City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to the August 11th, 2026 City Council meeting for the City of Antioch. Mr. Clerk, please take the role. Thank you.

Council Member Torres-Walker, you are joining us on Zoom. Can you hear us? Okay, well, we'll move on. Council Member Rocha? Here. Council Member Wilson?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Freitas?

Present.

Mayor Bernal? Here. Thank you. We have a quorum at 4.31 p.m. All right, will you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

All right, do we have any public comment on closed session items today?

We have no comments on closed session items.

All right, we have three closed session items. If I could have our city attorney please let us know what those are.

We have three items on today's closed session agenda. The first is a public employee performance evaluation pursuant to government code sections 54957B1 and 54954.5B, position to be reviewed, say the attorney. Second item is a conference with legal counsel, significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code section 54956.9E2. Number of potential cases, nine. City is in receipt of information concerning facts and circumstances that might result in litigation against the city, which are known to a potential plaintiff or plaintiffs pertaining to possible labor code section 1102.5 and Fair Employment and Housing Act violations. And the last item is also a conference with legal counsel, significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code section 54956.982. number of potential cases one and the city is in receipt of information concerning facts and circumstances that might result in litigation against the city which are known to a potential plaintiff or plaintiffs for a potential breach of contract and related claims and that's all we have all right thank you we'll now adjourn the closed session meeting is adjourned at 4 32 p.m

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Good evening, everybody, and welcome to our City Council meeting of Tuesday, August the 11th, 2026. Mr. Clerk, could you please take the roll?

Thank you. Is Councilmember Torres-Walker calling in from Zoom? Councilmember Walker? No, okay. Councilmember Rocha?

Here.

Council Member Wilson? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Present. Mayor Bernal? Here. Thank you. We have a quorum at 7.25 p.m. All right, if you would please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

All right, we are a little late getting started tonight. We were in closed session since 4.30 prior to this meeting, so Madam City Attorney, if you could please report out.

We had three items on closed session agenda for today. The first was public employee performance evaluation pursuant to government code sections 54957B1 and 54954.5E, position to be reviewed city attorney, and there's nothing to report out. The second item was conference with legal counsel, significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code section 54956.9E2. number of potential cases nine cities and receipt of information concerning facts and circumstances that might result in litigation against the city which are known to a potential plaintiff or plaintiffs pertaining to possible labor code section 1102.5 and fair employment and housing act violations and there's nothing to report on that item The last item was a conference with legal counsel, significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code section 54956.92, number of potential cases one, cities in receipt of information concerning facts and circumstances that might result in litigation against the city, which are known to a potential plaintiff or plaintiff for a potential breach of contract and related claims. And there's nothing to report on that item as well.

All right, thank you very much. We are now moving on to public comments. Mr. Clerk, how many public comments do we have both written and virtual so far?

Currently, we have nine comment cards, and we have one coming in on Zoom.

Okay, so these are on public comments on non-agendized items. And there's also an opportunity towards the end of the meeting for public comments. Again, if you don't get a chance to talk in this first round. And we will conclude public comments at 7.55 tonight.

Thank you. Can we please have Debbie Blazier? followed by Gladys Torres.

Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, staff, residents, businesses present and viewing. My name is Debbie Blazer and I'm the president of the Downtown Association and co-owner of Rivertown Treasure Chest. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the downtown businesses, some of which are here tonight, and residents who are increasingly concerned about safety, cleanliness, and the future of our downtown. We understand that APD is short staff. We appreciate that officers who attend our meetings, events, and patrol our downtown. However, businesses and residents need a greater sense of security, particularly from dusk through the early morning hours. We would like the city to consider increased patrols, officers walking downtown, Patrol cars are visible stationed downtown and more direct communications. We would also like clarification regarding the responsibilities of the downtown security guard and whether they can be more visible to protect the downtown in the hours that we need it. and more communication with our businesses and the DA. We understand that the contract for the present thing will be up for discussion tonight. We ask that it be extended or expanded, and we can't talk about that, right?

Well, if you're talking about it now, then you won't be able to talk about it in that item.

Thank you. Thank you on, um, lighting and cameras are another concern. We appreciate that some little light, some new lighting has started done installed and hope that most of the downtown will be changed and benefit from better lighting. Can the trees also be trimmed and can we also look at cameras if there are some and add more if possible. Cleanliness also needs attention. We've had regular street and sidewalk cleaning, gutters, drains, steam cleaning, that no longer has happened. Accountability for vacant and poorly managed properties is also necessary. The businesses and the residents should also all help to keep the streets clean. Finally, what is an update with our city economic development? the downtown association had provided a five-year downtown plan as a result of our working together funding our businesses cannot wait three to five years before seeing progress from the general plan we need to know what resources grants partnerships and small business support are available and how the city can possibly help We know that these issues cannot be resolved overnight, but we must start somewhere and start immediately. Our goal is simple, protect the businesses we already have, support our residents, improve the appearance and safety of downtown, and create an environment that attracts new business and visitors. We are ready to work with the city. We're asking the city to work with us. Our next DA meeting will be August 19th at El Capenal. And we ask everybody in this room and viewing to join us. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I see Councilmember Tamisha Torres-Walker has joined the meeting at 727. Can you hear us, Councilmember Walker?

Okay, great, thank you.

All right, can we have Gladys Torres followed by Christian Zamora? Thank you. Gladys or? Gladys. Gladys is passing? No. Gladys is here, great, thank you.

I'm Kristen. Okay, hi. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members and staff and everyone in the room. My name is Kristen Zamora. I run two licensed home-based businesses here in Antioch, Gossamer Admin Design and Gossamer Creations. I do not have a brick and mortar storefront, but I do have a stake in many of the businesses in downtown Antioch. I do marketing, design, and operations work that keeps downtown businesses alive Thriving. Many of my clients are small businesses and non-profits, several of them downtown. The Downtown Antioch Association is one of them, for example. I also make 3D printed products and sell them as a vendor inside two downtown stores. Last month I taught a class at the Lemon Tree on G Street showing local owners how to build systems and automate the repetitive parts of running a business. People drove from outside of Antioch to attend. There are a lot of us, designers, bookkeepers, photographers, cleaners, contractors, consultants. We are not on the list of downtown businesses, so we're easy to overlook. But we do feel every bit of what's going on in downtown Antioch. One of my jobs is to convince the public to come downtown. That job has gotten harder. In the last few weeks, my clients and neighbors have handled break-ins, a fire, broken windows, sewage backing up into a bathroom, doorways blocked at opening time, and paint that has just sat on G Street sidewalk since the 4th of July. Here's what that costs. When a business loses revenue, marketing is the first thing cut. I've already had clients pause or scale back this year. When foot traffic drops, My products sit on those shelves longer. What happens downtown lands on my invoices. The emails you've received last week and this week are not complaints. They came from people who put their savings into this downtown and want to stay here. I am still hopeful because those people keep showing up. I would rather spend my time telling people what is good about downtown Antioch and Antioch in general than explaining what they saw when they got here. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Erin Green followed by Leslie May and then Raymond Rodriguez.

Hello, everyone. My name is Erin Green. I am a downtown business owner. I own the Hen and Drake Modern Tea Room. Right downtown at 520 West Second Street. I've officially been open for just about a year, so I've had a lot of new observations. I'm not new to downtown, but new as a business owner. And I've identified a couple things that I think that maybe we should be looking at in terms of how to address some of these issues downtown. I think of it as three. Fairly simple things that we could consider implementing. From one, from my talks with members of the council. Well, let me back up. Sorry, I'm winging it. Since being open, actually 50% of my customers do not live in Antioch or the surrounding cities. So I'm having people come as far as Napa, Lafayette, San Jose, Sacramento. They're coming all the way down here to experience this beautiful city that we have. They ask, oh, you're right by the water. Can I just walk over there? And it's kind of hard to answer that question because look at our waterfront. We have a beautiful waterfront and I think we should protect it. So the things that I think that we should look into is currently our waterfront is dominated, and I'm not blaming this all on the homeless, but it is dominated by people who are hanging out. It's not kids with families. It's not the elderly. It's not people working out. It's a place to smoke and drink, unfortunately. So, as far as I know, ANIAC does not have a non-smoking ordinance. I think that could be something to look into. In addition, parking enforcement would probably get rid of a lot of our issues. Just simply citing and tagging vehicles that are inoperable or look inoperable or outdated registration, right? And my third big ask, which is a big ask, is I would love to see all of downtown collaborate and work together more. And I think the city could be a really big part of that. It could take a bigger role in helping us to collaborate and work together. We've got all these different organizations, the Chamber, DAA, Celebrating Antioch, all of our various nonprofits, and I can't help but think about how great we could be if we all worked together. And I would love to see the city kind of take the lead on that because, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be happening on its own. That's all I have today, but I want to thank you guys for listening. Thank you. Thank you.

Leslie May, followed by Raymond Rodriguez and Sunil Pandey. Can you hear me?

Okay. I would like to actually piggyback off of what they're saying. I come downtown. One of my grandkids can take me to this flower shop. I like to order flowers. I like to go in there. Wally Plaza is filthy. I don't even want to walk. Walking with this walker, and my shoes, I'm sticky. I almost fall walking through there just to get to the flower shop. That's filthy. It needs to be cleaned up. It needs to be power washed like they do in San Francisco. The bench needs to be painted. There's other places that I go. where I pay my rent, they clean it themselves. But I've also seen, I've experienced an unhoused person attacking, trying to attack the people there and the building recently. And I'm like, no. My daughter and I stayed in the car. I said, don't pull off in case you have to, I can't do much but try to trip them, but in case you have to get out and help fight. But that was scary. And this is not good. The streets need to be clean. The lighting, like my daughter calls it mood light. We don't want the mood lights down here. We want bright lights. We've been asking them for them in our own neighborhood right up here off of J on West 5th. We need lighting all through here, not just downtown streets, but all through this area because there's a lot of crime going on here now. There's a lot of crime going on. There was two shootings, one on my street and one the block behind it. They jumped into my neighbor's yard onto our street, hiding, ducking from bullets. So it's scary. Because why? It's dark. It's dark over there. And we should not have to sit there and be sitting ducks for crime. There's a lot of people coming in doing a lot of stuff I've noticed within the last month is too much. My second comment is that I am tired of requesting, making requests here to the city for information. And they send me something like this last time, okay, can you give us till the 31st? Okay, fine. So around the second or third I call, oh, we sent it to you on the 15th. I had to tell them you were lying. You sent me an email. Here's the email you sent me on the 15th telling me to give. asking me what I give you guys to the 31st. And then, what, an hour later I got my request. The other things I've requested I have still not received. And I got the email saying they received them and they were not, any reason why they could not send me that information. So I don't know who's running this show up here, but that's a violation. There's a certain amount of time that you have to respond to community members when they ask for something from this city. And as long as it's not privileged information, we should get it.

Raymond Rodriguez, followed by Sunil Pandey, and then Dale Krause.

Hello, City Council. Hello, everybody. Not to get off the topic that everyone's on, but I'm actually here to represent the Barrier Bomb Squad. We're actually a brand new 14U team that's trying to develop right here in Antioch. We're starting something new here because there is nothing in Antioch for our girls right now.

Excuse me, sir. Can you please address the council and talk in the mic? I'm sorry.

I thought I was talking loud enough. Okay. So what we're here for today is basically to let you guys know we're looking for funding. We're looking for a permanent residency in this community. We realize that there is no more Little League or anything like that for the girls. There's nothing homegrown anymore. Since COVID, everything has been dismantled. So me and our coaches have invested already our money, our funding, our time. We're right up at Mira Vista Hills. We actually rent the fields from our community. We are doing everything in-house. We have done tournaments locally right here at Delta Bowl. We're trying to set up right now with Lone Tree to set up a golf tournament with them. We use the local Lowe's, the local Home Depot for using donation parts. We've gone to delta antioch and delta i mean uh delta gmc and delta honda they've helped us a little but reality is i need more from our community i need girls i need girls that want to come play for their town for their area i have coaches already we have equipment um but i do need maybe permanent fields i know there's fields over here by the fairgrounds that are totally just depleted and not being used or taken care of We'd be willing to take over everything, take care of the fields, rebuild them, bring them up, do whatever it takes to get this back in Antioch. We're losing too much here. I coached over in Brentwood, so I know. I see the girls go. I see everyone leave. We need it back here. The other thing we've done is we set up our own website. So if you want to go on to www.bayareabombsquad.org, you can look us up. We have our tryouts there. We're having tryouts the 24th and the 26th from 6 to 7.30 at the Mira Vista Hills. Like I said, everything local. I've invited, actually... Council members to come out and see these practices and see what we have going on with these girls. Because I want you to see that we have a real strong organization and foundation where attitude and effort is everything. We're trying to teach these kids how to be citizens in our community and give to the community. We are offering our services if they decide to do a little league. We said we would help host and run the tryouts, whatever needs to be done. We'd help even coaching, set up coaching, set up clinics for coaching to make sure they're coaching the right way. All these little things that help the community become a stronger community. In return, we're asking the community to help us. Is that fair enough, everyone? I think that's all I can say right now, and thank you for everything.

Thank you.

Thank you. Sunil, followed by Dale, and then Kimberly Kid Bailey.

Good evening, Mayor, and good evening, the city council member and city staff. Hi, Mayor. I met you a couple of years back. I was here. You came to my property. Look at it. But before that, I'd like to read the email from one of my tenants who said that, I'm feeling increasingly unsafe in the back area. Just yesterday I had a man sitting in the chair outside her office for one hour staring at her. And she couldn't do anything. She is like almost 70 years old lady who is my tenant. I'm the property owner. I live in South Bay Milpitas. I don't live in Antioch. And I don't know the street name. I don't know anything. I only know my property, which is in 3721 to 3731 Sunset Lane next to the methadone clinic. And before me, whoever spoke, I am not the only one who is complaining or bringing the issue. I think everyone spoke the same thing. The city needs to clean up, more security, more things has to be done. And when I came from Milpitas driving this afternoon, I thought I'll be the only one complaining about the city. But after five minutes back, I was very happy. I'm not the only one. I have whole team. That is supporting me as the whole city needs to be cleaned up, not only Sunset Lane, everywhere. And that cannot be just taking the garbage from one place and putting it into other place. You have to clean it whole out at once, correct? You move them from A to point B, then point C. Nothing will happen. They're all going to come to point A. I don't want the hot ball. I give it to somebody else. Somebody will give it to somebody else. Then it will go like that. So it has to be concrete solution from the city. We can't do. I'm helpless. I ask city to let me the permission. Which city will not pay for the fence? I'll pay for the fence. I'll have the contractor do it. And my neighbor, who put the post, but city stopped him from putting the fence. And my other neighbor, second neighbor, he had a fence itself already. Correct? So somebody had fence out there. There are four. There's fence and mayor and everyone. I have been emailing everyone the incident. There was a car accident on August 3rd or August 4th in the night that hit the fire hydrant, nearly hit my building. Correct? That's one thing. The next day, somebody broke into the property. And I think the fence would protect. And it won't cost city any money. I'll spend my money. I'll do my fence. City just has to let me the permission and him, my neighbor, give us the permission to put the fence. That's all I'm asking. For past one year, I've been asking and the ordinance which were written when our father was very polite, good man, correct? Not like me. I'm a very cunning man, correct? I can fight. I can strike. I can steal. I can do everything. Correct? The code was written in 1960 when the United States, everything was different. So I want the code to be changed as per the situation, how the situation is now. And I walked this afternoon, I walked to the area, just straight from here to the waterfront. The lady was talking about it. Yeah, I saw the homeless people. I saw the smelling. I saw everything. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dale followed by Kimberly.

Good evening councilmen, councilwomen. I live in a high crime rate area near Kabala and East 18th Street. I've never had a gun pulled on me my whole life until I was 62 years old when I moved to Antioch. Since then, in the past five years, I've had guns pulled on me six times. As soon as I started working at the gas station, Dutch Pride, the first car I bought was stolen at 4 in the morning while I was there at work. Police never retrieved it. I lost all my tools. And I then saved for five years and bought me an RV. MY BOSS, WHO OWNS THE GAS STATION, BUILT A ROD IRON FENCE TO GIVE ME A SAFE PARKING SPOT. EVERY TIME MY VEHICLE IS OUT IN PUBLIC, PEOPLE BREAK INTO IT, THEY VANDALIZE IT AND DAMAGE IT. SO THE CITY HAS MADE IT THEIR MISSION TO PENALIZE THE OWNER OF THE GAS STATION FOR ME PARKING MY VEHICLE IN A SAFE SPOT. AND THEN I'M OUT AND I LIVE ON South Lake Drive, right down the street from the gas station. I can no longer be at my apartment because I have to babysit my vehicle because it's out on the streets. And all I would like to do is to be able to work at Dutch Pride and keep my vehicle in a safe spot because I'm constantly needed there because of all the criminals and homeless people destroying the building. And everyone I work with are from the Middle East. They speak Arabic. So they don't like to call the police. They don't like to deal with the police. They don't talk to the police. They rely on me to take care of the issues that happen with all the criminals in this area. I do my best to share the word of God with as many people as I can because I have proof that God is real. And I have so many people that know I know God is real. I've never missed a Christmas dinner, a Thanksgiving dinner. They always take care of me. And yet the city discriminates against me and makes sure I don't have a safe place to park my vehicle. Thank you.

Kimberly Kid Bailey joining us on Zoom. Kimberly, can you hear us?

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, you have three minutes.

Good evening. I had a meeting with our HOA this evening, and I live in the Aviano development in District 4, and our flock cameras are, they keep getting knocked down, so they don't want to put them back up. So the question to the city is, and they said it was a city council question, Are you able to give us permission to put the cameras on the light pole so they can't get knocked down up there? I don't believe that's the question I wanted to pose. I could leave my number or address. It's probably there on the previous meeting I've been to. I don't know, but I do know a couple of the council members and they have my number. If someone could just please get back with me. That was the one thing. And another thing, on a lighter note, I wanted to invite the ladies in Antioch who are over 40 years old to, I do double-dutch jump rope down at the Walmart on Wednesday nights from 6.30 to 8. So any woman that's over 40, we would love for you to come out and participate with us. And that's all. Thank you.

Good evening, council. My name's Ajani. Okay, the elephant in the room is that our former mayor is going to be indicted. Damn. Does everybody hear that? Our former mayor might be indicted. First of all, we got no city manager, we have no acting city manager. She must be doing really good at the job that she can already skip a meeting, right? Okay, we got these indictments against our former mayor. Monica, Tamisha, how you doing? Remember the sexual harassment charges against Lamar and you said it was a big witch hunt? Well now the US Attorney is on the witch hunt. Remember when Lamar was charged with a DUI and he told the officer that he had one drink, but he blew like a what? What did he blow? A .08? .18? So what did you guys do? Let's start a mayor's apprenticeship program. All the kids in the city can just be like our mayor. Sexual harassing, DUIs. What else did Lamar do? While he was on probation, in front of all you guys, he challenged one of our citizens to a fight, an 80-year-old man. Hey, Sal. 80-year-old man, he challenged him to fight. I went outside to the police chief. I said, do you know Lamar's on probation, right? He said, yeah, Johnny. I said, Lamar just violated his probation. You cannot start a fight, especially in a public place, when you're on probation. So what did you guys do? Nothing, OK? So Monica and Tamisha, I'm giving you a chance, OK, to confess all the illegal things that you guys might have done, OK? All the things, because do you want to be indicted also? See, there you go laughing. You see that? Monica's laughing, just like Tamisha laughed when I accused them of redistricting our whole city. She laughed and said, oh, it was a pizza party. But Lori Orgachok lost her position. So I'm asking, just confess everything you guys did now because when I got arrested, I'm wearing my own body cam now, but when I got arrested, I couldn't even get my own police report. But I'm on my way now to get some important emails that were written between the chief and the city attorney. So you guys, all the statements you wrote against me that night I was arrested, it's all going to come out. So please confess. Call up the newspaper. Get it off your conscience, OK? Because Antioch deserves better. Read the agenda before the meeting. Pull a few things off the agenda. Ask some questions, Louie. You're really a big disappointment, really. Peace out.

And we have no further public comments. All right, moving on to proclamation.

