City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Good evening and welcome to the meeting of the Hercules City Council. I'm Mayor Chris Kelly and I'm calling the meeting to order at seven o'clock p.m. Today is Tuesday, September 8th, 2026. May we have the roll call, please?

Good evening, Council Member Grimsley.

Present.

Council Member Butteri. Present. Council Member Bailey. Present. Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin.

Present.

And Mayor Kelly. Present. Thank you. Okay, can you all join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Thank you. Tonight we have a moment of silence for a local person and for others. Our first moment of silence will be for Joyce Tanaka, who is a kindergarten teacher retired at Ohlone. And I'd also like to have the moment of silence for the over 1,300 people who have died in the Nepal flood. There are now 5,000 people still missing. Could we please have a moment of silence for Joyce Tanaka and the people in Nepal? thank you so moving on we have a proclamation tonight which i am going to read now and this is a proclamation regarding the 25th anniversary of september 11th patriot day and national day of service and remembrance in the city of hercules whereas september 11th 2026 marks a quarter century after the september 11th terrorist attacks on the world trade center pentagon and Flight 93 that targeted innocent Americans and claimed nearly 3,000 lives that day, as Americans watched four commercial jetliners be converted into weapons of terror. And whereas each year the nation commemorates this somber anniversary as a commitment to never forget the patriotism and enduring resilience that emerged in remembrance of all those who perished that day and in the aftermath that followed, and honors the selfless bravery of first responders and individuals that sacrificed their lives answering their call to service. Whereas the memories of September 11th may still feel close to those adults who witnessed the unimaginable unfold and are now parents, grandparents, veterans, teachers, first responders, or community leaders. Children and young adults born after 2001 may know the date but were too young to know its significance in the enduring legacy of compassion and service in this nation. And whereas the city of Hercules, along with the nation, solemnly remembers the individual who lost their lives that tragic day and honors the bravery of all who responded to the attacks in their call to service and recommit to carrying the memory forward, so that a new generation of Americans will learn about the unimaginable loss we experienced and the stories of bravery, unity, and service. And those can continue to inspire compassion as freedom, courage, and unity should never be taken for granted. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that I, Chris Kelly, Mayor of the City of Hercules, on behalf of the entire City Council, do hereby proclaim September 11th, 2026 as Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance in the City of Hercules. I call upon the people of Hercules to observe this day by participating in remembrance ceremonies or educational programs, engaging in volunteer service, or observing a moment of silence to honor the innocent victims who perished under the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. In witness thereof, I hereunto set my hand and cause the seal of the city of Hercules to be affixed this eighth day of September 2026. So now I'd just like to ask if any council members have any comments about this? Yes, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, for putting forward this proclamation and recognizing a very somber day in our nation's history and truly our world's history. You know, I really don't have much of a recollection of that day, but I do remember being a little child and watching my dad get dressed, and it was unlike any other day, just seeing the distress, In his face, he was still in the fire service at the time and darted off and I pretty much didn't see him for like the next two days. But I just remember seeing his face as he was shaving like something was wrong. And since then, you know, obviously the nation and the world has changed drastically. But I think when we reflect on that. horrific event, we also recognize the heroic actions of everyday people coming together for a common cause that's bigger than themselves. We saw our nation unite in ways that, to this day, I don't think we've seen since then. We saw random strangers helping out each other across the nation during the event and even afterwards. And I think about people like Chief Ganci, who was a fire chief of the New York Fire Department at the time, who, whereas a lot of leaders will typically be away from the emergency and their command post, respectfully leading the mission, he was right in the fight. And unfortunately, he lost his life. But when I think about his story of selfless service, even to the very end, I find it inspiring. And I find it as a means to remember that even in our darkest moments, we can always come together and unite. So thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Anyone else on the Council? Yes, Council Member Grimsley.

I just want to kind of piggyback on what the Vice Mayor said, because what I remember most profoundly about that day was what happened after that day, and that was the way everyday Americans united. We were one country, one people. It was a somber, horrific, horrible thing that happened in our country on our soil. And we all felt it collectively. And we looked at one another a little bit differently than we did the day before. And we held that for quite some time, we as Americans. But then there are Americans who found themselves othered by 9-11. When we began more scrutiny for travel, we began more scrutiny around who we thought the terrorists were. And I fear that we are now on a time very similar to that. And I just want to remind Americans all of us here and anyone watching or listening, that we are one country. We are one people. We are all humans who live in this country, who were born in this country, who work in this country, living very ordinary lives most of the time, but we're all capable of extraordinary things. And most of us, the vast majority of us, will use that ability to do something really positive. We'll do something to better our community. I just encourage us all to look around and see one another again just as, for a back of the letter term, brothers and sisters. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Anyone else? Council Member Bailey?

Thank you, Madam Mayor, for the proclamation and for the comments by the Vice Mayor as well as from Council Member Grimsley. I do remember the day I was living in Florida. We were in flight school, and we had ground school in the morning. So because it was flight school, we were discussing what had happened at the first time the aircraft hit the towers, and we were trying to figure out from our perspective as student pilots what could have gone wrong. And so we actually watched live on TV the second one just because of the time zone difference. which we then knew something was wrong. And I remember just the confusion and the how could this happen-ness of that. And I think that what's been mentioned here is how it brought unity in our country. And I think it was very fortunate that we had that at that time, who our leadership was. We're in a place today where we don't have that unity, and it's unfortunate that it takes a tragedy sometimes to bring us together. So I think the thing that we can learn from that as we go forward is, of course, we want to be safe, but also to work together. We're stronger together. We saw that in 9-11. We watched many of those firefighters from New York go into that second tower to try and put out the fires that were midway up and then to watch that building collapse, and then to later watch the same exact thing happen with the second building. So there's lots of service that we can do to each other. I think the important thing is for us to work together to try and find things that we have in common, because there's many more of those than things we have apart. And I think that's a lesson that I learned from that day. So thank you, Madam Mayor, for that.

Thank you. Council Member Battarai.

Thank you Madam Mayor and thank you for putting this proclamation and also the moment silence for the people that lost life in Nepal recently. For me personally, I was a frisk out of the boat when 9-11 happened in this country. And that reminds me this country unites more than ever when and as they need. And as a council member of City of Hercules, I'm proud of the spirit of the unity and service that defines the Hercules and this nation together. And I just wanted to thank you again for all the first responders and our all the ordinary people who was going there to support while others were flying or clearing. I think that is the spirit of this country. I think I wanted to carry that spirit and the remembrance for our next generation to come. Thank you again.

