on certain roads would create a problem in case of a evacuation or fire access need on high fire on high. We're not going to shut it down on a ramp. If we if we needed it, would there be a problem? Right. Yeah. So, and because I know a little bit about Lafayette, are you talking certain areas? Well, I thought we were talking about roads like Spring Hill, right? Right. And uh we have all the single ingress and egress. Is there a you can probably call them evacuation

route does that cover everything we're looking at? Because I you mentioned bacon way. I mean, I see the problem there. Yeah, it's a very long funneling down to one. Yeah. Right. I think it's more the Stanley Spring Hill road. That's probably evacuation over there. Stanley is Yeah, exactly. I don't know. All right. Yeah, I think that that's just a large number of houses up that hill that are all going to be coming down. I think they do have parking on the side of the road. Um

if I you I uh designated uh Voyer Circle as a just like I was thinking I said Brian's family is a very much of a local street but because of the topography those are the kind of things that 365 days a year no better that would just be normal but this is this we're saying like again that that's more my concern is like this would be like on the certain select days. Yeah, that it would be a special thing. But then how do you unless you have a sign that says red flag days, no parking, which might be the only thing you could do. I just don't like I would hate but that kind of thing. How would you actually Arinda has this? What do they do?

They they have a thing where it's like it's reverse direction on evacu they have but on red fire days they have parking. They have I know I've seen those signs. So they do have signs on red flag days. No parking. I've seen signs that said on it's an evacuation route in one way only. I haven't Berkeley that are parking restrictions on red flag days. So when it's a red flag, the cars have to be gone. So I suggest that maybe what you want to do as part of this is how would it happen? What would be the operational elements signs on a certain day or how would they implement it if you were to do that? Yeah, I see Martino Road is the one I live on is a great contender for that. Parking on Martina Road. Uh people do park there. People do park

and it's not and it's not actually went through, you know. Is that public or private? Public. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it might just be a couple of cars that are there, but that could be too many in the event that you need fire responders to access and then people to be leaving because we know the width of a fire truck, right? And then you have to have more than that and there's a lot of roads in Lafayette that aren't more than that. So, restriction might not affect many people. It might just be those few people that do leave the car on the street when maybe they could squeeze it into their driveway off road in certain conditions.

Okay. So, I guess the question whether this comes gets written into the priority or this is just a a task to pursue. I' I'd say it's the latter, right? This feels pretty concrete. It's task. We just get it done. So, it's something you want to memorialize to see it happen or at least the investigation of it, but that maybe doesn't rise to doesn't go in into an outcome, but making sure it's captured as fast. Yeah. Okay. One thought doesn't have to be this way at all, but this is this and the brush clearing stuff is all evacuation route related. So, maybe you got to ask

Yeah. a priority around evacuation now some of these things. Okay. Yeah. Well, also coming back to and that's enforceable mostly because it's the people that have to do it, right? Because their property uh there's private property piece but also the stuff that um Confire has done with these measure X funds and clean some stuff up. But I think on these kind of roads a lot of it on these little roads will be Yes. homeowner. It's just like guys, right? Yeah.

So, would this be a new item to harden evacuation routes or So, how do you want to would there be other elements within that? Well, the other the brush cutting, but then there's also the the preositioning relative element. We need to come back to that anyway and decide how we're going to address that. Um, no ask. That's right. That's at some point

which which fits in with the evacuation, repositioning the cones and all about the evacuation, however we Yeah. Why don't we call it that? That's a priority for the state. I mean, a priority with sort of fast. Yeah, I think that's good framing. I like that on on the the prepositioning stuff. I kind of think that maybe it's the plan B if we can't get money from the state. I mean, just given the national reality there. I mean, I love what Grace is trying to do, but it's could be a pilot thing. Let's just do a couple. Yeah. Figure out how it works. Maybe it wasn't much of what was the budget you remember. Yeah. The ask wasn't to

it was less than 100,000 to get all the boxes or whatever the pre-positioning. Yeah. Okay. They put in the budget. No, no. This may be a doable thing. So yeah, new it's a new subcate for the personal priority. That's right. Not. It's not number four on our list. And just to go back, we we didn't actually Prioritize our priorities. One, two, three. We just said, "Here's our three top." Yeah. And we happen to pick an order last year. That's true. Yeah. Are there other outcomes that you see in under this priority?

Well, the other item we've discussed, and I don't know if there's been any further discussion, is a siren. Oh, yeah. No, there's some people in Springfield Valley that are B. Absolutely. Sirens. Super excited about sirens. Really? Yeah. And I bet Happy Glenn was too. It was more than 100,000. Yeah. Wow. There was a lot of lot for just the um the boxes. Yeah. There were 17 spots, though. So, we can scale that way back. It was 29. We almost could p just We could pie that. We could do four. Roll them out. say figure how they look, right?

Yeah. Sorry. I'm not kidding. I mean, they're going to want it. I like the pilot idea. Put four out there. How they look, see how they work. Yeah. Yeah. We know. We know the intersections, right? Yeah. Is that a test, an outcome? Um, it kind of goes under the harden evacuation, right? That gets added in there. Yeah. But is that something I mean I'm I'm just asking. Is that something we want to sirens? Yeah. Something to be Okay. I'm sorry. We're talking sirens. We're talking the box. We're talking sirens. I thought we finished with the box. Okay. I was

Okay. Sirens. I have a question. Sirens. So, they would be I'm imagining these p I mean I'm thinking these poles with big speakers, right? There's some centrally controlled from or something. You hit a button and it just kind of does a sound. In essence, that's what it is. Think about that tsunami warning sirens, right? That's kind of the first place they show up. When a siren goes off, people leave. It's Yes. It's easier to to notify people that way than even CWS, right? Like this is like Oh, no. I'm not saying

yes and no. There's a lot of nuances. Who pushes the big red button? is it aligned with what the county wants us to do. So the county is actually starting to look into these uh warning sirens. Um uh so there's a lot of back and forth. Sometimes you know Berkeley has got three or four or five different tones, right? It's a tsunami warning, but we only have well evacuation. So this should just be evacuation, right? So the challenge is um people that have been trained up on what the what the sound is know what it means. people that don't people that are coming in from out of town, right? There's there's an education piece there. There's also the question of what works at 2 am when you're all asleep at home,

right? And um voice stuff outside, which is the other option they were talking about is alerts don't particularly work into the house unless you've got so many sirens or so many speakers around. Um and that's why we're pushing the Noel radios because that's a that's an announcement in the house. Um, so the position we took on this over the past year was the county, it's going to be a countywide thing. It's probably something that is a combination the fire and the county that's deciding who gets uh, you know, who who should be evacuated. The police actually performed it. Um, so they're looking into that and we figured we'd follow that

and we go with the no radio. So sirens, yes, maybe. But again, we got to make sure everybody understands it. Everybody can hear it. I don't know how many we need in this Spring Hill Valley, right? But it's the good part is that you get if you have a place like Spring Hill, they've got a pretty sophisticated tree, you know, it's like you don't have to wake up very many people to get the news out, right? And it wouldn't take it would just be people helping people at that point with radios, not with radios. Yeah. whatever you got alert everything too. You know, we've had that a couple times, right? They have that thing where they force that alerts off everybody, you know, pretty

there's like seven or eight alert things that can come your way from emails and phone calls and nixels. Exactly. And CWS has, you know, phone, text, and emails as well. um these Noah radios people could use these local family radios as well. So there's a bunch of them before we even get to sirens, right? So I don't want to downplay it because it is something I think about for sure. Yeah. But I my take was the the county is going to look into this in detail and most likely community warning system would be the people that make most sense to push the button.

Yeah. so that we don't push the button when we shouldn't have or we forget to push the button or we don't think to push the button when we're supposed to. Right. We had a meeting with a vendor Yep. a bunch of several of us and um I mean the techn is advanced far beyond what it used to be when those those old you know nuclear warning radio things but uh who pushes the button quite the big one because there's kind of panic. I mean that but that's my almost my worry when that thing happens everybody just seems like so there's talk of doing a test on this like and I said you could use the hill behind my house and um I think goodness when that thing goes off you'd have to sort of like pre-warn everyone like right yeah

so it's like didn't want my career to end on that one that's another thing that they would you know they do once a week once a month at noon or whatever so everybody's familiar with the sound siren. That was a siren. The test. Yeah. If anybody's been in a town that has like a volunteer fire department, right? Right. The thing about the tests is they're useful, but then people can get desensitized. Yes. So, it's really challenging. I think the radios are a very good strategy to get into

the houses. and if they could be um I mean this is a technical issue but you know you mentioned getting flood warnings which may not have been the most dire thing for you to know about. Is it possible to to limit to things like fire evacuations? So there's there's about I don't know 30 to 50 different types of warnings and you can actually choose which ones you want. Um and uh the radio I have at home I just left the setup which is pretty much everything but there's stuff that doesn't apply at all to where we live. in there. I don't remember all what's there, but it's very specific to, you know, the planes or or Florida or, you know, the snow country or whatever.

Or we I I got a tsunami one years ago that, you know, National Weather Service or whomever just called it for the whole Alaska to San Diego. We're pretty safe. It wasn't obviously an issue, but but yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about um you know, telling people um not not um not desensitizing them, giving them the right information at the right time and then receiving it. So, what is the cost of these radios? The personal radios we're talking about, uh $50 to $100. Yeah, that much. That would be easy to I would say get a bushel of those and give them out.

I'm sorry. The weather radios are more like the $50 range. 30 to $50. Just search for, you know, no all hazards with the same on Amazon. You'll come up with a hund of them. Yes. So, and just see a recommendation would be good, right? The one we should get would be helpful, right? If there's a hundred of them out there. I'm thinking personally the CWS transmit to that or that's truly just Noah weather. So uh CWS one of the things they do are these wide area alerts which is the thing with your bongos you're asking for it right um those alerts go out oh there

yeah so if you don't have major evacuation a way alert would go out to let everybody know and that would go out over the radio as well. And those are over the radio waves like through the Yeah, it's like that radio, right? So, so long as you and it's the same channel that you get the the no weather uh stations. So, so long as you can pick up and listen to that station in your home, then you'll be able to get the alert on that same.

Are we there anything we're missing here in this category? I mean like you got public education, evacuation, retarding, working with confire as if like are we the only thing that hasn't come up in this category but I think is the whole element because I take this is everything related to wildfire it's insurance and should that be a separate item or are we leaving that under one of these categories? Is there nothing we can do about it? Yeah. Yeah. I don't

Yeah. The senator doesn't doesn't feel like he's got control of it either because it's all up to the insurance companies and their models, right? I mean, the insurance commissioner can push a few things and requirements.

Uh I I mean it for me it's a big deal of what can we do to get the insurance rates down and stop getting people canled. Um but it all comes out of the same thing, right? Defensible space, home hardening. If you do, they've got examples out there. If you don't just do your house, but you do an entire comm community community, then all of a sudden there's a very significant reduction in insurance costs in those communities. Um, and so that bigger picture of how can we keep pushing out um basically home hardening a bunch of houses together that potentially gets to the point where

Yeah. And I guess there's also the approach if we had better detection of ignition and better ways to respond to it, would that also have an impact on insurance? This is it's the insurance company's black box. So yeah, we don't know what they think about. The only thing we do know is this IBHS uh list of stuff that you can do to your house which is all the stuff you already know of you know vents and you know harden sighting defensible space first five feet it's all the things you've heard of before. So I can send you the the document if you want. It's it's a nice document that's easy to understand.

So then just sirens we're going to leave that with the emergency preparedness commission. Okay. So then back to have we missed anything? I just uh Andy W and we were at Senator Grayson's meeting or maybe it was community leazison confire talked about like an ambassador program. Yes, they are working on that. We have had meetings with them on that. Um and uh I'll let them announce that. They have mentioned I think maybe in a city council meeting But it is something that's uh I expect we'll hear about in the next couple months. So

can you describe it?

So the ambassador program is uh and MFD has done this. Some other places have too. It's basically a non enforcement set of people that can come out and tell you what sort of things you should be doing to harden your home and do defense in the space. So while it still comes from Confire who has their code enforcement side, those two pieces are completely separated and the ambassadors are actually people from our community that go through a mini academy of things they need to know and um then they would be the people that would go around and give advice give advice to the neighborhood. And so Confire is working on that. That's MFD has got that already. Um, and again, they they're working on their own plans, which uh I think we'll hear about in a couple months on it. But it's a good way to have a a non-threatening person come out and talk to you about, you know, the trees that should go or the vegetable space is you should have

and they're working with you and will they be working? So, they're doing it countywide. They're doing it countywide. So, they've tapped a couple people that they're asking questions of what it works. But again, it's it's their baby providing input. Well, that's come up at the emergency preparedness commission. I know Stephanie Bonttop was kind of all over one. It's an extension of firewise. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we heard at the leazison meeting they're thinking of doing on a pilot basis with one of the homeowners associations. And I think that was Springham homeowners associate. But we were also well long as it leads to broader

Yeah. No kidding. Anticipation in Ly, right? So that that's the stuff they're thinking through now. How do they track that? What do they do? How do they train people up? That's well that's all. Yeah, that's where they're at and that's you know I think they've got some good things from what I've initially heard but I respect them all. Just want to pick up one thing you mentioned Carl. Um there's been different I've heard different things floating around like in terms of the fire notific notification but like detection.

I mean there's a satellite concept. I know there are these cameras that are positioned all over the place that John Corn open one up I think in the park somewhere. They're everywhere up in my house now just but I don't know is there like a way to sort of like diligence that or kind of like what's out there what works or is there anything we should be doing that maybe kind of beyond our pay grade but um

yeah well we we have one resident in Lafayette who's studied this carefully because it was part of what he did professionally but uh is aware of two separate satellite systems that are being developed. Uh and I I don't know if you've met with Don Walker. I have not yet. He's on my list. Okay. Because he he's following carefully what's happening with these systems and and they're up there. The pilots going up and everything. So it may be happening. Yeah. So that's not a category on its own, but maybe it's Well, that's actually it is that's under number number that's the wording that was left out in number number five number one feeling rapid response of early detection. Yeah. Okay.

And how much does this how much confire? I mean this is where like he was trying to engage and difficult. Yeah. Very special. Yeah. So we're you know I think it'd be good if we looked into that. That's why I mean it should be it should be done statewide, right? Yeah. Right. At least countywide. Yeah. You know, because I mean what's our scope, right? We don't want to look yet because things can happen in the reinde. I mean there's so many other things that can affect us. Yeah. But yeah, you do you have not to push you but I should. No, I I understand. I was going to ask you do you want to summarize where you think we are? Do you want me to

cover any other outcomes? Do you think most have been captured and those who are continuing this and what we captured is perhaps a new outcome. Yes. So the one that and maybe want to work on the wording what we're seeing and again the ones you've talked about before with clone them outcomes adding one fire hardening which would have task underneath it underneath it. Evacuation. No specifically is evacuation route hardening. Yeah, very has a very specific so it's evacuation evacuation evacuation route partnership right perfect okay

great um so within that you have you do you see specific tasks talking about safety boxes um the siren issue take that off take that off safety boxes off sirens You said something about the EPC. Yeah. Uh radios very specific home hardening. No, no, the the you're talking about subtasks under evacuation. Okay. So, it's it's the boxes. It's the uh trimming up, limming up, and eliminating vegetation along evacuation.

So, is that the old harvey? No, this says road harvesting. But it's vegetation addressing the vegetation. It's kind of all under evacuation hardening just so you know. Right. Yeah. Maybe it's actually all under that that fire evacuation contains that the vegetation trimming which we' already talked about plus this like parking analysis. You know, it's kind of like it's all we're trying to like beat that part up. That's like one thing under our control really that we're responsible for. So I think that's why that's getting all the attention and adding adding um aspects to that. So the issue of home hardening that fall that's not evacuation rout that falls under other

that's under one and the one and four combination and uh Okay. So that is a new outcome. Yes. Yes. It gets added. Okay. Um and then we heard what you dropped off of there just to make sure. Number three. Yes. You combined uh five and you combined one and four, correct? Yep. And five and seven you um seven you've dropped off, right? And we dropped off nine.