We have one proclamation tonight for Overdose Awareness Day. Can I please get a motion to approve the proclamation? So moved. I have a motion from Councilmember Wolfson, second from Mayor Pro Tem Freitas. Please cast your votes. Can Councilmember Torres-Walker cast her vote?

Yes, she should be able to cast her vote. Would you like to do a rounder?

No, if she can cast her vote electronically, then we're fine. No, she cannot cast electronically.

Oh, wait, you would have to do a roll call vote. I don't have the ability to do it.

Can you please do a roll call vote? Council Member Rocha? Yes. Council Member Torres-Walker?

Yes.

Council Member Wilson?

Yes. Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Yes. Mayor Bernal? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

All right, so National Overdose Awareness Day, August 31st, 2026. Whereas National Overdose Awareness Day is observed annually on August 31st to remember those who have lost their lives to drug overdose. support grieving families and loved ones, and raise awareness that overdose is preventable. Whereas overdose continues to affect communities across the nation, including the city of Antioch and Contra Costa County, with historically underserved communities often experiencing disproportionate impacts, underscoring the need for prevention, education, equitable access to treatment and recovery services, and compassionate community support. Whereas naloxone is a safe, effective, and life-saving medication that can reverse an opioid overdose and increasing public awareness, education, and access can help save lives while connecting individuals to treatment and recovery services. Whereas the city of Antioch is committed to addressing the overdose crisis through community partnerships and strategic investments of California opioid settlement funds to expand access to medication-assisted treatment, patient navigation, recovery support services and overdose prevention initiatives and whereas national overdose awareness day provides an opportunity for the antioch community to reduce the stigma surrounding substance use disorder honor those working in prevention treatment and recovery and reaffirm our shared commitment to building a healthier safer and more compassionate community Now, therefore, I, Ron Burnell, Mayor of the City of Antioch, hereby proclaim August 31st, 2026 as National Overdose Awareness Day in the City of Antioch and encourage all residents to recognize this day by honoring those we have lost, supporting individuals and families affected by substance use disorder, and working together to prevent overdose and save lives. Is Daniel Aubin here tonight to receive this proclamation? Hey Daniel, if you could please come on up and if you'd like you could say a few words and then the council will come on down and present this to you and take a photo with you.

Good evening and thank you to the City of Antioch and the Antioch City Council and Mayor Ron Bernal for recognizing International Overdose Awareness Day. My name is Danielle and I serve as the East Contra Costa County Coalition Coordinator for the EC Meds Coalition and I'm grateful to partner with the City of Antioch's Public Safety Community Resources Department to bring education, prevention, and life-saving resources into our community. My daughter is standing with me tonight because I want her to see that we don't have to be ashamed of the people we've lost or the struggles families experience because of addiction. We can talk about overdose openly, remember the lives behind the statistics, and work together to reduce stigma that prevents people from asking for help. Today is not only about awareness, it is also about remembering the people we have lost to accidental overdose and giving their families and loved ones the space to grieve without shame or stigma. We have to continue breaking down those stigmas because substance use and overdose can affect any family and any community at any time. Thank you for standing with us in this important work.

Thank you, Danielle. Excuse me, was there any public comment on that item?

There are no public comments on that proclamation.

All right, thank you. Next are announcements of civic and community events.

Mr. Anderson?

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Anthony Anderson. I'm a resident of Antioch, current parent of an Antioch Unified student, and former teacher of Antioch Unified School District. I'm here this evening to announce Tech in Action 2027, a free regional youth innovation.

Excuse me, Anthony, can you speak into the microphone, please, or pull that over? Perfect, thank you. And also, maybe you can announce your organization again, Tech in Action. I don't know if it was heard by everybody.

Sure, no problem. I'm pleased to announce Tech in Action 2027. It's a free regional youth innovation STEAM workforce showcase taking place at the Hilton Concord Saturday, March 27th, 2027 from 830 to 5. This event represents a major regional moment for visibility and opportunity to position Antioch and surrounding communities at the center of innovation, workforce development, and emerging talent. It is designed as a direct bridge between students and the broader regional economy, bringing together employers, industry partners, workforce organizations, and community-based partners alongside students, families, and educators. Participating companies and organizations will have the opportunity to engage directly with young talent, showcase career pathways, and be seen as leaders investing in the future workforce at a time when the visibility matters more than ever. Students will present projects, engage with robotics and emerging technologies. Most importantly, connect with employers, apprenticeship programs, and professionals who can open doors to real world opportunities. Community partners and industry mentors will play a central role in guiding and inspiring these interactions, helping to spotlight the depth of talent coming out of Antioch and the region. Students from Antioch are strongly encouraged to exhibit, compete, learn, and build meaningful connections with employers and community partners. This is a chance for Antioch youth to be seen, recognized, and recruited into pathways that can change their futures. Families, educators, businesses, nonprofits, workforce organizations are also warmly invited to attend and participate in what is shaping up to be a high visibility regional gathering. Event information can be found at techinaction.lovable.app We especially welcome employers, industry leaders, community partners to attend, not only to share opportunities with Antioch families, but to be part of a growing regional spotlight that highlights Antioch as a place where talent, innovation, and opportunity converges. One thing I would like to add on a personal note, again, as being a former teacher in Antioch Unified School District, I'm acutely aware of some of the programs that are available to the students and some of the great things that they produce. The problem is not very many other people are because there are very few times as it highlighted beyond Antioch. And so I would welcome the opportunity to have residents such as myself or my neighbors or anyone else be able to come out and see what these students are able to do in our district. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Shahad Wright.

All right, good evening. I didn't turn this in, but I just confirmed it today that Jacobson Park will have a ribbon cutting ceremony on August 21st at 4.30 p.m. So all the families come out and know Jacobson Park's been redone. It looks beautiful. Shout out to Public Works and all the team for doing a great, phenomenal job on that. Again, that's going to be August 21st at 4.30 p.m. We're going to have some light refreshments, some music, and our city council members cut the ribbon with the rest of the residents. So come on out. Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you.

We have no further comments?

All right. Moving on to announcements of board and commission openings.

Thank you. The city of Antioch encourages residents to please become involved in your local community. One way to do so is serve on one of the various boards, commissions, and committees. Any interested resident is invited to apply for the following vacancies by 5 o'clock PM, Friday, August 14th. The Board of Administrative Appeals has three full term vacancies expiring March of 2030 and one alternate, a two year term. The Sales Tax Citizens Oversight Committee has three full term vacancies which expire in March of 2030 and two full term vacancies expiring March of 2028. To be considered for the vacancy position, please complete an application and submit it to the city clerk's office by the deadline date of Friday, August 14th at 5 o'clock p.m. Applications are located on the city's website and may be picked up in person here at City Hall. Please email your completed application to the city clerk's office, and you can also drop off your application in the water billing drop-off box located in the parking lot just outside City Hall. Thank you.

All right, thank you very much. Moving on to the City Council Committee reports and communications. Start with Council Member Rocha.

My standing committees have not met since it's been summer break, and those will resume the Tri-Delta Board meetings next week, and we have some other meetings coming up, but we have not met during this past month.

All right. Council Member Torres-Walker.

Nothing to report.

Thank you. Council Member Wilson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Delta Diablo is actually on break, but I do wanted to let the public and the council know that General Manager Vince DeLange has announced his retirement, effective September 21st. He's had 32 years of dedicated public service, I'm sorry, protecting public health and the environment. Nine of those years have been at Delta Diablo. He's done a really great job of really bringing that plant and that organization forward. Effective, following his retirement, Brian Thomas will become the interim GM, so wanted to let the council know, along with the public, that Delta Diablo is losing a good asset, but we have a lot of trust in Brian Thomas, who's becoming our interim GM, and we've started the search for the new GM for Delta Diablo.

All right, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Freitas.

Yes, I just want to thank the Antioch Police Department and the community for assisting on August 4th, the National Night Out. I think I attended five different locations, and I'm sure all the council members have done that. But it really is nice to honor our police officers and to have communities and celebrate in the neighborhoods. Of course, we are immediately asked to take care of every single problem affecting the neighborhoods, and that goes with the participation. But it really is an outstanding event. It really brings the community together, and I just want to truly thank the Antioch Police Department for moving this forward. It was very, very good. Thank you.

All right, thank you. I attended the mayor's conference on August the 6th. Contra Costa Water District made a presentation where they spoke about how they're gonna be enclosing the open channel that runs through Antioch as well as some other cities. It's over a $1 billion project, very expensive. And they're working on the design of that right now. They're expecting to start construction in around the 2031, 32 timeframe. It'll be an opportunity for us to possibly open up some additional space through the middle of Antioch for some better, maybe some better trails and access to our different parts of our community. Also attended the Delta Six, which is a meeting that's held quarterly between the mayors and the city managers. and the County Board of Supervisors that represent East Contra Costa County. There was a presentation by Contra Costa Transportation Committee Chair, not the Chair, but the General Manager, Tim Hale, about the transportation expenditure plan That is what is being proposed for the next phase of improvements if the voters choose to approve either the extension or an increase of the half cent sales tax currently known as Measure J. And Antioch has been the beneficiary of literally over $1 billion of improvements through our community from that measure. being the widening of Highway 4, the expansion of BART, known as eBART, into Antioch, and also the Highway 4 bypass improvements, the connection of the Antioch Bridge and Highway 160 to Highway 4. So the reauthorization of that measure will probably be coming to ballot in 2028 and we'll be sharing more about that and what sort of improvements we would be seeing either in East Contra Costa County but in Contra Costa County as a whole because it's a Contra Costa sales tax measure. Regarding Mayor's comments tonight, I'm going to keep these brief because we have a big agenda, but I just want to thank everybody who's come out tonight, first of all, to participate in whatever agenda item you're here to talk about. It's really important. You know, we've seen locally and nationally the way some discussions can become very heated and there's very important and emotional topics to people. We've seen next door in Pittsburgh with the data center and how some of those discussions have turned actually pretty into a pretty bad situation for the meetings, for the folks that are attending. So I would just encourage everybody to please, as we listen to items tonight and in future city council meetings, to please be respectful of other people that are speaking, to please refrain from applauding or saying things while people are speaking. to give everybody an opportunity to speak in a safe and respectful um place here in the city of antioch so that we can all have our voices heard which is which is very important and the other part that's important for us now is with um assembly bill 707 we now have the opportunity for people to participate virtually in our meetings and so people can call in now and participate in addition to coming in person which expands the ability for folks to be able to have their voices heard and let us as elected officials know what you think about certain items that are on the agenda. So again, I just thank you all and appreciate your respectful behavior here tonight as we do the rest of our meeting. And this isn't just intended for tonight but for any future meetings we have as well. So thank you for that. Moving on to our presentation tonight. It's on the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control. It's by Nola Woods, who is the Public Affairs Director and very passionate about this subject. And so she's going to be sharing about some challenges we have here in the city of Antioch, as well as across the county. So welcome, Nola.

Thank you very much. All right, there we go. Well, good evening, everyone, and thank you so much for having me come tonight. My name is Nola Woods. I'm the Public Affairs Director for the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about our public health agency and what we are doing here in Antioch. The work's very, very important. So as a public health agency, and I'm not sure, am I advancing these or someone else advancing or? Should be a clicker up there?

No.

Oh, thank you.

Okay.

Is it on?

Now it is. There you go. Okay, we skipped ahead a little bit. That's okay. So as a public health agency, I just wanted to make sure everyone here knew that the services that we provide are to reduce the risk of the insects and other animals that can transmit disease or can hurt you so we provide public health services for mosquitoes that includes our mosquito fish program for rats and mice skunks ticks yellow jackets and since the pandemic we started a service of confirmation and education for honeybees So these are all services that the residents all across Contra Costa County who pay property taxes and benefit assessments, so there is no additional charge for any district residential service. As I just mentioned, we're funded by property taxes and benefit assessments, so there is no, if a resident requests one of those services, there's no additional charge for those services. So during the last 12 months, the number of service requests that we've received from residents in Antioch for mosquitoes, mosquito fish, rats and mice, skunks, ticks, underground yellow jackets, and bees are all listed right there. The most common service is for mosquitoes and then skunks and then rats and mice. And the rest, if the person has that issue on their property, they're going to be reaching out to the district and we will provide that district service. So the main reason that I'm here tonight is to talk about a very dangerous mosquito that we have found here in Antioch for three years now in a row. It is Aedes aegypti. This mosquito's common name is the yellow fever mosquito. This is the mosquito that is not native to Contra Costa County, much less Antioch. But it is the mosquito that can transmit Zika virus, dengue fever, yellow fever, and chikungunya. It is a very dangerous mosquito. And what's different about it from our typical mosquitoes is this is a daytime biting mosquito. So it's very important for folks to know that and to be aware if they're being bitten in the middle of the day by a mosquito. And it's not... It's not the mosquito that you see on your arm and you swat. It's a mosquito that's more stealth-like. It gets in and out really quickly, and then you realize your leg is itching or a spot on your arm is itching. This is a dangerous mosquito, and the reason that we are working so hard to prevent it is because this mosquito... As I mentioned, it can transmit these terrible diseases, but it can also transmit these terrible diseases from person to person. If someone travels overseas and picks up dengue fever and they come home to Antioch or Contra Costa County And that mosquito is present. One of those female mosquitoes can bite that infected person and then bite someone else and transmit it to someone else. So this is one of the huge reasons as a public health agency why we're working so very hard to control this dangerous mosquito. We're seeing this local transmission right now in Southern California for the last few years because they're also experiencing this mosquito. So it's really, really important that folks let us know if they're anywhere in Antioch and they're experiencing a daytime biting mosquito, let us know. Since we first found them in 2024 here in Antioch, we started going door to door to educate residents and to check front and backyards for any source of standing water because mosquitoes have to grow in water. The eggs are laid near the water. When the water rises, those mosquitoes start to develop and then as adults, they leave the water and if they're females, they can bite us. So it's really critically important that not only here in Antioch but really across Contra Costa County that residents dump out any amount of standing water on their yards, on their front and back yards. Even the lid of a water bottle can produce mosquitoes. So it's really any amount of standing water. Our laboratory staff has been working here in Antioch, as I mentioned, since 2024 as well to set traps, to try to trap these mosquitoes, to find out how far they have spread in Antioch. The two traps that you see there, the one hanging on the tree, Many mosquitoes are attracted to that. The mosquito that I'm talking about, it is more really attracted to the trap on the right-hand side that's low to the ground because this is a mosquito that doesn't fly very far. It stays relatively close to where it emerged as an adult. So the district's integrated vector management program, or IVM, this is how we do our work as a public health agency. This is an ecosystem-based strategy focusing on long-term prevention of vectors of disease or harm through a combination of techniques, including public education, why I'm here tonight, biological control, the mosquito-eating fish, Physical control if there is a creek that is producing mosquitoes, and there's heavy vegetation Cleaning out that heavy vegetation allowing the water to flow Will will reduce the risk of mosquitoes because those young mosquitoes frankly are not very good swimmers and The vector surveillance and chemical control obviously our public health pest okay, I It went away. Oh, there we go, all right. Our public health pesticides are used only after trapping and surveillance indicated they are needed according to established guidelines treatments are made with the goal of removing only the target organism. The bulk of what we do is to deal with the young mosquitoes in the water because you don't have to deal with them flying around. They're in the water. Dump out the water right there, and you have killed those mosquitoes that we're developing. Our innovations at the district have been in existence almost for the entire 100 years that we have been protecting public health in Contra Costa County Folks know about drones. We use them primarily in agricultural areas That take hours and hours to travel on foot and we can now work on them in a number of minutes as opposed to hours So that's a wonderful innovation The other innovative mosquito reduction pilot project that I've mentioned here before. This is something that we started last month here in Antioch in a small area of Antioch near Harbor Park because we found a lot of these mosquitoes in that area. This is a project to use male mosquitoes that are exposed to Wolbachia. They're Wolbachia-treated males. And the key things to know, really important things to know. Number one, male mosquitoes cannot penetrate the skin. Male mosquitoes cannot bite any animals or people. Wolbachia is a naturally occurring bacteria. It is found in a number of mosquitoes as well as beetles, dragonflies, bees, butterflies, and fruit flies. The goal is when Wolbachia treated males mate with the local females here in Antioch, it renders the females infertile. They will lay their first group of eggs. Those eggs don't ever hatch. And so it's really a way to control the population of these dangerous mosquitoes over time. And it is important to mention, for those who have heard of Google's debug project, We have nothing to do with that and we're not affiliated with that. Everything that we're using is California and federally EPA approved and is being the same project as our pilot project has been used in Sacramento County as well as in Southern California for a number of years now. So folks may have seen the mosquitoes on our social media that we've released. One of the things that we're doing is a mark release recapture program. So we're using a non-toxic powder to color them so we can tell how far, when we catch them in the traps, how far they have gone from the location where we release them. And so on the left-hand side is our entomologist who is releasing the mosquitoes. And you may be able to see some little dots from this far away on the video there, or on the picture there. Those are some pink mosquitoes. On the right side there, we are using the non-toxic coloring is green or pink, and we're rotating between those two colors so that we can identify which mosquitoes we've released when they arrive in our traps. So the last thing that I have for you, as I mentioned, please do contact the district if you're experiencing daytime biting mosquitoes. Another thing that I wanted to mention is on the right there, there's a sign that says that our temporary location due to construction, we have been remodeling our main district offices with the goal of being done by next year when we celebrate our 100th anniversary of construction. protecting public health here in Contra Costa County. So I did want to mention that because we'll have lots of events going on and tours and whatnot. And everyone in this room, if you follow our social media, you'll be invited at some point next year to come celebrate with us. So thank you all very much for letting me come and explain all this to you. Do any of you have any questions?

Yeah, thank you, Ms. Woods. Are there any questions?

I remember, I think it was last year that you came out and spoke, I think it was last year, at one of the parks. You came and met with the community. Yes, yes.

It was a couple of years ago, but we did come last year and we came the year before. Yes, we did.

And one of the questions I had is, what part of Antioch are you seeing this particular species? What part of it?

So we're primarily seeing it in the area right there around Harbor Park and to the west a little bit of Harbor Park. There's an area on our website that really shows where we've been finding them. The focus of the pilot project is for a more concentrated area and that's why we picked that area because we were trapping a lot of them right there kind of on the southwest side of Harbor Park.

Is that the same area that you came to last year to meet with residents? Yes, yes, yes. That's what I thought, okay. We sure did. I was just curious if that had shifted, if it was kind of in the same region.

No, we're still seeing it. There has been a slight expansion, but not a huge expansion, so.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Did you have a question, Council Member Wilson? No, none.

Council Member Torres-Walker, any questions?

No, all right. Thank you very much, Ms. Woods. Are there any public comments on this? We have no public comments on this. All right, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Moving on to item number five, consent calendar. Do we have any items to be pulled? Item H and G. Did you say G?

Yes, G as in Georgia and H. And F?

Are there any other public comments?

Okay, so we have a motion to approve the consent calendar except for items F, G, and H. Yeah, motion by Mayor Pro Tem. Oh, we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem. Sorry about that. It is second by Council Member Rocha. Please cast your votes.

Okay. Roll call. Oh, I'm sorry, roll call. Council Member Torres-Walker.

Yes.

Council Member Rocha? Yes. Council Member Wilson? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Yes. Mayor Bernal?

Yes. Thank you. Motion passes 5-0. All right. Item number F, resolution approving Verkada Incorporated Police Department cameras. There is none.

I'm here to speak on item F. Item F, excuse me. Okay, the police department surveillance system has reached the end of its useful life. Okay, the police department is asking for a new security system, new monitors, cameras. I guess they don't feel safe over at the police department. Well, we don't feel safe out in the community either. We call in with suspects with pictures on our phone and we don't get any response. But now the police department is telling us they don't feel safe in their police department. They're not safe. Now let's see, let's look at this proposal, okay? They didn't take any bids, okay? This is a consent calendar, okay? It should have been the staff is saying you guys should approve this. This is their recommendation. They don't even want you guys to ask any questions or look at it. Just approve it, okay? Trust us. But they're not even here for the meeting. Where's our city manager? Why isn't she here? Where's our acting city manager? Why isn't she here? But the police department, after we spent eight months, we spent eight months going over our budget and now this is what the police department says.