Thank you, and I want to thank all the council for your comments. As I've said in years past, I was in New York City on 9-11. I was in the Upper West Side, and I recall that after the plane hit the towers, my husband and I went out into the street, and we recall people all that day and that evening streaming up, wanting food, wanting shelter, having no way to get home it was very very moving um and absolutely surreal and it was a day really of unity and i really prized that so thank you everyone very much so now we're going to move on and tonight we have a presentation from the family justice center and we have our executive director visa french here along with Natalie Oleas, the Regional Administrative Director. Welcome, Director French.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members, and community members. My name is Bisa French, and I'm the Executive Director of the Family Justice Center, and I have with me Natalie Oleas, and we have some slides. Oh, here. Thank you. So I say I'm the executive director of the Family Justice Center because I've been there as the executive director for the last six months. However, I'm not new to the Family Justice Center. I spent 28 years with the Richmond Police Department. the last six as the chief of police, and I retired in January. It was my time at the police department when we actually started the Family Justice Center in Contra Costa County in the city of Richmond. And for me, back then I was a sergeant, and I realized when we were starting the Family Justice Center that this was the missing key that I always experienced during my career when responding to domestic violence calls, that we didn't have more resources for the victims. So back then, and we're talking 28 years ago, so it was a while ago, I can remember going to calls, taking a report, but feeling like I wanted to do something more for the victim instead of just leaving her there and to find resources for her or himself. So when we started the Family Justice Center, and I'll explain what that is in just one moment, it was the key for me. And it was more than just providing resources for victims, but I saw how the Family Justice Center and providing resources for victims can ultimately provide more safety for our communities. Because my thought back then was if we can give resources to victims of interpersonal violence and their families, then the kids are gonna get the support they need, victims are gonna get the support they need, and in turn, that is going to have an effect on our community violence if we're providing resources and therapy and everything that survivors need. And that's ultimately what happened. I mean, you're in Hercules, pretty close to Richmond, and you know over the last 10 plus years, we've made a significant impact on community violence in Richmond, and the Family Justice Center was one of the initiatives that contributed to that. Next slide. So the Family Justice Center is a backbone agency for victims of interpersonal violence. So we serve victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, elder abuse, and child abuse. So what does that mean? When someone is victimized, they come to us, and we have staff. that hears their story and we connect that victim to services. And so while we don't have, we don't provide all the services ourselves, we focus on these four areas and our staff along with our partners focus on these areas to provide the resources and safety net that a victim needs to get through the situation. So as you see, health, community, wealth, education, and training. And so we wrap ourselves around that victim. The first thing of course is making sure that they're safe in their space, in their home, or wherever it might be. We do safety planning. and we focus on crisis support, but we stay with the victim long term. We wanna make sure that we're meeting their needs so that they can continue on a path to healing. Next slide, please. So partnerships are the way the Family Justice Center works. As I said, we have staff, but we have over 80 different partners that we work with to provide that safety net and support network. We have public and private partnerships. So we work with law enforcement agencies. We work with other nonprofits. We work with governmental agencies, county agencies. And through all of our partnerships, that's how we provide all the resources that a person might need. So before, people ask why we did a Family Justice Center. Because as you know, all these networks are in place. So why a Family Justice Center? And what we heard from victims was that the system was fragmented. So if a person is victimized here in the city of Hercules, before we had the Family Justice Center, they would have to go to Concord to get advocacy services from the advocacy agency. They would have to go to Martinez to get a restraining order. They just have to go to so many different parts of the county to receive all the services that they need. Now, with the Family Justice Center, they could call us or walk through our doors and receive all of those services in one location. Turn it over to Natalie.

Thank you, good evening. I'm much shorter than she is. We can go to the next slide. So a lot of times people ask, well, what kind of services are clients looking for when they come in our doors? It varies based on what the needs are of the client, and every client needs something different. But we primarily have resources focused on mental health, our children and youth, and creating community for our adult survivors as well. And so that's Project Connect, for example, is a survivor-led monthly group. It's not a support group. It's really more of a community circle of survivors creating those bonds, which are sometimes broken when you are in an abusive relationship, and rebuilding those strengths that you have with community. We also provide mental health services for both children and adults. It's totally free. It does not bill to insurance, so it doesn't matter if somebody has insurance or not. they can utilize it. So mind blowing, right? And then last but not least, we also have programs for children and youth. Our biggest one is actually coming up at the end of the month. We have a weekend getaway camp that children ages eight to 12 get to go to. We have about 75 kids signed up for that this year with a whole host of adult volunteers. So those are just some of the examples of some of the services that we offer. Next slide, please. So folks that are living in Hercules, that maybe work in Hercules, have some kind of connection to Hercules, if you ever needed assistance or you know somebody that needed assistance, we would want them to go to the West Center, which is located in Richmond. That's the closest center. We also have centers located in Concord, in Antioch, in Danville, and in Fairfield, because we know a lot of our clients travel throughout the different counties. But the Richmond office is the closest location that we have for community members that might need our services.

We can go to the next slide.

Thank you. So these are some data points that I thought might be interesting for council members, for community to get an understanding of what we're looking at. So at least in, throughout the last, what, seven years or so, six years, we've supported about 241 survivors located in Hercules. Our West Center, which again would be the center that survivors would probably connect with. Most recently in 2025, we served almost 1,000 survivors. And then the Family Justice Center as a whole last year served a little over 5,800 survivors. We can go to the next slide. And to give you a sense of people kind of are always curious about, well, what types of violence are you seeing coming in through the doors? What are people needing supportive services for? So I would say predominantly 76% of clients are needing support with some type of domestic or family violence, followed by sexual assault. And you can kind of go down the list. Also, race, ethnicity makeup, about 50% of our clients identify as Latinx. And the next category is white, about 20%. African American 15, so on and so on. Next slide. And this is an interesting slide that gives a sense of, for Hercules PD, this is located on the Department of Justice website. Every law enforcement agency in the state of California is required to send all of their crimes to the DOJ. And so this can be found on their website. And the total number of calls for domestic violence were about 24 in 2025. The year before was about 36 and the year before was about 41. So we have seen a little bit of a steady decrease in the number of calls for DV. What the reason for that is, there's a whole host of them. I can't point to one specifically. My hope is that some of the impact is because we have a Family Justice Center in West and that that's contributing to that, but I can't pinpoint specifically and say that's the reason why the numbers are going down. I'm sure it also has something to do with some of the good work that the law enforcement agencies are doing as well.

So we can go to the next slide.

And this gives an example, we also work with elder abuse survivors, so that's a population that sometimes gets overlooked. And so what I would say in this important statistic is just to notice that of the elder abuse survivors that we work with, Financial abuse is the highest type of elder abuse that they're experiencing. And it's usually from a family member. It's usually an adult son or daughter. And financial exploitation is usually the highest that's impacting them.

And we can go to the next slide.

So I wanted to share our website and our information in case any community members ever need our services or want to get more information about the services that we offer. And I have homework for everyone. I'm not going to be able to tell if you've done it or not, but I'm going to go on the honor system. You now know about the Family Justice Center. So you now have this knowledge that you can partake into other realms. So whether it's your work, whether it's your family, your community, whatever that might look like for you. Because what we know is interpersonal violence is so prevalent in our communities, unfortunately, is that the likelihood that somebody you all connect with are going to need this service is pretty high. So I'm embarking on you to please take this knowledge with you and don't just hold it to yourself, share it with others. And I think we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. And just a quick question. Do you ever hold an open house where people can come and see what the Family Justice Center is like?

Sure, we have a lot of events at the Family Justice Center. Actually, in the West, we're having a fall festival on the 30th of October. But we're happy to do tours. If you want to set one up, just contact me or Natalie, and we're happy to set up a tour. Council Member Grimsley came and toured our West Center recently.

That's wonderful. Thank you. So questions here? Council Member Grimsley.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to thank you both for being here and giving this presentation. Yes, I had a wonderful tour and a wonderful opportunity speak with the director, Lisa French, and learn more about the Justice Center that I really didn't know about. So the questions I have for you, and sort of just piggyback, I think you've answered the question, but how do people learn about the Family Justice Center? Is it largely word of mouth from individuals who are familiar with it? And then how do people get involved? How do you get your volunteers, and what is your staffing like?

I'll take the first and I'll pass it to Natalie for the second. So how do people hear about us? Yes, we have word of mouth, but a lot of our survivors are referred to us through law enforcement. At the West Family Justice Center, the police department's domestic and sexual violence unit is actually housed at the family justice center so we have detectives that are there so when they finish speaking with a victim they can do a warm handoff to us for additional services so we get a lot of our victim survivors from law enforcement we have an annual gala where we advertise and a lot of people come to that to support us and google yeah google search actually google search is a way that a lot of people we ask that question when they come in so we take some data on that good council member butter i oh there was a second second part really quick um so anybody can walk into our center they do not need to schedule an appointment

Each of our locations have what we call navigators. So navigators, I tell people to think of them like a GPS system. You use your GPS system when you don't know how to get somewhere, right? That's the exact same thing that navigators do. They're really the resource experts, and once they start hearing about a situation, they gauge, okay, we need to get you connected to this, to this, to this, and from the partners that are on site, we're able to make those connections happen almost immediately, which is great. So that way, everybody's getting connected right then and there to a real human being and not just given a phone number or website, because we know people don't always follow up with those.