Yes. Number nine dropped off. So you dropped off several combined a few of them. Mhm. You've added a new outcome and then you've asked um for some specifics um the city manager will come back to you right with the scope with the CCTA scope of work and what other cities are doing so that you they can discuss budgetary. Okay. Um then there was some specific things in power EPC that's what they'll be working on with community engagement one and four. Is that correct? Mhm. Yeah. Yes.

Okay. Also what about uh the issue of what you were talking about Jim with terms of satellite things like that. Is that fun? That's in number five. That's number five. Okay. That is number five. Let's restore that the wording. We can update the wording. Mhm. And then in terms of RENA engagement with the Rena Marada on wildfire risk, that's correct. But that's that's going on. It's not a separate outcome. It will continue. It'll be part of what is already within the outcomes. Correct. Under number two. Correct. Um so I think anything that we have not captured I think that's I think that's it. Keep Andy busy go.

Yeah. Okay, it's great. All right, you're right on time. So, we have scheduled 10:30 for a 10-minute break. You want to take that break? Sure. Okay. And then you'll come up with uh talking about your priority, too. And you'll be hearing from staff on the Andy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's the reason I'm trying to recruit everybody help with all this. That's the way you do it.

Okay, we're back and um we'll open up for public comment on the um the wildfire priority. Anyone have anything to say about wildfire? Okay, no one. So, we'll move on to uh priority two and uh your city manager is going to start.

I I just wanted to let you know under the Mount Diablo corridor plan there are six subtasks. Stephanie is here to present updates on one and two. I will provide an update on three and three and four and five. And then Patrick has slides for the last one which is the multimmobility study.

Um thank you. My name is Stephanie. I've met all of you. I'm the assistant planning director filling in for Drag Wolf today. Um so just wanted to give you a quick verbal uh update on where we are on priorities um on items one and two of priority number two. So regarding the preparation adoption of objective design standards for the downtown building um as you were aware there was an item that went to the city council in January um provided a lot of feedback. We are currently working with our consultant um and have scheduled meetings with the working group for March um to address the that feedback and then bring back an item to go through the approval process going to planning commission and back to city council for final adoption. So that's expected this spring um to wrap up. Um for item number two, the 949 Moraga project um developing that site for affordable housing staff has done a lot of work over the last few weeks. We actually have uh two items scheduled for Monday. One is with the city council. Um that agenda was posted to you uh earlier this week or a waiver request for the planning application that was submitted and staff is taking that application to a DRC planning commission joint meeting on Monday as well for their feedback and recommendations. Um we also are progressing on the DDA as well. Um and the city manager can provide more information uh regarding their details of that if needed. That's all the update I have.

Yeah, the DDA is almost ready to go. We may What's the DA again? Sorry. Sorry. This position and development agree. Okay. Am I right? Correct. Yes. And this is really formalizes the contract between the city and Saha. Um it there are just a couple of points that we're still discussing. We were scheduled to bring it to you on Monday. It may still go ahead, but we want to get everything right. So it may be the subsequent meeting but that actually finalizes the deal with

um regarding the Silva. Um Greg and I have uh had two meetings with the owners uh or the owner's representative. Uh they are interested in proceeding with a housing project. They um they do have partners they're looking at. Uh we've had some pre uh preliminary conversations about the process, what it would take uh because uh we talked about a development agreement and putting the deal points in. Uh we're also looking at alternatives to that. They would like to bring into the conversation the property they own on the north side, which is a very small, highly constrained property uh just west of Oakwood. So, um, we uh hope to we're meeting again in a couple of weeks and we're going to keep that rhythm going until we can come back and report to you. But, uh, they're still interested. There is still discussions about the land that they uh are giving the city for recreational purposes.

Do you mind what do they want to do with the north property? have a tiny little it's highly constrained and we learned that the aqueduct uh pipes run underneath. So it it is it is a constrained property and so we're talking about its development potential maybe transferring the potential to the south side. Yeah. So any any details about what they might be thinking of? They have not released that. Yeah. No.

And u regarding the plazaway update, you do have an item on the next agenda regarding the sale of the compana property. Um the plazaway update had had a couple of components to it in the vision. One was the consolidated parking lot. at the rear of the uh uh of plaza way. Uh the second is are the design guidelines and the third are the the restrictive number of land uses allowed in plaza way. So together they form the overlay. Uh given recent changes in state law, we can no longer we believe we can't achieve the vision of a consolidated parking lot uh because that would require the removal of the buildings in the rear of the of the uh of Plaza Way. Uh regarding uh so an update is not necessary per se. We will still try to make those physical connections between properties, but the chances of getting a a consolidated parking lot at this time do not seem to will not be we don't believe will materialize. But it's it's still I um I think it's still a good idea to keep the restricted number of land uses because what we really want to see are uses that activate the plaza, not service related uses. So uh there's no change there. And then of course the design guidelines are are equally important because they're very specific to the way. So at this time um and given that the compana building may be so we are recommending that this task be removed because there

is what we don't see a task there. I just ask um you mentioned state law and then removing buildings behind plaza way. Is that compana only or other buildings? There are two uh residential structures. one behind the McNeel property which um and then the other behind the wayside in so the vision was to remove those buildings and then have a consolidate bring the Kana building to the front and then have a larger parking lot with access both from Moraga Road and Golden Gateway.

Okay. It's a good vision still.

And u moving on um plan for creeks, parks and um pathways. It it it is what I would call under the under the uh water level. It's something that staff is doing, the commissions are working on. And so, uh, we just we're recommending that it be removed from this list. It's it's part of of what we do. When there's a project adjacent to a creek, we're going to be asking for some kind of access along the creek. So, and that brings us to number six, which is the multimodal modality plan

for Mount Diablo Boulevard. And I'm going to hand it over to Patrick. And Patrick is really going to put this in context of all the other projects that are going on in the downtown.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Um today, um I want to talk about the large number of transportation planning, design, and construction efforts that are taking place in our downtown area over the next several years. Many of these projects overlap geographically, thematically, and in timing. Um, so today I just want to provide this comprehensive overview. Um, and uh, just note that while these projects vary in scale and scope and funding sources, they do represent a collective body of work uh, that will advance a multi-year effort to improve safety, connectivity, and multimodal access. So I'll start with construction projects that are uh underway uh and then planning and design efforts and conclude with how they fit together. So um the next slide. No no right. No no no sorry bad one.

Okay.

Um so first although these projects differ in scope they are guided by some shared objectives. Um safety and comfort. So reducing pedestrian and bicycle conflicts and improving corridor safety and comfort for all users. um closing network gaps between neighborhood schools, BART, and our downtown destinations. Promoting mode shift. Um making walking, biking, and transit viable options to short vehicle trips and thereby reducing pressure on congestion and parking demand. Supporting our planned housing so proactively acting today to manage growth uh to ensure that new residents in our downtown can meet their daily needs without increased auto dependence. um improving safe access for students, seniors, downtown workers, uh and residents of all abilities, and then implementation readiness. So, advancing projects to strengthen Lafayette's competitiveness for future grant funding. Next slide, please. So, looking at some of the near and medium-term construction projects that are happening. First one is the Dark Town Center and Bike Station project. Um, this project, uh, long-standing project will improve pedestrian and bicycle access between BART and Mount Diablo Boulevard. It will expand bike parking at the station and create a public plaza at the town center pathway. Uh, that construction is uh is imminent on that project. Uh, connecting Lafayette. So, this project will result in construction of separated class one facility on school street and a pathway on Topper Lane. This closes a critical gap in our walking and biking networks between the Lamarinda Trail and downtown and also improves safety for students at the two schools on that street. And finally, aqueduct pathway. So, funding is currently being secured for the construction of the segment of this pathway between Dolores Drive where the

the pathway currently ends and the BART station. Um, more broadly, this project would result in the construction of a fully separated ped and bike path along the East Bay mud rightway through downtown connecting BART and running east to Pleasant Hill Road and beyond. Um, and when constructed will provide a direct, safe and comfortable connection to walk or bike to jobs, school, shopping, and transit without relying on a car. Next slide. So this map shows uh where these three construction projects are distributed geographically. The numbers 1, two, and three. Uh and you can see that these construction projects really contribute towards um starting to form a continuous active transportation network feeding into the Mount Diablo corridor. Next slide, please. Okay. So the these are um some planning and design projects that are currently underway. Um the design phase for the aqueduct pathway project. So um in addition to the funding that's being secured for construction of a segment of this pathway, funding from MTC is enabling the design phase of the broader pathway alignment between Dolores Drive and Pleasant Hill Road. Um so of course competing completing this design will allow us to phase implementation of construction and also compete more competitively for uh construction funding. The BART station access and circulation study. So this study supports compliance with MTC's transit oriented communities policy the TOC policy by advancing safer multimmoal access within the halfmile station area. uh and this compliance helps to position Lafayette for future regional transportation funding. So among other things, this study will help us evaluate gaps in the pedestrian and bicycle networks within that halfmile

radius of the station and will help to identify concepts to fill those gaps as well as enhance safety, reduce conflicts and improve multimodal access to and from transit. Uh and finally, the downtown parking management study uh is almost complete. Um, this study updates our 2016 parking management strategy and focuses on both public and private on and off streetet parking within the Mount Diablo Boulevard corridor. Um, broadly the goal of the study is to balance parking supply and demand while uh accommodating anticipating housing growth, supporting our diverse um land uses downtown and advancing multimotal travel.

Next slide please. Pat. Yep. So, can I ask a couple questions here? Yeah, cool. Um, so do we actually have on the um on the on the BART station ask the middle one, does it actually start? Do we actually have the people? You say February. Are they actually starting yet? I know we've been waiting. We have a Yes. So, MTC uh gave us a consultant team and we had a kickoff meeting last week. Okay. Very exciting way that

Okay. So, I'm gonna ask this now before you even before you get to number three on the the multimodal. You know, looking at these the BART station access and circulation study and our multi-modal mobility study, it seems like the BART station access should be a subcategory of the multimodal. So, we got 350,000 going into that study. We're going to be we have allocated 300,000 for the multimodal. How can we bring them together? I I know it's going to be different consultants, but

yeah, there's a lot of overlap between those two studies for sure. Although the BART station and access study will ensure compliance with the TOC policy for for the access and circulation component of that TOC policy. So, it is important that we address those other issues. um ensuring there's a complete streets guideline that meets MTC's um guidance. Um there's a few other categories. So we still need to ensure we have we are compliant with the TOC policy. Sorry Patrick means transit oriented communities. So MTC is developing developing it's not done yet, right?

policies um regarding housing um parking and station access and circulation within a half mile of the major transit uh stations in the Bay Area. and they are um they claim that they will be um requiring compliance with the TOC part policy broadly to future funding opportunities, grant funding opportunities. That was the OAG three or Yeah. four. Well, so where are we on the MTC TOC policy? They haven't released the updated yet.

Yeah. So, um, the last we heard is they've pushed, um, we had a a deadline of early 2026 was when we were going to be required to show that we were compliant. They have since pushed that deadline to 2027. We don't know early or late, but um, they have pushed that deadline out. And they haven't up sent us any revisions. They have not. Okay. So, it's not what the subcommittee saw, that's the last thing that's out there. So we don't know what changes are going to be that but in the meantime they're going ahead with this the consultants working on this study.

How much input can we have on the MTC study to get help with our own corridor study? I mean, I just I mean, looking at the numbers here, I mean, these four studies, it's a, $120,000 for studies of basically the same area. And um, and MTC is funding all of it. Yeah. I mean, in one sense, this is very exciting. These three are all funded by MTC. No local matches. These three right there. Yeah, they could, right? They could help us do a lot of good work.

Yeah. I mean this is great that we've got all this going on but just trying you know trying to you think about all that money going for studies just trying to well the bottom one I think is basically done right I mean to be clear right the parking study is more or less dra I guess that one but I agree with you the middle one is like I know for that one and the multimod going on like parallel right for us it's the same thing in yeah I mean it's like you know I think the union is greater than each because this one's going to be a half I'll circle around B. It's is going to be having areas that we wouldn't, but it's like oh my gosh, it'll be sure nice. I agree somehow. So, and do you have and this is where it's like I mean but we are hiring

the the multimodal thing versus MTC is assigning consultants to us, right? So, do we have control or how much control do you do we have you have over what they're studying or do they have like a template that they just kind of do? They have a template. Um could you send us that template? I'm sorry. Could you send us that template? So we'll have an idea of what they're where they're going. Yeah. Yeah. Um and the the template broadly is again to ensure compliance with their TOC policy in the station access and circulation element of it.

Um I've been focusing on the identification of the multimodal gaps within a half mile apart. And that's what I told them we want to emphasize and that they need to coordinate with whoever we hire for the multimodal study, the broader one. Um uh I was going to discuss this a little bit later, but I was also envisioning setting up a um multimodal task force um that could help to oversee all of this work um to ensure consistency um making sure that all the frameworks are aligned um and you know that public engagement is streamlined. Uh everything can be streamlined through this this task force. Um, so that that could help or that I think answers some of your question.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just Yeah. I I I feel like this middle one here is going to be kind of more technical. That's the way I'm envisioning it's going to be a little more charts and graphs or whatever. And then the one we're, you know, the one that we're paying for is a little more aspirational, conceptual, whatever. But yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Um so this does bring us now to the Mount Diablo quarter multimodal study. I think the group coined it the M3 study um for short. Um so this will serve as the parent study establishing a 20-year vision and framework for how walking, biking, transit and vehicle travel function together in our downtown. Uh this is intended to serve as a vision and a framework to help determine where and how multimodal improvements in the study area would be most impactful over time. Um, importantly, this study will integrate findings from concurrent studies as well as influence the direction of the other efforts. So, um, but again, this would be the the parent study. Um, the the, um, study area runs from Okalanus Road to Pleasant Hill Road, generally along the Mount Spine. Uh, an RFP was recently released for this study. uh and we are working to kick things off by early uh summer 2026. So underneath this M3 study, I've got two sub studies listed. Um I've listed them as sub studies because I've done some advanced technical work to support each of them. Um but before advancing them um my intent is to incorporate f further consideration of these bodies of work within the broader multimodal study so that nothing is looked at kind of independent of each other. The first one is right turn on red restrictions. Um this study would evaluate whether or not restricting right turns on red at three key intersections on Mount Diablo Boulevard could improve pedestrian safety and comfort. So the work here uh will consider those safety and comfort uh advantages alongside the resulting operational impacts within the overall multimodal framework. And then the second study is the Moraga

road redesign concept study. So in anticipation of an expected future resurfacing of Moraga road, this work would consider potential roadway reconfiguration options when we put the road back together. Um, so I'm envisioning that we would look at pedestrian and ba bicycle safety, left turn access, and traffic flow along this corridor. Um, sorry, y uh, that's great. Both are good. The funding seems oddly specific like you Yeah, that's because I've already done the technical work and that's

and I'm surprised. It's almost like I would expect the device to be flipped. It feels like the Maraga Road redesign is really interesting and conceptually you have all sorts of different options. we're going to have, you know, a lot of public intense public interest to put it mildly on what happens on Mara road versus the middle one feels pedestrian is not the right word, but feels like, oh, that hasn't been done before in a bunch of different areas and we have to take some best practices and learn. So, I'm kind of curious why you why your estimation is what they are. Well, no, this isn't an estimate. This is what was paid for the technical work. Okay. For each of these two studies, it's already Yeah. Okay. Yeah. done. Yeah. I just feel that it's just that bottom one like quiet makes it really interesting.