Our surveillance system has reached the end of its useful life.

They're telling us that now and then they're saying there's only one company in the entire United States that can provide us with this system. So we don't need to take any competitive bids because we've determined your city staff who's not here, you guys should just pay $365,000 for this to make our police officers feel safer in their office. because they're recommending it, but they're not even here to defend it. So why don't we take bids on this? The reason why the city recommends that we do a single source contract on this item is because they say that only this company provides all of the features in this camera. So like, if they just added one little thing, like an intercom microphone or something that wasn't on the other item, then oh, it's a sole source. We can't get this item from anyone else. That's true. But did they really look for the best deal? And is this really required right now? I haven't seen any reports of anybody breaking into the police station. So why are we spending $365,000? So Chief Joe, who's not even here, even though we're paying him a big salary to be here every meeting, why are we paying all this money for a security system when we can't even get an officer to respond when somebody's breaking into our house? When's it gonna stop, Ron? And you guys shouldn't leave this clicker up here because people get arrested when they wait for it.

Any other public comment? No further public comments. All right, through the acting city manager, could you please address a couple of those comments? And I see we have the police department here as well.

Yes, I believe Lieutenant Whitaker is available to answer questions on this item.

as he's coming forward. Number two is authorizing a fiscal year 26-27 budget amendment to roll over from fiscal year 25-26. So I'm assuming that this was actually approved last fiscal year.

Yes, it was included in the 25-26 budget. However, the project wasn't able to be completed by June 30th. It had not been encumbered yet as they were still working on the quotes and contracts. So the request is to take that money that was budgeted in 25-26 and reappropriate it into 26-27.

So the council actually did discuss this last year and had a presentation by the police department on this matter before the approval?

I don't believe it was specifically discussed for this item, but as part of the overall budget for 25-26, it was part of their equipment budget that was approved as part of the overall police department budget.

So, Lieutenant Whitaker, a part of the problem I have with this is under the fiscal impact. It basically is asking year one for the entire $381,676.22. And the rest of the contract years, two, three, four, and five, it's zero. So my question, and I couldn't find it, if the company were to go bankrupt or if it was to be purchased by another company, how do we get refunds?

So a few things with that. This was an unexpected cost for us. We did roll it over from last year's budget. It's a $6 billion company.

$6 billion companies fail.

They go out of business all the time. With that said, if it is purchased by another company, we have a five-year contract that will not change. We also, if for some reason the company completely went out of business and nobody bought them, the items would be open sourced, so we would own the contracts. We'll always own the equipment. So all of the cameras and all of the equipment for that. The only thing that we wouldn't own at that point or be in a loss would be the licensing.

The other end of the background, we talked about the existing Bay Alarm system failing, the maintenance and upkeep and things of that sort. So I hope we learn from our mistakes. If we buy the system, what guarantees do we have that there will be maintenance on a continuous basis so that we just don't purchase, let them rot, fall apart, and when that happens, we go and buy a new one? Hopefully we've learned our lesson. So I need to understand if we buy this system What guarantee do we have that they will be maintained monthly semi-annual annually or whatever?

So the Bay alarm has 12 servers that are housed at the police department eight of those servers have gone down We're down to four if we lose two more we lose the entire thing That's inside the building for evidence in the jail that protects the city from liability if if somebody were to be injured inside or outside of the building and And what Verkada is is it's a hybrid system, so there's no servers at the police department. The servers are cloud-based with extensive security, and then each individual product has storage on it as well with the 90-day retention.

And are all these cameras only at the police department?

For this bid, yes, but I came to you all in April and we did our city community cameras with it. It's worked outstanding. I'm happy to show anybody in the community or the council, it is unbelievable difference from what we used to have. And I think that to answer your question, we won't have to house any of the servers. If a server goes down, it's completely covered within our contract. They have 24 seven local tech support that's in San Mateo. They can access our system completely remotely with our permissions. That can be done by a sergeant working graveyard. They don't have to call a company to come to the station, hopefully in the next three or four days while we're completely have no video. And that can be troubleshot and done remotely right at the time it goes down.

And I have to admit, being in California with Silicon Valley, it's hard to believe that this is the only company that does this.

This is not the only company. I did over a year of research on this, and this is the only company that has the security that we need necessary so there's no open loop that anybody could get into it.

And this is the only company that can do that?

This is, and I could list you all of the reasons. He can laugh all he'd like, but I can list all the items they have, or I could speak with that as far as all of the bells and whistles. A lot of it is over my technical grade of understanding, but I was briefed by the company, and it is something we already have a platform for, and we're just adding to that platform as we go.

There's also a sentence, the platform's ease of expansion, centralized management, and ongoing software updates ensure long-term value. What does that mean when we say, is it the period of the contract or does it go beyond the contract?

So any upgrades that are during that contract are free of charge. So we don't have to worry about paying like a yearly subscription or software updates or things like that. It's done automatically. done automatically. The reason that it's a cost savings for us is a five-year contract. The price of RAM and storage right now with all of the data centers and everything going on is proven and shown to be going up and we get locked in at today's price.

Thank you.

yes my only question is why why do they want the full payment up front when it's a five-year contract that's correct so so uh 300 000 of that money is for the installation or excuse me not installation the actual physical equipment and the licensing um that's how they do their contracts uh you know i tried to break it out into the average yearly cost. That's also including taxes, the labor for install, the licensing versus just the physical equipment. It is about $53,000 a year just for the equipment, the cloud-based storage, and the licensing.

Yeah, I was just wondering if there's a cost savings by paying it all at once versus if you spread it out over five years so that it reduces the amount of the police department's budget. That was the only reason I was asking. I didn't know if there was any advantages to paying the full amount up front. So there's not really a- That's how they run their contracts.

We're rolling over money from last year's budget, so there's no fiscal impact this year at all.

All right, any other questions or comments from council? I'm not seeing none. Do I have a roll call vote, please? Excuse me, do I have a motion to adopt this item number? I'll move to approve. I have a motion from Council Member Rocha, second from Mayor Pro Tem Freitas. Please make a roll call vote.

Council Member Torres-Walker?

Aye.

Council Member Rocha? Yes. Council Member Wilson? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempreatis? Yes. Mayor Bernal? Yes. Thank you, motion passes 5-0.

All right, moving on to item number G. This is approval of a third amendment to telecommunication network license and encroachment agreement between the City of Antioch and Crown Castle Fiber LLC.

Yes, we have a public comment. Item number G.

Thank you. I think we should have a rule in the city that if an item on the report is over 150 pages, it shouldn't go in a consent calendar item. Looking at that report, it was definitely confusing. I'm not an engineer. That's definitely not the field that I work in or spend a lot of time in. But I will tell you that I consider myself vested particularly in this item because I have, for the last 30 years, lived 1,000 feet away from one of these facilities that was mentioned in this report. And so my question tonight is, looking through that report, I'm hoping for a little bit of clarity because The item itself first off and to be frank with you since I only have three minutes I think it would be more appropriate for the community that staff who does not time-restricted could spend 60 seconds giving a more in-depth of what the item is so that I don't have to inform the community but This item is to amend the contract because the equipment is changing at this site that falls outside of that specific contract's language. That equipment that is changing is larger. It is not aesthetically pleasing in any way. It is above ground on a pedestal along a right of way that has, and you'll see in the pictures in the staff report, zero shrubbery or landscaping around it. The bushes, the shrubs, everything that might have made that median and aesthetically pleasing disappeared 15 years ago and the city didn't replace it. So you have a pedestal equipment that is on bare ground with nothing around it that is becoming larger. What I'm concerned about is within the report it said utility companies typically require that that equipment go underground. But this equipment is not underground. I've seen other utilities across the street that have been there historically since 96 when we moved into that new subdivision that have been undergrounded, I imagine, as their equipment has upgraded. So my question is, are those utilities allowed to go underground? And if they are, why are they not underground? It is not aesthetically pleasing to that median or that space. And if a contract is being amended because equipment is being changed out, and if it is allowed to go underground, this is the time that it should go underground. It's not safe. If a vehicle goes off of the right of way, it can hit that box. It can cause damage. People will be without cell service. or limited cell service. At minimum, if it does need to be above ground, there should be some screening that goes around it that does make it a little bit more aesthetically pleasing. If that can't be addressed tonight, please hold the item so it can be addressed and there's more clarity for us in the community.

Thank you.

Any other public comment on this? We have no further public comments on this.

All right, through our acting city manager, if we could have Director Bunting maybe address the item.

Yes, thank you, Director Bunting.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. Yeah, as it was spoken, this is an amendment to an existing agreement for there to be changes to three sites. The project would include upgrading and increasing the size of both of an antenna on top of a pole as well as the existing box would be replaced with a larger box in relatively the same location. That is what the provider is requesting of us. Undergrounding the facility is not in their proposal. But that is what they're proposing to us and that is the terms that we negotiated for those three sites within this agreement. As for the aesthetics of it, we did our best to try to keep it enclosed and shrouded as best as possible within its cabinet. But the request right now from staff and through the provider here is the amendment to include these three sites being able to be modified and changed as shown in the staff report and within the drawings.

Alright, any questions?

They may not have requested it, but did we ask them to underground? Because there's only three sites, and they are ugly.

Sure, the discussion about that, it wasn't going to be underground. The request initially came for the box. Only other discussions that were able to increase its aesthetics was to try to shroud everything and cover it as much as possible. the facility being undergrounded was not an option from the provider.

Well, I'm looking at the pictures. It doesn't look like anything got shrouded.

So the interior of it, there is some stuff that is covered with it. It is a box, it is an enclosure. It's a bigger box now. Yeah, and there was some areas where there was more openness to it that we had requested to be closed before it even came forward to you. But that was the intent. You're looking at a larger cabinet next to a pole that on top of it has a larger antenna than is existing there. These facilities exist at these locations, just in a different manner, smaller size.

I was just gonna say, so aesthetically, there's really no other options but to have it be a standalone the way it appears in these images?

That is what's being proposed to the city at this time, yes.

Can you maybe, my understanding is that undergrounding means that you could have something above ground and subsurface is when the complete unit is underground. Is that your understanding as well? When the word undergrounding is used, oftentimes it'll have an above ground feature to it. It doesn't mean that the unit's completely undergrounded.

That's true. The utilities can be partially undergrounded and then have a surface mounted facility also. Some of the conduit and such would be underground. That would be an undergrounded facility.

What is the company's policy on addressing vandalism or graffiti?

I would have to look in deeper into the contract, but I would assume it's for them to get out there and remove it, keep things clean and painted. But I would have to look deeper and reply a little bit later.

I have a question for the city attorney. I know that there are some federal law with regards to this specifically. What if we reject this?

So if you reject this, then I think what happens is it depends on whether they want to continue the agreement as is. If not, then they could terminate the agreement and then they can apply under the new rules, which gives us less.

Which gives us even less control. Correct. And less revenue.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

All right, any other questions or comments on this? All right, seeing none, thank you, Director Bunting. Do I have a motion to approve this item?

Because, frankly, I don't like this. And this is another piece of legislation, in this case federal government, that basically says, keep the deal you have. Because if you turn it down, then you're going to get a worse deal. So reluctantly, I'll move approval. DAVID BURRAGE.

I have a motion from Mayor Pro Tem Freitas. Do I have a second? DAVID BURRAGE. I'll second. DAVID BURRAGE. Second from Council Member Rocha. Can we please have a roll call vote?

Council Member Torres-Walker.

Aye.

Council Member Rocha? Yes. Council Member Wilson?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Yes. Mayor Bernal?

Yes. Motion passes 5-0. All right, moving on to item number H, consideration of bids for the installation of park signage PW679-3.

Yes, staff is requesting to pull this item and move it to a future meeting.

All right, do you have a date for a future meeting at this point?

If not the next meeting, then hopefully the first meeting in September.

Okay. All right. We do have a public comment on this. All right, please have a public comment. Ms. May?

Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. I was going to ask to move this to another meeting because if I'm not mistaken, this was discussed before. I was wondering why it didn't go up for bid again, instead of just saying, okay, we sent out for bid, this person didn't, they didn't respond, so let's just give it to this other person. So if I'm not mistaken, maybe I am, I think this was discussed in a previous meeting kind of recently, so I was just wondering why they didn't put out for bid again, but thank you for moving it to another meeting.

All right, so, Ms. City Attorney, we don't need to take a vote on that, do we, to move this to another meeting?

You do not.

Okay, thank you. All right, that concludes our consent calendar. Moving on to our regular agenda, item number six, sales tax citizens oversight committee appointment for a full-term vacancy expiring March 2030. If I could have our acting city manager and finance director give a brief report on what this is about, and then I'll take it from there.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So our Sales Tax Citizens Oversight Committee that oversees the receipt and expenditure of Measure W funds, our 1% sales tax, has some vacancies. Right now, we have a total of five vacancies, as announced by the city clerk earlier this year. So last week, the mayor and myself interviewed Christian Lapena for As an applicant, he's very interested in serving his community. And so with that, I'll turn it over to you as you're making the recommendation for appointment.

All right, thank you. So yes, our acting city manager and finance director Merchant and I interviewed Mr. LaPena last week. He is very interested in being a part of this important oversight committee which is related to our one cent sales tax. and understands the role that he plays in that or would play in that if he's approved by the rest of the city council as far as taking the expenditures of that oversight or of that Measure J money, that one cent sales tax, and making sure it's spent for the appropriate intended purposes. So if I could please have Mr. LaPena come on up and say a few words and introduce yourself and let us know why you're the best person for this position before our council takes a vote, I'd appreciate it.

Hey council, my name is Christian. My day-to-day work in IT, I work in GRC which is you know governance risk analysis and you know, working on making sure everything is where they're supposed to be, right? My day-to-day job when I do the IT is mostly with nonprofits and philanthropy, and everything I do is making sure that funds are in the right place, people are in the right place, and everyone is in accordance to what they're supposed to be, nothing over, nothing less, just rightly so. I'm not the type of person that wants to make those decisions, though, so I'm happy just to make sure, you know, be the gatekeeper, so to speak.

All right, thank you. Any questions for Mr. LaPena? Do we have any public comment on this? We have no public comments. All right, so I am making a recommendation to nominate Mr. LaPena for the role of the Sales Tax Citizen Oversight Committee appointment for a full term vacancy expiring March of 2030. Could I get a second on that motion?

Move approval. You're nominating. I'm nominating, I'm sorry, I have a motion. Move the approval, move the nomination, I'm sorry. We have a motion from- Yeah, I'll second that.

Mayor Pro Tem, second from Council Member Rocha. Can I please have a roll call vote?

All right.

Thank you, Council Member Torres-Walker?

Aye.

Council Member Rocha?

Yes.

Council Member Wilson?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Yes. Mayor Bernal? Yes. Motion passes 5-0, congratulations.

All right, congratulations, and I believe our city clerk will swear you in now, correct?

That is correct, I'll be right there.

So if you all bear with us for a couple minutes, we will swear in Mr. LaPena in his new role, congratulations. Thank you.

I'm fine with that, no picture for me, but I don't know the process, so.

Do we have our PIO here to take a picture?

Thank you. Hey, please raise your right hand.

I, Christian LaPena. I, Christian Lapena, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully

I charge the duties.

Upon which I am about to enter.

Upon which I am about to enter.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

There you go, right there. Just over? And, oh, we've got a couple. Oh, boy.

Make sure they're all the same.

You and I will make this legal.

All right, thank you, Mr. LaPena. Congratulations. Moving on to item number seven, designation of a voting delegate, an alternate delegate for the League of California Cities annual conference and authorization for associated conference expenses not to exceed $2,600 per participant, acting city manager merchant.

Thank you, so it is recommended the city council appoint a voting delegate and an alternate delegate for the 2026 League of California City's annual conference. The associated conference expenses for one participant are for an amount not to exceed $2,600. The conference is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center from September 23rd through the 25th. And as I mentioned, the registration, hotel accommodations, and flight for one participant is estimated to cost $2,600. So we're just asking for the council to make an appointment of the voting delegate and alternate delegate for this conference.

Perfect, and I believe Council Member Rocha is our representative for League of California Cities, correct, or Cal Cities?

Yeah, I'm currently on the standing committee.

Okay, okay, perfect. So do we have anyone besides Council Member Rocha who would be interested in being a part of that? Well, it's for an alternate as well. If you really need an alternate, I'm sorry.

If you really need an alternate, wait a minute, let me double check my calendar before I say that.

Sorry, I should have.

I believe it's the 23rd to the 25th. I'm available, I checked. Okay, perfect.

Yeah, it can be an alternate if needed.

Okay. Mr. Mayor, I would move that Council Member Louie Rocha be the delegate, voting delegate, and the alternate delegate be Monica Wilson.

All right, we have a motion from Mayor Pro Temporetto.

Second.

All right, a second from Council Member Torres-Walker. Could we please have a roll call vote?

Council Member Torres-Walker?

Aye.

Council Member Rocha?

Yes.

Council Member Wilson?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Freitas?

Yes.

Mayor Bernal?

Yes. Motion passes 5-0. All right, congratulations delegate and alternate. All right, moving on to item number eight. This is a City Council discussion item, selection of potential park location for upcoming available grant funding through Proposition 4. I turn this over to our acting City Manager Merchant.

Yes, the city will be applying for Proposition 4 California Bond Measure Funds for park funding that can expand recreational facilities construction and renovation of local parks, repairing existing state parks, addressing deferred maintenance backlogs, and enhancing public access to nature. So Director Wright will be presenting this item, and I believe we also have representatives from Townsend regarding this, so I'll turn it over to Director Wright to present.

All right, thank you very much and good evening. We were rocking and rolling tonight, so let's keep the party going. Yes, so our Park and Rec Commission has met several times about this initiative. We kind of used the tool already to kind of identify five parks out of the five parks. Although it's absent in this report, I do apologize for that. They did come up with a recommendation for the two parks that fit the grant the best. And tonight, Townsend Public Affairs will go over the grant and give their recommendation for which grant fits and would score the highest. At this point, the Park and Rec Commission could not make a decision because both sites mean a lot to the city. And they have unique interests in things for each one of the locations. Tonight we have a discussion and whichever one we would like to move forward with will be more community outreach and public discussion through the Parks and Recs. So furthermore, I would like to introduce public affairs from Townsend, Niccolo, right here, the leader, Dapper. Uh, uh, we have Zoe King and we also have Alex grips who's going to do the presentation tonight. Thank you very much.