Thank you. Council Member Battarai.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you so much for the presentation. Yes, I do have been involved in community members, not only with the Family Justice Center, but others as well. A couple of the questions here. First of all, I hope you guys are not much impacted by the financial assistance and whatnot. I don't know, I don't understand that part. whether and if you guys are still continuing the full service that you are committed to provide and then a community who are badly needed are being helped and getting assisted at the time that they need it. And also the curiosity out of these stats that you provided by ethnicity standpoint, is there any way you can also maybe if not too hard, maybe you have all high-person Asian bracket. I wanted to understand what's curious more into the South Asian, especially South Asian regions, you know, the community. I think there are a lot of, you know, the need there, I believe, and I know them for sure. And then I don't know how much you guys have been able to support and engaged. And then that data would help us to make the community engagement better, actually. And thank you again, whatever you guys are doing. I have a lot of friends. Anupama, you probably know from CERI and NOAA. I think I've been working with those people as well. And thank you for your continued support and service.

Yes, so especially for those South Asian survivors, we actually have a couple different options. So we have a navigator at our West Center who speaks Hindi, Punjabi. She's very well connected within the Nepali community as well. And so a lot of clients will come directly for her. But we also partner with Naraka. And they work with South Asian survivors as well. So there's a couple different options there. And our navigators in total throughout all of our centers speak about 20 different languages on their own. And then we also have a language line for languages that we're not able to accommodate face to face. So we want to make sure that there's no barrier to anybody getting service.

Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Mayor?

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you both for the wonderful presentation. Just real quick, like you mentioned, a lot of people know somebody who's going through something but maybe don't realize it or even recognize it. So what are some of those signs that someone may be getting financially abused or even physically abused?

So a lot of times,

A lot of times, like I said, we get our referrals from law enforcement. So they get a call from somebody, a family member or something like that, or a friend because a family member is abusing them financially. We also get calls from banks because they see different transactions or somebody bringing somebody in. So those are signs, like looking at records, bank records. and a lot of withdrawals, especially from a certain person, somebody that's elderly that looks like they might not be all the way there still, and they don't have an executor, stuff like that.

Got it. That was my only question. Thank you again, both of you, for the presentation, and amazing work, too.

Council Member Bailey?

Yes, I'll be brief. I just want to say thank you for the presentation and the service you provide to our community. Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you. I've been to the West Center. I worked next door at the Early Childhood Mental Health Program for about a year. And so I got to know the place and did take a tour through it. It's really good to know. Is there an income level requirement? I mean, what if, do you have to be low income or do you accept people who are high income? Except anyone. Anyone? Any income level. Okay, that's really good to know. And I would imagine, particularly with domestic violence, if someone has managed to escape their domestic violence situation, if they show up, they're probably disoriented, scared, frightened, maybe embarrassed. And it's so wonderful to see all of these services just in one place. And I know for many people who may not have transportation trying to get around on the bus to go to different places in the past was really really difficult. So thank you very much. I really appreciate your coming here.

Thank you. It's nice to be back in Hercules. I grew up here raised my kids here. My mom owned a business here so it's nice to come back. Thank you.

Wonderful. Thank you both. Okay, so now we will move on with the agenda. Mr. City Manager, are there any agenda additions or deletions?

Madam Mayor, there are no additions or deletions to the agenda.

Okay, thank you. So our next item is public communications for items that are not on the agenda. Madam City Clerk, do we have anyone who wants to speak at public comment?

I'll turn to our in-person attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment at this time on an item that's not on the agenda, you can come up to the podium.

Please fill out a public comment card after you comment.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Let's see here. Well, hello, everybody. Good evening. My name is Kendall Tang. This is my brother, Jeremy Tang. There's another Tang maybe hiding over there. It's my dad. So I was originally going to plan to speak a few words at the next city council meeting. However, our family and I were going to be doing some traveling. So now today I thought would be a good time. So, you know, Dad, first and foremost, I just want to say, you know, thank you for everything that you've given to the family and to the city of Hercules. You know, I know raising my little brother and me wasn't always easy, and I'm sure we gave you plenty of challenges and migraines along the way, but you've always been a great father to us. You worked hard, you provided for us, and you showed us through your hard work that anything is possible. You've continued to show a unwavering commitment to the family and the city of Hercules. Over the years, we've been very fortunate to call Hercules our home, and throughout that time, you've always gone above and beyond for the city. From your years serving as the city attorney to eventually taking on the responsibility of interim city manager, you dedicated a significant part of your career to helping Hercules succeed. So there's a lot of reasons people love Hercules. You know, it's a beautiful location. It's a diverse community. And the fact that people feel, you know, safe here. And, of course, maybe happy at Power to Keg like I do. But like every city, Hercules has also faced its share of challenges. And behind the scenes, there are hardworking people who spend countless hours trying to solve these challenges and make this community better. So, Dad, I'm glad that you've been one of those people. And over the years, I've had people in Hercules tell me how highly they think of me. Or, I'm sorry, my dad. Not of me. and your work ethic. So hearing those things about my dad has always made me incredibly proud. So as you retire, I hope you take a moment to appreciate everything you've accomplished, not only in your career, but in the example you've set for the family. So congratulations on your retirement, and thank you for everything you've done for Hercules, and most importantly, thank you for everything you've done for us. We're proud of you, and you definitely earned whatever comes next. Thanks, Dad.

Yeah, just to piggyback off of what my brother said, I'm Jeremy Tang, Ohlone Eagle alumni, class of 2012. But dad, like what Kendall said, I'm just so grateful for all the sacrifices over the years you've done for us. You know, I have so many memories with my mom, with Kendall, like dropping you off. at the JPX bus stop back when it was at Safeway. You're working late, long hours, hopping on the JPX, BART to downtown Oakland, just countless days of hard work, relentlessness, and we always appreciated when you'd bring back our favorite Chinese desserts from Chinatown, so that was great too. But even then, with a crazy stressful job, you always still made the time to help us with our homework, take me to basketball practice, help Kendall with his piano. You're always still so present and there for us. I can't say thank you enough for everything you've done, just not for us, but for the city. And even before you had a real position with the city of Hercules, you'd still show up to city council meetings and were involved and voiced your opinion, and that's something I've always admired. So I hope we've made you proud throughout our life, and I'm excited for this next chapter for you. So I love you, Dad. Thank you.

Thank you both.

I know normally we don't respond to public comment. If the mayor will allow, I'd like to say I was not expecting that at all. I think it was probably queued up for the next meeting, but they'll be on a nice vacation at the time and won't be available. I guess you could zoom in from Paris, your comments. You could have done that, but... I'm fine with the option you chose. I'd like to echo what they said. This is a fantastic community. They grew up here. They are who they are because of their experiences here in this community. And we're proud to be part of this community, part of Hercules. And thank you for coming out and spending some time with us. We'll see you at home. Now, you can see between the two boys is my wife, who has been a very low-key figure here in Hercules. Lita has been my backbone, and she... is key to my success, to be perfectly honest. She's always been there for me and remains by my side, and hopefully through retirement it will stay that way. I'll be in her hair more. Actually, when I was first offered this interim position, I asked her, I said, you know, is this something you're okay with, and she's like, yeah, do it. So there's no hesitation on her part. At any rate, I appreciate your support, and I'm looking forward to good things from those two boys.

Thank you, and thank you, Tang family.

Madam Mayor? Yes. If the Tang family is open to it, would they perhaps like a photo?