So, you know, to to advance those two studies, I definitely want to incorporate them within the broader uh M3 study.

Next, Suzanne. So, these are some longer term planning and design projects that I wanted to acknowledge. The first one being the pedestrian and bicycle access through on Pleasant Hill Road through the uh highway 21 24 interchange. So this uh would consider improvements um for um peds and bikes traveling along Pleasant Hill Road connecting um north and south of the interchange. So you're aware that uh we've done 100% PSN design plans for the center median pathway within this uh alignment. City Council has directed staff to evaluate alternate alignments. Uh, and we do want to consider those alternate alignments um given the the framework set up by the M3 study, but also uh we want to make sure it's aligned with the design of the Aceduct pathway as that fits Pleasant Hill Road. Um, so for now we want to kind of hold off on that and make that a bit longer term to ensure that whatever's done on Pleasant Hill Road is uh fully aligned with everything else that's going on downtown.

Yeah, I think on that one when we last had it at the council, we said we were going to wait until Calrans had completed its work. Has Calrans completed what it's going to be doing? We believe that the uh the RFB installation is complete. Um and council had directed staff to consider an east side alignment.

Um we want to make sure that we want to include a westside alignment as well given that the aqueduct pathway would hit Pleasant Hill Road right there by the terraces. And so we do want to make sure that we are considering all the alignments and then also what's going to happen north of the of U deer road. Yeah. Okay. We mean north of Dear Hill Road meaning um Oh we want to make sure that west side possible. Right. Right. So that

okay so that's still in play. Well, I guess my question on that is what what is the condition um of approval for the terraces related to a path to the north? Is is there something in there? Um we uh have talked to Calrans about putting the pathway on CALR right ofway adjacent to the terrace's property. So right in between the freeway and um yeah, but I was thinking north of uh of Deer. Oh. Oh. Oh, is there a requirement for pathway? I will have to.

Okay. Well, just hold that. But I guess one what you're saying makes sense to me in terms of waiting till 2027. Um but I guess one question I have is whether it should come to the council for formal direction because the the last direction from the council was to get wait until Calrans had completed their work. We had evaluated the impact that that made them seen that right

and uh and then decide what to do. I understand what you're saying and I think that's an important thing that should be considered but I just rather than do it here I just wonder if that should be a formal agenda item. I I think it's a good idea to bring back a status asking what's going on with it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. To share some information about the aqueduct pathway extension to Pleasant Hill Road, the design and also the integration with the potential westside alternative. Because just to confirm the the pathway or the where the aqueduct goes is uh it it doesn't follow Deer Hill Road, right? Correct.

Well, it does follow Deer Hill Road until it gets to the terrace's property and then it's more along the the ledge that's above the uh the freeway, right? Okay. Yeah. And where exactly does it hit Pleasant Hill Road? Yeah, I'd like to see that map, too. That'd be great. Wait, was it on your map? Um, there was an approximation go down I think one. I think it's probably around Akalani Avenue. Um, there is rough rough, but it does you can see the on the east side of Pleasant Hill Road if you look at an aerial you can see the

the rightway very very clearly. Um, I mean this is this is very very approximate, but it it hits Pleasant Hill Road between Deer Hill Road and the interchange. Yeah. Yeah. Closer to you can look across the street and see where the they have a bunch of infrastructure right at Okalani Avenue. They own another parcel on the north side, northeast side. So I assume it's pretty much there and then at least it goes in some angle to the other side. Okay. Sorry, Suzanne, can you go back one

just quickly? Two more uh longer term efforts. So um bicycle and walkways master plan updates. Um I applied for a grant through CALR in late 2025 um to update this these two master plans. So, if funded, um, we could update our citywide bicycle and walkways master plans. Um, and of course would th this would be fully aligned with the recommendations emerging from these other studies. Um, and then finally, I wanted to acknowledge the circulation element update. Um, so this will uh incorporate transportation findings uh into our longer range general plan policy. Then back to the map, please. Uh, so this map just shows the full network of all of these planning and design efforts. Um, so advancing all of these projects concurrently will allow us to align our recommendations, avoid conflicting investments, streamline public engagement, which is really, really important, and then also move incrementally towards a more multimodal downtown. Um the yellow shaded area are the study areas for both the parking study and the multimodal study. So I mentioned this before but to support this coordination um staff intends to form a multimodal mobility advisory committee to provide integrated and coordinated advisory input across all of these efforts before formal commission and and council um action. Uh so in short, there isn't one study that's driving this vision. It is definitely a coordinated portfolio of projects uh at various levels of maturity that are collectively advancing a safer, more connected, and more multimodal downtown Lafayette.

Can I clap? I know. All I can say is we're very happy you're doing this. Are you My thing was like don't get hit by a bus. a lot you're jumping. This is fantastic. Thank you very much. This exciting more progress we've seen in a quite long while. So that is this is great. Why why don't we get public comment and then we'll come back for questions and comments and discuss it. So is there any public comment on this priority? Yeah.

Okay. So back to the council. We can address them one by one and then we'll come to the question raised the last time. I'm missing something that we need to clear one more little overlay on this. Right. Can I ask one Sure. one thing. Um just how does the CCT countywide and Laranda street signals project fit into this?

Uh so the smart signals project, you're right, is another construction project that's happening um starting this summer. And you're right, I probably should have included in that, but yes, um that work um uh is a CCTA project, but but uh they are anticipating um construction starting in 2026 in Lafayette. In Lafayette. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. And that would just So they'll be installing, but then also more information about the capabilities will come out. They gave a presentation at Transerarch recently, right,

at kind of a high level, but I'm assuming that I mean I'm guessing there'll be kind of like a user manual for all the controls you can have and then that could potentially be your reference for these projects on your list and what you could use technology to accomplish your goal. Right. Right. That project will allow us to respond more quickly to incidents or be able to adjust signal timings um to test out new um concepts with signal timing and phasing.

Right. So then would that is you also had presented to transer the right turn on red restriction. So that was a whole analysis that was done, modeling analysis was done without thinking about the potential from the SI street. Sorry, I'm getting my smart smart signals. Thank you. So would that have to be redone or recast? No. Uh the smart signals project presumably will start with our current signal timing signal phasing. Um it just makes it easier to adjust or um uh view what's happening in real time on the streets with the signal the current signal timing.

Okay. So possibly optimize the current signal timing to meet some of the goals of all these sub studies. Right. Yeah. See, let let me approach it from a little different angle because the last couple years I've been concerned about putting in infrastructure of whatever type before we do the multimodal mobility study which is to look at do we want to make big changes to our infrastructure. So going ahead with these the smart signals project is that going to be adding anything that's going to be difficult to change later? It makes it easier to change. Okay, great. No, but are you talking about locations of these? Yeah. Yeah.

Can we change the locations of the signals? I think that's the question he's asking. Uh no, those signal the locations are fixed at this point because we are or they are completing their uh their design of the project. But uh it does include all the signals on Maraga Road and Mount Diablo. Um all are critical. Practically there's nothing. I mean that's going to go ahead and Yeah. Okay. They're I they're upgrading the technology in the signals. They're not adding new signals. Oh, correct. Thank you. And that was my clarifying question.

Why am I It'll give you better um better capabilities to adjust. That's right. Infrastructure to meet the challenges or the requirements of some of these studies. Right. in understanding where queuing is happening, potentially why it's happening. Um what happens when uh with the queueing when uh highway 24 is backed up as an example? We'll be able to view that in real time. Yeah. Great. Okay. So, see, shall we go through one more? Sure. Why why is the construction for the aqueduct been till 2029? main reason

this is uh the bulk of that funding is coming from the STIP program the state transportation improvement program and that's the earliest that the funding is available. Got it. Thank you. Well, just to follow up on that, so we've got the the complete design all the way to Pleasant Hill. No, we don't. No, no, no. That's underway. Uh when will that be completed? What's the We're hoping by the end of this year of 20. Okay. So that's not going to impact because I'm thinking then we're going to have shovel ready projects, right, to go to our ear marks and all that. Oh, can I ask question? Um, yeah,

sorry, I may have missed what you were saying, but um, the aqueduct pathway project design phase, what level of design is that? Is it planning level or engineering? Full 100%. So, so double ready. I mean, yeah, which is so good. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Um my question sorry the following so the the parking study why is that still kind of in limbo? I thought we were kind of really close to releasing that and you're now we're saying first half of this year it's going to uh transer next Monday or uh sorry week and a half March second. Okay. Okay. Within a month of that. Yeah.

One more question. Um so for all of these studies especially well really they're all downtown. Um, will the CCTA evacuation study findings um be available to make as inputs into this series of studies and plans? I mean, is the timing right? Because, you know, I have this concern. I don't know if you were here at the time discussing the granularity. Yeah.

How applicable to our unique and and specific needs in Lafayette um are compared to a countywide study, which I imagine will be very broad. Yes, the evacuation study should be an input into these studies. Um certainly I'll work closely with Andy on that and you know if we are making ch proposing making changes on Maraga road or Mount Diablo um we will have to consider u evacuate or wildfire risk as well. Yeah. And my my thought is, you know, the modeling like what level of specificity? Oh, yeah. Because if you're doing traffic analysis and modeling, but we don't have a comparable input on the evacuation constraints and

yeah, issues, it seems like we we don't have a good integration unless we had a detailed view or focal analysis of of Lafayette, right? Um, and I'm not convinced the CCTA study will give us that granularity either, I'm assuming. Yeah, exactly. That's why I'm not speaking very clearly, but that is exactly my concern. Yeah, that'll be like the missing puzzle piece maybe in all of these great studies that you're conducting and leading. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that speaks to just greater coordination with Andy at this point. Yeah. And fire.

Yeah. and possibly funding and scope and whether to do more work in in our domain in our territory. Okay. Shall we go through the right you want me to Okay. So, our first one, the objective design standards and I think we just want to keep that in there. We hope we'll be finished with that by the next fiscal year, but we're working on so let's keep it. The second one, uh, let's keep it. We want to keep that going for years on that one.

Uh, the three, the Silva, I don't think we changed that one. We're just moving ahead with that. Uh, number four of the recommendation is to take that off. I think that's right. It's not a priority at this point.

Um, number five, the staff recommendation is taken off. Now, I have a little bit of disagreement with uh with that one because I think the reason we put that on there is that we've we see how important it is to have parks in the downtown. We we have the advantage of having this this asset of the creeks and we want to make the most of it. We got the 2017 master plan. Um, so we put this in here because we just something we've always talked about having as a priority, you know, arcs in the downtown. So I think I' I'd like to keep that in there. It's just something that's just keep that top of mind.

Yeah. I agree. Um in in addition there's just a I don't even know if this comes under this whole down thing but um you just keep reading about how all the storm drainage stuff and how our local creeks are they ready for climate change right and that is something that I know a lot of the city cities and I don't know if our downtown creeks are ready for the kind of rains that we're going to be I don't know where that falls.

Um, but it's, you know, condensation means basically you get all the rain just faster, right? It's the same amount of rain for the season, but it all comes in like three days instead of weeks and months. And I don't know if any other cities are looking into that or what. We can check to see by the cities. You know, this is like the mega storm, the mega article in the New York Times a couple years about. Yeah. So like no it's coming it's coming over a few hours few hours rather than right and that would be devastating far downtown right and so all creek neighborhoods and all neighborhood right and we well in in 2023 we came pretty close

right to hitting the top of the creek bank really in downtown. Yeah, that actually I did not know that the camera that that showed Andy, did you Okay, I think it was public that we came pretty close to the top of the creek as it makes the turn. It's after Lafayette Creek comes into um our main creek no trumpus uh creek you right there one building off of Mount Dhind

we could let you we could return with a report telling you what other cities are doing and how and report back on that because that is something that of us are very familiar with. That's a concern also for the culverts um you roadways that are over creeks infrastructure that could be vulnerable, right? Have you heard that and just want to Well, I think this is a specific task. But I think you were saying that when she when the city manager comes back, you wanted that addressed as well. What has happened in the past or I don't even know where to is this even police? No, I don't even I think this comes up. I think this is just something that arises during the meeting that we'd like staff to look at as opposed to something that's within

this point. We'll tell you what the checker what other cities are doing and what I think that's a good that's Yeah because well okay as so far as I'm aware the two big differences the changes climate changes that are going to affect Lafayette one is that and the other is higher winds right and I don't know what we can do that's the wildfire risk thing that we're well it's also prefall it's also hardening of the electrical infrastructure, right? Because there's going to be more trees falling on more and no undergroundings. So, more wires. So, yeah.

Okay. So, then you're on number six. Yeah, number six. I think I don't think we we're we're underway on that. All the studies are great. Now, the one thing I we we talked about and I just want to see if the council is willing to say it's a a priority or how we do it, but I I really think we need to have top of mind in the same way we have downtown parks. this idea of having protected bikeways from each quadrant of the city to the downtown because unless we say that's something we really want to have and make it a priority, it's not going to happen. So,

or somehow get to the aqueduct. Well, well, yes. I mean, we we have for the uh southeast part of the city, we haven't we have got the trail, right? And we now with the uh the uh school street project, you'll be able to make the transition over to first street or well that's the safest way uh down to to downtown. But for other parts of town, uh you know, we're going to have the development on the Dilva property. you know, unless it's a senior development, uh, we're going to have 300 families out there, and there's really no safe way to bicycle to downtown.

Well, you can get to the the aqueduct, but you have to come down to Rha Road in order to do that. So, but we need to keep that in mind and plan for it. And from the northeast quadrant, there really is no way right now. Right. Right. But wouldn't this come out of the bike pad study or ambass plan? But that's not on the list for the coming year. I just well how to do it. Yeah. I just want to you know does the whole council think that should be something we we keep in mind.

I would want to study it just to understand are there constraints or what are the tradeoffs? I mean, so that's where I was thinking along the lines of the plan. Maybe that kind of analysis would come out of that. Um, it it should come out of the bike pad master plan. That's a citywide effort. Which would cover all those quadrants and look at connections and possibilities and gaps and

but this would be an input into that plan. I mean we would be one of our one of our key tenants or whatever would be we desire protected bike lanes from the four major quadrants of uh to downtown that would be like one of the right that's how you would that's how you would manifest that goal is you kick if you have the plan I guess I'm saying in the development of a plan with public input right this goal would be illuminated you know yes I I'm looking I'm think I think it's slightly the other way around I don't I don't think I don't want I'm thinking you don't have the public input rise it you say that is one of the tenants that the plan intends to manifest that's one of the goals of the plan is to figure out how we get

protected bike lanes from the courts right that's the way I guess I'm I would agree with that the only way I would say I mean I think that's think we get the same result I'm saying it's more like going in that's you know that's because we need to plan like well like what what we need a framework for what we're planning for if we're planning for you know this is a goal can Can it be designed? Can it be implemented? So what I'm thinking is Happy Valley Road in that quadrant. Exactly. That seems really constrained. Totally. And that would be the example of analysis,

right? But that one actually, ironically, Happy Valley road and up road both have like a pathway that they've designed, but to make it a protected bike. Oh, we got put in a cur, you know, a curb which isn't there. I mean that's where it's like oh so the plan would be what does it mean to put in the curb right away? Um I lane comes out of that. Yeah.

Well, okay. So, I'm questioning whether we want to you you've got the bicycle and walkway master plan uh under additional planning efforts here and you are seeking funding. I wonder if we want to pull that out and actually make that a priority moving that along. I mean, I'm seeing it from the perspective of the last four years I've been talking about protected bike lanes and we don't seem to be any closer to looking at them or doing anything with respect to them unless we school top. Yeah. Just acknowledge that was a huge lift.