Hello, mayor, council members, members of the public. My name is Alex Gibbs. I'm the grants director at Townsend public affairs. I'm happy to be here this evening to lead us through this presentation. Part of this presentation, we're going to be reviewing the grant guidelines, eligibility criteria, and scoring criteria for the Prop 4 grant to give you all a better picture of exactly what the requirements are for this grant and how it's scored and how your parks would fare, and then ultimately allow council to make a decision about which project they would like to move an application forward for. I would like to stress that, that ultimately this is to determine what park we end up applying for. It's not necessarily a guarantee of funding. This is gonna be an extremely competitive process. The grant will be oversubscribed at the state level, There's roughly $200 million available, but I can guarantee you that the state is gonna receive well in excess of half a billion dollars of funding requests. So whatever decision you make tonight, it is by no means a guarantee that that project will get funded. It is just the next step in the process for submitting a competitive grant application to the state of California. So with that in mind, I'm happy to kick us off here. A little bit of background, this is the Prop 4 Statewide Parks Program. There have been, this is round five of the program. The program is funded by Proposition 4. Its predecessors were funded by Proposition 68 and Proposition 84. Proposition 4, as you may recall, was passed by California voters in November of 2024. It authorized a roughly $7 billion general obligation bond, of which $200 million or so was allocated specifically for this program. The program, as the city attorney said, provides funding to expand parks, renovate parks, or create new parks. Those are the three distinct categories. Creation of new parks is the highest scoring criteria, very closely followed by expansion and then renovation of existing facilities. Each application is limited to one project site. Each application requires extensive community outreach, which is largely why we are here this evening, because whichever park or application the city determines they want to move forward with is gonna require no less than five community outreach meetings and can be a considerable lift along with all of the other concept level site plans, budgeting, and other materials required to develop a competitive grant application. So lastly, that is why park selection is a very important part of the grant process. You can only score as many points as the park and the geographic lot that it is on will allow for. And I'm about to go into what exactly that means right now. There are multiple eligibility criteria, including critical lack of park space, significant poverty, and climate vulnerability. Critical lack of park space is determined by the number of park acres per 1,000 residents within a half mile radius of the particular park site. As Staff Member Wright had mentioned earlier, We had worked extensively with staff and played with a tool that's known as the community fact finder tool. That is a tool that was developed by the California State Parks Agency specific to this grant. You utilize that tool to determine exactly these metrics and it gives you an indication of just how competitive your park would be or eligibility criteria. Poverty, significant poverty is measured through two metrics. One is median household income and the other is the number of individuals who reside within a half mile radius that fall under the poverty line. Finally, climate vulnerability is a new metric that has only been considered for round five through proposition four. Climate vulnerability is determined by extreme heat, flooding, wildfire, and drought. Those are the five different climate vulnerability conditions. In order to score max points in that category, you need to qualify under three of them. However, you get points for two, you get points for one, none for zero. In a future slide, we will put the two parks up for consideration side by side so you can see exactly how each would score under both of those criteria. And then finally, type of project. As I had mentioned earlier, creation of a new park scores higher than the others, but there is some nuance to this in determining exactly how many points you get for each category. This is a screenshot of the community fact finder tool for both City Park and the BD Lumberyard. Up first is City Park. You will see the circled items are the ones that I had just discussed. You can see median household income for City Park is at roughly 62% of the statewide average. That is very competitive. In order to qualify through any of these metrics, you would need to be under roughly $77,000 for median household income. You can qualify under any one of the three criteria I had mentioned on the previous slide, median household income, high-rank climate vulnerability area, and park acres per thousand. We had previously run this for all of the parks in the city. There are only five parks in the city that do qualify for this. There are only two that are especially competitive given statewide metrics, and that's why we're here this evening reviewing both of these proposals. The other circled items on here are number of people in poverty. There are 968 individuals living in poverty within the half mile radius of City Park. It is in a climate vulnerability area for extreme heat, as indicated by the gradient or hash marks on there. And finally, It has .87 acres per 1,000 people. In order to qualify under that metric, you would need to be under 3.0. The fact that you are under 1.0 acres per 1,000 people makes this a pretty competitive site. So on these eligibility criteria metrics alone, this would score well. That is not the only scoring criteria. There are several others, including need, community outreach, measurable outcomes, et cetera. But for the purposes of this conversation, we're only reviewing the things that we can't change, the geographic location and these metrics that can't be dictated through additional community outreach or through the way that we write the grant. Moving forward to option two, this is for BD Lumberyard. You can see median household income at 61,000, number of people in poverty at 647. It's in two high-rank climate vulnerability areas, extreme heat and flooding. And then you can see the park acres at 1.82. which is considerably higher than City Park, and that's due to the other number of park acres that are being captured within that half mile radius. I know that that can be tough to compare the two, so we've put them on one slide here for you. You can see the items listed in green are the more competitive of the two for both criteria. This is where there is some nuance to it. So you can see in the left-hand column, there are points assigned to each of these different metrics, which means they are not all equal. For instance, you can see critical lack of park space at the top. This scores 15 points. The way that that is determined is your application will be measured against every other application submitted in the state of California. If you rank in the top 10%, you get all 15 points and it goes down from there depending on other applicants. So it is a little bit outside of your control. But you can see that City Park, for instance, has .86 acres, whereas BD Lumberyard has 1.82, which is a considerable disparity. That would score significantly more points than BD Lumberyard for this category, and seeing as how it is the highest priority category in terms of number of points, 15, that would probably be the biggest disparity between the two sites in terms of points scored. As I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, this grant will be oversubscribed. Every point will matter. Regardless of which park you pick here, we are going to need to execute community outreach flawlessly in order to score maximum points to make sure that your project is as competitive as possible. I have every confidence in your staff and my staff to be able to do that, to score max points elsewhere. So this is really where you're going to pick up or lose the most amount of points this evening. You can see the next two, median household income, eight points. It's a difference of about $1,000. That's roughly the same number of individuals or people living in poverty, 968 versus 647. That's a considerable difference. Climate vulnerability, these last two, number of people in poverty and climate vulnerability, they're only worth five points. So even though the previous ones, 968 versus 647, you're probably talking about a difference of one or two points climate vulnerability you get two points for having one climate vulnerability you get three points for having two so once again you're talking about a difference with one point there and then finally project type creation of a new park is 10 points that is the max award followed by expansion and then renovation so you're talking about a difference of about three points there um I'll move forward to the timeline here, but ultimately this is probably the most important slide and is gonna give you the most amount of detail and the difference between the two parks as far as project scoring and eligibility are concerned. I understand there's lots of intangibles, especially regarding community desire that aren't really captured through the data, but my role here this evening is to present the data and answer any questions that you may have about how the application could potentially score. So once again, moving to the timeline, we are now in August. The final grant guidelines are about to be announced at any time. We were initially told that they would be out on August 3rd. It is obviously past that date and they have yet to be announced. But honestly, we're waiting any day now. This could be announced The state has told us that essentially you are going to have four months to submit the grant. So whatever day it is announced in August, it will be due that corresponding date in December. Initially we were told it was gonna be open August 3rd and due December 3rd, which would give you four months to conduct all of that community outreach that I had mentioned at the top. Community outreach can be retroactive. I know that you have done some outreach regarding both park facilities. However, it can only be retroactive to the point when Proposition 4 was passed by voters. That is November of 2024. Any outreach that took place prior to November 2024 will help your application, but it will not score you additional points, and you must still conduct your five community meetings in order to score maximum points. After the grant application is due, there will be site visits by the state. It'll be roughly six months until they determine awards, so you're now looking at June 2027. That is when you would get your award if you are selected and you're noticed to proceed. You likely, in the event that you are selected, would be able to break ground on a project in July, August of 2027. and you would have a four year performance period or up to four years to spend all that money and have your project open to members of the public. And I believe that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have regarding anything that I presented this evening in terms of scoring or any other questions regarding the grant application.

All right, any questions?

Yeah, well just one thing to be clear. You can only submit one project per application, is that correct?

Yes, one project per application is correct.

Yeah, any other questions? Yes, any public comment on, oh. Oh yeah, Council Member Torres-Walker.

Thank you for acknowledging me, Mayor. So it's one park per application, but does that also mean that we can only submit one application?

There are no limit on the number of applications you can submit.

And because the process is so competitive, it wouldn't be in the city's favor to submit two applications. I mean, it would obviously double the work for staff. I'm assuming outreach would need to be done for both sites and things like that. Is that the assessment?

That is correct. You could submit multiple applications. In previous rounds, there are rare instances where multiple parks were funded for the same municipality, but those municipalities tend to be city of Los Angeles or much larger entities due to the geographic equity criteria. I do not see a world where both applications would be funded for the city of Antioch. They would be competing against one another. You certainly could submit both, but likely if an application is funded, it would only be one of the two projects. That was the reason why I asked.

I might have more questions. Go ahead. I might have more questions, but I'm going to go ahead and hold off. I've got to think about it.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. So the packet that we received, there's more to it. Do you want to go over that or?

I believe those were attachments from staff from the previous meetings. I'm happy to answer any of the questions regarding the materials that you did receive, though, as I'm the subject matter expert here.

So what is the recommendation from Townsend?

The recommendation from Townsend would be to submit likely one application given the amount of time that it would require staff. You really want to put your best foot forward for this application. You get one bite at the apple. The way that this project or this grant is funded is through a general obligation bond. They're passed. If history is any guide, once a decade. In previous funding rounds, they had multiple rounds. That's not the indication from state parks this time. They're gonna have one round So you really have to prioritize, and when I say prioritize, it means going all out for community outreach, making sure that you're doing that correctly. If submitting two applications means that you're not going to perform community outreach as well and potentially lose points and hurt both of your applications, then you're jeopardizing any grant award to the City of Antioch. So my recommendation would be to probably select one application, put the entire city's weight behind it, all of your resources behind it, and ensure that you are submitting the most competitive application possible, as opposed to two applications that might not be as competitive as one.

So I assume you were present when the Park and Recreation Commission discussed the whole process?

I provided information to staff leading up to that, but I was not present at that meeting.

And professionally, do you have a recommendation between the two parks?

You're gonna score more points for City Park. Just looking at the statistics, you will lose points for BD Lumberyard based on critical lack of park space. The 1.82 acres versus the .86 acres, that's really the biggest difference. That's what we're talking about here this evening. For the number of people in poverty, you're looking at a disparity of about 300 individuals. Given state metrics, I would say you might lose one or two points, but for the critical lack of park space, that's a difference of about five points. This is an application that's scored out of 100 points. Five points here plus an additional two for number of people in poverty. that's almost a 10% scoring difference. So even if you do everything flawlessly for both projects, if you do everything flawlessly for both projects, City Park would score about five points higher than BD Lumberyard, which could be the difference between whether or not the application is awarded.

So most of us know the members of the Park and Recreation Commission. They're not a shy and retiring group of individuals, particularly the chairperson. So I'm a little surprised that they are recommending two, not one. Is there a rationale for that?

I wouldn't be able to speak to that. I would defer to staff.

All right. The chair's here if you'd like to ask him to come on up.

I'd rather the next speaker is the...

Okay, do we have any other speakers from staff, staff standpoint? No?

I assume you're gonna speak.

Yeah, so we're honored. We have the chair of Park and Rec here as well as the vice chair. If you want to ask some questions about it. Again, it's my mistake that I didn't put their comments into a recommendation, but I do know the passion of this community for both locations. And, you know, I've been very vocal on trying to maintain what we currently have. But to be honest, as a park director, I would love to see an amphitheater downstairs downtown as well I mean it's really hard to make a decision and I will tell you and they can correct me if I'm wrong but the Commission was was split between the two locations so that's why I wanted to bring it here to get get you know public feedback to get the council involved because this is a public process and we're gonna need everybody's support and ideas to make whichever location work in the favor of City Antioch so One of the things that I will say when talking to Niccolo's team is that a lot of the amenities, we can ask up to $8 million, and we can really get a lot of things in either one of these parks. So I'm looking forward to making a decision tonight and moving forward and seeing what the community will like.

So the city of Antioch has approximately 37 parks, 36, 37 parks.

I think right now we're at 35, and then we're gonna be breaking ground for the bike garden.

So 36, and roughly how much does the city expend on existing parks?

In maintenance is around, it averages out about $3.2 million. Thank you.

All right, Council Member Torres-Walker, did you have a question?

Yeah, thank you, Mayor Pro Temp, for asking that question, because I know that for city park is already included in the city's maintenance budget. And so this is really just to improve the park and make it more dynamic and usable for the community. Whereas we do have to consider, and I'm not saying I'm against it either, because I think using the BD Lumberyard as a space to bring people together, have arts and culture take place, potentially scaling up the farmer's market model, but also bringing the necessary revenue to the city is important to think about all those things for that lot. One of the questions I did have was there were two designs. So a community engagement process went forward. I know it was in the agenda packet and there were actually two designs that came out of that particular engagement process. I guess my question for Director Wright is like, what do you have to say about that process? I know it came in the packet, so I'm not sure if we're supposed to be deliberating which designs to move forward tonight as well if the BD Lumberyard is chosen. So I just need some clarification on that.

Yeah, no, so that design was done and we wouldn't be able to actually use those meetings because those meetings were before, what was it, November 2024. But I did want to make it public because a lot of people said we did spend public money to have a firm. There was a lot of conversation with the parking rec of saying we did do outreach and we already have a design. So I just want to make sure that people are aware that that I'm not forgetting what we've done in the past. And hopefully we can put this back on the CIP and find funding for it if we don't choose to move forward with it tonight. But it's really to show what the community desires and what's possible. And in those meetings we learn a lot of where and how to do community outreach. listen and then have the designer come up with something that represents our city and the voices of our residents so I wanted to make sure that people understood that it's not lost we have it saved and this is you know a foundation to move forward off of so it's not to choose anything but it's also to show the possibility and let people know that they've been heard and we still have it so just to clarify

During this application process, a new community engagement process would have to start. Right after this, despite whatever was was done 10 years ago or five years ago. It would need to be an entirely new community engagement process, depending on the direction of council tonight.

Correct.

I have one. one question for town um townsend so this is um the city received prop 68 funds through advocacy of the community and working with staff to renovate contra loma estates park and you stated that the the prop 4 is similar to that this is the fifth round of this particular kind of grant that we are discussing tonight. Did the city pursue in rounds one and four, one through four, or is this the first time we're pursuing in the fifth round? And then my last question to that, do we suspect that it will be future rounds of this funding that the city could potentially seek for the Beattie Lumberyard in the future?

My understanding is that the city previously applied through round four for this grant when it was called Prop 68. That took place in 2018 and 2020. That was rounds three and round four. That was when Prop 68 was passed in 2018 by California voters. Prior to that, it was Prop 84, which was a previous decade. So while this is round five, the rounds have not been in close proximity to one another. There have been decades between round one and two when it was funded through Proposition 84 and when it was funded through Prop 68. In order to have future rounds of the statewide parks program, the state would need to allocate a significant amount of funding uh traditionally it has been done through general obligation bonds that would need to be placed on the ballot by the legislature or by california voters once again this typically only happens about once a decade there's no guarantee that it will happen again i would say the likelihood of a round six probably would not take place for another eight to ten years There are other funding sources such as the Land Water Conservation Fund that could fund BD Lumberyard. That's another grant program that will be coming up at the end of this year that does prioritize acquisition and construction of new parks. Unlike this part, this grant, there are matching requirements. That's what makes this grant so unique is that there is a significant amount of money available. Eight and a half million dollars is the max award and there are no match requirements. which is somewhat unheard of in the grant world. Any federal dollars that you get will federalize the project, you'll have to complete NEPA in addition to CEQA, and you will likely have match funds required, which is what makes this such a rare opportunity.

All right, any other questions? Council Member Torswalker?

No.

Okay, thank you. Any other council members have questions right now?

My only question was going to be to Shahad. Regarding, in the packet it talked about being that it's a new park, and we talked about I think we have 35 or 36 parks you mentioned. With the addition of a new park, what are we looking at in terms of additional costs for park and rec? Because that was what's written in the report. I think it ranged from anywhere from $200,000 $250,000. I don't know how that dollar amount came up with, but I'd just like to hear a little bit more about if the city park was to move forward, what would that mean for your department, maintenance, and operations, versus with the lumber yard being a new park, what would that look like? I'm just trying to get some understanding on that.

Yeah, so one of the things about City Park is also revenue generating because of the field. We have residents who have practices in youth sports on that field. In terms of what the community wants, hopefully we can come to a consensus that the design also lowers our maintenance costs. We did ask Public Works and TerraCare of how much a new park would cost. That's a rough estimate. That's probably on the high end. If you take the $3.2 million and you divide it by the 35 parks, we're under $100,000. But you also have to think about a new park and the location in terms of maintaining some of the new features. There's probably going to be abatement and major upkeep that needs to happen with this location. So that number is probably a little high. But in terms of maintaining the parks that we have, we do have a very big inventory of parks. Our parks are not small. I mean, City Park may look little and small, but it's five acres. And so when you think about that and put in new amenities on there, You know, the community might ask for a splash pad. You know, this city doesn't currently have that where they can go and have water features for free. You know, turning the field into a turf field versus having it being mowed twice a week. That will save us costs. Having a bathroom that works. I mean, you know, just some of the basic amenities that some other parks have would be an attraction at that location.

Yes, I want to, because I believe staff worked on it, I want to go back to a question I started to ask but didn't get through it. On one of the pages it talks about all the parks and I believe this grant came up, and Townsend's gonna have to refresh my memory, about a year ago you started discussing the grant with us? that's correct and we and you did take a in the conversations we had i believe you guys did kind of do an overall look at all the parks to see because i know i think i asked oh is there any eligible in district four yeah you pretty quickly said no um but i want you to kind of talk about so the community knows that we did look at all the parks

Yeah, and that's one of the attachments that was talked about that's in there. We list all 35 parks. We put them all through the tool to see if they meet the metrics and criteria. And also working with Public Works, Scott Bunting and Carlos Cepeda, we have a running list of parks that are in need. So I know, I don't want to get into it tonight, but there's about two other grants that we're going to talk with Townsend tomorrow. about a 50% match and hopefully 100% match on some play structures and stuff like that. So we're trying to be strategic to make sure that we don't put a bigger burden on the general fund, but we also want to listen to the residents. We also want to take care of the things that we currently have.

I noticed that Pruitt Community Parks listed as one of the parks here on the laundry list of parks. So does that include the water park? Does that include that whole facility there when you say the community park? Yeah, so Pruitt, that's a huge facility.

So, you know, one of the things is we're building the bike garden on that site and thinking about how we can expand later. That site will have a bathroom. It will have a family picnic area. It's going to be five acres as well. But there's also extra room that we can expand. And hopefully that could be our, you know, major recreation complex where you have the water park, you have the library, you have the – the preschool, the gym, you have the bike garden, maybe it's a soccer field that's built down the road, and it's all within that complex on that land. But that's way, way, way down the line.

Is the $3.2 million per year maintenance cost, does that include the Pruitt complex as well?

Right, so the parking, all the parking, landscaping, and stuff of that nature.

The sod area, all that stuff? Yeah. Okay, so that's all included. Yeah. It's just inside of the water park's a separate cost, correct? Correct.

Yes, correct.

Okay. All right, seeing no other questions from council, how many public comments do we have on this item? We have 18 comment cards. We have 18 comment cards, that's about an hour. Okay, we'll go ahead with, if I could just ask folks if you could please not duplicate comments and we'll go ahead and give three minutes per comment on this item.

Okay, can we start with Leslie May?

Good evening. I read through it. It was a lot. I just have some concerns. It said, though, significant poverty areas, which I understand. That's why you chose those two. Climate vulnerability, I think it was. the type of project and then it's also said you might be able to create a new space. I do have concerns about any parks any work being done at park around this area uh... especially district one uh... not too long ago there was a uh... report provided to this council and the community members by the antioch high school students this was science class i believe and they were talking about contamination of the ground in the area in this area uh... and how uh... from just the tires and all the cars and You know, we're not talking about donuts, how much contamination that makes. But they actually did studies. Would have been interesting to have them come in and talk about their numbers that they found for contamination of not just the ground, but the air. And that it was so bad, somebody else came here talking about the contamination of the air in this area down here closer. So it would be from West 10th down, all the way to downtown, where I wanted to buy some property to start a community garden, but I was like, no, I wouldn't dare do that. Everything would have to be planted above ground. That would be a waste of land, a waste of everything, so I wouldn't do that. So what I'm concerned is that you do contaminated soil testing, air testing, because these are highly traveled areas. I also am concerned that you change these parks to self-sustainable, which is, I know people are going to say this, but less grass, more plants, more environmentally friendly plants. You know, low maintenance, that sort of thing. Plants that are native to Antioch and native to California. Low cost of city, you can use the non-potable water, even on the grass, the water grass instead of just using regular water. We have non-potable water trucks going on through here where we could use that water for that. But my main thing is making sure that the ground is not contaminated. If it is, to be able to, you know, clean it up. Because we have children, we have people of all ages, elders and stuff, but children, especially children playing in these areas. So I think that's all my comment on it.