Photo like with the council? Or in front there?

I don't think they should be allowed to leave the meeting. They should stay at our meeting. I want to see that commitment.

Yes, would you like to take a photo or have someone do so? Okay, so we are back, that was well deserved. Is there any other public comment?

I'm gonna turn to our Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment, please use your raised hand icon. And seeing none, that will end public comment.

Okay, thank you. So now we're moving on, no public hearing tonight. We have the consent calendar. There are 11 items on consent. Would anyone care to pull an item? If not, then do I hear a motion to approve?

Madam Mayor?

Yes.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar as is.

Okay, motion by Walker-Griffin. Is there a second? Second. Second by Batarai. Any discussion? No. Roll call vote, please.

Council Member Grimsley. Aye. Council Member Butter, aye. Aye. Council Member Bailey.

Aye.

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

Aye. Thank you. Thank you. So now we're on to our discussion interaction items. And the first one is awarding a construction contract in the amount of $804,000 to Rapid Grading Service for the Foxboro Pavement Rehabilitation Project. Mr. City Manager, do you want to introduce this?

Yes, Madam Mayor. I will have our Public Works Director take the lead on this presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Roberts. Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm pleased to be able to report that the Foxboro Pavement Rehabilitation Project Phase 1 has been successfully bid out and is coming to you tonight for award. The project is located in the Foxboro neighborhood, primarily on Dartmouth Street and Oxford Street. The work includes primarily asphalt pavement grinding and overlay, so the residents there will get new blacktop. also includes related activities such as utility and monument cover adjustments, pavement striping, and traffic sign installation. The project also includes sidewalk concrete repair along Willow Avenue and Brighton Street to eliminate potential tripping hazards. The project was advertised for bids in the West County Times and five regional plan rooms. A total of seven bids were received at the opening deadline of 2 p.m. Tuesday, August 11th. and upon opening the bids, Radius Earthwork was the apparent low bidder. However, upon further review, it was discovered that Radius Earthwork Inc.'s bid omitted required information which rendered the bid unresponsive. Rapid Grading Services submitted the second lowest bid of $804,132, which was determined to be a responsive bid. Rapid Grading Services is based in Hayward. They've been in business for four years, and they performed similar projects successfully at public agencies including Pleasant Hill, Solano County, Lafayette, Richmond, Calistoga, and San Rafael. The references and bid proposals were checked and they were deemed a responsible bidder. So should council move forward and award the construction contract to rapid grading services as recommended by staff tonight? Construction is anticipated to take place approximately one month following the issuance of the notice to proceed. And then at that point, staff will meet with the contractor to firm up their schedule. We anticipate they'll be doing work in October and into November. We did get some questions from a council member tonight I'd like to address. The first was their rapid grading services length of experience, which was only four years. However, they have completed at least a half a dozen similar projects successfully, so they do meet qualifications. Of course, having said that, and them being a new contractor for us here in Hercules, we'll approach their work with heightened awareness, but we're also excited about the possibility potentially for a new business relationship with a contractor to come into town who operates in a very cost-effective manner. So with that, that completes my staff report. I'd be happy to respond to any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Roberts. Are there questions here? Council Member Bailey.

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor, and thanks for the report. So the Public Works Project, we usually go at the lowest bidder. Can you confirm that? If that's so, is it required to do that? Do we just do it because it's a cost-saving measure?

Yes, if I understand your question, Council Member Bailey, you're asking how the city selects the bidder to award the contract for. And the terminology in a nutshell is they have to be a responsible bidder submitting the lowest responsive bid. Responsible bidder meaning they have the requisite experience and past job performance to be able to perform the work successfully. Responsive bid means they fill out the bid without any major errors or omissions that would allow them an unfair advantage against the other bidders if it were allowed to proceed. So that's why we're recommending a word to the second lowest bidder.

Okay, so it sounds like staff has taken time to review a bunch of bids, rank them based on qualifications, and then rank them based on price, and then chose the one that was best for us, which is the best available, which is lowest bidder. It sounds like one radius earthworks. might have missed something, and therefore, whatever their number was, disqualified their entire bid package, is what it sounds like.

Yes, so specifically, when they enter their bid, they enter a unit price, and then an extended price. They inadvertently omitted all but one of them. uh so allowing that bid to proceed potentially could allow them to change the numbers to their advantage at a later date so it could not move forward very unfortunate incident we did read out reach out to the contractor who we haven't worked for before and of course encourage them to please continue trying to bid projects here in hercules sounds good i think the last thing i heard was work would be starting we'll commence around october november is that what i heard Yeah, we have to meet up with them. We anticipate, though, the work will start in October and go into November.

We're looking forward to that. We have lots and miles and miles of roads that need paving, so we do it one mile at a time. So glad to hear that. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, Council Member Battarai.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you, Director, for the presentation and my presentation. answering my question. I think I had a little more, a few more questions, if you mind, I can, or can you just address those. More importantly, I think it sounds like, you know, these are the right contractor that we have hired. I'm more curious to learn that, you know, how this warranty material testing and the compact testing and then a corrective work requirement will apply on these kind of things. And then how residents will be notified regarding the parking restrictions, driveway access, dust, noise and traffic controls. And then whether this unused contingency will be automatically refunded to the original funding sources or goes back to the general fund. Would you be able to clarify those areas as well?

Certainly, Councilman Bettere, I did anticipate discussing those items and answering them with the companion item, which is following, because it's primarily about construction management, how we manage the project. So we could move that up and talk now, or if you're OK, we could defer it for that item. So the next item, we anticipated answering those questions at that time as part of the scope of work for our construction manager.

No, I do not want it to be a roadblock here. I wanted to get the ball rolling, but I wanted to have that transparency and then the oversight on these areas.

That's correct. Can we provide that to you? So what this does is this is the award to the contractor for having the correct experience in the lowest bid. What the next item is about is overseeing that work and ensuring they do it in accordance with the appropriate standards and procedures. And that's something that our construction management firm will enact. So that's a separate item, but if you'd like, we can discuss that now.

Yeah, if you will, that would be great, actually. If you can share some thoughts or insights or anything that you can share, that would be great.