No, no, I know. No, I No, I understand that. But that's in the the center of the city. Yeah. And we did talk about that as connecting southeast right Lafayette through the band town but we've done nothing or the other quadrants well the you know this spring alone quadrant that aqueduct plus this pathway we are going to cover it but I think you need to look at it from the perspective the overall perspective of your goal is to come up with a protected by way unless you say and I think I think it is a protected by way right well I don't know if that's that's being looked at from that direction. Okay. You mean u the the aqueduct trail is the spine concept of a protected pathway but how does it connect to other

Yeah. Where you go from there? Yeah. Just if you start from the perspective okay we want to have protected bikeways. Okay. And that's that's our goals. So then when you look at each of those individual things, you say, well, okay, how does that lead us to a protected bike way or how does that at least not do something that would Sure. hinder a future protected bike way.

Yeah. I mean, it seems like in I mean as a policy input to a to a master bike ped um plan could be prioritize class four facilities over class three. plus three being the ones that are sherros on the road, you know, no specific special zone to do that at that high level so that you kind of have that policy direction and see what's possible. Right. Right.

And that the active or the the multimotal advisory committee could start with that use, you know, setting that as a framework at least for the downtown area. Um and and that at least is establishes the goal at least in part or a good chunk of the city. Well, even the um the MTC study covers a half a mile from the BART station that actually does it include Happy Valley, right? Okay. So, keeping that in mind, but but again, you've got to say, okay, our goal is to end up with protected bikeways unless I think you have that as a goal. Yeah. You don't know where you're going. It's really important for Dilva, too. Right. I

absolutely going all the way to Aquarius, right? Right. Yeah. And all the I mean, just as a minor thing, uh the West Reach project we're talking about, uh what we're going to do there, taking out parking places, you know, is that where we want to have the bike way? You know, we're moving ahead with that, but that's before we're doing the multimodal study. All these things fit together. I just want to make sure we don't do something that we would have done differently had we looked at it at the beginning saying okay we want to have these bicycle pathways. So I believe the city manager also council member Cvantes

yeah no I think I'm good with a concept I guess um but we're not necessarily locking ourselves in here. It may be that on a given stretch it's just not feasible. I mean at least we're trying to identify right we got a goal but we may not get there in all places. I mean that just may be reality for us. Yeah. I guess I'm saying unless we say we want to do this. Yeah that's correct. And and everything we

plan on at least thinks about keeps in mind that that's our objective. We're not gonna it's not going to happen. processing what you're saying. Uh if it's if the concept is the same as five plan for parks, creeks and parkways and you know protected bikeways connecting neighborhoods to the downtown. That's great. I'm only looking at deliverables and I do agree that if if we want to get to where do the bike claims go, how do they connect, that has to be under the umbrella of the up updating the bikeways master plan.

And that also helps us if at all we get a major development along the road, we can ask because we have a a plan adopted plan. Yeah, I just think given the uh the tasks are in the current upcoming fiscal year work plan, I don't think we have the capacity to update the bikeways master plan because Patrick is going to be involved in M3 and all the other projects. But as a concept, I mean that's something we can share with staff with the Trump circulation commission with DRC planning as a as as a council directive. Absolutely.

Okay. Is it reasonable to say that the M3 will kind of do that donut hole analysis of the bike head master plan and then when you get the money, you'll be doing the the periphery which will be the neighborhoods. So, we'll start we'll get ahead. We'll not forever also cover the uh um southwest part of Lafia. We're assuming it's going to come along at least part of it along Mount. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Are there other other outcomes that you would you like to add that to Yes. to number three? Yeah. I I like that. So at least it's in there five. So it would be state it would be stayed in the way to make sure that the the staff is aware of it being accountable and the commission you know I I can apply as it's framed. I don't know this particular too much. Well, let's just maybe maybe we

see how can we do this because this whole priority is the corridor. All these things are basically under the rubric of implementing the housing element and planning for the corridor. Um so it doesn't quite fit there. I just want to have the council on record that this is a goal. Um so maybe this isn't the place to do it. Maybe we bring it to a council meeting or or we can do it make it a new category. Is that what Well, but see this is basically the Mount Diablo corridor we're talking about here.

So I mean like the like Patrick do report out on stuff or our list everybody who it's relevant to sphere. So shall we just say this is our pri a priority is looking at we we would if it's feasible to do it we would like to develop it protected by each memorialized just by you letting staff keeping that in mind every time we put in concrete is it getting in the way of a protective path okay all right then Jim is there something we missed here in terms of what we're

I'm thinking about the evacuation routes and understanding that input into these and I know we talked about it with respect to wildfire prevention as maybe asked staff would share this scope of the CCTA study but is there it was not in a safety element yeah the safety element we said when you're ever but you're thinking more well because in the RFP um that one of the considerations is evacuation routes, right? We I'm pretty sure we built in I believe the multimotal I'm pretty sure that we said evacuation routes are one of the things that they'll take into consideration.

So it's more the actual concrete evaluation of the capacity of the evacuation routes that you're concerned about. Yeah. And what what it's possible to change to optimize Yeah. Yeah. Or what are constraints to be aware of and to use considerations of the pros and cons of potential designs and facilities. And so I guess where we are now on that is that that's something the consultant is going to keep in mind on this with the

triplem study. But I guess you know my concern is what data will they have to work? They won't have any data. No, we take remember the safety element and in our vision zero didn't we kind of outline whenever you do changes to especially our evacuation routes you know any traffic you know any like road diets any kind of any mitigation that gets thought of has to pass by police and fire. Yeah. I guess you can look at whatever they whatever come up with in the plan. Yeah. Um we wouldn't necessarily be doing uh um a SQA evaluation, but we could do a safety evaluation.

Yeah. I thought that's how we kind of covered that. Yeah. So that's Yeah. policy wise. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I guess I'm still thinking that, you know, going back to the Berkeley study, um, and some of the information that Arinda has on their that new tool that they have. Um, there's there's like scenarios, you know, it's not like a static system like our network is our network. Um, there's different things could be happening in different times and then the network can be responsive or not. and and so it's more of that scenario analysis input that I'm thinking about, but the CT CCTA evacuation study

probably won't be granular enough or I have to read the RFP that I just got this morning. Um, and so I mean there's already a lot of stuff on this on this staff's work plan and then there's a question of would this cost money to obtain this data and what is this data? But I think it's very important input into this domain of work that Patrick's outlined. Um, so I I don't know exactly if that's a something that needs to be analyzed by staff or put on as a and then maybe put down as a number seven if it seems like it's rises to the the level of being important functional. But on the wildfire one, we did ask, you know, the to review the CCTA scope of work.

Um, and the RFP was just released. Like you said, we're going to get it. We're going to scope and whether we need to do our own little evacuation stuff here, too. But we just want to make sure that this feeds into the studies, the traffic studies. Yeah, there's a crossover, right? Okay. So, you think it's I think Yeah, this is characterized in because we're thinking we might have to do our own evacuation analysis, right? If we're not if we're not happy with what CCTA I'm trying to think before the CCTA study came up two or three years ago, we had on our priority we did our own study. We did of neighborhood we've delayed it because CCTA. Yeah. Right. So, I think if the CCTA turns out to be not helpful,

right, then we're going to have to consider Yeah, we have to and that'll be part of the information that the city manager will bring back. Okay. Okay. So, any anything else on on the priority? So, basically, we're going with what we had with with the elimination of number four. report and the city manager um not adding anything as the object or outcome but the city manager letting staff know the importance that council is putting on protected bike waste. Correct. Yeah. Right.

There anything else in this? I mean these these obviously the the level of effort on these things are different right because you have a couple that are just like tasks of let's do this yes whatever a couple of these things are this plan right here the last one which is really a shortcut for all the stuff that Pat are doing in one thing right it's some heavy lifting so I don't know adding one more any more anything more to this particular task seems well we're already pretty stretch of what we could physically do so I would be really kind of hesitant to add anything else to that mix so I'd like I had some some of the stuff done so start seeing Okay. Can I just take a moment to recognize Heather for she was the one who drafted the RFP for the multimobility study.

Okay. And uh she worked with Patrick and with Greg wouldn't have been gotten off the ground without her efforts. Very well done. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah. A lot of this stuff seems like it's kind of moving now that we have on board as an observation but a lot of things that were pending in the background that are now now happening. I'm sorry this is already a task but can you share that RFP with Yes, please. It's on the website. Well share it with us. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh on the page where people can go and bid and find out.

Yeah. So you could bid if you No, maybe not. But I mean not fine.

Well, you know, while we're on the category of I mean, as I've said, what I'd like to move towards in the city council meetings at that last item we talk about activity, council member activities for council members to report on things that, you know, if they hadn't been involved, they think other council members should know about. Just say right now that um Oh, there's Stephanie. We moved. Um I had asked uh planning to give the mayor and vice mayor a quick overview. Well, not a quick overview, a complete overview of all the development that is going on and is planned and is thought about for and we separately got that uh uh report and I would recommend that we put that on a council agenda so everybody hears what what's going on. We were the planning department did an excellent job. It's

inspiring. It takes about an hour and a half to Wow. Wow. Okay. I mean, some stuff we know you know a lot about already, but seeing it all together. It's a little bit like Patrick when you see all the stuff Patrick's like, "Oh my gosh, like see all the stuff planning is doing." It's like wonderful. Okay. So, you want public comment again? Thank you. Public comment. Nobody's raising their hand. Okay. So, you're doing very well. Um quarter to 12 and lunch was scheduled for noon but it will be coming in soon.

So I I guess the question is you want and Tracy are you you were gonna do a small update on the finance but you but I I think we're going to need Jonathan here because I lead into him. Okay. tonight and actually on this sheet there are a couple things that people raise under non-dity plan and just make sure everybody feels that they've been covered. Okay. I mean the impact of reena numbers on the plan what I don't know who raised that or what the

Well, I know but I I guess I think in this one we included on that we did for wildfire and not on this impacted. I mean, you and I talked about this, but I mean, that was more like because of all the things we're talking about. If it was me, that that would be the the question. Okay. And then concern for downtown businesses. I think these are things that council members wanted to be kept in mind because they were in their mind that as the plan goes ahead um you know what is going to happen with downtown commercial businesses

if you do it right it's be better for business right that that should be the whole goal right we're going to want to shop downtown by walking and driving to W I think uh maybe that fourth one there potential for more community gathering spaces and even public plaza public faces. Again, that was raised by a council member as something to keep in mind as um the planning goes ahead. Yeah. And that's partly why you want to keep parks in here top of mind thinking about parks. There's number five, item five in the matrix, right?

And I recognize conflicting elements and that was the to me that was the safety versus multimodal conflict. It was Okay. Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. Evacuation versus tra versus I mean, there should be a way to to thread the needle, but um

but yeah, I mean, I took a look at the the Berkeley evacuation study and there was just one section that I thought was characterized exactly the issue that this is a quote from the study. The impact of trafficcoming devices and I would assume also that means like facilities um on evacuation illustrates the complexity of public safety demands on the on Berkeley's roadway system. So the day-to-day public safety function of the traffic calming devices poses significant challenges to evacuation traffic flow in this situation illustrates the dynamic and complex yes public safety demands on the roadway system and therefore I know what Andy and Patrick talk every day. That is the problem. Yes, you can all these

and what do you do? That's for the the load like what's the load on the network? That's where slow down Lafayette, but yet we need clear evacuation. I mean the whole break yet it'll get out. Yeah. Well, I mean it might be maybe a signal is necessary in a place where there isn't a signal that can be tied into the into the signal smart signals controls. Just just I mean this well actually the smart signal thing is actually a really good way of actually a solution that can solves both problems, right? It actually facilitates better throughput on normal times, you know, and stopping whatever, but but you know, and keeps people safe, but yet evacuation route, it's all green. Let's just go or whatever, right? So,

no, super helpful. Yep. You're free without an assignment discussion until the lunch comes out in a few minutes. I'm just ripping here. So like when I think of like there's been talk about um you know in an evacuation scenario instead of one lane each way two two lane going on think of Spring Hill Road Morocco Road. I mean to me that's the part that really concerns me. There's so much Oh yeah.

traffic on that. If you keep one way each way, what do you do about this? Somebody's going back for their pet or one emergency vehicles, right? Emergency vehicles have to go in and I mean contra flow is what you do. We did with the Spring Hill thing, seven years ago. The challenge is you got to close off public signs driveways on the way. So that one person doesn't like upstream, right? Everybody has easy Um yes, but you can do it I think on just about any road as long. Okay. But you need people there to manage that. We have to like

Yes. So when we did the the um trial on Spring Hill, we had all the certain email members in and close the space so that we could do that and then they contrad the city road to always act out. Yeah. So on Moraga Moraga road you can see that it could have three lanes heading north and one lane heading south for but the problem is problem I was saying road it's not this part here which is interesting but like you get to the twisties that you know how did that work right we can make four lanes go as fast as possible but see you get those twisty things in the case of a fire in Moraga where they need to get out

right that's probably where we need the contra north so we have to cut off all our traffic any other side like that. Yeah. So we maybe we would contra south we're stuck but I think we'd be trying to go up the size and start. So is there contingency planning on that like contingency planning? I mean we're discussing it here like but it's like is there something that in case of emergency break glass and pull a lever kind of a thing? I think fire has led that typically of actually doing flow contingency planning. I haven't I don't know. Yeah,

that can be part of the sign boxes too. I think that's what has done. They've got if they they're doing contra stuff on Broadway and they're actually spending millions of dollars on making a bike path that could be an emergency as well, which is a great such a good idea. How how much is that costing? Do you know that? I don't remember for sure, but it's singledigit millions is my thought they got approval for or they funded. I forget the cell phone or they actually approved for the design. That's all they've got so far. They are getting a design for that whole thing. But that's like that again is a win-win, right? It's great bike lane for the normal thing and plus evacuation. That's just a sweet one.

They're also doing a feasibility study as part of that, right? That was the SSA grant. So I think they're looking at is it can it work first question to answer we're breaking for early.

Mayor, we're good to go. Okay, we're back in session and we'll start with discussion of priority current priority three.

Okay, I'm going to uh go through the uh the tasks and tell you where we are regarding the focus on fiscal sustainability. So we did establish the measure H citizens oversight committee and their first meeting excuse me is scheduled for March. Um second number two carry out a capital assessment study. Um that was completed um and the report and the final recommendations were presented concurrent with the final budget in January 2026. um ask the city manager to explore additional sources of revenue including working with other entities to advocate for changing the Bradley Burns sales t sales tax allocation. Um a couple things that are in progress is that the development impact fee study is underway to update existing impact fees and consider new fees. Um and the next step is that the Cal City city managers departments drafted a sales tax redistribution proposal uh which will be released to all cities um upcoming spring and summer 2026. Uh number four, ask the city manager to explore additional efficiency members. Um this is actually an ongoing priority. Um and department heads will be looking for ways to improve efficiency as we always do. Um and then we can report specifically on those when we uh submit June. Determine the amount of revenue from the new half cent sales tax. Uh basically that is completed. Um, I'm not sure we've had uh four quarters come in yet,

but if it continues on pace that we have seen it, uh it should be roughly $2.8 million uh this fiscal year and determine the impact of federal cutbacks. Um as of right now, the city is not directly impacted. Um, however, I will say that other agencies are impacted and they may have downstream effects on the city. Um, just as an example, if the county um is going to increase their sales tax in response to um cuts, uh that will indirectly affect possibly our ability.

Yeah. Ju just to clarify on that, there was an adjustment to the amount of sales tax that cities and counties could take, right? It could add on that you guys what you're saying. Well, there's a limit to how much cities and counties can take of the sales tax. So, and I think that was 2%. It was a 2% cap, but I think that was lifted a while ago. you know, they need to get special legislation, which I believe they're seeking, which right now, that's the catch. But regardless, the higher it gets, people are going to be have less of an appetite, right?