Thank you. Can we have Mark Jordan, followed by Kim Statlander, and then Shana Shapiro.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members. I rise to speak in support of an open space park for Second Street property, commonly known as Rivertown Square. Antioch's active downtown specific plan, state funding mechanisms, and environmental economic data all support opening a new park there. I urge the council to protect the former Beattie Lumberyard site exclusively for the Rivertown Square Park. The site is rare, it's irreplaceable, and a waterfront asset. Turning it into a green space fulfills Antioch's downtown-specific plan by driving foot traffic to Rivertown small businesses and would also help offset urban heat island effects. Let's go ahead and apply for a grant for that location. Parks are not financial drains. They can be economic engines. This can draw people to the downtown area. We've talked about this. I've lived in town for 60 years. We've talked about this for 60 years. Today's the day we get to do something about it. We could talk a little bit about environmental justice. We could talk about SB 1000. I could go on for much longer than a minute and 28 seconds that I have. But honestly, this would be a park for the entire city. But it would primarily benefit the downtown residents, many of whom live in high density apartments with limited private yards. I think it would be equitable. The grant, it's already been spoken of, it's an excellent opportunity not to have matching funds. I did appreciate the gentleman saying that an empty space, commonly called a brownfield site, gets a priority. And we need to remember that. Because we want to win, we don't want to lose. We can preserve our historic identity with this park. And the activity it will bring down to downtown will also help to reduce crime within the area. The more people that are in the downtown area, the less likely you're going to be to have criminals wanting to actually burglarize or hurt other people. It's an excellent opportunity. It's a wonderful site. It's been vacant a long time. Let's do something today. Thank you.

Kim Statlander, followed by Shana Shapiro, and then Ciara Bellis.

Good evening. I'm here tonight to represent over 875 Antioch residents, business members, people who work and visit Antioch who signed our petition asking the city to pursue funding to create a town square in our community. Every name on the position represents more than just a number on a petition. They represent people who took the time to say that Antioch deserves a town square where people can gather, celebrate, build community, and give people a reason to come downtown. As you consider whether the Beattie Lumberyard or City Park should be selected for the green space build-out, we ask you to look beyond the immediate development opportunity and consider what will serve Antioch residents for generations. If your only reason for choosing City Park over the Beattie side is operational and maintenance cost, I think that's short-sighted. It will take years for the build-out, and in the meantime, we could create a Rivertown Square endowment, seek sponsorships by businesses, for example, Community Stage presented by Safeway. And we could seek foundation grants and donations, recruit volunteers, and hold events that generate revenue for the town square. Cities all over the Bay Area have done this, and we can too. The BD Lumberyard presents a unique opportunity to create a destination that could become a true community gathering space. especially given its location adjacent to the river and connection to downtown. A town square could provide space for families, seniors, children, community events, local businesses, festivals, performances, and everyday enjoyment. We recognize the value of the city park. Our request is not about diminishing the importance of our existing parks. It's about asking the city to consider whether this particular opportunity could provide something different and complementary, a civic gathering place and town square that becomes a defining feature of Antioch. State funding is available to help make this vision possible. This is maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity and Antioch should take the steps to pursue it rather than allow the opportunity to pass us by. The 875 plus signatures demonstrate that residents are paying attention and want a voice in what happens. The majority of signers are your constituents. We respectfully ask you to recognize the strong community support for a town square, carefully consider the long-term community value of the Beattie Lumberyard as that town square, pursue available state funding that could help make this vision a reality, and make a decision that preserves Antioch's opportunity to create something new Our community will benefit from for generations. This is not simply about choosing one piece of land over another. It's about deciding how we create a thriving downtown and what kind of community we want Antioch to become. Thank you for your consideration.

Shana Shapiro, followed by Ciara Bella, and then Frank Sterling.

Good evening.

Do I need to hold this down?

As you probably know, Antioch has never been in a financial position to make an investment into revitalizing downtown Antioch. And although there are private investor efforts and the efforts of Celebrate Antioch or the DAA, what is and always been missing is the city. And frankly, the city of Antioch may never have sufficient money to do what is really needed to turn downtown Antioch around. Without investment from the city, Antioch's downtown continues to struggle. Businesses are closing, leading to more vacant buildings that lead to more crime. So how can we pass up this chance to invest millions of dollars from a state grant in our downtown that is desperate for support? maybe a once in a lifetime chance to do something extraordinary. And maybe it is not exactly or everything downtown needs, but there is a good chance it could very well be the catalyst that helps change the perception, bring the much needed foot traffic, create a destination place, and take advantage of our greatest asset and the views of the San Joaquin River. There are other spaces throughout the downtown that would be much better suited for additional housing or retail than the BD parcel. And the opportunities and the constraints environmental reports specifically state permanent residential or retail on the BD parcel is not recommended. Whereas a green space could actually mitigate some of those hazards. I know you are concerned about crime and the cost of maintenance, but you are probably four years out of the build of a Rivertown event space. And one of the most successful ways to discourage crime is to create vibrancy and bring hundreds and maybe thousands more people downtown that would visit the local small businesses and the restaurants, creating more sales, tax revenue, and increasing property value, all of which helps the city of Antioch's revenue. a green space for our seniors just next door to the senior center, a place for our farmers market, a space for spring and summer concerts, car shows, weddings, festivals, a space for our families to gather, a space that would be used every day. Every other city around us and throughout the Bay Area has made an event space a critical part of their downtown revitalization plans. And we can see that these efforts have been tremendously successful. I visited Brentwood's downtown plaza summer concert on Friday with hundreds of people there. Same with Concord's Todos Santos for their Thursday night events. And downtown Oakley's new downtown event center on Saturdays for music and festivals. This could be Antioch's downtown. Over 870 people have signed our petition for the creation of this space in just over a month. They are telling you that they believe in this. They are telling you that they believe in downtown. And so much more of the grant criteria has been already done for the BD parcel. Extensive planning, efforts, and community participation gives us a huge jump start in meeting the grant requirements. Please take advantage of this incredible opportunity.

Ciara Bella, followed by Frank Sterling, and then Michael Simpson.

Good evening, my esteemed council members and everybody else in the building. My name is Ciara Bella and I represent downtown. I've been here for a very long time and the Bella clan from Contra Costa. I live downtown near the yard and I want you to understand what this place already means to the people that live here. I've watched fathers take their little girls out to the field and teach them how to fly kites in this dirt lot. We have used this place, this little lot, as a staging ground for Fourth of July. Antioch has had community events here in the dirt because even without grass and a playground or a plaza, people have found ways to get together and celebrate. This tells you something. This is already a community space. We are just asking you to help us officially make it become one. I have a nephew one block away who just turned one. I want him so desperately to be able to ride his bike to a real park where we live with his friends, learn to play ball, and feel like this neighborhood has a place that belongs to him too. I've watched cities grow their downtowns and places that host markets and activities, and I think to myself, why not us? Why not us downtown in Antioch? We have the waterfront. We have the history. We have the community right here. Antioch has spent so much time making headlines for things that go wrong. Please give us something to make the headlines because we got it right. Our own farmers market, a few blocks away from the proposed town square, already shows what happens when you give people a reason to come down to celebrate, to convene, and stay. Downtown once had a green space at Barbara Price Marina Park. We lost it, and we've been promised something in return, and guess what? We are still waiting. Downtown, oh, the community has been fighting for this far longer than this petition has ever existed. We've attended meetings, participated in workshops, and we have given our time and sweat equity into this vision. An architect believes so much in this community, and he believed enough to draft a town square plan for free. We displayed the plan and many people have stopped and asked me, talked to me about it. I've talked to businesses and residents from downtown alike and they tell me, we want this. And then they look to me with hesitancy and they say, but will the city, can the city actually follow up? And that is what Years of Broken Hope does. Promises that made by the city should still matter when the people sitting in these seats change. The responsibility for office does not disappear with an election. We want to feel heard. Today, more than 800 people have signed the petition. Those signatures are only in the newest chapter in a fight that we have been asking for for decades. Please choose the yard. Put aside any kind of...

Thank you. Okay.

Thank you. For you, this may be politics, but for us, this is our neighborhood.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Frank Sterling, followed by Michael Simpson and Kathy Robinson. Frank, you were on. You have three minutes.

All right. Can you all hear me now?

You were on. Thank you.

And yes, as she said when she was tapping out there, this is our neighborhood. I have been fighting for the yard for as long as I've been fighting like the pre text message scandal police after I got attacked. This is one of the longest fights I've been doing. I marched from the yard up the road along the river right there. Second Street to the City Hall. I think it was 2015. The project has been approved twice if I'm not mistaken. And this is something we, not just me, I wasn't alone there. There was like 75 or a hundred people that marched chanting for the yard. And I talked about it this morning with some of the folks in the green search there, shout out to you all. This is one thing that unites people that don't usually get together and agree on all issues. We all want the yard to be a bad-ass community space for us to thrive into a beautiful downtown. And this is my personal vision here coming in, you know, from the freeway pass and lose past your cool Antioch sign and then boom on your left the new yard, the community space and then right into the river town sign into the beautiful downtown. All right. I feel like you all should be bold i feel i don't even know if it's bold because it's something we've been fighting for for a decade but i'm in favor of the yard being our community space being our downtown space when i bought a house when i had the opportunity to buy a house i said i wanted it from g street to the river from 10th street uh from g street to downtown what the hell is it from g street to the city park and from 10th street to the river somewhere in that area And I got one, and I'm there now. And the yard is a big part of it. It's right down the street from my house where I could walk to and be a part of it. So I hope you all choose the yard. I would like to see that. And I tried to write some stuff down. A splash pad could be there. It could generate revenue. And don't get me started on the bathrooms at the city park when I have to talk about how long they've been closed. And I have to let my friend, who we've talked about in the... Unhoused community come to my house and use the bathroom because you can't use a bathroom or wash his hands at the city park. I don't think they were broken. They were not opened. So people couldn't use them there, in my opinion, which I've talked about numerous times. Anyways, the splash pad, the revenue that could all be at the new place. Please do the yard in Second Street there.

Thank you. Michael Simpson followed by Kathy Robinson and then Sherry Thompson.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. I'm here to urge you to support the Rivertown Square vision for the former Beattie Lumberyard. This site is not just another vacant lot. It is one of the last opportunities Antioch has to create a signature public space that connects residents and visitors to our historic downtown and the San Joaquin Delta. One of the things that makes Antioch special is our waterfront. Very few cities in Contra Costa County have direct access to... Very few cities in Contra Costa County have direct access to a world-class river view. Once this site is filled with condos or retail space, that public connection to the waterfront is permanently diminished. RIVERTOWN SQUARE WOULD ALLOW EVERYONE TO ENJOY THE SCENERY, SUNSETS, COMMUNITY EVENTS, AND THE RIVER THAT DEFINES OUR CITY'S IDENTITY. WE DON'T HAVE TO GUESS WHETHER A PUBLIC GATHERING SPACE CAN BE SUCCESSFUL. NEARBY CITIES HAVE ALREADY SHOWN US. CONCORD'S TOTO CENTRAL PLAZA HOST FARMERS MARKETS, CONCERTS, CELEBRATIONS, AND COMMUNITY EVENTS THAT BRING PEOPLE DOWNTOWN YEAR ROUND. Oakley Civic Center Plaza has become a gathering place for concerts, movies, and family activities that strengthen community identity. Brentwood's downtown city park hosts concerts that draw thousands of residents and visitors, creating a destination that benefits local businesses and strengthens downtown. Pittsburgh has invested in old town and waterfront gathering spaces that support community events, music, and tourism near the marina. These cities understand that a great public space creates economic activity. People come for events, stay for dinner, shop locally, and return again and again. Supporters of housing might argue that ground floor retail will help downtown, but our downtown already struggles with storefront vacancies and business turnover. Simply building more retail space does not create more customers. What attracts customers is a destination. Rivertown Square can be that destination. Housing is important, but not every available parcel should become housing. Some places are simply too valuable from a community perspective. The Beattie Lumberyard is one of them. The city has already invested in planning and exploring grant opportunities for Rivertown Square. We should pursue that vision and create something future generations will be proud of. When people think of Concord, they think of Todos Santos Plaza. When people think of Brentwood, they think of City Park. Antioch deserves its own historic gathering place. one that celebrates our waterfront, our downtown, and our community. Please choose Rivertown Square. Thank you.

Kathy Robinson, followed by Sherry Thompson and Rachel Brown.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Kathy Robinson, and I'm asking you to select the Beattie Lumberyard site and pursue proposition for grant funding to create a true town square in downtown Antioch. Five years ago, I chose to buy a home nearby because I believed in the future of Rivertown. I saw the potential of our waterfront, historic downtown, and surrounding community, and I made a significant personal investment based on the belief that this area could become something very special. But homeowners and business owners cannot revitalize downtown alone. We need the city to invest alongside us. A town square at the Beatty Lumberyard would be more than another recreational space. It could become a central gathering place for our city and simply a place where people would want to spend time. As a homeowner, what matters to me is seeing the potential of Rivertown actually become something. I didn't buy here because downtown was already everything it could be. I bought here because I believed in what it could become. A town square at the Beattie Lumberyard would be a visible, meaningful step toward fulfilling that promise and creating the kind of downtown residents can be proud to call their own and not just on the 4th of July. I recognize that City Park deserves investment, but improving an existing park and creating a town square on our waterfront serve two very different purposes. This is an opportunity to create something new that can help define the future of Rivertown and the future of Antioch. For years, Antioch has talked about revitalizing downtown. Residents like me have already put our money behind that vision by buying homes and investing in this community. Now we need the city to invest in us. Please select the Beattie Lumberyard and pursue this grant to create a town square that become the heart of Rivertown and the focus of Antioch. Thank you.

Sherry Thompson, followed by Rachel Brown and Susan Welch.

Good evening council members. I'm here tonight to ask you to bring back something downtown Antioch was promised years ago. A park and town square. In 2014 when downtown boat ramp was opened and replaced Barbara Price Park, the community was told that another public gathering space would be created downtown. Here we are 14 years later and we're still waiting. Barber Price Park was just over six acres. The proposed yard or town square site is just under two acres, roughly one third the size of the park that we lost. That matters when we talk about maintenance costs. We are not asking the city to recreate a six-acre park. We are asking for a much smaller town square, a space one-third the size that would require significantly less landscaping, irrigation, and ongoing maintenance. The city has also had 14 years without the expense of maintaining a park at this location. that should have provided plenty of time to plan and budget for the maintenance of a future park downtown public space. The yard was identified as a location for this community gathering space. Residents participated in the planning process and worked to show why a park belonged there. The previous city council agreed that a downtown park was needed and that it was included in the city's plans. We are simply asking that you put it back on the plan. A downtown square would give downtown Antioch and place for families, communities, events, concerts, festivals, celebrations, and everyday gatherings. It would create a welcoming space where people can come together and bring life back to our downtown. We have waited long enough, this community has spoken, the planning has been done, the need has been demonstrated, and the proposed town square is less than one-third the size of Barber Price Park. Please don't let maintenance be the reason that we can't have a town square. The city has had 14 years to plan for it, and this space is significantly smaller than the park we once had. Please honor the commitment made to downtown Antioch. Please put Rivertown Square back on the city plan, make it a priority, and give our community the gathering space we have been waiting for. Please apply for the grant to be at the Rivertown Square. Thank you.

Rachel Brown, followed by Susan Welsh and Sonia Johnson.

Good evening, mayor and council members. Downtown revitalization isn't only about new buildings or bigger budget. It's about what brings people back to the heart of their community. One of the most proven tools to achieve this is a downtown park and event space, a place where residents gather, visitors linger, and businesses benefit from steady foot traffic. A well-designed park and event space does more than offer greenery. It creates a reason to come downtown on a random Tuesday, not just during special events. It supports local restaurants and retail by turning passersby into customers. It gives families a safe, welcoming destination and provides community programming like concerts, markets, cultural celebrations, and youth activities. That builds pride and a stronger local identity. In short, it helps downtown feel alive, not empty. This is also a rare and unique opportunity with Prop 4 that we can pursue right now to try to help expand public spaces, support community programming, improve walkability, and create places for safe public gathering, and turn one of Antioch's largest and waterfront dirt lots into something magical. Do you know how many cities wish they had a waterfront like ours for their event squares? With the right proposal, we can attempt to secure the funding needed to plan and build the park and event space at the Beattie Lumberyard site. With lack of funding being the consistent reason given throughout the decades of why nothing has been done on this site, we finally have a potential solution. Now, I want to address the maintenance and operations concerns directly because I know the City Council is in a budget deficit and may be tempted to choose City Park as an option for this grant on the grounds of attempting to avoid additional ongoing costs. But we don't have to treat maintenance as an excuse. We can treat it as a design and planning requirement from day one. If grant dollars can't be used for maintenance, then we must build an event space engineered to reduce ongoing costs. Durable, low maintenance materials, landscaping that doesn't require high cost irrigation, vandal resistant fixtures, long life lighting and systems, and a layout that minimizes expensive repairs. And we can offset operations through revenue and community support. Once it's complete event generated funds fundraising and community-based donations Maintenance doesn't get solved by saying no to the project it gets solved by designing for it and planning for it Transparently approving this grant responsibly protects the city's finances while still making an investment that pays off for years and economic vitality and community connection And this matters even more, as mentioned before, when we remember what was taken away. Over 15 years ago, the city removed a downtown park named after Barbara Price, but they promised to replace it. This is our chance to follow through by restoring a central gathering place on a lot that has sat vacant for decades and that the community has fought for time and time again. When are you guys going to follow through on past promises to the countless people who have been here fighting for this issue every time it comes up? I am asking the city and all stakeholders to move forward now, apply for the grant to build a downtown park and event space at the Beattie Lumberyard site, paired with cost-reducing design choices and an operational plan the city can sustain. We can have nice things. Being concerned about finances does not mean you say no to every possible project, opportunity, or grant for the next few years. Thank you.

9.57, Council Member Wilson has left the meeting. Can we have, she has returned at 10 o'clock. Can we have Susan Welch? Followed by Sonia Johnson.

My name is Susan Welch and I live in the downtown. I have been down there for almost 50 years and lived in James Johnson's house for 38 years, so I'm quite attached to it. Everyone that's just presented the different aspects of this, has said things that I firmly believe in. The downtown, the city, sorry. The yard has got to be kept and made into something that will vitalize the entire downtown. It will bring people down to the park to listen to music and they'll go down onto G Street and stay and go to restaurants and places where they can get and spend money. The thing that's worrying me is if this doesn't go through, what is gonna happen to the art? We keep hearing things like the fact that it might be sold and apartments put in there. The idea of that just frightens me. And I don't think that the yard is appropriate. It's right there. And if you've ever driven down D Street and looked up as you got down to maybe 4th, and here was a ship right in front of you on the water that was enormous. And at first it's over the top trying to figure out what is that? It's so big. Well, if we built houses or built something instead of not a park, an event center, someplace where people could go. and hear music and go down to G Street and eat, but not block up what you can see going down G Street. It's just, it would be horrible to do something like that. Everybody else has listed all the other reasons for making this your decision to make this your recommendation. And I agree with that. Well, thank you for your time and energy.

Sonia Johnson, followed by Jennifer Agpaoa and Jennifer Hughes.

Hello, my name is Sonia Johnson. I'm new to the area. I've been here for about 5-6 years now. So I'm excited to have an event space. I would like to start off by saying Antioch shouldn't be the city people drive through. It should be the city people drive to. In recent years, or even recently, we have seen surrounding communities build spaces that bring communities and bring people. Antioch residents, including our own families, often leave Antioch to go out to eat, attend events, enjoy entertainment, or simply find a place to gather. That means our residents are taking their time, their spending, and their tax dollars somewhere else. I believe Antioch can do better. We can imagine young people positive places to gather. Imagine families being able to attend events close to home. Imagine supporting local businesses instead of watching our residents drive to the next city to spend their money. And there is an environmental benefit. If people can... find recreation, entertainment, and community activities closer to home, we can reduce unnecessary driving, traffic, and vehicle emissions. That is good for our environment and good for the quality of life in Antioch. But most importantly, this is about believing in our city. Antioch has residents who want to see our community succeed. We have families who want to stay here. We have businesses that want to grow here. Let's give them a reason to stay. I respectfully ask that you support Antioch receiving this grant money and give our community the opportunity to create something we are proud of. Antioch shouldn't just be the place we call home. We should be proud to say I live in Antioch. We have an opportunity to change the perception of those who see Antioch as a place to avoid or drive through and show them a vibrant, welcoming community that people want to visit, enjoy, and return. Antioch deserves it, and again, it should be a city we drive to and not drive through. Thank you. Thank you.

Jennifer Agpaoa, I'm sorry. Agpaoa. Agpaoa, followed by Jennifer Hughes.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Agpawa, and I want to thank everyone here for their service, because I know this is not going to be an easy choice. I do want to say that we've got a lot of community support for this, and I don't want to duplicate what other people have said. So I fully support this. My whole family supports this. A huge community supports this. I think it's what Antioch needs. I think it's what we need to build morale, help businesses. I think it's just in the best interest for Antioch, and we task you guys with making this decision, and I know it's not easy, and thank you very much.