Sure. So full disclosure here, we did get an email with questions from Councilman Batteri. So quickly, first question is about written authorization for contingency use. This is for the 10%. So council approval of the contract authorizes staff to proceed with the 10%. And then as part of the work, we do issue change orders, which look at the equipment, materials, and methods that the contractor uses. comes up with a cost as part of their construction management work that then gets routed for my signature as city engineer and then also the city manager, and then it proceeds. So that's how we address the contingency. If we exceed council authorized contingency, then if we can anticipate that in advance, we come back for additional funding in the budget. So the second item is the monthly cost and schedule reporting, including timeliness and delivery of risk. So the construction management company does do daily working days as well as monthly working days. And as part of that tracks the time for which there's a number of working days to complete the project. And if they run over, then they're potentially subject for liquidated damages. And so Part of managing the project is to look at the contractor's progress, where they're at in persecuting the entirety of the work and anticipating potentially any challenges in the future. With regards to your question of independent validation of material quality and quantities, this is a key issue of quality assurance and quality control. So we do get submittals in advance of all the materials coming onto the project, including, for example, the mixed designs for asphalt concrete and also Portland cement concrete used in the sidewalks. so uh the quantity is measured either by tonnage based on scales for the trucks the qualities are based on square footage for sidewalk or linear feet for curb and gutter then the next question is post construction report documenting final costs payment condition improvement warranty items and lessons for future foxborough faces So thank you. One of the advantages of using Sandbell, who we'll talk about next, is that they were actually the designers on not only phase one, but also the future phases, as well as Willow. So what they learn out there based on the unique aspects of that site can then be applied to future phases. So the construction management firm does come up with their own cost independently and marries it up with what the contractor submits. If they need to, they'll verify what the quantities are actually out in the field for monthly progress payments to ensure those are accurate. And then under the contract, the contractor is required to do a one-year warranty. So that's something that they're required to do. So you had a second series of questions as well, which I'll cover here really quickly. Pavement life extension, measurable condition improvements are expected. So overlays are anticipated to last 10 years. After that point, there's follow-up treatments which can extend the life, starting with anything from a slurry seal, moving up to another overlay on top of it. Then with regards to material testing, compaction testing, corrective work requirements. So the key issue, this is a pavement overlay project, is that the asphalt is placed properly on the street. It comes in at the right temperature. It's mixed correctly. You have a breakdown roller, a finish roller. You have to get it on at the right time. If you go too soon, it overcompacts. If you wait too long, it stretches. So the quality assurance, quality control for overlays are really in the hands of the Public Works Inspector or resident engineer in this case on Sandville's team. We have someone who's not only a seasoned inspector But also a professional engineer, so we're very fortunate in that regard Should we have problems We will then bring out a testing company to take out samples of the asphalt and actually test them generally we don't do that as a standard of practice unless it's a federally funded project and If we were, you'd end up with a patchwork of samples because it has to be a random sampling. So we don't do that unless we are concerned that there's an issue. Then with regards to how residents will be notified, so we do work very closely with residents. It's a really important aspect of the job. The first thing residents will get is a letter indicating the project's coming and approximate times when it's gonna occur. then followed up there are door hangers for actually when the paving occurs and 24 48 hours notice ahead of time on barricades for cars so so people don't park in the streets but um obviously working with residents closely um is a key issue so with regards to unused contingency it does um unused contingency of the budget it does return to its original funding source if you will if you want to you know use that terminology but so if it's gas tax and say there's a million dollars and nine hundred thousand of it goes to the project there's still a hundred thousand in the budget in gas tax for that fiscal year i believe that answers um your questions okay Hopefully that wasn't too much.

Thank you so much for that detailed response and then a very satisfactory level. And then I think that gives a confidence that we can manage and then deliver this result as we promised. And thank you again for being on top of that. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions here? No? No? Just one. So Mr. Roberts, so the locations then, so this is going to be the paving on Dartford and Oxford, is that correct?

That's correct.

And then there's going to be a sidewalk repair on Willow and on Brighton.

Yes.

Okay.

And there's also a court in there.

Edinburgh Court. I'm looking at the map here.

That's going to be resurfaced as well. Thank you.

Okay, good. And then most of the money will come from SB1 or from Measure J, a little bit from the General Fund Capital Reserve. That's correct. Yeah. We always have to cobble together different kinds of funds to get these paving projects done, and I know it takes quite a while. We have a great deal of need here in the city of Hercules for paving. Okay, so is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak? Madam City Clerk, on this item?

I'll turn to our Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on this item, please use your raised hand icon. And seeing none, that will end public comment.

Okay, and I don't see anyone here, so I'll bring it back to council. We do have a resolution before us, so do I hear a motion?

Madam Mayor?

Yes.

Make a motion that we approve a resolution of the Herkley City Council. The City Council of the City of Hercules authorizing the City Manager to execute a construction contract with rapid grading services in the amount of $804,133 for the Foxboro Pavement Rehabilitation Project Phase 1 and authorizing an additional expenditure of up to $80,400. and $13 for a 10% contingency on state construction contract for a total not to exceed contract amount of $884,546.

Okay, motion by Bailey, seconded by Wash-Griven. Any further discussion? No, roll call vote, please.

Councilmember Grimsley? Aye. Councilmember Butteray? Aye. Councilmember Bailey?

Aye.

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

Aye. Thank you. Thank you. So that was for the construction contract. Now this one is going to be a professional services agreement with Sandbell to provide construction management services for the Foxborough Pavement Rehabilitation Project. Mr. Roberts.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. So as mentioned, Sam Bell recently completed the design on the project. They were formerly known as Belici and Associates. So they're in fact on the city's pre-qualified engineering list. As mentioned, city staff have worked with their team over the past decade where they've performed well and gained understanding of the department's needs as well as expectations. So Sanbel's design contract includes future phases of Foxborough as well as sections of Willow. Having them perform the construction management on this project will be beneficial since they're familiar with the design. knowledge gain that is unique to the foxborough neighborhood can be applied on the future phases of work so staff is then recommending an award to sandbell for a contract amount of eighty one thousand nine hundred and seventy four dollars i know we've spoken in some detail to this contract but if there are any questions bob bristol principal engineer from sandville is here tonight if you have any questions thank you

Thank you, any questions here from council?

Comment, I guess.

Council Member Bailey.

Yes, thank you, just after the report. An issue that sometimes comes up in our projects is dust, and then starting earlier than set up times. I'm assuming our construction manager company's gonna be on top of that, or is that a city staff issue? It comes up often when we have construction. We want the new roads, we want it done in silence, and then we also don't like dust, so just those two questions.

Thank you. So these projects move really quickly, and a lot of money gets spent really quickly. So it's absolutely essential that we have the construction management firm do it cradle to grave so they have full understanding and control of the work, especially given our resource levels here at the city. This is one of those areas where we want to make sure we don't skimp so that they do the full contract.

Thank you, that includes safety meetings and all that kind of stuff is all under this particular company's charge. That's correct, yes, the whole thing. Okay, thank you. That's all I have, Madam Mayor, thank you.

Okay, any other questions here? Council Member Grimsley.

Thank you. Director Roberts, you indicated that the project would likely take place in October and November. November is typically when our rainy season begins, and I'm just wondering about the impact of weather, especially since we're anticipating an El Nino this year.

Yes, excellent question. I saw an article in news and it said El Nino may be starting as soon as November. So the streets are in very poor condition out there. Obviously we've had a bit of a delay in getting this project out due to some staffing changes. so we're going full speed ahead with the intention of getting it done ahead of the weather the benefit to this is the nature of the work involves grinding existing asphalt and then overlaying it with new asphalt we're not getting down into the subgrade or the gravelly dirt which if get it gets wet you could be chasing that all winter

so based on our calculations you know we believe they can be successful and get it done and that the residents frankly deserve to have their streets done as soon as it's possible thank you greatly appreciate it i know the folks in the foxborough neighborhood certainly appreciated for we've had discussions in years past about that particular community sort of feeling left out of the hercules community so they're getting some great attention this year thank you

Any other questions? So Mr. Roberts, the money's coming from the gas tax fund. I think that's here. Again, we're cobbling together all different kinds of funds to finally get these projects done. It is. Thank you.

Thank you. It is a gas tax fine. And so to your to your point, Mayor, we're spending approximately $850,000 a year on street overlays based on our latest asphalt study. We need about 3.6 million just to keep our pavement in the current condition that it's in. So this is not unique to Hercules. This is happening all over the Bay Area, but nevertheless, it's still a concern and very real.

Yes, and thank you. And I know Foxborough is probably our oldest neighborhood, or one of our oldest neighborhoods here in Hercules, and they absolutely need to have their streets redone, so this is great. Madam City Clerk, is there anyone who wants to speak on this item?

I'll turn to my Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on this item, please use your raised hand icon. And seeing none, that will end public comment.

Okay, so bringing it back to council, we have a resolution before us, so do I hear a motion? Madam Mayor? Yes. Can I have a motion?

Okay. Motion to resolution of the City Council of the City of Hercules, California authorizing the City Manager to execute a professional services agreement with Sunbell Inc. in the amount of $81,974 to provide construction management services for the Foxborough pavement rehabilitation project phase one.

Okay. Motion by Dr. Rai. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Grimsley. Any discussion? No. Roll call vote please. Council Member Grimsley.

Aye. Council Member Butteray. Aye. Council Member Bailey.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin.