But it exempt exempts any BART tax. I think was in the reportion already for the There was there was another entity that was included in the sales site. I can't remember what it was that was taken out. So it's just county and city that counts against our y which right now county is gonna go for 625. So that's that's the impact. Yeah. The higher it gets the 625 people are people are potentially going to have less of an appetite for the local tax. Oh yeah 2% rule rule or not. Yeah.

But then there's only 3.325 left if if the county passes. We don't we would still have uh another half percent. So it would be 0825 if county passes. Yeah.

Okay. So, um, just to give a just a brief recap, overall, um, the city's finances are currently in a strong position because Measure H has given us some breathing room over the next several years, allowing us to maintain the current service levels and be more intentional about planning ahead. Um that said, uh we need to continue to be disciplined recognizing that some of the current surplus is temporary and that cost pressures will continue over time. Um and as you know, but I will reiterate that one of the main areas we've been focusing on in this past budget is deferred maintenance. Um the recent assessment made clear that we needed to be contributing more consistently to keep up. Um, and based on that, uh, we determined that the ongoing need is about $855,000 annually, and that will need to be ingested for inflation. Um, and about half of that is currently being supported by measure H, which, you know, uh, sunsets in about six years. So, we're making progress in this budget, but it also starts to frame a bigger, longer term funding question for the city. Um and where this really comes into focus is the community center. So the assessment um that the building is essentially at the end of its useful life. Uh and while repairs are still possible, they come at a high and increasingly unpredictable cost. So this becomes less about routine maintenance and more about a broader question of long-term investment. Um, at the same time, we don't currently have a funding source identified for a full replacement. Uh, and the next discussion, uh, is going to walk us

through what some of those options could look like. Uh, and there's also a larger policy and funding conversation that will need to happen in the future. So, with that, I will turn it over to Jonathan, who will walk through the community center in more detail. Okay, I want to thank all of you for the priority session today and for the focus on parks in the earlier session. Um, as uh, assistant city manager Robinson shared with you. Uh, we uh are faced with a lot of deferred maintenance. I have uh two very thorough uh staff reports uh that were in your packet today and two very brief presentations. I've spared you any of the photos of the cracked parking lots or leaking roof, but I will go through some of the options. Uh, in order to focus us today, um, we are looking at priorities, not necessarily decisions about the various options. There are a lot of details in those reports about the options, but the intent isn't to have you go through every option and decide what you need to do today, but consider those options and if this is a priority you want to take on in the fiscal year ahead. Uh in order to provide some context for service level, our current community center and its indoor space is just under the uh sort of minimum you would need for our population uh in square footage. uh if you wanted to review in the year ahead what those benchmarks could be for indoor space provided for residents uh in the report I provided some numbers for looking at a 1.5 square foot per resident and two square foot per resident option sorry uh and then uh presented to the options there's really some policy questions about whether we uh with our funds and any funds that the community could help to provide. Want to maintain the current

level of service that we provide through the community center space that we have now or look at potential expansion to meet uh the new residents that are going to come with all the new housing or to provide a centralized location in the downtown. Um, one of the things in my other report, uh, that I looked as we looked through the various city plans, um, one one of the plans that didn't get included in that was the age friendly plan. And one of the age friendly goals is also to look at those downtown spaces and providing a very accessible center of the downtown. So, we talk about that as a potential potential expansion and looking at those plans. I want to make sure I provide that content for you today. uh in the charts uh that are provided there are two in the presentation today I've outlined um these are I provided these as tools if we wanted to discuss the various options there are three scenarios one scenario where we've uh maintained level of service right now so those are primarily focused on looking at the existing community center in its existing footprint um it does serve our current population it's just underparked uh if we have a village event pickle all on the playground all going at once. We run into some parking problems of that facility. Uh any expansion of the site we have to take uh parking into mind uh because uh we have a very popular community center that does have those constraints. So the blue option in the top of this chart uh sorry under each scenario provides options. One of them here is to uh just maintain the existing center right now to go with the what we've uh the findings in the study and spend the money over time to renovate the community center and maintain the existing systems. Uh option B is to um level that building, create a new facility in that same footprint. Scenario two would be to expand uh those

possibilities. So uh to look at the existing site and how we might grow uh that space and have to consider parking and there's ways of doing that where you add levels to the facility. You just take the whole facility and build up twice and maybe three times structured parking underneath or you go up even higher or look at the various spaces and provide uh ground level parking around the site. So there's options to look at on site. And the third, the green section is how we pair those options with the potential for downtown facility. Uh so there's various ways to look at uh how we treat the community current community center property and how we could expand to a downtown area. Do we just sell the entire property and move the entire uh community center downtown? Do retain the uh assets that we just invested in? That's the Jennifer Russell building, uh the large hall, the um pickle ball, the playground, and potentially the new restrooms. I know the engineer said we might be able to parse out the restroom section, but that was a $800,000 renovation of those facilities uh right next to what was a million-doll investment in the playground and patio expansion as well, the community center. There's a lot of recent investment in some of those resources and we happen to have a magical sort of location for pickle ball. I'm one of the only directors. We are one of the only cities in the area that has pickle ball that's pretty much uncontested in its location. It's embraced by the community. There's uh it's well spaced from the neighborhood and uh it's really embraced by all of its users. Um and then uh we could also look at uh ways that we could rebuild or use portions of that site and then add an additional facility downtown. So this chart uh shows you some of the uh cost implications of those various options and some of the various impacts. Obviously expanding any community center space anywhere else or increasing the

size will require additional staff. Adding community centers uh to downtown is the most complicated uh of the various options. Uh my next slide provides some of the pros and cons that are listed throughout the port. Uh if we wanted to use as a tool for discussion, those are all listed out here and available for you today. Uh they are in the report listed under each of the options on each scenario. Slide. This is a map of the community center that we can use for any discussion today. Uh it shows the uh facility as um as it is today. Uh so that's a tool that we can use for any discussion or answer any questions. Slide and today there's a lot of information regarding the community center. As I said, we don't necessarily need to get into the specifics on um which options we need to study, but really staff is looking for direction on if this is a priority, how we would like to study it and then you're moving forward. I can end there with the community center or go on with the other option if you wanted to consider both at once.

Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. All right. So two, so uh the next section of my presentation is to look at the park priorities and I'm glad we're considering them both together because the community center is very important, but there are a lot of needs for parks. Uh fields was is at the forefront of everybody's thought right now because of all the discussions regarding baseball and softball. But in reviewing uh all the city plans, I want to make sure you were aware of all the the various options that um that the parks shows and recreation condition the city have been tracking over time through our plans. Next slide. So the plans uh that were reviewed were the facilities master plan, the trails master plan, downtown specific plan, the creeks plan, our open space plan, and then as I will add uh the the age friendly action plan calls for various facilities and the downtown community center specifically. So within those plans, fields are were in the facilities master plan. It was the the number one need and in a lot of ways remains the number one. We is the hot topic in the town right now. And we have uh a short such a shortage in fields that um we don't have any adult sports and uh we have a great need for uh softball and baseball uh during the the spring season. Bike park remains a heavy need. off leash dog area neighborhood park space specifically called out in the plan as in northern Lafayette downtown parks uh that are outlined in the u the downtown specific plan the trails master plan and a nature oriented plan as well next uh the fields have a structural shortage we do only have the four fields when we consider city fields we can't think about the school fields though the school fields are entirely booked as well. There's no summer use of school

fields. They do shut down the school fields during that time, but that's sort of the lowest demand time for fields. We see the most demand in the fall and the spring when all the sports want to play. We have camps and uh the school sites have camps that do utilize the fields during those times. So, while it is shut down to sports use, uh some of the camp use does utilize the school fields as well. Uh, as I shared, we're limited to those youth use, no adult use. Uh, and, uh, as previously shared in meetings, we have a lower per capita amount of fields than all of our surrounding cities. When we look at increasing field capacity, there's a few options to consider. Land acquisition, uh, is the easiest. You find land, you build fields, you have more space. Uh synthetic turf is an option that comes up sometimes, but it's actually the option that has the lowest impact. If you take our current grass fields and were to make them all synthetic, you're only adding the days where it's rained out and a period of time during the the rest period this between uh November and January where the leaves are generally on break for holidays. So, uh, just turning to all synthetic doesn't actually add, um, significant hours to the inventory. Lighting does make a difference. In some cases on the weekdays, you could almost double your time when you look at those calculations. Uh, there has been neighborhood push back at times to adding lighting. Um, new LED technology makes it a little bit easier because there's less light leak. Uh but that it is still a change of condition that's generally faced push back in several locations. Excellent. Uh bike parks are uh something that's been on the city radar since 2009. We came very close. We even had a plan for the community park in 2013. Um and they still pop up all around town. I think as

long as there are bikes and you can create an incline, kids are going to want to jump off those hills. And um kids have shovels are easy and carried and these jumps pop up uh in various places. A lot of communities um have been able to create parks or small pump tracks. This is something that doesn't have to be built on a large scale. A pump track can be a dirt or asphalt forest uh that can be built in a smaller area. Um there uh there is recent social media requests from parents who have interest and this just flares up in the community where my kids are building jumps and I would love to have a bike park. Uh this has not gone away. It is still of interest. Next slide. Off leash dog areas. Uh we also with the JO project came close to having a dog park as part of that development. Uh but unfortunately right now our informal dog parks uh sometimes end up being the Stanley Fields or the community park fields and uh we we work with the community to try and provide resources about where you can take your off leash dogs. The regional parks have a policy that does allow for off leash use on trails that's different from our ordinance. Our ordinance does require leash uh through out all city parks. Uh so there's or uh possibilities in looking at our ordinance or ways that we could look at our spaces or also look for land for those sites as well. We've we've looked into some of those over time as well. Next slide. Uh neighborhood parks uh we have and downtown spaces. Uh northern Lafayette where we call for those parks in the plan tends to have few opportunities. We do monitor um as those come up for the possibility to build parks in those areas. Uh we've had little success in that area. Downtown parks, we've already lost the library park site. It is currently entitled for development. Uh the gazebo park, we're m actually making

headway. Council has um taken into consideration the potential acquisition of that property. Uh and then the town green is privately owned in that space. We do monitor other downtown spaces and opportunities and have even had a nonprofit popup that helps raise funds for parks and has opened uh an outdoor space for recreation and now an indoor space for recreation to help aware raise awareness and funding for parks. Um the two uh parks collaborative concept was part of that process and that's looking at the gazebo park space and the leak creek side space uh where members of the community came together to find a compromise for how parks could be provided in that space. Next slide. Uh the trails subcommittee is hoping to bring forward an update to the trails master plan this year. They are they've been working on this update for some time. uh they've developed um ju at the sort of member level. There's a couple of them that have been working on a draft to bring forward through the trails subcommittee um an update that has segments of maps and um other opportunities that we can try and capture. The current trails master plan still has a number of easements that we have not managed to acquire, but uh the update that they want to bring forward will um include more of those connections throughout the community. So they they believe they're close to bringing it to the subcommittee and up through the commission and all the rest of the planning process. Next slide. Uh our nature oriented uh community park nature park uh may come uh to reality in the form of the Hamlin Nature Park. Uh this is uh the parkland between suite and St. Mary's that we're working through uh the park plan. It's uh the community feedback right now has been focused on an open space park with trails which helps us to meet that need for a nature park. Um right now we're doing additional geotechnical study on the site so that we can continue to

bring that plan forward. Those funds were approved as part of your budget process. Um but just getting that study completed um delays our process and bringing forth that park plan. But we, as you know, we've done a had to do slide repair um and a number just a lot of work on that site to get it ready to open as a park. We're very excited about it. For those who haven't been on there, it's a beautiful nature woodland with eyes and oaks. So, it will be a great asset as we get to the point of opening that. Next slide. Um, one of the things that we should continue to look at is a regional partnership with the school districts potential with the county and flood control, East Bay MUD. Um, I know some of the the parks and trails commission have been monitoring various opportunities. It just came up at a recent meeting that the staging area of the Olympic while needed to support the opening of the Calvary Ridge Trail, the lease between the county and um the park district is up for renewal. So there's opportunities for discussion on that site. Um there are lands these Ben might own that provide recreation opportunities, ways to look at how we work with the schools, but things that we could do to have those conversations in the community and see if there's ways to bring forward those some of these uh recreational opportunities. Next slide. Uh however, the financial realities of this are that the land is hard to acquire because the high cost uh construction costs have gone up over time. the $800,000 or basically sorry million-dollar playground at the community center would have been much less uh in years past iterations of that playground were much less expensive but construction costs have gone up over time. And then the long-term maintenance is something we have to keep in mind. That first playground we built of the community center was probably $300,000 and now we have a million dollar while expanded playground at the community center. we do have to take into

consideration the maintenance concerns of opening any of these new facilities. Um and then the other um challenge we're faced with are how the developer fees roll in. We used to get those fees as soon as they pulled the grading permits, but now we're often waiting till uh occupations. So the residents are already here and we're already behind in trying to provide those facilities. Um and uh any of this expansion increases our baseline costs for staff or maintenance and uh all these facilities. Next slide.

Uh so the discussion regarding this is uh from council's perspective what you would like us to explore during the year. Um some of those opportunities and talking to regional partners or looking at our own spaces. I know just at the park subcommittee meeting last week, they were discussing potentials for fencing areas inside the community park uh to provide a potentially lowcost dog park where you look at the meadow area in the community park, add some fence as a as a trial and potentially a little dog park in that space to to try it out as a pilot. So some of these can be explored but it all adds cost and requires sca staff time especially with the challenges regarding the community center uh and what we face in your head. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Thank you for all the work that went into these two reports.

Sorry. Fantastic. I love it. The reports were great. Um very thorough. No, I just have a kind of a conceptual question on the um on the community center in downtown just because I had a hard time like conceptualizing imagining where it could possibly be downtown. Like I understand all the all the pros. I mean it's like ob it's it's obvious in so many ways but I just look at the competition downtown with you know opportunity sites that we probably can't build on if they came available. The challenges we've had with Boswells and Campana and all that stuff. I mean how realistic I mean it feels like there's not even a path. I don't want to be spending a whole lot of time on it. Um, if there's not even a path to it, right? Like I just feels like it would need to be such a big location to be suitable. I don't any Can you respond to that? Is it even like in the realm of possibility?

The challenge is always going to be finding that property and being able to acquire it. The city's limited in what we can do to acquire parcels when they come up for sale. And often some of these parcels sell before we even know about it. just doesn't show up on the market and then we're not competitive and we're competing against say a housing developer who's going to make it's just the money that we assessed value that we could pay is so much less than. So is it even realistic?

Uh you would have to have a willing property owner um that wants to work with the city uh and or look at opportunities that have presented themselves to us. Um my best example might be the Dilva site that isn't immediately downtown but is in the corridor and how we review a site like that that is closer to the downtown. Uh it is what the commission has looked at as the field space because there are very few parcels that could ever have a field but if we look at that space differently it's something that that could be studied. Could you achieve a field parking and a community center through that site or are there ways to work on on on parcels down here? But it's hard to plan for that if we don't know if we consider you're right potentially impossible.

It goes both ways. I think I think it has to be like it's such a big lift moneywise. We have to have a you know what I'm saying? It's like yeah, we wouldn't get it unless we can get that but we have to actually at least have a a candidate site. And I just worry with the I mean it's almost like 10 years ago when we didn't have the housing you know all the other kind of housing goals great yeah you know whatever but now it feels like the big ones because they're opportunity sites we can't touch assumingly or whatever it feels like a bridge too far I guess I would if I because I'm committed to doing this for sure if I wanted to I want to be in an achievable spot realistic that we can actually do that I guess that be my question I don't want to know if I want to waste time on something that's just so it was required this unicorn event to happen and but we can't find park.