Jennifer Hughes, followed by Carrie Motz, and then Deborah Pope.

Good evening, everyone. I'm going to cut mine down a lot because, of course, people have been saying the same things. I live downtown, less than two blocks from the Beattie Lumberyard, and I fully support applying for the grant to turn the dirt lot into a town square event center. In November of 2021, the city council voted unanimously to keep this a green space in response to our presentation to have a town square. And the vote being unanimous last time tells me that we had good ideas. And at that point, we didn't have the money to pay for the development of a town square, and a grant like this does not come along every day. Please don't pass up this rare opportunity for all of Antioch to have a beautiful gathering space in front of the river. Other people have talked about all the other cities that have done it. Martinez is going to join the party now. They are going to develop their waterfront, and they're talking about doing an event center, a town square. And I think it could also be a revenue generator. You could, if you had a gazebo-like space on the town square, you could rent it out for weddings. There's ways to make money if you design it properly. We know people will come. The Fourth of July is a great example. Tons of people come, even from other cities. When we had our sesquicentennial, people from other cities were coming to listen to the concerts there. It would create a unique identity for Antioch. Few can say our town square is on the river. The San Joaquin River is one of Andean's best assets, and we need to take advantage of it. It's the reason people settled here in the first place way back in 1849. It's a true asset. We need to invest in our city and ourselves, and in Waterfront Town Square we could combine public space, economic development, tourism, recreation, events, and historic preservation all in one project. And the concept is consistent with Antioch's existing planning vision for Rivertown and the waterfront. Yes, Antioch can have nice things. Please vote yes. Thank you for your time.

At 10.06 p.m., Council Member Torres-Walker has stepped away from her Zoom connection. I'm sure she'll be back soon. Can we please have Carrie Motz, followed by Deborah Polk.

Good evening. You have before you a choice between upgrading an existing, well-used city park and a chance to create a unique town square that serves multiple purposes. Green space, event center, a community gathering place with historic views and historic designation near the founding place of Antioch, which, as your own analysis states, would provide for enhanced economic vitality in Rivertown. This has been a stated goal of all Antioch General Plan updates for at least 40 years. And yet, as my former colleague on the Planning Commission states, nothing ever changes. The reality we endure is actually the one Antioch has chosen with the lack of vision and will it takes to create a new paradigm. One which begins to change the narrative of reality and perception of Antioch. And you might be given that means to do so through this grant. My fear is that you will use the economic reality we face, which was partially created by spending on social issues, well-intentioned or not, that we could not afford and did not have sustainable funding for, to say we can't afford to cut the lawn on another park. The answer to those issues lies in county and state and perhaps federal hands. To nearly bankrupt a city in a well-meaning attempt to solve them is irresponsible and self-defeating. The loss of Barber Price Park as the only waterfront public area in a town sitting at the confluence of the second largest inland delta in the United States makes no sense. The yard is better situated and preferable. We utilize best use practices established in every major modern community development plan and will showcase Antioch's greatest natural asset for the whole community. In addition to providing revitalization for a historic river town as the heart of Antioch, as Martinez is about to spend $500 million to transform their waterfront. The sale and use for retail or residential will be a tragic, permanent loss of our greatest asset. It ignores the real, permanent value the real noise and pollution findings in the city's own report, which in fact would be mitigated by trees and green space, with less exposure for people by temporary usage rather than permanent structures. With the state grant, the building out of the town square would take years, leaving time to establish self-funding for maintenance and operation, as cities all around us have done. A one-time sale is a small temporary budget fix. A town square will spur economic revitalization and community forever. Please join over 875 of your fellow residents and those who took part in previous study sessions and have the vision and the foresight to give this a chance. Thank you.

At 10, 11 PM, Council Member Torres-Walker has returned. Can we please have Deborah Polk followed by Christine Clark and then Cecilia Perez.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, and residents of Antioch. My name is Deborah Polk, Antioch resident and Secretary of Rising Junctos East. We're a community-led organization that advocates for racial, economic, and health justice in Contra Costa. I am here this evening to express my support for developing a park at Beatty Lumberyard, the area called The Yard by many in the community. North Antioch children and families deserve a great park in their neighborhood to play, to exercise and to thrive. Children need a safe place to play, interact with other children and to explore nature. Unfortunately, many children in this area are now forced to play in busy streets, are in the driveways of their complexes, which is dangerous. A decade ago, Rising Juntos assessed 32 parks across the city of Antioch to determine the suitability for young children and families. Through community workshops, residents identified Contraloma States Park and Prosserville Park as priorities for improvements. We are proud that as a result of that work and of our partnership with the City of Antioch, we helped secure millions of dollars to renovate both parks that are now beautiful and utilized by residents in the neighborhood. One of them was through the Prop 68 funding. During our park assessment, the community also raised their wishes to create a new park at the yard. This was over 10 years ago. Since then, Rising Juntos and other residents have participated in city meetings, giving input on community design and have been consistent in advocating for this space to be a park. Now the council has an opportunity to make a much needed and desirable new park for North Antioch families. Please vote yes for the children and families of North Antioch and vote to apply for funding to make the Beatty Lumberyard a long-awaited park. Thank you for your time.

Christine Clark followed by Cecilia Perez and then Alexander broom Good evening mayor council members and staff I am Christine Clark also with rising who toes which is an amazing organization That builds power for racial economic and health justice in Contra Costa County We do believe that children and families deserve safe and enjoyable enjoyable recreation spaces to thrive. Unfortunately, this is not the case for many North Antioch families who still do not have enough green space in their neighborhoods. Thousands of renting families count on public parks for outdoor spaces for their children to play and also be in nature. This is why I recently went to a planning meeting Year so ago for a future park at the yard many Antioch residents were there and had amazing ideas for the space We imagined playgrounds a stage for music performances food trucks a farmers market a walking path a community garden Exercise equipment and much more we envisioned not just a park but a cultural hub for our community to gather and enjoy the neighborhood and When I first moved in here in Antioch River Town in 2006, people were talking about making the yard a park back then. There were signs that had been out long before I even moved here in 2006. So it's been 20 years since then, and all I can say is why is it taking so long to get something completed there? There are no parks at all on this side of G Street. The closest one is City Park, but it's in front of a very busy intersection and kids need more options across North Antioch so they don't have to cross a busy street to get to a park. We are the most densely populated neighborhood in the city and must have more green space per capita. Making the yard a park would make downtown way more walkable and enjoyable. Amazing views, which everyone's been talking about, and a welcoming place for residents and visitors alike. People can make a day out of it and business would benefit. And with the senior center is literally right across the street from that location, our seniors can just walk there and enjoy it, the beautiful space. Please move forward with plans for a park at the yard and honor the nearly two decades long wishes of those who live here. It will benefit all Antioch now and into the future. Thank you.

Cecilia Perez, followed by Alexander Broom.

Good evening, council members and city staff. My name is Cecilia Perez Mejia. I'm the lead community organizer with Rising Juntos, where we build power for racial, economic, and health justice. And I'm also a District 1 resident, and I'm a mom. I'm here tonight because our children deserve better. Every family in ENIAC deserves access to safe, welcoming parks and green space where children can play, families can gather, neighbors can connect, and our community can simply enjoy being outside. For nearly 20 years, North ENIAC residents have been asking for a town square park at the Beatty Lumberyard. Downtown families don't have a nearby park we can easily walk to. And access to green space per capita in North ENIAC is severely lacking. My child and other neighborhood children are already using the yard to ride their bikes, to fly their kites, to play with their dogs, and to run around. They have already made use of this space with what they have, but they deserve more than just the dirt lot. They deserve a real park. Right now, the city uses parking lots and streets for community events that could happen in a permanent public space. Fourth of July children's activities are held in the parking lot here at City Hall. The farmer's market is held in the parking lot across the street from City Hall. Dia de los Muertos is held in the Nick Rodriguez Community Center parking lot. These are important community and cultural events. Imagine what they could be if they were held in a beautiful, welcoming town square with trees, grass, open space, places to sit, and room for children to play. This isn't just about creating another park. It's about investing in a park of Antioch that has been asking for this for many years. And I want to be clear, this should not be a choice between city park and the yard. City park needs investment, and our community absolutely deserves to see it improved. but we should not have to sacrifice one park over another. For this grand opportunity, we urge the city to apply towards the Beatty Lumberyard and pursue other funding opportunities to renovate city park. Please choose to invest in the Beatty Lumberyard and give our children the park they deserve. Thank you.

Alexander Broom.

Good evening, neighbors. This is the Antioch Vice Chair of the Parks and Recreation Committee. I want to make clear my stance on this project. I'm all in favor of building out Beatty or Bust. I think we should put all our eggs in this basket for this grant. I hope that you will heed the call as representatives of a unanimous at least in person, public comment for the BD Lumberyard in that grant process. If not, I'm hoping I can say a few things that might sway or influence your decision tonight. There are a couple of calculations that I'd love to see Alex or the other staff kind of clarify with this yard. In the calculations of that process, looking at the number of impoverished folks, it's kind of hard to say that one area has more than another if we don't extrapolate. Maybe that's a stipulation within the grant funding process, but about 40% of that half mile radius north of the Beattie Lumberyard is unoccupied due to being the river. We're not going to have as many people who are in poverty there. I think another issue with the calculations that we need to understand is that BD Lumberyard's not a park, but City Park is within that one-half mile radius, so it's being counted as park space. However, I think that the deferred maintenance of City Park... should be handled on its own through the city, that we should be ready to and prepared to have working bathrooms, have good facilities. I'm not in favor of putting turf there. I think that figuring out a way to, whether it's through maybe like an eighth percent sales tax initiative to help specifically benefit Rivertown areas as a historic district, or do a business improvement district to collect fees for public safety initiatives or for park maintenance in that area will pay dividends through the additional trade in that area. And I do agree that PUTTING HOUSING THERE AND GETTING FUNDING ONE TIME FOR SOME DEVELOPER TO GO IN AND BUILD IT AND SOME LANDOWNER TO COLLECT REVENUE FROM RENTS OR LEASES OR WHAT HAVE YOU DOESN'T CREATE A GREATER PUBLIC BENEFIT. IT'S HARD TO PUT A NUMBER ON PUBLIC BENEFIT FOR A PARK LIKE THIS IN TERMS OF DOLLAR VALUE. The whole community has come out here who is able to tonight, and they are in favor of putting our eggs in that basket for the grant. So I appreciate your consideration. Thank you.

Mr. Becker?

Thank you.

To use some of the words, I will say that the city of Antioch back in the 1970s started putting all their eggs in one basket with our redevelopment agency dollars. And as we talk about improvements in the downtown space, I'm sure our finance director can assure all of us that we are still paying debt obligations for some improvements that have happened in the downtown space over decades ago. But luckily we will be done with that soon. You know, I think a frustration for me, beyond the facts that Alex did a wonderful job, and I wish that he had been a part of the home key application process, When you look at the Beatty Lumberyard and you look at the 1.84 park acres per thousand people, the number above it is the 8.01 total acres within that half mile. And my concern is that you look at 415, I'm sorry, 418 East 18th Street which a lot of people know as Romy's Liquor Store over off the 18th and Govalo. And an interesting number for that site is there are zero total park acres within a half mile, and there are zero park acres per 1,000 people. But there are 900 individuals in poverty. It is an extreme heat and a flooding zone. And my concern is that the intent of Prop 4 is to, and correct me if I'm wrong, preserve or create open space for individuals. And I keep hearing tonight, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. And so I wonder, even though I've heard that it's been decades in between these different opportunities, why homes were built in 1930 along Cavallo and today, In 2026, there are still no parks within a half a mile. And that was not even a part of this discussion. Would you go and you ask anybody on Cavallo whether they would want a new park downtown or whether they would like to be able to have even a green belt to sit in instead of the parking lot of the liquor store that you all complain about them being in? Individuals have nowhere to go. And here we are talking about coming out and supporting how we can creatively offset these annual operating deficits. Where was that conversation with Homekey? We can't afford anything, nothing. And here we are two weeks later talking about building a new space. We don't even have dollars associated with costs. We don't even know what that property is worth if you were to sell it.

Thank you. We have no further public comments.

All right, it's back before the city council for any further questions or comments. No further questions? Through the city manager, is it possible to ask a question of acting community development director?

Yes, of course. Mr. Scudero, please come forward.

Thank you, Mr. Scudero. So quick question. What is that property zone? How is that property zone currently under the downtown specific plan, the zoning ordinance, the general plan, all the above, right?

Yeah, so the downtown.

This is the BD Lumberyard property.

Yeah, so the downtown specific plan applies the zoning to that area and is zone mixed use, which allows commercial, residential, and also public spaces.

Okay, so it's pretty much anything can go there. Yes. Currently. Not industrial uses, but yeah. And the city obviously owns that property, so we can control the destiny of it. If we wanted to sell that property as a surplus parcel, do you know what that process is? You may not.

Yeah, it's the Surplus Land Act, and the way that law reads is we would have to make it available to affordable housing developers before we could pursue any other use there.

Okay, so if we were to sell, we would have to offer that up first?

It's a 60-day notice of availability. If someone expresses interest, then we have to negotiate in good faith.

Okay, and yeah, that's all the question I had. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, any other questions or comments anybody might have? Like to say anything?

I'll go. Both projects are meaningful to the community. The city park, I grew up playing sports, learning how to play sports. I remember going to law ball tournaments, city park. A lot of people who grew up in Antioch probably have those kind of memories. That was a time when families came together and engaged. I remember watching my dad and my mom play softball, watching law ball. For those of you that maybe don't know, back in the day, if you hit the ball out of the of the area into the trees most people would think that's a home run but back in those days it was a single because the trees were so close that was just part of the mystique of having like the fenway park in antioch so i have a lot of great memories of the city park i think that the city park does need investment but i also agree that we have a downtown area that we've all i think many of us i grew up here have always wished that our downtown region could become something that we've always hoped for, which is a place where people can come together and gather and build a sense of community of people coming together and hopefully bring some economic development, having people go to the restaurants, doing a lot of the things that we're trying to invest in. So to me, both projects are very important and valuable to the city of Antioch. I mean, it's unfortunate we have to pick just one. One of the things I've heard in the discussion tonight is, because it looks like both projects meet the requirements for the application process we've heard that the city park may have a better opportunity based on you know the the critical lack of park space we're talking about that being the largest value 15 points but also but i don't know what that would mean for uh creating a new park how that would compare to other potential new park developments, outdoor space developments, because the median household, the number of poverty, things kind of match up, meaning that they both have significant need and value to the community. Whatever we decide tonight isn't gonna determine whether one happens or the other. It's just a matter of us deciding which one we're gonna move forward with. What I have heard in the comments earlier is that once a decision is made, we need to hit the ground running and there needs to be bringing the community together to be able to have meetings, to get the ball rolling, to show enthusiasm, engagement. And that's probably the one thing that I have been most impressed with is that although I'm new to the council, I've heard of this discussion many times over the years about the yard, town square, it's had different names. So for me, one of the things that I'm really paying attention to is bringing people together, engaging in something that we all can get behind and believe in because I think that's what it's gonna take for this project to move forward. So I came in with an open slate, not knowing where I'm gonna go with this tonight and I'm still looking at both because both are very important. I was hoping I could support both projects and let somebody else judges decide and instead of it leaving it up to us so I'm inclined to support the yard because of the engagement that it's bringing people together the benefits of I know there's been some cost that was one of my questions about potential cost I think you know if this was to happen I've heard it might be like four years down the road if we even where to get the funding. And I think that we would need to work together with the community to try to figure out how to mediate those challenges with costs and the general budget with maintenance and et cetera. But I do think the value, I've gone to Pittsburgh to some of the events in Pittsburgh at their new square. I've been to Brentwood a couple times. I've been to events here in Antioch when they've been at Walde Plaza or Williamson Ranch. So I understand the value of bringing people together. So to me, I think both projects are meaningful and valuable. I could support both, but obviously since I can only lean or put my advocacy for one, I'm going to support the Beattie Lumberyard because of the high engagement, the years of work that's happened behind. The project that was previously drawn up has been an investment for plans that were drawn up, I guess, two, three years ago. There's been meetings that I know that doesn't count because it was prior to 24, but I don't believe that there'll be a problem getting the people sitting behind you in this audience to rally and to do the things that I think need to tip this over. So for me, that's kind of where I'm at right now. So again, I came in here with a, I could go either way, I actually wanted to support both, but based on what I've heard tonight, looking at everything that's been presented to me, and the high engagement of our community of as many as 800 residents in such a short window of time stepping up and saying, we want to be a part of something positive in our community. I'd like to support that.

All right. Councillor Wilson.

Well, first of all, thank you to Townsend Public Affairs for getting us in front of this grant and a couple other grants. Can you go over again, you talked about the competitiveness, because I'm... Both are good, but I want to make sure we put one in that is going to be the most competitive and we're most likely going to get dollars from. Because even if we pick today, there's no guarantee we're going to get this. So I just want to hear again the comparison on the competitiveness.

Yeah, that's correct. Ultimately, you're determining which application you want to submit. There will be a lengthy process of review. It's going to take at least six months. It's going to involve site visits from the state. Ultimately, representatives from California State Parks will come to whichever site you select, most likely in April of next year, to evaluate the sites, to evaluate the community outreach components as well. So to the slides that I had presented earlier, you're looking at really a difference of five or six points in terms of the levels of poverty. Some of the previous public comment addressed that there are fewer individuals living in poverty at BD Lumberyard, just given the geographic location of the site that half mile radius includes portions of the river. The state has taken that into account. They do want to impact the greatest number of individuals, which is one of the reasons that urban areas tend to have an advantage over more rural areas for that very reason. I'm not going to speak to the equity of that. That was determined when Proposition 4 was drafted and passed by voters, but that's the reality that we're living in. So ultimately, I'm confident that in either case, whichever park you end up selecting or both, We can write a very competitive application. We can get as many points as are on the board. The only things that you're gonna lose out on the points are, once again, those geographic features like number of individuals in poverty, park acres per thousand residents. Those are just the things that we cannot change.

And then one last question, and this might be a staff question. Going back to what Mr. Becker said in regards to Cavallo and 18, is that, we didn't consider that because that's not city-owned property, correct? I'm looking at staff.

I believe we have the previous, not staff report, but the document that our team put together for staff that has the list of every park on there.

I think that space we don't own, I don't think it's considered a park, but he brought up the question, I want to make sure.

Yeah, I think he referenced that area, but I'm not aware of any land we own in that area that would be developed properly.

Okay, I just wanted to get clarification on that.

Any comments?

Can you hear me? Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

First, I want to thank all of the residents who came out tonight to speak on this issue. Thank you, Mr. Becker, for raising up the issue around Cavallo. We also have a lot of new families and children in that area, and we do not have access to a local park. I know that this property is owned for mixed use development. I keep hearing, don't put housing there. And I don't know where that narrative came from because I also do not agree that housing should be the priority for this site. I think it's also important to acknowledge that community is coming here and saying that it's been 15 years that they've waited That they got a commitment to replace the Barbara Price Park that they lost, that there was a commitment to replace that 15 years ago. That seems to be a theme that I continue to hear in the city of Antioch. um as i've been a resident hearing on this council that people have either waited 20 years for something or 30 years for something or 15 years or something or 14 years or something and even less than 10 years I get the understanding that we don't want to pass up this opportunity, so we don't want to split the baby. We want to put in as much of a competitive application as we can and cross our fingers and hope that we get selected because it's a competitive process. I also understand the people who have reached out to me and said Homekey was also a competitive process. The city of Antioch was awarded the largest award in the history of Homekey here in state of california and we had significant conversations around the city's deficit and missed out on that once in a lifetime opportunity potentially i also want to raise up that we just heard business owners tonight where we're going to be reviewing a potential security contract, the issues around homelessness, blight, vacant buildings, people's fears around what could actually make the community safe. I do believe that public safety by environmental design makes communities safe. I definitely want to support any development that is going to bring revenue to the city of Antioch. I've heard that this park could bring revenue. It could also generate its own maintenance costs, and it will also provide a space for families to enjoy. We have over 115,000 residents in the city of Antioch, and I'm sure they have not all weighed in. I spent a lot of time on J Street and I see young kids driving their bikes in the middle of the street and playing in the street and playing around the neighborhood. And I often wonder what would it look like for them to be able to have a park to go to? I believe there is a park nearby that particular area near O Street, but I'm not necessarily sure how much young people get to enjoy that park. those young people that I see on J street because they will have to cross a busy street to do so. I'm sure whatever decision that the council makes tonight, it will be a hard decision. If we can put in applications for both, both parks and run a robust community engagement process and submit two successful, two applications that will hopefully be selected or be successful through this process. I would love for that to happen as well. Um, also have questions related to, so this is a 7 million, eight, eight, potentially $8 million grant. If the council decides to move forward tonight with a vote to submit one application over two applications and select the BD lump yard, I'm wondering have city staff or even consultant considered also the potential of inflationary cost materials and other things that might put that might require additional funds from the general fund or any other park funds to offset additional unintended costs. Has that been considered or do staff feel like this $8 million is more than enough to address those potential issues down the line as well.