Aye. And Mayor Kelly. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. So on to our next item, which is the adoption of the June 2026 Sewer System Management Plan. And Mr. Roberts, you're on again.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Thank you first for your time on this item, and secondly for allowing it to be a discussion item. I know the sanitary sewer system is not necessarily the most exciting, riveting, attractive item out there, but it's a large program, about $8 million a year. We have about a quarter of our staff working on it full time. It is very much a health and safety issue for the residents of Hercules. Plus, given the creeks and bay, it is a potential environmental risk as well. heavily regulated and it's on the order of about 1.2 million gallons per day of wastewater going through the system. So it's a core program we have and of course in a resource constrained agency it's always competing against other priorities and this is the one that staff knows we have to be really vigilant about. For tonight's report, our presentation will be by Chris Morris. So Chris is our relatively new maintenance and operations superintendent. He also has the dubious title of the legally responsible official for the sanitary sewer management plan. And then with him tonight is Ann Gertz from West Yost to help out with any questions that may be needed. So with that, Chris.

Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Morris.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and staff, and the community. I'm here to talk a little bit about the sewer system. The state requires us to have this management plan. It requires all municipalities that run a sewer system to have a management plan in place. It's one of the many requirements that the state hands down to us. One of the things is we need to keep it updated every six years. That's a requirement. and audited every three years to keep things updated. Ideally, they like things even updated as frequently as anything changes, policies or procedures. They like the state being, like to see it an active document. You even have to log any changes. Also has to be documented. It's quite the document. It's one of the, bigger requirements of all the things the state asks of us as a sewer system, being that the sewer system is a huge public health and safety issue. It's often kind of the last thing thought of. The streets, you know, our streets, parks, a lot of things get the attention by the residents, but this is a hidden importance that needs to happen. There's goals that we need to maintain, maintain the sewer system, minimizing spills, ensuring capacity that we can meet expansion and the wastewater flows. We need to have a, these are just some of the goals, but there's many goals, including a response plan for sewer spills and response procedures in place. Oh, next slide. Yes, and we have 62 miles of pipe that we're responsible for, six lift stations that convey that to Pinole, and I think that was mentioned, 1.2 million gallons per day, an average number of spills per 100 miles over the last decade, 1.3. We had one small spill this year so far. We're pretty good, and I'm I'm big in being proactive on monitoring the system as much as we can to minimize spills, because spills are the most important thing. It's the most looked-at thing. We have to document so much and report all of our spills to the state. Next slide, please. And hot spots, this isn't... It's normal for every municipality to have hotspots. It just shows we're being proactive. There's a list there, but every municipality and sewer system agency has hotspots in their system. There are areas where they monitor their issues with age pipes that need to be replaced. They're more proactive in monitoring these spots and minimizing anything AFFECTING PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY WITH SPILLS AND PIPE BLOCKAGES AND BREAKS. BUT YES, EVERY SYSTEM HAS HOT SPOTS AND IT'S DOCUMENTED AND WE HAVE TO SHOW THIS TO SHOW WE'RE BEING PROACTIVE ON OUR SYSTEM AND ALSO TO NOTICE AREAS FOR CIP IMPROVEMENTS, AREAS TO REPLACE OLD DAMAGED SECTIONS OF PIPE. And the general order is what the state calls our sewer system requirements. It's a big document that tells us what we're required to do for the state. They updated that in 2022. A lot of minor things like spill categories, terminology was changed, and thus we also had to update our SSMP to reflect their changes. and also because every six years it's due to be updated regardless. That's one of the things they changed. It used to be five years to update, and they changed that to six years. Two years used to be audited, now it's three years. They made it a little easier for us, you know, because there's a lot of requirements. Next slide. So CWICs is where we report, where I report all of the sewer activities, spills, reports, and this SSMP will be uploaded to their website or to their database and also will be on, one of the requirements is it has to be posted on our website as well. And that will happen once adoption. Legally responsible official is, and there's also data submitters, that's for, data submitters are the step below the LROs, what they call it, in terms of reporting spill reports, documenting any activity, maintenance, and then the LRO certifies everything that's reported and certifies reports to CWICs, which is the state water board. And then also, yeah, the internal audits conducted every three years. Yes, the next due is 2031. Next slide. With that, I recommend adoption, and I'm available for any questions. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Morris, and thanks for keeping an eye on this. I know this is unseen, but it's terribly important. Yeah. Yeah.

So any questions here?

Council Member Battarai and then Grimsley.

Thank you Madam Mayor and thank you for the presentation and this is a very important area of our company service and thank you for keeping eyes on this. Couple of the question on this. One thing that you just mentioned that internal audit happens every three years. So when was the last internal audit and then do we have the internal control in place? How we manage that and second question, Given that we have a new residence and new developments are coming, how well we are prepared? I know that there is impound fee that can probably take care of that part. Are we, you know, are that one is sufficient enough to cover this, you know, the aged, intrastate and whatnot? So can you please set some lights on those areas? That would be great.

Well, internal audits don't necessarily mean internal. I've had, it's either like West Yost did our SSMP right now. We can either choose to do in-house or have someone audit it. Auditing is basically making sure our document complies with what the state requires and is updated to what we're currently doing. That's an audit. And being new, I'm not sure when the last audit was done. I know the last SSMP was six years ago, but I'm not sure when the audit was done.

Yeah, you mentioned that, you know, that your internal audit conducted every three years, so that means we should have, if we have not, if it is a 19, then probably there should be one more internal audit in between that 2019 and now, is not?

good evening uh councilman better i am so to be fair mr morris of course wasn't here back then but my recollection is we did have west yost do an internal audit and obviously one of the key aspects of having mr morris here of course is moving forward he has the expertise and we have the resources to ensure compliance

Thank you for the information that can you also please set some light I don't know who can answer that question if you or what is the you know the our prepared you know the preparedness for this you know influx of new housing or new development and the new squares system inflows I guess.

Make sure I understand the question.

My question is given that we have a new Housing development coming in the city so how we are well prepared to handle this, you know the influx or they know the Increased amount of the sewer system.

Thank you. Thank you for clarifying So we do have a sanitary sewer model that West shows built and we do run model flows including at build out. So we know that we have along the major pipes capacity. And then additionally, when developments come into town, we do require that they do downstream analysis that they can convey the additional wastewater from the development in the localized system. And then of course, any upgrades they would need to do themselves or provide funding through a connection feed to make sure that occurs. So in a nutshell, we do have an entire model for the system at build out and then for each individual case, we look at it as well to make sure in the immediate vicinity that there's adequate facilities. Thank you.

Council Member Grimsley?

you um mr morse at the top of your presentation you mentioned um uh you were spoke speaking about spills and so just to clarify when we were talking about uh partially treated or untreated wastewater are there any other type of spills that kind of fall under that umbrella or no in the sewer system wastewater it's all it's wastewater it's none of it can leave the system

and if any of it does, we have to be proactive and show we're doing everything to capture anything that left the system, basically. Stormwater stuff is different. It's stormwater, it's rainwater. It's separate systems, so wastewater has to be contained within the system.

Great, thank you. And then... We understand that the SSMP has to be updated formally every six years, but you also indicated that it's intended to be like a living document where it's constantly being, the information is being poured into it. So when we're gathering all of the information about spills, et cetera, that will eventually go into the formal revision or update of the SSMP. How are we storing or capturing and storing that information?

For me, there's record keeping, but there's also record keeping on the state water board level when I referred to CWICs. It's California Integrated Water Quality System, and that's all the documentation goes in there as well. All spill reports, I would have to record keep on spills or really any activity that's required to document, but then also that's uploaded to the state as well.

Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? Council Member Bailey.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We're doing pretty good on time, so I want to go through every page one by one. Please, yes, we'll be here until midnight. My question, first of all, thanks for the report. I appreciate it. My question is just more of interest, just because I'm curious about the process. So if a lift station fails, because I think we can identify them as residents because there's usually a generator, yellow generator next to them. So out by the waterfront, there's a generator there. I thought that was offline. I may not recall that correctly. But how does staff find out after business hours that we have a lift station that's having a problem?

There's alarms that will trigger. There's redundancies, too, for these alarms to get notified. So anytime, 24-7. Standby is notified. Maintenance is notified. And they'll go out there immediately and see. And you may be thinking there is a lift station there, a promenade, that's active. It's small, but it's active. And then usually spills don't really affect residents in terms of If a pump station fails, it's gonna overflow there. All the residents really, they're probably not gonna notice anything. All their stuff is still flowing to the lift station. It's just coming out of the manhole by the lift station. That's where it's important we have to not have that happen.

Thank you. If I may just add, so lift stations have wet wells, which is like it sounds, a well. And they can handle a considerable amount of time before there's an overflow. So we should be noticed long before there's any risk. They also have redundancy in that they have a second pump. They both don't need to be pumping at the same time. So if one pump breaks, they can always use a second one. So we have a lot of redundancies in place to ensure that it doesn't happen.

Thank you. That was where I was going. We do have systems that protect our residents from this health and safety issue if it should occur. We have processes in place, both built in and then a notification process that sounds like it may call someone at home and say, hey, we have a problem. Come take a look at it.

Yeah, and it's also advanced warning, too, where it's not Alarm will trip when it reaches a certain level in the wet. Well, there's still that's factored in a plenty of time For it. It's even a an issue. It gives enough response time to address the issue before it creates a mess

you and then I think customer and whoever can answer it I know your time here is not as it doesn't have the history but I think to answer customers about to rise question we did do some sort of an audit because we found out that we need to we're gonna have some issues upstream from Sycamore so we do like this trunk line replacement but we know that I guess from basically Safeway is that north but going up Sycamore we have to do some future replacements which sort of was our conversation about raising rates and things like that could you talk to that

Yes, thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Bailey. So there were two issues with the Sycamore trunk main, which was about a mile long project from basically Duck Pond Park to the wastewater influent plant in Pinal. First was the age of the pipe. The second was its size. So while it wasn't yet at capacity, it was time to replace it. We actually had, there was a high need to do it. So we upsized the pipe based on the sewer modeling and got it to be a new pipe as well. So that's how we addressed that particular issue. I think the audit generally is more about overflows. In this case, we were ahead of the curve on that one.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. That's all I have, Madam Mayor.

Okay. Any questions, Vice Mayor? So, Mr. Morris, one question. You mentioned these hot spots here, and there's a bunch of red dots and all around. So, do your public works people go around and kind of monitor it and then let you know if they see something, or what generally happens?

Yeah, those are all manholes. They'll go... They'll go check them at quarterly, six-month, and based on what they see visually down in there, we'll determine if a crew has to come out and clean the line. Usually it needs to be cleaned. It could be roots. There's a lot of stuff that accumulates in there, and then a crew would come out, do whatever work that needs to happen, and then also determine if it's a structural failure where repairs need to be done.

Okay, so you're monitoring all that. That's good to know. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Roberts.

Thank you, Mayor. I do have one last comment. So we're in the process of filling the sewer supervisor stormwater position. Excuse me. So I wanted to take a moment to thank council for your support in filling this position. It's much needed. And staff will respond the only way we really know how, which is to perform as best we can. So thank you so very much for your support on that position.

Sure, that's very important, and we're in complete agreement. Okay, Madam City Clerk, is there anyone who wants to speak on this item?

And once again, I'll turn to my Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on this agenda item, please use your raised hand icon. and seeing none, that will end public comment.

Okay, well, thank you. And thank you, Mr. Morris and Mr. Roberts. This is great to know about. So we're gonna bring this back here to council. I see a resolution before us.

Madam Mayor.

Yes.

It's a long resolution. I'd like to make a motion to adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Hercules adopting the June 2026 Sewer System Management Plan.

Okay, is there a second? Second. Okay, so a motion by Walker-Griffin, seconded by Grimsley. Any discussion? No. Roll call vote, please. Council Member Grimsley.

Aye.

Council Member Butter, aye. Aye. Council Member Bailey. Aye. Vice Mayor Walker-Griffin. Aye. And Mayor Kelly.

Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Passes 5-0. So that's it for our discussion and our action items tonight. Our next item is public communications. For anything not on the agenda, do we have anyone who wants to speak?

And once again, I'll turn to my Zoom attendees. If you'd like to make a public comment on an item that is not on the agenda, please use your raised hand icon.

And seeing none, that will end public comment. Okay, so we're coming back to reports. Mr. City Manager, do you have anything to report?

I don't, but I'd like the Parks and Rec director to speak to a couple of items. He stepped away. Can we come back to this item when he returns to the chambers?

That's certainly okay. Sure. Madam City Attorney, do you have something to report? Nothing from me, Madam Mayor. Okay, so I'm going to bring it here to Council, and I think I'll start with Council Member Grimsley.

thank you madam mayor i will just update that the westcat board of directors will meet this week we last met on august 13th where we had an election for the new board members sorry my notes are kind of funky we also I'm sorry. I had the approval of consideration and approval of Amendment 5 to agreement for the public transportation services between WCCTA and MV Transportation to extend our agreements with them through June 2026. and establish a new variable to have a fixed rate for that. And that is all I have for report.

Okay, thank you. Council Member Battarai, anything to report?

Not much, Madam Mayor, but just I wanted to share that I had the opportunity to visit on site on that request that we had from one of the parents in the our elementary school incident. I mean, the email, so I was following up with the other staff, I think our city manager, and I also had a chance to talk to our school board of trustees, Jamila Smith. I think this is more of the collaborative efforts, not only from cities or the our police department, but also from the school administration staff, PTO boards, as well as the board of trustees. So I think our staff is also working with them, and then we are trying to find that solution. But I think that's the one thing I wanted to share with them. We just want to make sure that we are hearing the concern from our residents. That is some valid and I think I share my thoughts and then I share the pictures with the city manager as well. So we are taking the appropriate action at the right time. That's when I mentioned that part. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Council Member Bailey, anything to report?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I attended the West Cat meeting with Council Member Grimsley back on August 13th. The items, I think, have already been covered that were discussed there. And then I wanted to thank staff, Public Works. We've been working for, I think, years with the Nassau and Stop Signs. on John Muir Parkway as well as on where I think Bayfront Boulevard meets John Muir Parkway. So we've got some additional stop signs. There was great signage out announcing the coming of the stop signs. Flags out there saying, look below the flag, there is a stop sign. I was, I do, I walk that street almost daily. We had police enforcement, I think it was on Friday and Thursday, unmarked today, SUV was parked over there. So just trying to do awareness for the community, stop signs there. I talked to the president from the HOA from that community, John Muir Point, and they were ecstatic and excited. They've been working and lobbying for this for a long time. So there's more to come. The council set aside some funds for some traffic coming on that street, so looking forward to watching that come to full fruition. I also met with some of our police staff to discuss flock cameras in our community. There's been lots of talk of that in the past couple of months. I think internally we've had some vandalism on some of the cameras. From residents' perspectives, there's been an increased visibility of those cameras. What we learned, and this is public information on our website, is we have... small number of cameras in town. You can actually see a list of those streets. You can see where that data is shared with. It's not being shared with ICE as what was communicated to me. It's also what's published on our website. But just looking for how we navigate this challenge. This company, I think, wasn't It is my opinion they may not have been as careful as they could have been with people's data. And so I think there's some challenges for them, and there's lots of articles about what's going on there. Anyone wanting to see if your license plate has been used can go to USA Today. There's a cool article, and you can just plug in your license plate number, and it will show if it's been anything that's been publicly made aware from police agencies. So that was about two weeks ago I think that article came out. So for folks, that's been a high issue for us here in town. And I got I had just in attend the business roundtable with the city manager Pretty well attended lots of our real estate Agents here in town as well as some of our small business Businesses restaurants were there as well. So it was a good time had by I'm all that's all I have Thank You vice mayor