Yeah. Uh adjusting our thinking to how we would hold the existing site or potentially invest in the ex existing site and and expand to another site uh opens up options for smaller cars too. So that is another way when we're looking at those hybrid options uh we're faced with still some of the challenges and we created a fund with the community foundation lobby to hold funds in the event that we found a parcel to help fill that gap if we had to. Uh but even that that's a challenge because until you have the parcel it's hard to create the energy behind in investing in that opportunity.

Can I ask a followup? So what kind of footprint would you need for say a 20,000 square foot downtown facility? You were going to be able to multi-story it? Um we we'd have to look at the parking and and my engineers aren't here to help answer some of those questions. Um, but it's um I I'd have to refer to Mike for the specifics on on that broker and the parking. Sorry, I don't No, it's it's okay. I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, we have like the Oak the Oak Bridge parking lot. Is that the kind of parsel footprint that you'd be targeting

if you wanted to do like a smaller scale?

And it uh you could look at um a site of that size. I I've looked at even the city currently owns the campana site and what could happen on a site like that, but there are constraints on a site like that and ingress and egress and how that works for a larger facility and building up in a site site like that. Um and that's you look at a site like that a smaller parcel and you consider what you do with the rest of the community center site and how you balance the needs. Uh we have um this came up in some of the questions that um if we were to entirely abandon the community center site uh and move to a downtown site um one of the largest impacts would be uh to the child care that we offer to Burn Valley. Burn Valley is the largest elementary school with the highest demand for afterare. It's got the longest weight list. We're providing afterare uh to 80 to 90 of their students um daily through our just our core program and then beyond that we're over 100 students and some of our other programs that we're providing care for that then you have to have additional bus service we're actually running to the cap of some of the buses getting them to a program at Lafayette Elementary or at the community center because there's such a demand in trying to get them from that area to down here. So when I think about these spaces and how we move to those sites, it's just we have to balance that against what happens at the other side.

So So you're saying the Camp Awesome kids at weekday afternoons can actually get a bus ride up to Lafayette Elementary for after school enrichment programs. So what what you can come from Burton Valley to go to enrichment at those other sites, but we actually take from Burton Valley to a care program at Lafayette Elementary because the capacity is full in our program at the community center uh site right now. And um we have some kids that sign up and take the bus from Burton Valley to read the the Skyhawks program down here. And they most of the enrichment classes PB kids sign up for happen at the community center, but some could uh come down to that those enrichment classes, but they do come down for full-time care uh through the Skyhawks program.

Oh, okay. Which is different than the cats at Lafayette Elementary. Yeah, Cats is full with a wait list. Every Yeah, every care program is full with a wait list. We offer additional care at the community center and at Lafayette Elementary uh through our Skyhawks contract program. Uh, and they're actually taking kids from Lafayette Elementary and from Bird Valley because the demand is so high in that neighborhood and with that school. Yeah. I just want to piggy back on what John was talking about earlier. I was looking at these options. I was thinking where would if I were king, where would I put a downtown community center and the lot across the street here? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. You mentioned that. It's already spoken for. I know. Yeah. It's out.

Yeah. Yeah. And which to me is like part of the problem of doing any kind of a community type facility in the downtown, it's all spoken for for housing. And I looked at the between the that real world dimension and the cost. Um I just thought the downtown community center was just a to me seemed like a non-starter. I just didn't see how we could continue this the square peg and around. So why why don't we If we're moving into comments, let me ask for public comment at this point and then we'll go into We have a public comment here. Does anyone like to make a public comment on

this? Yes, we do. We do. Anybody in the room? Anybody? Anybody, please? Oh, I see. Okay, you get to be the best of ceremonies here. Who could it be? Oh, race. You have at least three minutes.

I'll be super brief because I've said it all before. Uh, and I'm here mostly for questions because I have a lot of ideas. Uh, but first off, I'd like for you all to consider a few elements. Number one is called the proximate principle, and it's been studied for over a hundred years. And basically we could build one really big park or community center or whatever. And so the surrounding and this is all studied and you can look it up principle books and books about it. Um it improves the neighborhoods directly around this really big park and then of course it's like a ripple improve improve improve and it improves as less as it goes out. But if you built three small parks, community centers, senior centers, teen teen centers, whatever you want to call it, you now have three ripples, for lack of a better word. And so it improves the neighborhoods and the economic vibrancy, etc. of those neighborhoods, these neighborhoods, and the property values and commercial property values in these neighborhoods. So, I would make a a a great suggestion to consider what the small uh lot sizes could do to drive revenue, to improve vibrancy, accessibility, sustain sustainability, etc. I'd also like for you to consider a survey of what the current population wants. Our surveys are very old and for many many years and there have been lots of presentations the downtown neighborhoods have cried for more park spaces and they're not really being listened to and it's been mentioned in vistas. It's not just I mean these are city surveys that

prioritize downtown public spaces. So weigh the considerations of a survey, another survey, weigh the considerations of the potential to raise funds for the city. So all of these other cases are amazing and necessary, but the impact is 4:1 to 40:1 in improvement to the the return on investment. Okay? And I didn't make up these numbers. It's pages and pages and you know, studies and studies of this weigh the percentage that of these locations that are sustainably accessible on walk on foot on wheelchair weigh the usefulness of these uh facilities for all ages and all abilities. So for instance, you know, I I I love fields, but as a percentage, what percentage of the population can use those fields? Is it hundreds or is it thousands? Thousands can use community centers, teen centers, public spaces. So weigh all of those considerations, the economics, the usefulness, and weigh the potential to drive economic strength and growth. Um the the um the percentage that I'm concerned with, and I know you all have your eyes on the ball, and I trust you all, is that the facilities assessment analysis shows a 5.6 percentage of the funds planned for downtown uh parks 5.6 95% of the funds are being spent outside of downtown and that's a concern.

Now, I know that we don't have the sites per se, but I just think we can do better times. Questions? I see a question being formulated. Okay. Yeah. Um, do you have thoughts of like where I have lots of thoughts. Yeah, maybe in a time frame, but like like um I I hear what you're saying. Um and

well, this is being recorded, so I don't want to get any landowner, property owner concerned, but um yes, I have lots of real ideas that are absolutely buildable, attainable. Um the nice thing about downtown is you can also go higher, then you can go elsewhere. for right or wrong, they're going to be surrounded by really high buildings. So, I live down here. I I could throw a football and hit my house from here. So, we just need to I I'm speaking I just need to embrace that. And then, okay, we got some we have situations where we need to build high. Okay, what can we do with that? We can build high for community center, teen center, teen scene center, all that. We can go high. So the footprint goes low. So you know, so this propertyy's already been mentioned once, so I can say that one. So yeah, the Oakidge lot, you know, I played there every Sunday for 16 weeks. It was amazing. And yes, people walked straight out of their house for five minutes. They were there. seniors, all the senior centers, Lafayette Elementary, Stanley, you know, it's it's all accessible right there. Um, you know, I know Park Theater is going to need parking, but I I mean, I live here. Parking's not really a problem down here right now. It's not, in fact, nobody parks in the in the Oakidge parking lot because there's such ample parking everywhere else. Um and and yes, I've done your analysis on how many people parked in Oakidge parking lot. That's 20%. So that's Yes. Yes. In short, yes.

Thank you. Is there any other public comment online? Great. Bring it back to the council. So are there any further questions? Well, I have a question for staff. Um, so I see city manager is not here, but um is really is really all the the land in downtown spoken for for tagged for housing. I don't that's actually outside my will. I mean Okay.

Well, the short answer is yes. I mean if there's anything that is could be an opportunity opportunity site it is an opportunity site right but I don't does that mean we can't touch it I don't that's a no net loss right kind of thing and so we have to make sure our buffer we're building enough things outside of our arena that compensate for that sites only I'm gonna just I I don't think in terms of our relationship ship with HCD. I don't think that's going to be a problem. That that won't be a factor that would limit a downtown

site. But I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, I don't know. I mean, creatively, there may be a parcel land owner who's okay with changing maybe one usage to another. So, it's a parking lot, service parking lot to a underground parking lot with a community center on top. I mean, maybe through some kind of a long-term lease. I I don't know. I mean, creative ways of of using

Well, that's almost why you kind of need like But that's what I was going to ask for a little bit like just mean like anam one example. It's hard to even think that's the problem. We don't have that's to me I look at it everything Grace said is true. So, I'm not like would stipulate that completely. If I look at like oh my god it's like you know what we have downtown right we have existing housing apartment buildings which of course no net loss whatever we've got and then we aren't really service parking lots and there's existing commercial properties if somebody that could be a thing but then

again you would just need this I I you need this benevolent owner who really want to give back to the city that would do that that would say I don't want your 30 million I'm going to take your three million it's like maybe that's out there but that's like Oh, it's like can't but but do we plan for that? I guess that that's my thing. Like I because I as I said I want to embrace this. I mean this is like I want to go full whole hog on this plan. But I we just need I think plus to really community support. We need to have a goal in mind that people can see and and touch and and whatever. That's where I kind of worry about an aspirational downtown site that we just can't really articulate. I kind of worry it's just kind of fuzzy. But I mean there's a there's a step before that which is trying to analyze the feasibility like answer the question that you're that you're asking first before committing to anything or having a you know a concept to to show to the public. I I think from a policy perspective continuing to have a a community center in Burton Valley pretty much at the farthest south eastern part of our city. how many miles from the folks living up northern release valley or or upper Happy Valley Road. It's just not equitable. It's not putting our our resources to the best use in in my opinion to to be accessible to maximum number of people from and from all ages as as the speaker mentioned and Jonathan mentioned that the all all not all ages age friendly plan. Um, I think that there's a lot of value to working really hard to look high and low for downtown centrally located spots that could be walkable, bikable. We have higher number of housing units in the downtown. Our housing density is

going to go up. Our population density has gone up. That would make a community center successful. and a community center in that location would enrich the lives of all of those people. So I think it is important to work toward understanding the feasibility of this aspiration to not just assume that it's all spoken for for housing.

Yeah. to just to follow up on that. If you assume well, most of our housing opportunity sites are in the downtown. If even a fraction of them are well, if they're build out, we would either double or triple the amount of people who live in the downtown. So, it just seems logical that uh if we were to have if we were going to spend money on the community center, we'd spend it on the downtown community center. So, I think it's I think it's worth moving forward, taking a look, trying to to uh get I I don't, you know, I don't think we want to name sites now or speculate on sites, but, you know, I think there's enough of an opportunity that we should move forward and just express a preference

for a downtown and move forward to try to see if we can make that happen. If I think part of the hand we've been dealt u we have an existing site it's no school site um the surplus property city took it over uh so you got a facility there so I'm thinking like at a minimum we'll be looking at a 25,000 square foot facility the match what we have now that probably our minimum pressure I'm thinking okay part is like the financial reality of all this is um if we just stay the course keep the existing building. We're going to be throwing money at what 800,000 a year or so, alluding to JC.

Yeah. $500 and something,000 a year. It's a chunk of money going into as opposed to like a you could tear it down, build a new one. Um, finance it, it'd be somewhat higher, but, you know, we could maybe manage that. But then to go to a site, you have to acquire a site unless that one benevolent property owner or you have to find around here. Um, I just like part of is like financial reality to me in this. It's it's great. I love the aspiration, but I'm just thinking that um it feels like a bridge too far. I mean, just off the top. I'm just skeptical we could be realistic,

I think. But a the this distributed model of you know not having one not having everything at one core site that's big you know not not the 50,000 or 40,000 or 25,000 square foot one but you've got senior services here and you've got whatever I I don't know if that works. I don't know if it does work. I would like to find out if that works and which ones make sense and which ones are like child care should be self- sustaining right it actually shouldn't lose money right and that's that should be a thing that we look at as well we can have a money-m opportunity as well or at least not a loss um for programming and which ones are the money losers versus the the ones that can be self- sustaining because that that'll be part of the argument too is that it can self sustain itself

and at least the way I'm thinking about Even if we were to move part of the community center to downtown, we would definitely want to keep the pickle ball and maybe maybe to expand into the parking lot that's right next to the pickle ball. And did you get a chance to think about how many more corks that might be? Uh, I don't. There's a couple of different ways you could cut the site up in the way that it looks, but it you could pretty you could at least double what you have there, if not more, depending on how you built out the pickle ball constituency. Anyway,

okay. So, keep the pickle ball and you definitely want to keep the afterchool care there. And I think you'd want to keep some classroom space. Plus, we got You got the Jennifer Russell building. So, yeah. So, you want to keep something out there. So, you think keep the Nord part plus Jennifer Russell. Well, I what I Yeah. Okay. You know, we're hard not to This is our opportunity. This is our opportunity to think big. So, I got where I get it. Thinking big. You would tear down the two existing buildings. You build one back presumably. Well, in my mind, the south building because it kind of shelters the existing playground.

Okay. And you would you would create parking where the north is and then you take the parking away from pickle ball and double the pickle ball facility. So, as Jonathan said, that's the best the best place in town for pickle ball is right there. Um, and then so then you'd have a a great complex. You would, but you have to to reclaim you lose. I mean, like I look at I think just we're brainstorming think big, right? You look at the the Oakidge Park there, right? I mean, that would be a great site for a small look at the the the the parking lot. Sorry, the parking lot that Grace was talking about. Oh, no. I'm talking now about the existing. I know you are. I know you are. But I'm just thinking if you were looking big because you you do reduce capacity when you just did that, right?

Oh, yeah. No, I didn't. So, then you have to expand somewhere else. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. you put 20,000 square feet at least big. Yeah. No, that would be to me that would be ideal and then have some services downtown too, right? The ones that we've lost that were there. But we have things we don't even have yet, right? The this the formal teen center, the senior center. I mean, that's where you think because I mean another option would be like you have the current footprint that you just rebuilt. So you keep think what you have there now which is still at capacity

plus you do something in the parking lot that's a teen that's a focused teen or senior center that's kind of just additive right so you got a space downtown small one that you can do some stuff and you have your your bigger facility down there because I just worry about even losing half the capacity at uh at uh current places that's a challenge too right yeah well I'm looking at it that way because longterm I don't think you'd want to build back the full facility there because it's a location. So you build something at a lower cost that would last another 80 years and then put the main community center somewhere downtown.

So you could take your catalog that comes out, the recreation catalog and and it wouldn't all be in one place like some here and some there would really expand the access and the opportunity and maybe even the enrollment. Yeah. when we took on the enrichment at the four elementary schools and expanded Sakare to Lafayette Elementary, it it does add additional staff constraint because we're on all the satellite locations,

but it does provide a lot of enrichment to the rest of the community. Once again, like the fields, that's happening for youth right now, but it's not happening for adults in the same way. We're able to provide some after school enrichment, but the community center houses most senior center activities uh our child care program and all the youth enrichment that site. So to have those opportunities comes with its challenges and we need for staffing and maintenance of facilities, but it does provide a much better service. There was a huge improvement if we're thinking on that enrichment of the other sense. So in terms of what we're trying to accomplish today, which is looking at priority for the next year, it seems pretty clear that at a minimum priority is looking into

what we do about the community center. I would broaden that to looking into recreational opportunities generally. Uh, and then you pair that with the fact, well, I'm not sure how you bring this in, but the fact is that if we want to continue existing services in Lafayette, um, Measure H, the last time if we want and we want to renew Major H in order to achieve that, the last chance we have to do that is 2030, right?

So, that's something that needs to be factored in as well, right? So, I don't know if we can do maybe we can talk about um policy questions like well if we had the opportunity would we prefer to relocate most of the community center operations downtown? Yes. and see if if they but okay agree on the cross tree opened up but in terms of what we put down on our priorities here I'm not sure if we can get beyond just for now saying priority this year is to figure this out. Yeah. Yeah.