Yeah, we haven't got to the design phase yet, but I would make sure that we have a contingency within our plan to make sure that whatever money we have will cover what we're planning to do. And with that, just seeing that a lot of our projects do take the three to four year, nothing is gonna kick off and there's not gonna be a shovel, you know, in 2027. So as the design phase happens with the community and we get the designer, that will definitely be one of our priorities to make sure that the contingency fund is available to cover the inflation.

And I'm assuming that this, if BD Lumberyard was selected tonight, that this would be a city park, not a neighborhood park, so that that design would hopefully include restrooms. I mean, given that we have a little over 115,000 residents that could be potentially accessing this space at any time, this would not be proposed as a neighborhood park, right?

Well, if we go over the $8.5 million, the first thing that's going out is the restrooms. We have to take the restrooms out immediately. You got to take that out of the plans. I'm joking with you. It will be a restroom.

I hope you are joking. I hope you are joking.

All parks.

Neighborhood parks that we have versus city parks with red rooms is also something that you have to think about when you consider equity, because essentially neighborhood park is being maintenanced by all of our tax dollars. But if we don't live near the park, we can't access it.

Yes, ma'am. That would be in the design phase.

Is that a council member?

Yeah, very, very, very challenging. One more question. So say and maybe this is for director, right? If the council decides tonight to move forward, will be the lumberyard for this particular grant. There will be a design phase, a community engagement phase. It will be a city park, meaning that it would have restrooms. What would be the follow up plan for City Park. I know that Townsend mentioned there was another grant, but the city might have to do a match, but that might not also fit for City Park. Have there been any footwork on the staff and consultant side of things to consider the potential vote tonight and what other options might exist for City Park? which also has not had, I believe the staff report says the last time it was significantly renovated was 20 years ago.

Yeah, so whatever the decision is tonight, I'm prepared to pivot and try to ensure that all our residents have equitable open spaces no matter what. So if it's you know, we have a meeting tomorrow. We also have a call on Thursday to talk about, you know, community outreach. So whatever the plan is, we will move forward with the plan from tonight and I will pivot and try to figure out with the rest of our department head staff to how to fix the rest of the parks in the city. Thank you.

And this, and this is four years out.

Is that what you have up to four years after you're granted to complete the project?

So that would give the city potentially enough time to address the issues, relate the issues that have been raised by businesses downtown, necessary infrastructure that is needed to assess any potential parking issues, as well as addressing the issues around a good majority of unhoused folks who actually live on the waterfront.

that will give you the amount of time to the completion of the park to do as much as you can.

Nice. Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, it is now 1046. I'd like to make a motion that we extend the city council meeting to 1130 p.m. A motion to extend the meeting to 1130.

I second. I second. All right, we have a motion from Mayor Pro Tem, seconded by Council Member Rocha. Roll call vote, please.

Council Member Torres-Walker?

Aye.

Council Member Rocha?

Yes.

Council Member Wilson? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Yes. Mayor Bernal? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

So Mr. Mayor, on this subject, we talk a lot about history. So when you get to my age and you've been involved in the community this long, you might want to sit down. Some of us have intimate knowledge of history. So I want to go back to 1978, 1979. I was the Antioch Chamber of Commerce manager. My board had approximately 20 members. of which most of them were from the downtown area. Why? Because at that time, it was still one of the economic hubs in our community. I go so far back that what is now off the chart cannabis facility was a Rexall store that my mother used to work at. So I have history, extraordinary history in the downtown area. And so I can tell you the Chamber of Commerce with the Board of Directors, the downtown community, they all saw that there was going to be danger when the decision was made to build County East Mall because it would have a devastating effect to small businesses in the downtown. And that is exactly what happened. Within a three to five year period of time, many of the businesses that were in downtown were adversely impacted. Names you probably don't know, but I remember them as Famous Fashion, and Tito's, and Marchetti's Restaurant, and the Riverview, and on and on and on. The direction from the board then and what I advocated strongly was the downtown could survive if we had more residents moving into the downtown area and true economic development. Economic development meaning sustained development on a long-term basis. Now the Beattie Lumberyard was one of the most important pieces you know, for economic development. And you have to remember, back then, A Street ended at Sixth Street, and what was sitting in front of it was Sears Tire Service. And we all had to drive through the community, through the downtown area, to get to Second Street, Third Street, Fourth Street, to get to the businesses that operated there. And so I had heard for basically 20 years that we needed to improve the circulation pattern in the downtown area. And back then, as mayor of the city of Ania from 2000 to 2008, I basically negotiated with a company called Calpine. for five million dollars to be devoted specifically to community projects in the city of Antioch. And the number one project, which was over two, two and a half million dollars, was to finally connect A Street to Second Street. That's probably one of my greatest achievements as being mayor, because finally, downtown had circulation. which was a very, very big problem for all of us who lived here and came down either G Street or through the community. So on the issue of the Beattie Lumberyard, and this has been an issue really more like 40 plus years, my position as a candidate in 1998 and as mayor from 2000, 2008 in every single state of the city address that I made annually My vision for the BD Lumberyard was that we needed to make downtown a destination, and we needed to generate revenue. I have never, even though I have seen many people on social media say, well, Freitas wants to build apartments. Freitas never wanted to build apartments. But that lie just keeps on repeating and repeating and repeating. So my position of more than 30 years ago was something similar to the Concord Sheridan Inn, which was off of John Glenn Boulevard. And that was the city of Antioch would own that property. The city of Antioch would reach out to builders of hotels. very similar to the Claremont Hotel with the idea that architecturally it would have a river view architecture, be two to three stories. On the third story, we would have basically a rooftop garden and lounge up there so that everybody could see the extraordinary view of our river from the third story. There are people around the BD Lumberyard who blasted me and have continued to blast me. How dare I say that because we live around that property and it would ruin our view. Well, I was a little bit more expansive. I wanted to have A situation that we would do a 35-year lease. I never wanted to sell that property ever because they really didn't trust any city council. Once they got the money, they were going to spend it in a year, maybe two if we were lucky. But with a 35-year lease, each and every year, we would generate revenue. And each and every year, we would escalate based on the consumer price index. So for a revenue stream, the city of Antioch would continue to own the property. It would be a long-term lease. We would build a hotel. Now, Council Member Tamisha Torres-Walker says 115,000. We actually have more than 118,000 people in this town. There is no hotel in this town for us to offer seminars or training or anything else. And that is a very sad commentary for a city of over 118,000 that we don't have a facility that we can use. So part of my argument was, let's build one. And if you're there for two or three days, what are you going to do after training? You're going to walk out the door. You're going to go up Second Street. And then we would be able to maybe have a jazz lounge, use the El Campanile as a entertainment. We would have restaurants located there. It would become very much a destination point. As a child, When you were in the 60s and 70s and you said, where are you from? You say Antioch, oh my God, I went to the Riverview. That was fantastic. People came here because of that restaurant, not just by the automobile, but by the boats. And you could go down to Riverview and there could be 30, 40, 50 boats there. People who came, got off, went in, maybe went to the bar, had lunch, had dinner. It was extraordinary. It was a destination place. So somebody like me who was born at the old Antioch Community Hospital on 6th Street, that has been my dream, my hope, my desire. So when you say you're disappointed that Barbara Price Park was taken away 12 years ago, I've been disappointed for more than 50 to 60 years because downtown needs economic development that is sustained. when I heard speaker after speaker say, well, this is going to be great for economic development. Really? To do that, you would have to be using this facility every day to generate necessary revenue. And that's not going to happen. We need to be realistic. That's not going to happen. And everybody believes it. Oh, we can do this and we can do that. Well, We've had attempts to do that over the years. Celebrate Antioch was extraordinary. They kept on having event after event after event. Excluding the Fourth of July, you might get several hundred people, but pretty much all the same people. Now, I hate the fact that the city of Antioch has districts, even though I represent District 3. Because back then, before district, people said, what is in the best interest of our community? And that was how we guided our votes and our participation. I can tell you, District 3, very few people come out of District 3 to the downtown, because there's nothing there for them. It could be. Uh-huh. So what do we have? We have Williamson. And what is the problem with Williamson? There's no parking. And the people go crazy every time we have a major event. They go crazy. We hear it all the time as the elected representatives. Parking is going to be a major issue if BD is developed. And for some of the people who live here, if this happens, I hope I don't hear from you complaining about the parking in the downtown area. People are blocking my driveway. I can't get in. There's too many people. Where's the police department? Why aren't they ticketing? Because that will happen. So I... A lot of us have history, have knowledge, and frankly, I think I saw Mike Burkholder, some of his schematics. I was very impressed with them. I thought they were very interesting. I have seen your schematics. Very interesting. But it's not going to sustain itself, and that is the challenge we have. You have done an extraordinary job of coming together and advocating for this. You have. I think Director Rocha mentioned that. From me, I'm listening to the Park and Recreation Commission. I'd like to listen to Shahad Wright as the Director of Park and Recreation and Townsend. And you have all done a very good job. But I think I can count the votes. I think we're probably going to embrace BD. But be under no illusion. This is at least a three to four year process. And frankly, when it comes to money, especially without matching funds, you put your best foot forward and you do the best bet. And the best bet is not BD. The best bet, in my opinion, is City Park. But I'm a realist. But I'm going to challenge every single one of you here. Because if we do either one of these, BD or City Park, there's going to be community meetings. So I want you to be accountable for everybody who has said, well, you know, we could raise money through nonprofits. We can raise money through foundations. We can raise money through other financing mechanisms. Don't wait. Don't just say it and then never do it because that has been the practice of this city forever. make lots of promises, pie in the sky, and when we go to the people who advocate, ah, you know, I'm just too busy. So if you're really serious, and I believe that you're really serious, if BD is chosen, then I challenge you. Start figuring out how to pay for this on a long-term basis. We are in a deficit. When the three of us came, You know, and we're sworn in on December 10th, we had a $54 million budget. Now y'all wanna know how much we spend usually annually? A little over 100 million. We've done an extraordinary job. We have reduced it dramatically, but our finance director has told us, yeah, next year, you're gonna be probably anywhere from $15 million back in deficit. So I've heard the answer. Your organization is great. But if it is voting on, you have another part of the job. Don't abandon us. Stay with us. I challenge you. Where are all these monies that are going to come in? Because the city doesn't have it. So don't abandon us. Thank you.

I'm going to take a little different angle on this. Probably isn't going to be super popular, but the council chose to remove this park or this project from the CIP during the budget process because we couldn't afford the capital cost of it, and we also couldn't afford to maintain it. The maintenance part of it, if this project were to go through as far as the BT Lumber site, we still can't afford the maintenance. We have literally millions of dollars at the water park. We have $4 million in roofs to repair. We have... $3.2 million is being spent on parks right now to maintain that we can't afford because we're running a $15 million deficit, structural deficit, as we sit here right now. We do not have $250,000 to spend to maintain this park. And if we do go forward with this park, the other parks are, everybody's gonna get a lower level of service. There isn't magically gonna be $250,000 to spend on this park. I know that's difficult to hear, but it's just the reality. And all I know is that we have deferred maintenance coming out of our ears in this city. City Park is one of them. If we don't get this grant money for City Park, that place is just gonna deteriorate because we don't have any money to spend to fix the restrooms, to fix the sports fields, five acre neighborhood park. So I am not in favor of adding another expense, just like we had the opportunity to have $35 million in grant money, the biggest grant opportunity in the state of California for homelessness to purchase a hotel. We did not have $1.2 million a year to spend to pay our part of operating that over 15 years. And we don't have $250,000 a year to spend. As much as people would love to see this park built downtown and have been asking for it for years and years, it's just a reality. And the other thing I will add to this is knowing and being part of the Prop 68 grant last time, we're talking about one point is the difference between getting a grant or not. This is not like there's five points out there to squander. So if we do go with the Beattie Lumber Site project and we don't get the award, we could have done it at the jeopardy of having $8 million to spend on our downtown city park. And that's just the reality of it. And that park won't be improved and will be the way it is with restrooms broken down and sports fields that are overrun. And we won't have a park at Beattie either. So I wanna look at this from the standpoint of being financial and the fact that the city is in a really tough place right now financially. And the other thing I will also add when it comes to finances, the new parts of Antioch that are being developed, built into their CFDs or community facility districts, is the maintenance of their parks. So those new areas are fully paying for the maintenance of their parks. The downtown area and north of Highway 4 pays for none of their parks in the downtown area. And so that's just a reality. The general fund is picking up the cost of that. All of Antioch is picking up the cost of maintaining Proserville Park, City Park, whatever other parks. There aren't a lot of them north of Highway 4. So we went forward in 2000 to Pro Tem's point about coming through with additional funding to maintain this. We went through a process in 2000 to do a Prop 218 ballot to change the structure of our street lighting and landscape maintenance district to, at the time, it was gonna be $50 north of Highway 4, $100 in the middle of town, and $150 in the southeast part of town. And it failed by almost 70%. and the majority of the reason that it failed was pretty much north of highway four in the middle part of town and so i just want to say that there is a desire to have more improvements and more infrastructure and we do need to improve our downtown and we do need to make places where people come to and enjoy it and gather i'm for all of that right we need to build community this has been an amazing example of community coming together across all across the community and really fighting for something that they really believe in and love and i think that's an amazing thing we need to do more of that but i'll just say that we do not have in my opinion the resources nor the the the wiggle room in this process to be able to um take a chance at not going after city park so i'm going to be i'm going to be in favor of city park

Mr. Mayor?

Council Member Torres-Walker.

Sorry. Can you hear me? Yeah. I know that Council Member Rocha mentioned since we have to only choose one that he would just choose the yard. I don't I don't know if this would be putting us in a position of competing interest, but I didn't hear that we only had to submit one application. I heard that we can do two applications. Was that correct?

Hello? That is correct. There's no limit to the number of applications that a city can submit.

So would the council be against just submitting two applications?

I would be opposed to that.

You say you would be?

I would be opposed. To submit two applications? Yes, I would be opposed. I think Townsend has made the case not to do that.

And I also think it would be a question of staff capacity to run two parallel processes. And I'm looking at Director Wright. Is that something that you believe that you could do?

But you're not on the record.

I guess my question would be how well, and I'm not trying to put an answer in your mouth, how well would you be able to run two processes? Because they're both big. I remember when we did the one for Contraloma States Park. It was huge, the process was.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things I said is anything is possible. I mean... It's a heavy lift, especially when we're thinking about another grant that's due at the end of this month and other grants and running programs and we're already understaffed and we already have two facilities that are down. That would be a tremendous lift. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying it is what Townsend has said is we wanna make sure we do it well. And how well can I do to in this small timeframe? I'm not sure about it.

Fair enough, thank you. Council Member Torres-Walker, did you wanna add anything else?

No, I understand. I figured it will be a large lift.

So, Mr. Mayor, I always tell candidates, elected and appointed officials, that before you make a decision, ask yourself the question, what is in the best interest of Antioch? So with that in mind, in my earlier statements, I want to say to Townsend, to all three of you, and to Mr. Wright, and all others involved, thank you very much for your... forthrightness coming before the city council and giving us a very accurate description of what may or may not happen but i'm going to move that we do apply for this grant for city park i have a motion for mayor pro tem to have second all right i'll second that so we have a motion from mayor pro tem um second is there further discussion

Yeah, of course. Second by Mayor Bernal. Any further discussion?

Yeah, I guess just one more question. So for Townsend, you said that it takes a while for this particular type of funding to circle back around. And, you know, I was the biggest advocate to bring grants to the city of Antioch, grant writing. everything because there had to be money out there to offset cost of what community want to see and need versus what the general fund can balance. Do you perceive that there will be potential future opportunities down the road sooner than later? Could there be a commitment to aggressively pursue grant funding related to parks no matter which site is chosen tonight?

I can commit to putting forward the best application possible on behalf of the city of Antioch if the city decides to pursue a grant as part of our contract. And my responsibility, I will make you aware of all park funding when it becomes available, and I will provide guidance on how best to secure said funding, how best to maximize points, how best to maximize the resources and funding that the city has at its disposal. So I commit to not leaving any stone unturned for making you aware of everything that's out there, be it state, federal, foundation, private, et cetera.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? All right. Can we take a roll call vote?

Council Member Torres-Walker?

Yes.

Okay, so let's, to clarify, a motion for the city park. Correct. Council Member Torres-Walker, yes.

Yes.

Council Member Rocha? It's a no for me. Council Member Wilson?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Freitas?

Yes.

Mayor Bernal? Yes. Motion passes four to one.

All right, we're going to take a five-minute break. We've been at this for a long time.

Meeting is recessed for a five-minute break at 11.11 p.m.

Thank you. you Thank you. you Thank you. . . . Thank you.

All right, welcome back from our recess. Mr. Clerk, could you please call the roll? Thank you.

Council Member Torres-Walker.

Present.

Council Member Rocha? Here. Council Member Wilson? Here. Mayor Pro Temporetto? Present. Mayor Bernal? Here. Thank you. We have a quorum at 11.20 p.m.

All right, so we are now moving on to... Yes, sir.

Could I make a motion to extend our meeting till 12 o'clock, even though I don't think we need that much time?

All right, we have a motion to extend the meeting to 12 o'clock from Council Member Rocha. Second. Second from Mayor Pro Tem Freitas. Please take a roll call vote, please.

Council Member Torres-Walker?

Aye.

Aye.

Council Member Rocha? Yes. Council Member Wilson? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Yes. Mayor Bernal? Yes. Thank you. We have vote passes 5-0 to extend to 12.

All right, item nine is discussion of downtown security services. I'll turn this over to Acting City Manager Merchant.

Good evening. In June, this item was brought forth to extend the security services for downtown. City council did not approve it at that time and asked for more information and metrics to come back. I will state that this, even though it's labeled as downtown security services, this was only for city-owned parcels in downtown. It wasn't to provide security services to businesses. It just absolutely though did act as a deterrent having that presence downtown, but it wasn't to actively monitor or provide security services for any of the businesses downtown. The administrative assistant in the city manager's office did gather some metrics and data from the firm that was providing Spearhead, that was providing the security services, as well as reached out to the downtown businesses to see how they felt about these security services. The security services, I will state, were also from evening hours into early morning. So it was not while the businesses were open. So only a handful of businesses actually responded. You can see that in an attachment E. And it did appear that actually a lot of the businesses that were surveyed didn't even realize security services were happening downtown or not. So with that, I'll turn it over to City Council to continue that discussion. If they want to continue to explore security services downtown, at which time we would have to issue a request for proposals, just as we did a few years ago, to review other security services companies, as well as Spearhead could, of course, submit proposal for that. So I'll turn the discussion over to City Council for direction as to what we want to do.

All right, thank you. Any public comment on this item?

Yes, Mr. Becker?