Yes, it's been kind of busy. It'll be busy coming up. So recently was at the mayor's conference in Moraga. For the third year in a row, it decided to rain, which was really crazy. I also attended the car show that was at the waterfront. That was super cool, along with National Night Out. More recently, I was in Arizona with Senator Kelly, first time ever going to Tucson, and I learned about the Sonoran hot dog. That was a lot of fun. Thank you to him and his team. And the up-and-coming things that I'll be at, I will be at the library with the library card tomorrow, so excited to do that. The labor-to-labor dinner, that will be later this week. And later this month, I will be back in D.C. with Senator Kelly to speak on a policy summit, basically like how cities have been impacted through the current presidential administration, what we can do to try to mitigate that and what the future looks like. Shortly before that, I will also be in Denver for a policy summit around cities and how they can uplift the youth in their communities. I know I'm gonna forget a couple other things here. Oh, League of California Cities, I'll also be at that conference later this month. Really excited to be there and see all my colleagues from around the state. It's gonna be a really good meeting, or a really good conference, because as I've mentioned before, I'm the inaugural president of our Young Elected Officials member group, and it took three years to get that going, so I'm excited to have

first meeting down there and I also found out that I was appointed to the board of directors for the League California City so I'm really excited to represent Hercules in that capacity and with that I will have a future agenda item thank you okay thank you and in August there was a lot of internal things to do but and the public facing I was also at the National Night Out the cops and cars show the Bayfront Chamber mega mixer over in Crockett that was very well attended I moderated a panel on screen time for young children at the library and we might do that again in a month or two. We're talking with the librarian about that. And then at the WCTAC meeting, CCTA Executive Director Tim Hale gave us an update on the groundwork for setting the groundwork for the transportation expenditure plan that might come to people in 2028 or 2030. That would be a renewal of Measure J. And then also at the most recent WICTAC meeting, we got an update on the STMP projects list. So that's all that I have. And now, Mr. Roque?

Yes, Madam Mayor, Mr. Roque is present in the house. He's going to give us a little update on some items from Parks and Rec. Thanks, Christopher.

Yes, welcome, Mr. Oak.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. A couple announcements. Coming up in October, we have the Bayfront Festival and Run on October 4th, which is a Sunday. The run will begin at 8.30. The festival will follow from 11 to 3. There will be free music, vendors, food trucks, entertainment, and much more. So as they say on all of their advertisement, come for the run, stay for the fun. To register for the run, you just need to go to bayfrontrun.com, and you can register for the run. It's still available to do so. On Monday, October 12th, at the Senior Center, there will be the Ohana Day. This is an annual event that we run. It is from 1230 to 230. at the Hercules Senior Center. Join us for a delightful Hawaiian themed pizza lunch featuring special performances by our talented senior classes. Enjoy great food, wonderful entertainment, and an afternoon of fun with friends. Then coming up later in October, we have our Trunk or Treat. It's never too early to start talking about this because this is a big event. We started this event about nine years ago. We had 75 kids that came through the first year. We were trying to figure out what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. The last several years, we've had 1,200 to 1,500 kids come through in a three-hour period. It is quite the event here in Hercules. We are, at this point, accepting applications for vehicles to be decorated, so if anybody would like to partake in the event, we would love to have you come and join us again. If anybody would like to have more information about the trunk or treat or our pumpkin carving contest that we call Pumpkatas, we would like to have you contact us at the Hercules Park and Rec Department at 510-441-4FUN. And one project, one park project update I'd like to just quickly mention, Shoreland Park playground repairs. On Monday the 14th, we will be starting the work on the porn place or PIP surfacing. So there'll be some tear out of about 400 square feet and a replacement of that. And then there are a few parts that have been unordered they've been back ordered they're still not here yet but we anticipate them soon and as soon as we get them we'll get that put in and i know public works is going to be doing that so thank you to public works for that and obviously the bathrooms at shoreline park have already been painted courtesy of your public works team and that's all i have for tonight

Thank you, Mr. Roque. And I would like to say something for Public Works Railroad Park near where I live. There are a bunch of bollards there. I saw the Public Works people going and replacing them and painting them. And it gives it kind of a refresh. So really, really appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Morris and Mr. Roberts.

That's great. I think that project included a replacement of some wood on the tables, benches in the tabletops, the bollards. I know that Public Works also got out there and repaired some of the surfacing. There were a few holes that had to be attended to in the porn place. So I know that that was done also. But I believe they're still waiting on some benches to come in and I figured we'd capture this in the next meeting.

Great, thank you very much. Okay, so I'm gonna bring it back to council now for future agenda items. Yes, Council Member Bailey.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just wanted to see if we could have a future agenda item, hopefully for next meeting if staff has the time, to look at amending the council rules for our staff, and we all know we have two staff members that report to council. It would be if there was a personnel issue that a council member could raise that issue and then have it come up as a closed session item in the future. So the initial discussion is just how that might occur. I'd like to work with the city attorney's office to figure that out and then bring it back through that first phase, which is just sort of explaining it, and then council would then vote on it to make it a process. But again, this is just to amend our rules. We have a process to get things on the agenda. We don't have a clear process for closed session issues.

Okay, and that's all right with our city attorney.

If that's the will of the council, I wanna make sure that we have consensus via a quick vote here, but if that's the will of the council, I can look into bringing back an item with proposed JAF changes to our current rules. Okay, so is the council agreeable?

One, two, three, four, yes, we're agreeable. Okay, thank you. Any other agenda items? Future agenda items, yes.

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. Recently, I've been having conversations with a lady by the name of Princess of Burley. And in these conversations, I've looped in our city manager. And she runs an organization called Entitled Futures. And what they do is they provide free therapy sessions to kids. And I would love for us to have a discussion about how we can partner with them. So what I'm envisioning. envisioning is in about a month's time or so, she comes, she gives her presentation talking about the services that she provides and how we can incorporate that in the community and then figure out what that looks like for implementing it. I think that this is very timely, given everything that we see around youth and the mental health crisis that we're facing in this country I mean both political parties mainstream political parties have acknowledged it many states are underway trying to see what they can do because let's face it the youth of this day and age are in a different world than a lot of us have faced before from what it's as easy as accessible it is on your phone and everything else that comes a day-to-day. And I think that as a city, given that we have such a large youth population, so many people bring their families to raise them here, I think it would be a great opportunity for us to make a claim and say, hey, the city is trying to do something about this. So I would love to have her come and speak in the next month or so, and I would love support on this item. So thank you.

So I think we could have her come and just speak, give a presentation, okay? So I mean, I don't think, is everyone okay with that? All right, if you can give me the contact information, then I'll talk with city staff and we'll arrange that.

Okay, any other future agenda items?

Council Member Grimsley?

Yes, it's also a request for presentation as opposed to an agenda item.

Yeah, this is a, you have an additional one?

Yes.

Okay, so entitled futures, that's it? So that will be a presentation, and then Council Member Grimsley?

I'm requesting a presentation from our school board representatives, John Sweat and West Contra Costa Unified School District. It's the start of the school year. I'm kind of just getting a tap on what's happening new and around both of those districts.

Sure, sure. We'll ask staff to reach out to the school districts and see if they can give us an update. Any others? And that's okay with everyone? Okay, all right. So two possible future presentations. Okay, with that, we don't have any more agenda items, so we will now adjourn the meeting at 8.38 p.m., and our next meeting is September 22nd at 7 p.m.