You know Patrick and I agree with you on that. I think part of it is like extent you have a split site setup. you touched on this in your memo and in this discussion is like there's a cost there's an annual cost factor. So, um, which is the other thing I think we just need to be super conscious of and because that's just a an extra threshold to manage in the budget and we need to have a strategy for that or at least identify what it is first.

And would you put in so you're thinking I agree. So I think well said yes. So the priority would be we we want like a a direction a direct at the end of this fiscal year or we want a direction kind of like a analysis with enough analysis to provide allow city council make a recommendation or whatever on where we want to go. Do we also have at the same time kind of the financial piece as well or does that come after how do you sequence these things because they're kind of like related? Yeah, you know

that's that's the thing it's do we keep this third priority as fiscal sustainability? I would say in one sense we've now we achieved the goal of being able at least for the next year while we have five years left to provide existing services. So you can say okay you can take that out of the priorities but it's still a financial priority to be able to achieve what we need to do with the community center because we're not going to be able to do that with existing right funds. There's just no way. So it is a a fiscal issue. So you can make the third priority, you know, achieving our recreational needs in a fiscally sustainable way.

Yeah, I agree. I actually I would like to change the the the kind of the the emphasis though, right? Because yes, fiscal part goal part, but it really is recreation. Recreation, you know, and again to everything we're talking about community center, the ball field and other pieces added to it. makes the financial make. I mean there's really two complimentary paths. A fist path as well like just mean like a feasibility study of some sort at least which maybe is a first step like you know has done a great job but kind of like there's some come estimates but like just means like the one level down.

Okay. because I was thinking, oh, can we just knock off a couple of the options to kind of get our be able to get going? That was kind of my objective, I guess. Dark, but it's fine. If we want to keep all the options on the table for now and do a feasibility study, I mean, that's fine. It's just, you know, it's all money and time and I want to eager to get going, but I'm fine with we want to keep already on the table. You mean in terms of recreational opportunities?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at because I thought all the um all the options that Jonathan put on are probably worthy of the next level study. My thought was right, you have seven up there. Can we somehow get to five? I mean, do we we have enough knowledge now to get down to a little more fixed things so we can just be more efficient with our time and money to kind of get to the end. That was kind of my my thought trying to kind of short circuit a couple of these just so we can really move ahead with the ones that are feasible. But if we're not well, we really can't make that call yet. I mean, we could go through them and and just weigh in. I mean, I think the the move everything to downtown is that that in my mind that doesn't seem like feasible from service and then sell that property, right?

Which would give us some money, I will say, to do that, but probably not. Wow. The hybrid's the one that just kind of rises to the top. It really needs some significant analysis. Just just to get this out of the way, why don't we look at our existing tasks and see number one, we delete. Right. And number two, remind me Tracy, at the council meeting, um there was the recommendation from staff that we carry out the survey of the remaining assets, secondary assets. And we approved that, right? You did. I just have to contact. Okay. So, it's going to be much easier. And

so, the question that doesn't need to be I don't know that it if you want to just keep it on here to keep me accountable, that's fine. Phase two, but I'll it just it's not so much to keep you accountable. I just wonder want to put this on there so that the public knows that we're caring. We're not done yet. Yeah. We're not done. That's fiscal sustainability still is that's a core Yeah. responsibility we all have, right? But does it you know go below on on the diagram? Does it go below the water level? I mean in a sense it is. It's just been part of the core of everything fiscal sustainability follows assessment. I think that's just a follow on now. So I don't I don't need we need to include it. Okay. So

I think this really needs to reflect our Yeah. Yeah. And then in terms of number three um you know look for other revenue sources and four additional efficiencies. I'd say those are again you know that's something just part of what we do. We called this out here because we were you know this year we're just looking what our situation is and we still I think would want the reports which we'll get as part of the budget process but I don't think we need to call those out. So basically and then five and six come off. Uh I think um so basically now the third priority is recreation.

I agree. I totally totally completely agree. So sorry the number three in the meanings almost all of these are gone even row three. Okay. Yeah, because that will be done, but it's not like it's the big priority for the the fiscal year starting in July. Yeah, the big priority is solving this problem that was just started. Yeah. Yeah. Fiscally responsible. Yeah. So, is the the legislative aspect of three something that would just come off here, but maybe it's going to happen. It's going to it's going on this.

So, I mean the analogy again you were saying these become operational. Yeah. kind of fall because we're in February, right? These are priorities for this fiscal year. So, we are going to get these reports during this fiscal year. It's part of our budget process and then going forward the next fiscal year, they're just part of our ongoing operations. Yeah. because what's happened I mean it's it's very interesting to see how this has developed having put the capital assessment of staff's recommendation on the agenda and then what it's shown surfaced this enormous problem that we now need to deal with and now it's the third priorities right

yep third priority still be focus on fiscal sustainability what would it be refer ational opportunity recreational might be better title for that a title. Yeah. Uh I think what I was hearing you say is be planning for developing and financing recreational needs. Okay. Okay. We could do that. Or achieving recreational needs in a sustainable financial manner. Does that do it or

Well, I I think we realistically we're going to start planning and Okay. Can you say exactly what you said? Well, you can edit it. Planning and financing our recreational needs. Yeah. We can do I have a better idea. You can definitely It's not quite spicy enough, but yeah, we I know. But yes, I agree that that is what it is. And the fiscal part will come back no matter what. Yeah. But in a couple years, like no matter what when the sales tax starts getting done. Oh, yeah.

Right. But this one, sorry road rage. Too polite. Sure. But the but with respect to this assessment or planning of these the recreational needs of you mean there'll be a financial analysis embedded in absolutely I'll make sure that you I'm all about that. She sat forces to me for a reason.

So before we stop the focus on sustainability limb there was a thought that I had was we have this new sales tax in place. It's been increased. It's going to generate money. How can we increase the number of sales tax generators? And I'm thinking about maybe bringing back one of the priorities that's mentioned in the in the report from 2021 about ways to fundra um which was the how do we increase surviving and commercial success in Jan.

Well, we've heard some public speakers come. to several council meetings talking about how we need to go beyond just supporting existing businesses. We need to try to get new ones. Um I I I'll put it out there. I don't think that's a big problem. I think it's important. We should always continue to do it. I don't think it should be a focus of the city council to do that. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Like an economic development. Correct. I think I don't want to um I mean, if you want to do it, it's great. I I think I just look at our downtown right now, very few open storefronts,

you know, and I just don't think, you know, what are you really kind of recruiting for or doing? you know, we should I mean, we should always be angling for new opportunities, but I just don't I don't think that is I I just I wonder I just don't know if that's the biggest the best use of our time given precious time and and what we could be doing and well, we are at a certain level emphasizing shop local, shop Lafayette. I mean, we can we can do more of that, but does that rise to the level of a Yeah. of a of a priority? I just don't know. Oh yeah. I was just thinking, you know, make hay with while we have that sale. Yeah. Yeah.

That that's that's a more of a bank shot though way to raise money though, right? Because like you have a brain, we'd almost need like to make a significant difference. You would like we'd have to have an empty thing that we then bring Costco in to generate the sales tax to give them money, right? That's kind of like not I'm not thinking of like an auto run, right? I think there's like Yes, I am.

Like a Rubian Tesla kind of. I'm investigating. No, whether we actually get money from them. I don't think we will. If it's We heard from Creek that they weren't letting get the money because that's correct. The cars weren't actually there. I did hear that. And I thought, wow. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Mon Creek is like, "Yeah, they're very upset at that." Their Tesla either. Their Tesla thing is not the Well, I mean, but we do have vacant, you know, storefrs because they're not it's not we're not fully 100% at capacity. No, you're never at 100% because of just general churn. I just don't I just don't

No, I'm actually not I'm not actually saying it's not bad not a bad idea to do generally speaking. I just don't know if it rises to a priority level like that's really my only comment. It's not that it's not important to do. more like I look at I don't want to have four priorities or five priorities. I don't really know how that one fits necessarily into this one. You know more we have a lot on the plate. We will. Yes. So maybe a future year. Yeah.

So mayor um you established this third goal looks like correct. Um can you do you have some outcomes in mind that staff could look to um location? I mean feasibility study on community center a lot of the work's been done we will no it needs to have expanded we next we will have to hire somebody to come and do that that was my question but then what what do you mean by feasibility study what do you understand it to be

well what staff has done is just give you ballpark numbers we're not you know based on what we all collectively know you need somebody who does face needs analysis. Uh who cost of construction to come to give you some very realistic numbers as to how much it'll actually cost and also to develop kind of evaluate the three options. Abandon existing center, build downtown, uh keep current center only, or do a hybrid model. Okay. So, I'm going to make the situation even worse and say before you do that, one of the things that concern me and I well, you use rules of thumb for what you how much space you need for a community center and um I don't know if that applies to the Lafayette and I don't know which way that goes. Um, I wonder if there's a and and Grace mentioned a a survey to see what people want and need. Um, but I'm just wondering how much, you know, we'd be planning for a certain population, you know, particularly if it's going to be downtown, but, you know, is our is well, is our population different in terms of what it needs from a community center or what we think we should have? In other words, are there more um do we have a population that wants to do more classes, whether it's, you know, history, um crafts, you know, music, whatever. You know, want to have classroom space

for that. You know, it could be that we have a a higher need for square footage for that sort of use than than other communities. Yeah. I don't know how you get at that, you know, how you plan for how much square footage you have, but I think that's the first step and I don't know how much the parks, trail and recreation has thought about that, you know, what the what the needs are, how many square feet we need.

The last assessments were in 2009 with the facilities master plan. So that part of that process uh was looking at what the needs were and that's how most of these facilities came up and I highlight some up some feedback from the community where there are still needs for those facilities but the it those are old numbers based in the 2009 Oh you're talking about this okay

yeah sorry I still have on the screen all I'm thinking of just the You know, I think about oh well just these the general the happiest country surveys they do and they show that Finland is there's a big article in the New York Times and one of the reasons was they had a bigger community towns have bigger community centers and there's more activities going on where people can get together and if you have the facility you know are people going to use it then is that you know do you you so is this a survey Okay. I I need a term. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just raising.

It's industry standards looking at communities of our size and socioeconomic makeup and a survey. I think we still it it will be folded in and we we'll have to contract that out. I guess my thought would be that I think for the I guess I would think for this first level that we're doing here this kind of next we can almost I just don't know if using the rules of thumb is that bad coupled with a survey to kind of give us a little bit of stuff but I just don't feel like I I wouldn't wait to do that before doing this but I maybe do them at the same time. It's just that

at some point I think we need need to do a needs assessment. Certainly the community is going to ask, well, why are you doing 25,000 square feet? Why don't you do 15,000 loads? But can I I have a request on the survey just because I'm I'm so I'm suspicious of surveys that we send out on emails. Hey, please respond. You know, we're interested in getting we get this kind of self- selected group. I would like to do a if we're going to do one actually invest in one that actually I don't think we're not gonna decide today whether or not to do it because I I feel the same way about surveys all the surveys we did the surveys we did with respect to ARPA right yeah I know

no matter what method we used it wasn't all that useful right I I will just add quickly the other source of data that we have are is the user data from the existing community center that we'll be able to share. We know the popular classes, some of them have weight lists and some of them we've tried and haven't had success with. So, that's something we can add as part of that.

And what we don't know is if you put it downtown with another, you know, 7,000 people living in the downtown, what would the need? The other thing I'm conscious of is, you know, if you took the option 1B, you build the new one at the cheapest option to get a newer center. Just looking at my ballpark on what that would cost us if we financed it, what it would be, it's above what more than what we'd be paying to keep the existing plant going, but we could still maybe manage it. All these other things to me would be beyond our budget capability. Oh, you don't think we could finance some ones? Sorry.

Like by bonds, right? Yeah. I mean, we could probably going back to my old school days, but um the replacement, the existing, you could maybe finance it. We do lease financing. We don't need to go to the voters. We could maybe manage that internally. I'll look at Tracy on this one. But anything beyond that, what happens to the voters? I think you got to go. And without a doubt, Gio probably it's a two-thirds vote. So having some sense of oh yeah people might say look I love these ideas this is great are you willing to pay that's what getting you willing to pay $10 for 100,000 of assessed value whatever I mean figure it out

I think we need to get like are people willing to step up and tax themselves that would be helpful yeah and another part of that is there are there people in the community if this were a big priority and a big thing willing to actually fundra as always and this is where we talk about the feasibility study. This is this is the kind of pieces that I think are part of it. I mean it's drilling down one level and stuff you did plus it's looking at the the financial possibilities and realistic possibilities. How realistic is it for the community? I mean we've had tremendous luck with the library and the park theater. Not so much the community center foundation or whatever, right? So are people willing to fund raise for a civic thing or not? I don't know.

Right. But that be a great thing to like figure out, right? Yeah. Parks most likely they would, but a community center maybe may be tough for us. Yeah. It depends on our I would imagine our demographic has changed a bit. We have a lot more younger families moving in. Right. We do actually right now. We might have different demands for for facilities. Sure. I think we we definitely do. I'm sorry to bring it back. That's sort of my job here. Um this is a new priority clearly.

Um I heard a needs assessment. Correct. Agreement on that. Meeting needing a need meeting needing a needs assessment. Yes. No. Do we I don't know. Like that's the qu I don't you know so I guess the question would be do you have is there sufficient information that exists without doing that? We definitely h we have to have a needs assessment whether we do it by survey is the question. Okay. I I just don't know if we've put these down as I think we've we've brainstormed now. This is helpful. I think we put these down as steps. You know maybe we

and then staff comes back to you perhaps with a more Oh yeah. Way to approach it. I don't know if we're going to work out all along with that. Financial implications is one of the things to look at, right? Finance um location. Yeah. Y um those are the the ones the three major ones I think size. Well yeah we're talking about community center. So I mean the needs and you know what the parameters are for what goes into the community center, what stays out there, what comes in here. But then we do have the other uh facilities,

right? Like how does that right because like I I really appreciate Jim's background everything okay maybe have what was a med center just rebuilt on the current site just modernized maybe we could finance whatever but it's like all of a sudden oh but there fields there's some other things like all right you know but we do have some money for ball fields we don't have money for community centers correct we have been saving some money for both okay

but and there it's really the maintenance of both there's it was a scing fund for field renovation We just utilize some of that on the the fields. Uh we have been saving some money for the community center roof, but the roof and HBA system quote was between three and $4 million just to do that. So we've been saving for renovating portions of the community center and have fallen behind significantly through the the assessment and the the other functions of that facility. So, we do have some funding there, but for any of the new features, uh, it's likely an ask of the community. We're in a fortunate and unfortunate position where a lot of the opportunities are presenting themselves. We're close on the nature park. That plan's almost ready to go.

There there's opportunities like I shared with some of the regional partner sites and things to move forward. We have a property owner who's willing to work with us uh for a civic use of a large parcel. All the pieces are coming together, right? So, a lot of pieces coming together at once that that achieve could achieve a lot of those goals, but it's going to take the dollars behind it to to make it a reality for the community. I just wanted to uh ask how much we have in impact fees because we do we are collecting monies. Well, that's the question I you had raised. I had raised. Yeah. 4.2 million,

right? in park acquisition in the in 17 the park acquisition fund and well I can't say the other there is well we're in

the facilities we've been paying back for some of the improvements we're we're just about paid back uh um we have very little in our facilities funds so that's 12 used to develop new facilities on those sites but we've been utilizing those funds for improvements to expand the park systems so uh as we um achieve future development and we collect those fees. We'll have those available to us and there's a good forecast uh in some of the sites that haven't paid in yet. The terraces project is will be significant for the community but once again we're waiting on occupation.