Thank you. So this one was particularly interesting for me because before I stepped into my advocacy and housing development and consulting roles. I managed a private security company out of Santa Clara for years, and we did commercial private properties as well as multifamily residential, both on-site and patrol services. So I'm pretty familiar with these different security companies, their processes, their models, and more importantly, the technology they use. And so I think that for me, the biggest question, and I do say this respectfully, but I have to say this. For me, what's very alarming is that staff puts out a report that includes these security logs And then we get this generalized description of what this is, but there is no results. There's no, beyond what you see in the staff report, we as staff feel that they have been doing a good job. We as staff feel that they should continue or the work, not necessarily that they should continue obviously, but that the work should continue in downtown. But really, most importantly, it's staff's responsibility to monitor and maintain all contracts. And these contracts have been going for a few years now. But in this staff report, there was only a few months of security logs that were submitted. Well, I went through all of the security logs. And a couple of things were very alarming. In the initial part of the staff report, it speaks to a high volume of emergency calls that were put out over a period of time. Police service calls, dealing with unhoused, those kinds of things, medical calls. You look through those security logs, and I think you see four or five very low instances of made contact with an unhoused person, or there was a random vehicle there. Five in the hundreds of logs that were put out. But most importantly, what was concerning was As Acting City Manager Merchant just said, the contract is for city-owned parking lots. So if that is the case, why are 90% of the pictures that are in those security logs of properties that are throughout downtown that are not parking lots? Why is off the charts there? Why is a picture of Monica's there? Why is there a random picture of a property on G Street? But then the most alarming part is why are there pictures of big box commercial retail shopping centers that are not even in downtown? This security company submitted reports with pictures for properties that they supposedly were at that are not even in downtown. They said we patrolled downtown parking lots and then it's a shopping center in a newer development. That is my time. Where are these guards and who are we paying? And what is this company's relationship to the city?

Thank you. Can we please have Keith Butler?

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council. Keith Butler. I am the CEO and founder of Elite Defense Security Solutions. We are a private security company based here in California with ties to prior law enforcement. I'm a retired law enforcement officer of about 18 years. I wanted to talk about this item in particular. I've heard all the comments that were made earlier about the downtown Antioch District uh... just listening to some of the the questions even with with mister baker brought up a really good point uh... when you're hiring a private security company what i've always had my model off of is being professional and holding the staff accountable uh... you guys are paying for service and you should be provided that particular service uh... without getting into the particulars of the current company uh... i can just tell you a simple things is that i look at our company and how we base things off of his it's not who's providing security, it's what does security look like. And if the city of Antioch is putting out an RFQ or an RFP or whatever that came out prior to this just for city parking lots, that's pretty much all you're gonna get. Within that, if this is something that the city is looking for to kind of assist with their business owners with developments of security measures that can be accountable, data-driven, You really need to look at your options as far as what security can do. There was talks about tonight, Ricotta camera systems within the city of Antioch and how a lot of business owners are asking about cameras within the city. We are a Verkada provider. We do work with Verkada just as well as a lot of other security companies do. In particular, a lot of law enforcement agencies use Verkada. And within a Verkada system, we can also tap in and put in feeds to business owners that they can review their own cameras, but as well as partnership with the police department to be able to provide that data that they need. Looking at what the logs that the security are on, I do agree with the last speaker. There were a lot of items that were on there that I saw that did not appear to be parking lots. It appeared to be activity that they were tracking, which is a great job by them tracking data and medical calls and emergency calls within that area, but you're also going to want that data as far as a security company as a provider, to also report back, report back with the statistics of the hotspots, report back of what's occurring in this particular parking lot, that particular parking lot. So respectfully within that, if this does go to an RFQ, I would definitely like to be a potential candidate to kind of assist in the city of even drafting up an RFQ of what is needed As far as what the business district is requiring as well as a city for its city parking locks.

Thank you All right, thank you any other public comment yes one more Look at April 16th log date look at three to date and then look at one to date. Thank you. I

We have no further public comments. All right. It's before the council. Any questions, comments? Mayor Pro Tem Freitas.

I don't necessarily have questions at this point, but because of this being on the agenda, I'm sure we all received some emails and things of that sort. And I think when we initially did this, we did focus just on the publicly owned property. But from my perspective, I don't know, Mr. Mayor, if we wanted to constitute a work group You know, in this report, we didn't receive any input from the police department. We didn't receive any input from code enforcement. We didn't receive, as far as I know, any input from the Antioch Chamber of Commerce or the downtown, where'd this go? Yeah, DAA, Downtown Antioch Association. And frankly, and the owner of Hen and Drake, I mean, she, I thought, spoke tonight. And so I think maybe we had, I had more of a narrow view, but frankly, some of these issues that have come up, I think we need to sit down and maybe in a work group way, fashion sooner rather than later and ask some of the questions. What specifically do we want? How do we want it reported? Let's be proactive versus reactive and get information. At this point, I'm not really ready to approve this because I think that we really need to see where we're at, and with the input from the police department, code enforcement, and some of the actual business owners and operators down here, I think we might get a better product if we kind of studied this for two weeks, three weeks, and come back to council, maybe at the second meeting in September with the recommendation.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. Yeah, I looked at the staff report, and under discussion, one thing that it mentions here is one key strategy identified was the deployment of private security services to act as visible deterrent, identify safety issues, monitor city-owned properties, and promptly report incidents and safety concerns to the Antioch Police Department. My concern, the communications that some of us received that Mayor Potem referenced, and then when you look at the survey of the participants who did the survey, it looked like they were mostly merchants, restaurant owners, And when I go to the chamber meetings, which I'll be on Thursday morning, because that's the next chamber meeting, when I spoke to them about this contract a few months ago, they looked at me as if they didn't know what I was talking about. And then we discussed it at a city council meeting. Can we learn more about what actually is happening? Because they didn't seem to know anything about it. And when you read the comments, the feedback from the survey that was provided, when they're talking about the key strategy was to be visible deterrent when people don't even know they're there. And I know that from what I heard it's really Maybe this is misleading, the way that the key was written, because if it's like just to make sure that the parks, the parking lots that are city-owned are being supervised, monitored, that's one thing. I think what the merchants and the restaurant owners are wanting to have a relationship with whoever the security is to exchange numbers. How can I get ahold of you if I need you? And that didn't happen with this particular vendor. So my suggestion, along with what Mayor Pro Tem just stated, I do think we need to have some community members, merchants, restaurant owners, police department, what is it that we could do together that will help improve the safety, the supervision, the visibility, all of the things that I think that they're looking for and asking for. I meet with them Thursday and I'm sure I'm gonna hear questions about what are we gonna do to try to improve things? Because it is hard to read, difficult to read comments that things are so bad for the people who are trying to make it, investing in our downtown, who wanna be safe and be able to have an open business without challenges that they're being faced with. And it's a question of what can the police department do, what can the private security do, how do we? bring them together for the better good of us all so i agree i think there needs to be some dialogue before we i'm not prepared in any way to approve this contract i think we need to really look at what where we're at and what it is that we want to do councilman wilson yeah so i'm looking you know and looking over the rfq that we did back in 2023 one of the things

I noticed it pretty quickly. We didn't include any type of measurables that Mr. I'm sorry, sir. What was your name? Mr. Butler was talking about the measurables around patrol hours, business contacts, activities, how they communicate with the police. And I think that's something if we do do this again, we need to include that in there. And I think. I think since it wasn't included I think that's probably why they kind of I don't want to say rogue but just kind of did whatever but they thought okay well this is good I'm doing this but if we do you know if we have this committee we do probably should we do need to kind of figure out what the performance measures that we are looking for but that was just the thing that stuck out the most to me about the RFQ and I'm like wow we totally missed it on this one

Well, if I may just provide some context, although I wasn't involved when this contract was done a few years ago, I do remember the management team at that time, they met with some downtown businesses, I think they met with Joe Martinez and some others, and one of the metrics, I don't want to say metrics, but one of the difficulties I do recall being discussed was the fact that how can the city pay for extra security for a business just downtown and not provide the same thing at Slatton Ranch, for example. If the downtown businesses aren't paying for it, why can't we do the same thing at Slatton Ranch? And so that's how, recall it evolving into being just to downtown parking lots and that's why there really wasn't any metrics because how can you just pick downtown versus another challenged area within the city and why should we be paying for those services and not the businesses themselves coming together to have a way to pay for it so just to give a little background on that I know that's kind of how this evolved councilmember Torres Walker

I was trying to use some Zoom etiquette.

I see you.

It's getting late, y'all. I'm still sitting here at 1130. So thank you. Is it acting city manager merchant? I don't know at this point, it's late. I think it's acting, acting. I do remember those conversations. And so how this all came to be was there was a lot of activity happening in downtown parking lots, especially Smith's Landing with the cars coming down and spinning out and everything. people started coming to the city and businesses saying, you know, do something. We, we need more support from the city. And obviously with the police department being understaffed and like right now still currently under understaffed at a rate where like we can't just dedicate officers to downtown. The conversation was like, well, what can we do to prevent some of this particular activity? That's why I was relegated to city-owned parking lots because we couldn't justify doing it for like the businesses because we were like, well, are there other city-owned parking lots throughout the city? And you're right. People were asking, well, if you're going to do a downtown when you want to do it for everyone. I mean, one of the biggest things is that like, it does kind of feel like businesses downtown are kind of under siege, but, and I'm sure this feels this way for, for most businesses across the city. I think I have talked to people and I think what is being often overlooked is that one of the biggest issues with this contract was that it just provided patrol for city-owned parking lots downtown and didn't include patrols for businesses, right? which is now increasingly becoming an issue. I know we all read the emails and have had conversations with people around how can we support. I actually did review attachment C where shield protection public security said that they made between January 2024 and June, 2026, 83. I'm assuming those 83 calls are referrals directly to APD. And when I also looked over that document, there was at least one property outlined in here that is way over by Deer Valley, right? And so I'm pretty sure that question won't get answered tonight because I wish somebody from the security company would have showed up, is how did they end up from downtown near the water all the way up to District 4, but I'm assuming that's neither here nor there. I also reviewed the survey that Attachment E, which was pretty interesting. The survey results and whoever did this quickly, I commend you. The survey was completed by seven it says seven respondents. So there's seven businesses that responded to the survey out of a potential of 50 businesses or more that exists downtown. But even when you look at the survey results, you have 71% of the respondents out of the seven individual businesses said they would support the city continuing to dedicate some security services to downtown. Now, mind you, that's seven individual businesses out of the potential 50 plus, just because they're the only ones that respond to the survey. It is very telling the survey results. The time of day that came out of the survey that businesses felt like the majority of businesses who replied to the survey felt like security would be needed would be weekdays in the evenings, weekends in the evenings, and for special events. Another part of the survey that was interesting is when people were asked, how often do they see the security company patrolling downtown? A majority of the, it was pretty spread out, but you had, you had never rarely or occasionally were the majority of the respondents, which wouldn't be in accordance with the contract because it was to increase visibility. However, you have one outlier that says that they have seen the security company several times per week. When you look at question six about the overall satisfaction, you had 43% of individuals saying dissatisfied and 43% of the respondents saying that they're neutral. I don't know if neutral means giving up or what that would mean without any actual conversations with folks who took the survey. And then, you know, you had 71% of the respondents to the survey say that they were not familiar at all with the security company. So that doesn't speak to even like creating relationships with folks. I also think when you a security company and you have a history of doing this kind of work and you submit an application, through our RFQ, most security companies will provide you with their metrics or measurements of what they would consider to be success. And so it could be on the city to provide that, but these are supposed to be the experts in the field. They could have provided that to us. I don't agree with moving forward with the contractors just because of the survey. It clearly states that businesses want to see security downtown, but they might not be particularly satisfied with this particular security company. I think having more conversations with the businesses downtown on what are further solutions, how could they inform a new RFQ? would be definitely detrimental on who we actually attract with this RFQ to do a quality job downtown in the event that the council want to go in that direction. I know that this is probably off topic, but I also want to highlight that we have a dispensary downtown off the charts. And, you know, that that could be there were conversations around security. This organization is this company is supposed to have 24 hour armed security and also security for deliveries. Right. And so there's a big concern around, you know, is that is that happening? And what is the the potential that this could also be drawn like a little attention to downtown? If we did move forward with another contract, I would want to include patrolling for businesses, but I, and I think we need to look at long-term strategies. This is a business district. Most business districts and other municipalities have a special police district overlay where the businesses actually do contribute through their business licenses. for additional police patrols. That could potentially be a longer-term solution outside of a short-term contract. I'm always for not contracting out work that should actually be full-time positions in the city. And as we deliberate this, I'm wondering what is the capacity of the police department right now currently to provide increased patrols to downtown? And also, is there an opportunity to commit potentially a CSO to ride around in a marked vehicle and patrol the downtown based on the needs of the businesses while we deliberate this, but maybe also into the future as the city considers a longer-term strategy of the potential

um creating a special police district um for um the waterfront all right thank you yes um my suggestion about creating this work group and listening to council member rocha talking about thursday having a meeting I do think that we need to be a little creative, because this could be possibly a collaborative effort between the City of Antioch and individual businesses, that they financially contribute to this. I know everybody says, oh, it's a problem. City, solve it. But I think there is a possibility of having collaboration between the two. Maybe I'm crazy that way, but it's in their best interests And I think having this work group with the police department, code enforcement, you know, and actual businesses that are down there, particularly Debbie Blazier and the woman with Hen and Drake. Erin Green. Pardon?

Erin Green.

Yes. And I just think we should try to get them together. And I would suggest probably the city attorney because there may be questions About you know some of the services on private property versus public property and if there's a fine line or a thick line So I I think it's a least an idea to move forward and I think that councilmember Taurus Walker is right Because we don't have the services right now the question to the police department is can we use you know Yeah, are there any other personnel that can be used? Even VIPs, for that matter, if that's a possibility. I mean, I just think we need to be a little creative short term, looking for a longer term solution.

I was just gonna say, actually, the CSO idea, was written in a couple of those statements about in the interim until such time, could the police department work in some way to be more visible, even if it's CSOs or VIPs or whatever that might be?

Being that acting city manager, merchant, being that we have a couple of our police officers here that are in operations in the street, can we maybe get a little input from them tonight on what they think about the idea of providing CSOs or VIPs or extra patrols? And I think the other thing we need to keep in mind is that this current this current work's being done between 5 p.m. and midnight, right? So it's not during normal business hours, and so Captain.

Right, and that might be to some of the point of the survey, not even seeing it, because if the business is already closed, you're not gonna know. So that makes it a little bit difficult on that survey measure.

Sure, Captain Cook, you wanna?

Good evening. Good evening. Under the words of Director Wright, anything's possible.

Well, since you're just tired, I should have said acting chief cook. And so this goes with a lot of authority when you say things like that.

No, I mean, we've we've already increased our presence over there with the extra patrols between officers and CSOs. And that's all varying hours of the day and night. And those are scheduled through our CAD system already. So they automatically populate. So we have increased those calls for service. I looked at the calls from what we've been out of service with security for about roughly 42 days. I went 42 days before and 42 days up till now from July or July 1 to now. There's been roughly a 23% increase in calls for service to the police department in those 42-day window. It's roughly three and a half calls for service per day to four and a half calls for service per day. So there is an increase in calls, but I think the overall security haven't, them there, having the lights on, the flashing is a deterrence. The businesses are reporting the vandalisms, the burglaries, and the after-hours events that is occurring. So having that extra deterrence there I think does serve a great purpose and is a force multiplier for us.

How much do you currently collaborate with the security? And prior to the 42 days they haven't been working, how often were you collaborating with them or were you collaborating with them?

I was collaborating with them. I met with them several times. I actually went and drove around the downtown with them. and talking about different strategies for the different parking lots, the encampments, the loiterings and the vehicles, the noise. Because there are some residents that live there as well, besides just the businesses that were affected by this. And then we also had Amtrak, the remodel of the station there. So they were gracious enough, as they patrol Walde Plaza, they're monitoring and able to see what is going on with the Amtrak in the downtown area. And at my request, they were taking pictures and providing those reports to the city manager's office so we can kind of see what's going on. And just having that extra eyes and the extra reporting and the collaboration between the two was an overall help for the police department and also being able to strategize next steps.

So you saw the security as being a benefit to the overall presence downtown and being able to be better alerted when there's a problem?

Overall, yes.

Okay, because it is $100,000 a year, so it's not cheap. And also, I suspect as they're driving from one parking lot to the next, they can take different routes to get there, and if they see something along the way, it isn't like they're precluded from making a call if they see something going on, correct? Correct. Yeah, so businesses, I guess, would incidentally be benefited by having them drive between the parking lots. through downtown different routes.

Correct.

Okay. So there's, any other comments or questions on this? So there's been a, yeah, I'm sorry. So there's been a working group request. I know that Mayor Pro Tem, you and Council Member Torres-Walker already kind of do the Northern Waterfront and downtown. I don't know if. you all were going to be part of something? Are you thinking that it would be strictly staff driven?

No, no, I think, sure. Commissioner Torres-Walker agrees, yes.

Well, and the other thing is.

But the only reason, hesitancy, is because Council Member Rocha is our liaison.

Oh, down at the chamber?

I just know I'm going to speak to them on Thursday, and there's going to be some interest. So whatever we can do to get people together.

Yeah, I mean, either, I'm sorry? Oh, either, I mean, I just think, I think I'd like to hopefully see something done in the month of August so that we can come back, say, by the end of September with at least a proposal on what we want to do.

With this working group, when I speak with the chamber on Thursday, how should I facilitate that to happen?

Well, I think, number one, I mean, there were only seven people, but A lot of people don't know what's happening, having the police department there, having code enforcement there, having chamber, DAA, and some business owners there to talk about this. It's like, you know, I mean, part of it is just what's happening, and how does the police department control it?

I'm sure there's an interest to do that, so it's just a matter of just getting everybody together.

And that this may be a collaborative effort between the two. So if you want me to work with Louie or Tamisha, I will.

Mayor, the only reason why I don't think the standing committee is a good structure for what is being proposed tonight is because that's more like, that would be more like me and Mayor Pro Tem Fred is deliberating and talking to staff. It's more structure like the city council where it's only we take comments and then we deliberate. I think what Mayor Pro Tem is proposing is more of a community driven conversation. That's the only reason why I don't think that a standing committee would be the best place for that, especially if you want to germinate new ideas and get people in a full dialogue rather than feeling like they're talking at us and we're deliberating around them.

Okay, so Mayor Pro Tem said he would work with Council Member Rocha just to informally talk with people downtown with the goal, and I think also obviously PD be involved in that, code enforcement, whoever else would be involved in discussion. I don't know if Mr. Butler would like to be someone that's consulted on it as a security expert, but I think it would just be good to put everybody's minds together, but then also from the number of calls and the complaints we're hearing from downtown, I just got one today from the marina where someone was having kayaks stolen out of the marina or trying to steal them. And apparently there's some boats parked out on the river now. And so there's just a lot more activity downtown and I think we need to do something quickly.

We definitely need the interim strategy. I understand the police department saying it was an added support. I mean, similar to the crisis response team, right? I think any way to relieve of our officers to address those critical issues in the community, not saying that the issues that downtown is facing are critical, I'm the belief that we do need to pursue another request for qualifications. I just think that it should be on the heels of some productive conversations so that that request can go, can speak to the overall greater need and also some of the things you mentioned, Mayor. I would, you know, I can't really see Mr. Butler, but I think if he's, I would I don't want to mention it, but I think anybody who will be a potential applicant might have an advantage in those spaces if they attended.

Right, so that may disqualify them, is that what you're saying, if they're involved? So yeah, we can maybe keep it apart from them. Maybe between the police department and everybody, we could come up with an RFP. The other thing is there was a DAA meeting on the 19th at El Campanile Theater, and that might be another opportunity to talk to folks at that as well. Okay, so Mayor Pro Tem Freitas, Council Member Rocha will work between Chamber, DAA, get together with folks, and then hopefully we can bring something back with staff towards the end of September with a proposal on how we proceed.

Noted. I'll definitely deliver this message to the first acting city manager. All right.

I want to raise up something real quick. Just be mindful of public meetings and the potential of the Brown Act is that I will also be attending that DAA meeting.

Yeah, I will too. So I guess maybe that.

To talk about these similar issues. So maybe it might make sense to kind of split our efforts. Maybe if you're planning to be their mayor and I'm planning to be there, it might not make sense to have another council member there, especially if we're talking about something that might possibly return to them.