Yeah. Do we have well it's 4.2 and then as mentioned we are negotiating or we're looking at the gazebo site. Right. Right. So that would come out of that. And and then do we have any more information about whether the the um Lenar project or not? Lar they've already paid how about 950 Huff they probably okay just trying to get a sense of immediate funds. How many if we're successful in selling Kana where does that money go? Was that borrowed from a different fund? City hall

also parking fund right now parking still under water parking we we took we took water out of money out of the parking fund city hall fund city hall to buy campa if we sell campana that brings money back into the city hall funds which that's a whole different People are but we gave away the 949 Mara road that correct that's correct 949 so I don't right okay and we own the property on Alino Ranch Road right yes which property is that

it's on Elino Ranch Road to the west west probably at most about a million dollars we're not talking about multi Yeah, but every little million helps. It's a million here, a million there. So many. Is it like a sliver by the highway or it it was build one or two? Or it could be Chris the community center there. I don't think it's big enough. It's there's hills. It's just to bring it back again. kind these kind of pots of monies. That's what staff would be able to help identify for you what could be used. Um

once you figure out what the financial implications are, staff would come back, correct, with more language or specific on this priority. Correct. We can come up come back with not with answers, but these are the things we can do. Right. Yes. Right. And I would assume some of these will take a little bit longer than others. Is this all existing staff or is this something even to get this first level question? That's an excellent question. That's that's a very good question. This is a huge lift for PTR. If this is the priority for the year or two years, we have to look at that.

Yes. So I don't know how much more we can do other than to say that is a priority. This is the big big new priority. We're really going to focus on it and make something happen. And you know basically what some of those pieces are that you need the financial piece and what you need. You're going to you know what those pieces. You don't know the answers but you know those are the things that need to be looked at. Correct. Yeah. But I don't think we're going to put that on. We're not at this. Not at this stage. We're not going to say we're going to do this, this, this, and that. Correct.

And are we addressing the question on the slide right now about the specific specific priorities or are we saying we're interested in all of that right now? Pending staff. analysis. Yeah, it's you know that's a it's a difficult question to answer because each one of those has different factors with it.

And so I think over the course of next year we'll be looking at okay which ones of those are realistic to actually do which ones can we do without a huge additional cost. But then your reason your question is so insightful is that you can't do any of those without additional staff really. Right. So I guess that would be we need that for the upcoming budget. It' be like a Yeah. Yeah. I guess do these there be line items. So we need to report back. Yeah. out before that so we can get the line item that we because while one of the reasons we do this

is because then NAR goes to the departments that here's the priorities what do we need in order to for the budget that can improve in tune in order to carry these things one one quick addition we did mention that the um the Olympic staging area the thing is the lease is coming due. What's like the date on do we need answers from us about ideas sooner rather than later?

It's my understanding the park district and the county are in conversations right now that they've been they're they're working together to work on what that looks like moving forward. So that is something that we should keep on our radar and can come back to a future council meeting as well. Um, I think it it warrants uh further council discussion in parks, trails, and recreation commission. They only it was on one commissioner's radar that the date might happen. I chased it for them to to verify that information. It was true. Uh, and now they'll continue to monitor the way that they want. We want to influence the current lease, does that just cover the parking area or what? Yeah.

Uh, yes, they they lease the staging areas, right? Okay. Which is also two parking areas and there's and empty space. And then there's the empty space. And there's the space to the to the north of the parking area. Is that part of the lease? Because that's something we've been trying for for years years to get right. So I don't have the specific details. I do believe it does encompass a lot of the land. It could be the entire area in between and what they lease back from flood control. Uh so there there are possibilities there.

Okay. Well, but I Well, okay. But I, you know, even now I would just say if somehow we could get that entire parcel, we would want it. I mean, that was that was fell over. Well, no, but that's that's what we were That was going to be the dog park. It was a dog, right? That there were that could be that could be this bike park. It could be what you know there's a lot of could be a lot. I mean that space is the only level space that's out there.

Yeah, there is a significant parcel there. They they do utilize the staging areas and there is a planned trail expansion too. Uh so uh they have easements and we have portions of those easements that go from the roundabout all the way to Roar. Uh and they've uh lined up the entire trail. They've actually done the study. So there there's additional trail uh that's likely to be moving forward in a project that they've been working on there. So um they they still need staging area for the regional trail, but there may be opportunities to partner or subleas get a portion of what's there to achieve our goals and worth having those conversations at the staff level, leadership levels to move that forward.

And can you just um I'm not familiar with this. So just from the from the top. So this is we're talking about the along Olympic Boulevard where the Lamar trail head is the areas that are the parking lots and then there's the connecting walkways and so who owns that right now and what's the just my understanding is this is a parcel that's bordered by Olympic uh release station going north uh the creek and Pleasant Hill. Those are the four sides of it. Yeah. And and so what is the transaction? Who are the owners, the players? This is what we're trying to find out, right? Yeah. I don't know much about this.

County flood control land that the park district lease uh leases for their staging areas for the Lafia Maraga Trail. Okay. Okay. And then eventual Calaveris Ridge Trail that will um that will start from there at the roundabout head towards Roar along the ridge. Roar. So drive in valley. Yeah, that is a very long length of trail that they've been working to achieve over time. Wait going up the hill on Snake Hill. What? Yeah, but not on Snake Hill in the Not on Snake Hill. You actually it'll be east of the development that's there at the roundabout. Yeah. Oh. Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah. On the Walnut Creek side of

the Don't they need all this? I guess I I guess I'm still a little bit like I'm just confused on what it means for us. They have a lot of plans. We don't have a lot of needs and we aren't part of it. So, how how are we part of it? We're going to be part of it. I know. I'm all I'm all for. I'm like I'm just getting all excited. I'm like, there's a lot of land there. There's a lot of land there. There's pretty significant uh space in between the two areas. They may need to expand their parking, but it was the commission uh looked at it as a dog park. uh the small pump track features that we talked about as far as a bike park would fit in that area doing all that

and they don't use it all. No, it's so that that area in between there is a section that gets opened up for equipment staging fairly frequently when things are happening, but it's just otherwise open. It's just open between those two are between the parking. It would be that's I want to come back and talk about this. It would be with the proper fencing dog park would be pretty achievable and there's with the trail use bike or dog use uh would work very well in that. People are already walking through that area. You're between the middle school and the high school. So when you talk about the way the bikes are utilized, it's uh one of the best partials for achieving some of those goals. Wow. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

And we want to buy it. So Okay. And because it is flood control land, those there's those lower impacts, too. Pump track, you flood a pump track, it's still a pump track. At a dog park, it's still a dog park. You go in and replace some fencing, some bark. It's low impact for flooding. So, we're not building a community center. No. Yeah, that would be a little more difficult on flood control land. Put it on stilts. We're all Thank you. Are you I I don't know if we can do any more today on this on this one. Okay.

Scared staffing up already. I think so.

Jonathan over to the city manager. Well, thank you. Um, this was a really good workshop and I think we've got a lot of direction from now. Boil is in our court. We have to figure out how we're going to do it, whether it's achievable and how much it'll cost and we will come back to you. Typically we type your uh Naen types up your priorities. We bring it to a council meeting for your approval a regular meeting and that should happen within the next month and then I believe in at the end of March the department the management team is meeting to start work on the uh preparing for the next fiscal year. A question maybe for our mayor. Should we rank order these at this point or come back later because we got

terms on three priorities? Yeah, three priorities. We did that last year. One, two, and three. No, we didn't. I think it was Well, you actually did. Wildfire was your We did it after that. I don't know if we do that. So, is that something that would be helpful with or in this particular case? I think I'm looking at it from a depart department standpoint and uh fire wildfire is really uh Andy and the police department. Uh item two is is Patrick and engineering for the most part with some assistance from planning

and then the third one is parks, trails and recreation and uh Heather and I will for now assist. So I see them as as three separate uh you should have resources. You should find something for legal that being suspiciously quiet. She's looking already up to here. No new task. So I I I appreciate that. Um I even if if I come back and say we can't do uh subtask one or two it'll only be for that particular

so is there anything else not that it rises to a priority but something that you feel should be acknowledged or we had under in the garage we had rena just the word reena which skewed, right? Oh. Um, a two-year review for commissioners. Okay. That was one that came right. Yeah. That's something you would like memorialize for staff to perhaps talk about, look at, bring back to you. Um, what do you think? Explain. Okay. So, the thought was, you know, we automatically renew for what, six years? Two. Two.

Automatically for two. And at the sixth year, you'd have to apply. That's it. So basically six year every six years is the only time to get reviewed, right? And so there's there was we were approached by one of the chairs saying um let's keep that but add an option every year. We check in with the chairs

and to see if if they've got specific instances and they do want to review. Is this going to be rare? Right. I'm imagining it be very rare and it would only be on behalf of the chairs and and they would request I would imagine almost every single commissioner would go straight through EZ every two years but it's just almost interimm two years to give an option and I okay with a change to the policy it would be a change to the policy if if we want to try to do that we would think we would I'm trying to think how we would consider that because I mean it goes on practically

that there chairs have raised concern right and there has been counselor right so the only um change would be changing the policy well what goes on now with the counseling if the person who's being spoken to just basically is not listening Mhm. There's nothing you can do about it, right? There's there's no recourse right now for anybody to do anything about it, including us, right? Yeah. So, you'd be adding I guess Oh, we can, right?

But it's obviously something we probably are going to you want to avoid that, right? And so, so I guess the question is whether you I don't know if we should we should discuss this, but um You know, are you causing It'll be awkward. It'll be awkward. Yeah. Going to someone saying, "Well, we're gonna have to re you're going to have to reenter." I know. How do you work?

No, it does. It would work. It would be a count, you know, this it would still have to come all the way back up to council and you would effectively remove them. So basically, you'd be saying a committee chair would have the option to say that a a a renewal should not be automatic, right? And they and this person should go back into the interview process. So maybe you just maybe it's not for our priorities, but we just bring back on a future agenda the discussion about this is clearly not a Yeah. Yeah.

Is that something you would like? That would just be what I'm gathering is this just comes back at a future meeting of the special so it doesn't need to be part of this. Yeah. So revisiting the counsel and then we've got discussing it will take to maintain the positive council relationship that exists. Right. I heard at least one council member, a couple, everybody spoke about what a great group it is to work with and one individual indicated maybe at some point there's an opportunity to look at why you work together so well and how do you sustain that

I don't know I mean that could be something that you write each other little notes I don't know pass, but it was something that I heard. I might have raised that. I don't know. But I really think that's true. I think I think I

No, because I um I'm struck by I think this is the group that really works well together. Um and it's sort of a I I've been I've seen lots of cities and special districts where it is not the case. So, and I don't know, maybe it's just that you get the right people together really working towards the right goal with the right staff and that all works out. But um I don't know there's an element of collegiality here which I really find refreshing and um credit to you all for that. So I don't know I don't I would that might have been me using on something maybe but um because I think it's a you have any ideas let us know.

A lot of cities I was discussing with your city attorney a lot of them are not this way. Um I I think what I see in the four or five years is that you talk to each other and a lot of lot of muscles that deal with never in groups of more than ever. I I didn't mean it that way. Never ever that. But I I mean when you are collectively in the room, you do talk to each other, respect each other, and I notice a lot of council members um talk over interrupt those kinds of conduct. And I fortunately see a lot of that right now in the last year or so I've seen a lot of that just so I think I guess the word I would use and I don't know you well enough that you respect each other

yeah that leads to that I think we listen to each other that's my my assessment from a viewpoint of respect right oh absolutely even if we don't agree which is rare but yeah so are there other things that come to mind if not that was one more that oh on here um that's a oh how how is or will you engage with other entities regarding external environmental environment how broad are you talking

I think that meant not physical environment I think it meant the changing environment you know regulatory issues state issues federal how you how you work with other entities other cities counties whatever that for me again. It was I think what I what I think I was trying to frame if I can try to remember this conversation from what it was, but I'm conscious of um particularly the state there's a long game we need to be thinking about um because we're vulnerable too. Yeah.

And we saw SB79. So, it's like having a like a thoughtout strategy over years as to how we like built relationships and um get ourselves known. I mean, kind of get get in the mix on things and maybe it's the state comes to mind, but in particular like there are other jurisdictions that have real impact with us. East Bay Mud. Um, so I I was just like musing about that like how do we think about ourselves not just as Lafayette but there are these like concentric circles around us that matter um our state legislators or supervisor and so on. So I I don't know that I vote that you lead this effort with us.

Well, I mean part of I see this as partly the legislative committee. Yeah. You know, taking the lead on this and particularly now that we've got the lawinda framework and actually Okay. So Moraga has approved. Everybody's approved. Everyone's approved. Okay. And is it going to be two people from each? It was scheduled to be one person from each. Yes. one person from each. It was going to be the mayor of three. Yeah. Well, I've said that it won't be me because it should be somebody from the legislative committee.

Uh we are trying to schedule that meeting for mid-March. Uh our legislation committee is going to be looking at the bills first and triaging them to send forward them to the regional. Yeah. When when we were doing the council assignments, I sort of counted the legislative committee as three or four assignments. It was just so much work. At least from my perspective, it looks like a lot of work.

Uh and it be it'd be even more important in the future too, you know, and also thinking about what impact it could have. I mean, what more we should be doing. I can leave that for the legislative committee. other things that we haven't that you want to talk about that I will put you through one last little activity. Um, let's see. Are we going to have Nut or I think you want you said what you were going to say. Yeah, we saw looking for the bridge fly up there.

Oh, and the Starship Enterprise. I don't know yet. What I what I like from you, it's just your words that it falls into the whole idea while we work together. Do you have any takeaways from today? And do you have any?

Um, you know, my this session just reinforces my prior one year experience of the council that um was a really strong sense of colleiority or respect. U we listen to each other. Um don't always agree on everything, but I think when you sort of accept someone else's viewpoint and you be convinced of a different way approach. So, um, yeah, I think it's I I really value that this group works well together and really respects staff and I think it's there's a certain element of collegiality here that I think is really refreshing. Well, that's a take away. How about you, John?

Good one. I like that one. Um, the um No, I agree. It's so good. I love hearing from all you. You're all so smart. It's just it's it's inspiring. Um, but what I I mean, I just love I actually like where we ended on the priorities. I think I mean yep the fact that fiscal sustainability was such a big deal focused on it knocked it out of the park and now we're doing the next thing which is the um whatever but I mean it's like now we're working on that the recreation we're all I think we're all aligned I mean whatever like whether we're like who knows exactly the detail that's just like it's phenomenal so no I'm I'm all in um well my takeaway is what an incredibly strong staff we have this thing too

and and then Patrick, Jonathan, and the team. Um, you know, that's partly the benefit of measure H. You know, we got Heather now, we got Dana and working with Tracy. You know, we're build we're bringing in strong people to do things. You know, we're probably going to have to think about what we do in the park, trail, and recreation area, but it just brings home to me that the stronger staff you have, it's just worth investing in that strong.

Um, I think we were far more aspirational this year than we have been in a long time. And I it's it's fun to have that luxury and u and try to think beyond keeping the doors open and and trying to actually think where we want to go and and I think the mayor heard doing a lot of the pushing on that and and thought in prep preparation your first year first year. Yeah. Well, really

at least the third year. Yeah, they're kind of a ringer. True. Um, well, you know, I just reflect on how many challenges we have that we've discussed, but also how many opportunities there are and that's actually really quite exciting. Um, I'm glad that we're in a position where we do have some of that financial dis stability um to stop and think about the aspirational. It'd be hard out. Yeah. No, you know, no rosecolored glasses on that, but I'm glad that we're in a position to be able to to do it.

Is there anything you would you do this next year? Whoever helped you with any of this, is there anything you would have done differently? Cookies were pretty good. What I heard was good lunch and good cookies. That's when I figured it came out. Anything you would have wanted to do differently in the time that you had together? This is pretty smooth. You're out of class. You're 50 minutes early.